Dirty Hearts: A Bad Bod Mafia Romance

by Gray, Khardine

  Everyone was happy. One happy family. Sure, Dante and Gio were single to some extent, but they were living exactly how they wanted to.

  “I’ll make you boys roast on Sunday.” Amelia giggled and looked at me. “Claudius, should I roast you a squirrel?” It was a running joke between us, to some extent.

  I smirked and gave her a pointed stare. “Yes, you do that. Put some jalapenos on its head.”

  “Okay. I’ll even throw in some pink bon bons.”

  To my surprise, a smile tugged at the corner of my mouth. I guess it kind of wasn’t all that surprising since my sister-in-law knew exactly what to say to crack my hard exterior when I got like this.

  She waltzed over and planted a kiss on my forehead. Maybe she could see something was wrong with me too. I knew Luc could see it. Took one look at me as I walked in earlier, and that recognition formed in his eyes.

  “Make you chicken.” Amelia laughed as she backed away.

  “Mrs. Boss, can you make those little desserts like last week?” Gio jumped in.

  “Sure, I’ll get Gigi in to help. She makes them better than me.”

  She left us. Dante, Gio, and Maurice followed and closed the door behind them, leaving me with Luc.

  Luc released a slow sigh. “So, I need to tell you something, but I can see something more than usual is up with you. What is it?”

  I didn’t want to talk about it. “What did you have to tell me?”

  Luc laughed, not the humorous kind of laughter. This was more sarcastic. “Right, how about you tell me what’s up first, and then we hear what I have to

  say?”

  I leaned forward onto the table. “Brother, I know you know when I’m not in the mood to talk. So, don’t push me.”

  “Prick. I know you know that I’m possibly the only person you can talk to.”

  I frowned and narrowed my eyes at him. Sometimes Luc drove me crazy because he was always right.

  I was older by two years and should have been wiser, but it was always him.

  He always knew what to do, and damn it, he wasn’t possibly the only person I could talk to. He was the only one who could reach me when I was like this.

  I didn’t answer straight away. I just sat back in my chair.

  “Last week was Marissa’s anniversary, but that’s not what’s up your ass.” Luc drummed his fingers on the solid wood of the table.

  My gaze fell to the dark brown hue, then I returned my focus to Luc’s bright blue gaze.

  “I fucked up big time.”

  “Who’d you kill?” He looked worried, like really worried, and he was serious.

  “Jesus, no one yet.”

  “Good… I mean…” He got that faraway look in his eyes. The kind that he’d gotten since he’d been married to Amelia. Luc wasn’t part of the business anymore and what he deemed our way of life.

  He knew things were still clean, but if I was honest, I knew one day things could flip.

  “I know what you mean.”

  “You’re the boss, and it looks like things are going well. I won’t tell you what to do. I have no right, but know that I have your back. No matter what.” He nodded.

  “Means a lot.”

  “You know I do, Claudius. So, how exactly did you fuck up this time?”

  “Ava.” As soon as her name left my lips, I recalled the image of her from last night. I deserved the slap. What got me, though, was how she’d looked. The disappointment in her eyes, the hurt. The hurt I’d caused.

  Luc’s expression softened. “Did you see her?”

  “I saw her.”

  Luc bit the inside of his lips. “Did you… you guys have a repeat of four years ago?” A tentative expression washed over his face. Tentative and careful.

  “No.” He’d dragged that out of me too. Although I think I didn’t need much to crack me on that one. I’d actually told him what happened, but Dante and Gio guessed it.

  Four years ago, as I watched Ava from the shadows, I watched her break down and do the strangest thing. It was like she could sense me, sense my presence. I’d been hiding behind a mausoleum. It was closer to Marissa’s grave. She just spoke out loud and said, “How can you just stand there and watch me in pain? Claudius, you bastard.”

  That’s what she said. She couldn’t see me, but she knew I was there.

  I didn’t come out to her. I just watched, watched her break down, then it took me another hour before I lost my mind. I must have lost my fucking mind because I wasn’t thinking with my brain anymore.

  I went to her house, and seeing her sent me over the edge. We slept together, and then I did something I never thought I’d do. I left her.

  I left before morning. Before she woke. To her it must have looked like I didn’t care, like I was just using her.

  But that was so far from the truth.

  It was so very far from the truth, and my actions had made everything else so much worse than it had already been.

  “Hey.” Luc tapped on the desk. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”

  I pulled in a breath and on release, I managed to start talking and filled him in on what was going on.

  “Claudius, are we going to have this same crazy conversation again in ten years?”

  “Maybe, and you know why.”

  “Right, so it’s better for her to believe some lie? To continue believing the fucked-up for sure mess you conjured.”

  “It keeps her safe.”

  “Goliath took her to mess with you.”

  “Yeah, he sure did. He messed with me big time.” We knew to keep our family out of business, especially our women. I’d kept Marissa right out, and Ava hadn’t even been in the picture. To get to a guy like me you had to come at me by targeting my weaknesses.

  “So, you’re just going to continue like this? I know you. You don’t want anyone else. You want her.”

  Things had always been messy between Ava and me.

