HE'S FORBIDDEN TO TOUCH ME.
I'm the Don's daughter. A mafia princess. He's my father's right-hand man.
When Carlo catches me taking my clothes off in a strip club,
he wants to haul me into my father's office.
I suggest an alternative–one more pleasurable for both of us.
He can handle my punishment. Dominate me the way he's always wanted.
Take care of my needs and, most importantly, keep my secret.
But we're playing with fire.
Every day, I fall a little more for the underboss
and if my father finds out...
It won't just be my future destroyed.
It could mean Carlo's life.
This stand-alone romance has no cliff-hangers, no cheating. HEA guaranteed.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Prologue
Sicily
Carlo
Blood soaks my clothes—too much to show up at my great-uncle Junior’s front entrance. I slip around to the back and tap the heavy wooden door. I hope Zia Maria doesn’t answer, not that the old woman can’t handle the shock. Sicilian women—at least those in La Famiglia—are as tough as the men.
The door cracks, and the muzzle of a Glock points through followed by my uncle’s bushy white eyebrows.
“Carlo.” The door swings wide, and my uncle grabs me by the shirt and hauls me inside.
“Only some of it is mine.” I can’t get my damn ear to stop bleeding from the bullet that went through. The bullet that missed my skull by an inch.
“Get cleaned up before your aunt sees you.” The old man propels me to the bathroom. “I’ll bring you some clothes.”
I strip, the metallic smell of blood filling my nostrils. Ferdi’s blood. Fucking Ferdi. I left him alive after I beat the truth out of him.
Who tries to kill their own cousin? Ferdi, apparently.
I won’t. I didn’t. Ferdi’s soldier, though, is another story. I left a bullet in the middle of his forehead. Closing my eyes, I try to erase the sight.
I wash in the shower and dry off, barely managing to keep the continuous drip of blood from my ear from staining Zia Maria’s towel.
My uncle comes in without knocking and drops some clothes on the counter. He gives me an up-and-down sweep of the eyes, probably checking for bullet holes. “Just the ear?”
“Yeah.” I yank on the clothes.
“Who?” Junior hands me a washcloth and lifts his chin toward my still-bleeding ear.
“Ferdi.”
My uncle’s bushy eyebrows drew together. “Your cousin Ferdi? What happened?”
“Mario put a hit on me.” I somehow keep the waver from my voice, unprepared for the sense of betrayal rocketing through my chest. My own fucking brother. My fucking brother ordered me killed.
Junior’s face turns to stone, his eyes black and dangerous. It’s an expression I’ve seen on my father’s face countless times. The Sicilian war face. Calculating, deadly. “What happened? Wait, come out of the fucking bathroom. I’ll get you a drink.”
At the kitchen table, Junior pours both of us a glass of grappa, and we sit down.
“My dad named me Consiglieri. I think Mario thinks he might pick me to lead when he dies.” My chest tightens at the thought of my father, so diminished from the cancer now.
“I see.” My mom’s uncle isn’t part of the Romano business in Palermo, but his family has ties to them and runs their own network of semi-legal or illegal operations. He understands the dynamics. “What’s your plan?”
That is the fucking problem. I don’t have one.
Junior reads into the silence. “Are you going to tell your dad?”
I give my head a decisive shake. “Hell no. He’s on his deathbed. It would kill him, and he would die brokenhearted.”
“Let me ask you this, Carlo. Do you want to lead the family? I mean, how old are you? Twenty-three?”
“Yeah.”
“I mean, I know you’re smart, and I’m sure you’re tough, but do you think the older guys are going to fall in line under you?”
I shrug. “I wasn’t trying to steal the power from Mario… or any of them.” Hell, I’m the fifth son, I never expected to be more than a capo. But as the youngest child, I have the special ability of reading people. Born from all that time observing from corners as a kid, I suppose. I see through bullshit, see into people. My father used that talent in the last few years, coming to me much more often than he did Mario or any of our other brothers.
We always were tight, me and my dad. I’m the baby of the family, after all. My dad wasn’t as much of a hard-ass with me as he was with my brothers; and more than that, my parents revered me as a special gift because I almost died during birth.
“Look, I don’t even know if my father would have shaken up the structure. But obviously, Mario was worried. So now I’m in a bad place.”
The soft pad of Zia Maria’s slippers scuffing the floor signal her approach from down the hall.
“It’s Carlo,” Junior calls to her.