Jaded Devil: An Enemies-to-Lovers Mafia Romance

by Nicole Fox

  “Hi.” I smile, sitting down and leaning my hands on the counter in a way that pushes my breasts up a little.

  He glances at me with disinterest, then does a double take when he gets a better look. “Ah… hi.”

  I smile. “The pizza smells amazing.”

  “Yeah. Thanks. Not my recipe,” he says awkwardly.

  The trick about flirting is not to overdo it. You want to be subtle. Friendly, but not sickeningly so. His eyes flicker down to my breasts. Good start.

  “I haven’t seen you around here before,” he remarks. “Most of our customers are regulars.”

  “Well, maybe I will be, too,” I tell him. “That is, if the pizza tastes as good as it smells.”

  “It is. We do a ton of Greek dishes, too, if that’s more your thing.”

  I frown. “Really? That’s weird.”

  “Yeah,” he shrugs. “There was a management change a couple of years ago. The guys in charge are Greek now.”

  “Interesting,” I reply. Even though it strikes me as slightly odd. I don’t have the mental bandwidth to process that right now, though. I just need food.

  “What can I get you?” he asks, clearly eager to keep the conversation going. “Or are you waiting for someone?”

  “I am, actually,” I reply.

  His face falls immediately. “I’m waiting on my brother,” I clarify. The smile pops right back onto his face. “Silly me, I lost my purse in the park and I’m stranded here until he comes to get me.”

  “Oh…”

  “I’d order a piece of pizza right now, but I don’t have the money to pay for it.”

  His smile gets wider as though he can’t believe his good luck. “Don’t worry—first slice is on the house. My treat.”

  “Are you serious?” I gasp, speaking a little louder to cover the fact that my stomach is growling furiously. “Thank you so much, uh…?”

  “The name’s Luigi.”

  “Luigi,” I say, giving him my best smile.

  “I’ve got a slice of capricciosa ready—”

  “Sounds perfect,” I say, a little too abruptly.

  He plates up a large slice and sets it down in front of me with a glass of water. It’s all I can do not to grab the slice and scarf it down in one go. I manage to contain myself, but the moment his back is turned, I wolf down a huge piece.

  When he turns, his eyes go wide. “Whoa. Someone’s hungry.”

  “Or the pizza’s just that good.”

  “I can get you another slice if you want.”

  “On the house?” I can’t help but say.

  His smile dips just a little. “For a pretty girl like you—sure, why not?”

  I’m finished with the first slice and licking my fingers before the second one arrives. My act is wearing a little thin now that the edge has been taken off my hunger.

  “You never told me your name,” he points out, popping in a raw pizza into the oven directly in front of me.

  “Renata,” I mumble.

  “That’s a pretty name.”

  “It’s a family name,” I say, offering up more information without even stopping to consider if that’s wise. “My grandmother’s name was Renata. And so was her mother’s.” My only excuse is that my ordeal has blunted my common sense by a lot.

  “Is that right?” comes a new voice.

  I freeze as an older man strolls up next to Luigi from a hidden door off to the side. He’s clearly been listening in on our conversation, because he’s eyeing me with interest.

  “Uh… yeah,” I say. “It is.”

  “And what did you say your last name was, dear?” he asks. He is nothing like patchy-faced Luigi, with his innocent smile and clueless eyes. This man gives off an aura of authority.

  And not the good kind.

  “I didn’t,” I reply. “It’s, uh… Belasco.”

  “Is it?” he says with a nod that I don’t like one bit.

  I put down the slightly burnt crust of my second slice of pizza. I’m still hungry, but I can afford to ignore it now. “Y’know, I actually should go and wait outside,” I say, avoiding Luigi’s eyes. “My brother should be here any moment. To, uh, pick me up.”

  The older man walks around the counter and stands right in front of me, blocking my way out. “Your brother’s not coming to pick you up,” he tells me flatly.