  Well… not always.

  Not in the beginning.

  She was sweet.

  I’d never had sweet before. She was the sweet college girl a guy like me should have stayed away from. I was seven years older than her, and I was a mobster.

  I should have stayed away from both her and Marissa. I didn’t.

  I went for the good girl, the sweet angel, and messed up.

  Marissa tricked me. Tricked me big time and in a way that the only person who I could tell was Luc.

  Our relationship was formed from tricks and traps. Tricks and traps that no longer mattered because she was dead. All she did was love me, and now she was dead.

  I couldn’t let the same thing happen to Ava.

  “Luc, as long as that animal is alive, I won’t rest. That puts her in danger. He took her when he didn’t know how I felt about her. What do you think he would have done to her if he knew?”

  “It’s been seven years, Claudius. No one’s seen him or heard of him.”

  “Doesn’t mean I’m going to stop looking for him.”

  Luc pressed his lips together again and straightened. A dark look washed over his face. “Something happened on Monday, and it panned out when I dug a little deeper.”

  Luc only looked and spoke like that when something bad happened. Something dark.

  “What is it?”

  “I saw one of Manello’s men in my shop.” He steepled his fingers and gazed at me.

  My blood instantly boiled. The Manellos were the key to finding Goliath. They’d been off grid just like him, and prior to that they’d only resurfaced when shit was going down. “Who was it?”

  “It was a lackey, a grunt. He wouldn’t have known it was my shop.”

  Luc ran a wine store in town. I doubted that anyone who’d been away for the last couple of years would have guessed that the shop was his, or even that one of the most feared and revered had settled down in the vanilla lifestyle.

  “What’d you do?”

  “Saul followed him.” Saul was one of Luc’s men. It
was funny they were still part of my crew, but they stuck with him. They were just there in case of trouble. They worked with him, looked happy doing it, but if I needed them, they’d be at my side. “Saul said it checked out. Claudius, if the Manellos are back, then something’s going on. People know you’re boss. They’ll know.”

  I stood up to go.

  “What are you doing?” Luc asked.

  “Leaving. I’m going to look into this.” I needed to.

  “Can I ask you to stay out of it? Let them do whatever it is they’re doing and just watch your back.”

  “No, you will not ask me that.” I looked at him like he was crazy. “For years, years I’ve been looking for some kind of lead. I don’t care where Goliath is. I will find him. He linked up with the Manellos before. They must know something. If you truly wanted me to stay out of it, you wouldn’t have told me anything.”

  Luc chuckled off key. “Maybe. Maybe I just want you to have some closure, finally.”

  “Thanks for the info.” I moved to the door.

  “Tell Ava the truth, Claudius. The whole truth.” His words stopped me.

  I turned back to face him. “I don’t know if I can do that.”

  He shrugged. “She deserves to know. If she hates her sister for what she did to you two, it actually doesn’t matter. But if you have any feelings for her at all, give her the respect she deserves with the truth. I’d want to know if it were me.”

  I took in the serious expression on his face, took in the sense in his words, took in what they meant.

  It was logical to tell the truth. But how did I do that? I could paint it to make Marissa look bad with the way she’d fooled me.

  However, that would excuse my guilt in the mix and make me look like the good guy.

  I’d always prided myself on being able to tell the twins apart. For me it was easy. I knew the one my heart reacted to. It was evident from day one.

  To me the women might have been similar but not the same.

  Marissa, however, lay in wait to catch me at the most vulnerable time in my life.

  That night, I didn’t know truth from lies. I never saw past the glimmer of her pretending to be Ava.

  I never had the strength for it.

  In my rendition of the truth I’d have to tell Ava that I got wasted because hours before, I’d lost one of my best friends. Henry. Luc knew this story all too well.

  That fucking psycho Victor Pertrinkov killed Henry, his wife, and their two kids, and there wasn’t a damn thing anyone could have done about it.

  I got wasted, plastered out of my mind, and Marissa picked that moment to reel me into her trap.

  That was the truth.

  Chapter 6

  Ava

  * * *

  I woke up this morning feeling like shit.

  Absolute shit. Just like yesterday.

  I tried everything and couldn’t get out of this stench of a mood I’d been in since seeing Claudius.

  I went to work this morning with a dark cloud over me and couldn’t shake it all damn day.

  And worse, it was starting to affect my work. That never happened. Never, ever. Work was the one thing I could always rely on, and now he’d taken that too.

  I couldn’t focus enough to finish off the menu, and it didn’t help that I hadn’t heard back from the realtors or the bank.

  When I’d called them yesterday, they said they were still waiting to hear from the owner. Since I hadn’t exactly done this before, getting a commercial property and a loan to expand, I figured that maybe it was normal to wait.

  It didn’t help though.

  I’d sat here for the last hour giving the menu another attempt. Every time I thought I had something, I thought of Claudius and ended up squashing the notepaper up and throwing it on the ground.

  What did he want?

  Why did he come by? Maybe the sensible thing to do should have been to hear whatever it was he had to say to me, then slap him.

  At least then I wouldn’t have been stuck wondering with suspense gripping at my insides and making me crazy.