  “I… Of course he is…”

  “Cut the shit,” he says with a sinister smile. Then he leans in to whisper in my ear, “I know exactly who you are, Renata Lombardi.”

  13

  Kian

  An Hour Earlier—Outside Kian’s Penthouse Building

  My phone rings. “Yeah?”

  “Calling with an update,” Phoenix says in a low voice.

  The valet pulls my car into the broad-roofed driveway. I walk around to claim the driver’s seat. “Go ahead.”

  “We’ve got a lead. He’s a Lombardi loyalist and we intercepted a phone call he made twenty minutes ago. Apparently, he’s on his way to an important meeting. The name Lombardi was thrown around a few times.”

  This is unexpected. But certainly not unappreciated. “Who’s he meeting?”

  “No idea yet. But we’re tailing the fucker.”

  “Good. Don’t let him out of your sight. I’ll meet you at the location.”

  “Hurry,” Phoenix tells me. “This zhopa isn’t gonna stay in one place for long.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I reply. “But traffic’s gonna be a bitch. Try and place a tracker on his vehicle just in case.”

  “On it.”

  I hang up and drive out onto the packed New York streets. I’ve been here long enough that I know shortcuts and by-lanes, but it’ll still take me at least an hour to get to Long Island.

  The traffic leaves me feeling fidgety and impatient. Of course, it takes no time at all for my mind to start spiraling. Inevitably, it lands on the feisty brunette trapped in the wardrobe of my guest bedroom.

  It took a fuck-ton of will power to keep me from going in there this morning before leaving. She needs to be taught a lesson. And my new desire to spar with her at every opportunity needs to be squashed.

  My cock strains against my pants and I grit my teeth with frustration. Why on earth does she turn me on so fucking much?

  The morning I met her, I’d woken up with two different women on either side of me in bed. Now, that memory feels distant. Detached from me. All I can focus on is the image of Renata bursting into the shower with her arm raised. The glint in her eye as she’d tried to stab me with the crystal ornament Ma bought as a housewarming gift years ago.

  It was a fight to the death—theoretically, at least. But my cock was throbbing from the moment she charged at me.

  And of course, once she was wet, there was no holding it back.

  Her breasts looked just as firm and plump as her lips and I was at war with myself over whether to kill her right there or fuck her in the shower with my hand clamped around her throat.

  The memory is enough to get me hard all over again. I should focus on the road, on Lombardi, on literally anything else. But no matter what I do, I can’t get her out of my head.

  The violence radiating from her skin calls to me. Like a fucking beacon I can’t turn away from. I’ve been here before. It’s too much. Always fucking too much.

  And she is no ordinary woman. She’s a fucking Lombardi, and they’ve proved to be a bigger problem than I ever anticipated. Keeping her around is only going to invite more trouble. No woman is worth the headache she’s causing.

  Tiernan will take care of the Renata problem soon, like I asked. And then all of this can become a distant, dusty memory.

  Things will be better that way.

  The updates keep lighting up my phone, but I spare them only a glance as I drive to the industrial hub in Long Island. I take longer than I would have wanted to get to there, but thankfully, the Lombardi loyalist that Phoenix is trailing hasn’t moved.

  Phoenix and my other men are
waiting for me when I arrive. There are dark circles around the kid’s eyes, but apart from that, he looks alert. Energized. He really is built for this world.

  “Well?”

  “He’s inside the data housing center over there,” Phoenix tells me, pointing out the building in question. “Been in there for almost fifty minutes now.”

  I nod and survey it. “You think he suspects us?”

  “He seemed pretty nervous when he entered the warehouse, so who the fuck knows? But he doesn’t have back-up.”

  “He entered alone?”

  “Yeah,” Phoenix replies. “Jacobsen confirmed that there’s at least ten men in there with him. But most are low-level employees. Civilians, if I had to guess. Probably not connected to mob business at all.”

  I shake my head. “We can’t assume that.”

  The vow I made to myself a long time ago flashes through my head: No one gets hurt who doesn’t deserve it. I learned that lesson the hard way. What it does to a man’s soul to take an innocent life. That rule is the only thing separating us from the beasts.

  I shudder and refocus on the conversation. “Have you managed to find out anything else?”

  Phoenix nods. I can tell he’s both worried about the news and excited to tell me about it. “Apparently, he’s going in for a meeting with the Greek mafia.”

  My eyebrows hit the roof of my forehead. “Say that again.”

  “Greek mafia. That’s the intel we’ve got.”

  “Fuck,” I growl, looking towards the building like I’m worried it’s gonna blow up at any minute. “The fucking Greeks.”

  “I wasn’t aware the Italians and the Greeks had an alliance.”

  “Because they don’t. At least, they didn’t,” I tell him. “But the fact that there is even a meeting between them suggests that something is in play.”

  Phoenix studies my expression carefully. “This concerns you,” he guesses.

  I ignore that for now. “Did you get a name?”

  “Uh, yeah. It’s… um, hold on… Let me ask Jacobson,” he says, looking back over his shoulder.

  “Just tell me it’s not Rokiades,” I mutter, rubbing at my temples to ward off the headache.

  “That’s it!” Phoenix confirms before he even gets a step away. “That’s the name. You know him?”

  “Motherfucker,” I growl. That’s not the news I was hoping for. “I know of him. He controlled quite a large part of New York around the time I moved here. He and the Italians—the Lombardis, specifically—were at war. Fighting for dominion over the usual bullshit.”

  “Then you arrived,” Phoenix infers.

  I nod. “Right. I came, wiped the slate clean, and made the city into undisputed Clan territory.”

  “What happened with Rokiades?”

  “He’s an older don. Stubborn as fuck and power-hungry. But he’s also smart. He realized that if the Clan could take on the Lombardis and win, then his pitiful little organization had no chance. He didn’t pledge fealty like some of the other small-timers, but he did recede into the background. It was as good as raising the white flag. I haven’t thought about him in almost twenty years.”

  “You just… let him go?” Phoenix gawks at me.

  I wince at the decades-old choice to show mercy. “I was trying to get my bearings in this city,” I admit. “It might have been an oversight, but it was one of my first decisions as don. I didn’t want to be a butcher. If the Greeks weren’t interested in challenging me, then I wasn’t about to eradicate them for no reason.”

  “And now?”

  “If they’re moving against the Clan, I will wipe them off the fucking planet,” I snarl. “Make no mistake about it.”

  “Why would they ally with the Lombardis, though?” Phoenix muses. “From everything we know of Drago Lombardi, the guy’s a fucking imbecile.”

  “Sometimes, a name means more than the man who bears it,” I reply darkly. “Drago may not be suited to the role of a don. But his name still carries weight in certain parts of the city.”

  Phoenix frowns, deep in thought. I can tell he’s wrestling with his own name, his own legacy. I’m the first one to admit it’s a difficult cross to bear. He’ll figure it out when the time is right.

  “There’s a group of men, Italians, that have been sidelined for twenty years,” I explain. “They need a leader to gather behind. And they’re going to stick to their own rather than sell out. Loyalty is everything in these circles.”

  Phoenix nods thoughtfully. “What’s the plan now?”

  I jerk my head towards the data center shrouded in darkness. “We follow this son of a bitch to the meeting and take note of everyone who turns up for it,” I say. “Then we make the real plans.”

  “You’ve got that look in your eye,” Phoenix remarks.

  I chuckle. “Is that so?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “The look like you want to hurt somebody.”

  I shiver. Again, that old oath runs through my head. No one gets hurt who doesn’t deserve it. Then my mind jumps to the girl in the wardrobe.

  I shove both thoughts aside and focus on Phoenix once more. “Only the people who would do the same to me if they were strong enough to,” I say grimly.

  “Is this going to be like the Lombardi don’s wedding all over again?”

  Clearly, his father has filled him in on all the gory details. That’s what he cares about, what excites him. But all I can think of is the blood-drenched little girl who stood in the shadow of the doorway, looking at me as though I could provide her with answers that would make sense.