  Jesus… I looked over the recipe I was making for the new beef lasagna frowned when I noticed I’d added two different types of chili. The habanero Kelly had cautioned against and the scorpion. That would have ruined the meal.

  Ughh. I tore that out of the notebook, scrunched it up, and tossed it to the others.

  “Fucking shit!” I bellowed.

  At that moment, Kelly pushed the door open and came in with some iced tea.

  “Gosh, looks like I came at the right time. You look like you’re going to blow up.” She winced.

  “Kelly, not now. Please. I just can’t.”

  She frowned. “Drink the tea. It will cool you down. It’s been a hot day, and at the rate you’re going, you’re going to give yourself an aneurism.”

  Maybe she was right. I took the tea and downed it, not realizing how thirsty I was. The peach flavor and the ice did cool me down and to some extent calm me. But just a little. Only a little.

  “Thank you.”

  “Feel better?” She quirked her brows.

  I shook my head. “No. I feel awful.”

  “How about you go home, and I can finish up here?”

  Kelly was such a great friend. I loved that she took such great care of me, but I couldn’t let her do that. Not tonight. She and Cody had a big date tonight. She’d worked late for the last few nights.

  “No, I’m good.”

  “You kind of aren’t. Please don’t bite my head off, but have you thought of maybe going to see Claudius? This is a different question to the other night. Then I was just talking about closure. Seeing him changed that.”

  I was about to tell her that I never wanted to see him again when there was a knock at the door.

  “Come in.” I tried to look less antsy.

  When the door opened and a really tall guy came in with that badass look and that sureness-of-himself attitude, I could have breathed fire.

  I straightened immediately and eyed him with daggers.

  Kelly tensed.

  “Relax, your manager told me I could come back here,” he stated.

  “What do you want?” I asked. There was no point in pleasantries. I knew that mobster look, could tell it from afar. This guy was one of them.

  “Geez, those guys sure know how to pick ballsy women.” He cleared his throat. “The name’s Maurice. I’m just a messenger, I swear. Came to give you this.” He pulled out an envelope from the inside of his leather jacket.

  I stood up and walked over to him, taking the envelope when he held it out to me.

  “What’s inside?”

  “Don’t know. He thought I was the most suitable person to give it to you.”

  “He?” I squared off with this guy like I was the same height and stature as him.

  I was wearing pumps today, so he had a good foot on my five feet and four inches, and the width in his shoulders could have been two of me.

  “The boss.”

  Claudius. As if I didn’t know, but then I did ask.

  I looked down at the envelope realizing that this was what he’d wanted to see me about.

  I opened it and took out a document that was stapled together. My attention was instantly drawn to the heading on the top of the paper. The letterhead. It said Eidlewoods Commercial Estates.

  The document I expected to get from them was a lease where I would sign for however many years or even months they would allow, but this was a transfer of ownership document

  My hands stilled, and my eyes lingered over the words on the first paragraph. It stated:

  I, Claudius Morientz, bequeath 101-110 Duesbury building and the adjoining land surrounding it to Miss Ava De Luca …

  That’s all I saw. The rest of the words were hazy and looked like a massive blur.

  101-110. I’d only placed my enquiry on 108 and 109. I thought I could start small and then expand. This was the whole building, and it was massive. Even
bigger than the one I stood in.

  I looked at Maurice, then at Kelly, who still seemed really tense.

  “Well, what is it?” Kelly asked. Her curiosity broke me out of the tension.

  I handed the title to her, and her mouth dropped. I was about to hand the envelope to her too but felt something else inside.

  I looked in and pulled out a check.

  When I saw how much money was on it, I dropped it. A million dollars.

  Maurice picked it up and smirked. He didn’t look surprised. That in itself shouldn’t have amazed me because I guessed he was used to seeing those kinds of digits. He went to hand it back to me, but I couldn’t take it. Kelly took it instead and shrieked.

  “Holy fucking shit!” she cried.

  Maybe I was messed up. That should have been my reaction too. Getting the place I wanted to expand my business and a check for a million dollars was supposed to be some kind of dream, right?

  As in the kind where all a person’s dreams could come true and their whole life could change.

  So, why did I feel like this?

  Why did I feel that hollow inside me just get bigger?

  Why did I feel worse?

  It was because he’d come to see me the other night for business. That was it.

  He owned the property and probably owned the bank I applied for the loan at too, or something.

  It seemed like he must have felt some sort of guilt in making me pay and did this. He decided to give me the building and more money than I could dream of.

  That was it. That thought made my mind slip from me. It slipped right out of my grasp, and I grabbed my little purse and my jacket.

  I didn’t even stop when Kelly called after me.

  Her idea earlier was a good one. Go and see Claudius.

  Yes, I absolutely fucking would.

  * * *

  It took me half an hour to get to his office building. I’d been here exactly once before. That was to meet him outside.

  I wasn’t supposed to know that this place was the central hub for the don of the Chicago mafia. I didn’t think it was some hideout. These people didn’t need to hide, but I was sure as fuck that people didn’t think it was an accountancy firm like the other buildings surrounding it.