  “It might be,” I acknowledge. “And like the first time, we’re gonna win this battle, too.”

  Phoenix smiles. I notice his hands balls into fists of anticipation. He’s still young enough to crave a fight, to go looking for one. I passed that point a decade ago. Now, I only fight when I have to. When I’m forced to.

  Occasional battles are necessary to keep morale and to reinforce power in the city. But they come at a price, too. I’m not risking my men unless I have to.

  Being a don means thinking of the lives lost on your watch. Not just the battles fought in your name.

  I catch a signal coming from our man on the other side of the warehouse.

  “He’s coming out,” Phoenix observes.

  “Good. Let’s get in position.”

  He nods and starts to trot back to his vehicle—when a gunshot shatters the relative silence of the morning.

  Phoenix drops to the ground.

  I turn my head to the right, catching sight of the shooter. I grab both my guns and cock them at the same time as I raise my arms.

  Phoenix is scrambling to his feet, keeping his body low as he ducks for cover behind his vehicle. The bullet missed him, but from the scorched sleeve of his shirt, I realize it wasn’t off by much.

  We’ve both got our eyes on the target, a mass of shadows not far off in the distance. I don’t see any other silhouettes near him. The man seems to be working independently. He steps into a slanted beam of light, bright enough for me to make out a few details. He’s got so much facial hair that it drowns out the rest of his features.

  But I’m not worried about identifying him. He’s going to be dead shortly.

  He’s shooting desperately, both his guns going off in a blaze of mindless violence. Then, behind me, I hear the screech of tires.

  And I realize he’s not meant to be a threat—he’s meant to be the distraction.

  The Lombardi loyalist we’ve glommed onto is making his escape. I grit my teeth and keep my attention on the fucker between Phoenix and me.

  First things first. I hurtle forward, keeping my eyes on the bearded bastard so that I know which way to swerve. It’s a risky move, but I’m fucking pissed now. The fact that my shoulder is hurting like a motherfucker doesn’t help.

  I land a shot on his leg and the man goes down with a pained grunt.

  One of his guns clatters to the ground, but he keeps a tight grip on the second o
ne. He’s struggling to get it aimed at me, but before he can level the weapon, I’m on him.

  I kick the firearm out of his hand and then drop onto his face with the full weight of my body bearing down behind my elbow.

  An instant crunch. The trickle of blood. A moan of agony.

  I roll off, but stay close enough to wrench the son of a bitch up by the front of his shirt. He coughs blood as his eyes pinwheel in their sockets, delirious with pain.

  Phoenix comes up behind me. “You okay?” I ask him.

  “Fine,” he replies. “The bullet just grazed me.”

  I give him the once-over just to make sure. Then I turn back to the bearded fucker in my grasp. Re-gripping my gun, I jam it up under the man’s chin.

  “We don’t have time for this,” Phoenix says urgently. “He’s getting away.”

  “You planted the tracker?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” My eyes are fixed on the man in front of me.

  “Where’s he headed?” I ask for good measure.

  “Fuck you, you fucking mick.”

  I roll my eyes, drop him down, and shoot him three times in rapid succession. The man’s lifeless body twitches and then stills. His face is a messy patchwork of blood. The coroner will have their hands full identifying this one.

  “Come on,” I tell Phoenix as I wipe the man’s blood splatter off my face. “We can still catch up to the loyalist.”

  “The boys are on it.”

  “Well, then, we don’t want to be late to the party, do we?”

  Since my men have taken the main vehicle, Phoenix gets into mine and we start the chase across Long Island. “You think he’ll still head to the meeting?” he muses.

  “Doubtful,” I reply. “But it doesn’t matter. If we catch him, we can get him to talk. Find out what the Italians and Greeks are planning.”

  “You think he’ll talk?”

  I laugh and stomp down harder on the gas. “By the time we’re done with him, he’ll be fucking screaming.”