by Nicole Fox
Liar’s Lullaby
A Mafia Romance
Nicole Fox
Copyright © 2021 by Nicole Fox
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
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Also by Nicole Fox
Liar’s Lullaby
1. Charlotte
2. Lucio
3. Lucio
4. Charlotte
5. Lucio
6. Lucio
7. Charlotte
8. Lucio
9. Charlotte
10. Charlotte
11. Lucio
12. Charlotte
13. Lucio
14. Charlotte
15. Lucio
16. Charlotte
17. Lucio
18. Charlotte
19. Charlotte
20. Lucio
21. Lucio
22. Charlotte
23. Lucio
24. Charlotte
25. Lucio
26. Charlotte
27. Charlotte
28. Lucio
29. Charlotte
30. Lucio
31. Charlotte
32. Lucio
33. Charlotte
34. Lucio
35. Charlotte
36. Lucio
37. Lucio
38. Charlotte
39. Lucio
40. Charlotte
41. Lucio
42. Charlotte
43. Lucio
44. Charlotte
45. Lucio
46. Charlotte
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Also by Nicole Fox
Kovalyov Bratva Duet
Gilded Cage (Book 1)
Gilded Tears (Book 2)
Princes of Ravenlake Academy (Bully Romance)
*Can be read as standalones!
Cruel Prep
Cruel Academy
Cruel Elite
Bratva Crime Syndicate
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Lies He Told Me
Scars He Gave Me
Sins He Taught Me
Belluci Mafia Trilogy
Corrupted Angel (Book 1)
Corrupted Queen (Book 2)
Corrupted Empire (Book 3)
De Maggio Mafia Duet
Devil in a Suit (Book 1)
Devil at the Altar (Book 2)
Kornilov Bratva Duet
Married to the Don (Book 1)
Til Death Do Us Part (Book 2)
Heirs to the Bratva Empire
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Kostya
Maksim
Andrei
Tsezar Bratva
Nightfall (Book 1)
Daybreak (Book 2)
Russian Crime Brotherhood
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Owned by the Mob Boss
Unprotected with the Mob Boss
Knocked Up by the Mob Boss
Sold to the Mob Boss
Stolen by the Mob Boss
Trapped with the Mob Boss
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Broken Vows (Book 1)
Broken Hope (Book 2)
Broken Sins (standalone)
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Vin: A Mafia Romance
Box Sets
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Tsezar Bratva (Tsezar Bratva Duet Books 1-2)
Heirs to the Bratva Empire
The Mafia Dons Collection
The Don’s Corruption
Liar’s Lullaby
Book One of the Mazzeo Maffia Duet
THERE’S A LIAR IN MY BED AND A BABY ON MY DOORSTEP.
My soldiers threw Charlotte at my feet and told me what she was:
A thief.
A liar.
A sneak.
I chained her in the cell beneath my mansion with a plan to get rid of her at dawn.
But something made me change my mind.
That something?
A little girl arriving on my doorstep, desperate and alone…
With a note in her hand that changes everything.
“This is your daughter.
Her mother is dead.
She’s your responsibility now.”
Now, I need a nanny for the daughter I never knew I had.
Lucky for me, I’ve got the perfect solution…
And she’s locked up in my cellar as we speak.
Charlotte
New York City—Just After Sunset
The walk home from work always sucks.
I’m leaving the cobbled pavements of upper-class cityscapes for the scarred sidewalks on the bad side of town.
Glistening skyscrapers turn into crumbling crack houses.
Men in expensive suits turn into men in… not that.
For fuck’s sake, the sidewalk even literally slopes downhill.
Basically, it’s the perfect metaphor for my life.
My thoughts are going to crazy places tonight. Probably because I’m exhausted and starving. It’s the kind of hunger that makes your stomach roil, your legs tremble, your head throb.
Back-to-back-to-back shifts at the restaurant with no rest in between will do that to a girl.
I’ve been on my feet since before dawn, which is why they’re killing me.
Well, that—and the fact that the soles of my ballet flats are so worn-through that I can practically feel the pavement on my bare skin.
I need new shoes—badly.
But I also need to make rent.
And triple shift or not, I don’t have the money for both.
As a matter of fact, right now, I don’t have the money for either.
“Hey there, Charlie girl!” comes a shrill, unwelcome voice.
I sigh and plaster a fake smile on my face before I look up at Mrs. Hammond. Her balcony overlooks the street and gives her a bird’s-eye view of everyone else’s business.
Incidentally, “viewing everyone else’s business” happens to be her favorite hobby.
“It’s Charlotte,” I mutter under my breath.
I’ve corrected her on my name a couple of times before—not that it did an ounce of good. But the urge is still there.
Only my mother calls me Charlie. And I don’t like it when she does that, either.
Not that I talk to Mama much these days.
To the nosy woman on the porch, I say, “Hey, Mrs. Hammond.”
She juts out a saucy hip and looks at me over the edge of her rhinestone-studded glasses.
“How many times have I asked you to call me Lisa?” she demands.
“About as many times as I’ve asked you to call me Charlotte,” I grumble.
“What was that, dear?” she asks. Her penciled-on eyebrows rise as she leans over her balcony railing.
She’s got pretty hazel eyes and a graceful, straight-line nose. But her most prominent feature is still the peach fuzz on her chin.
“Nothing,” I reply hastily. “Just heading home.”
“Awful late, ain’t it, sugar?”
“I took an extra shift today.”
“You work too hard,” she lectures. “Honestly, a pretty girl like you—you just need to find yourself a handsome fella and get him to take care of you.”
I bristle at the suggestion. I’m no kept woman.
That was my mother’s goal in life.
It sure as hell isn’t mine.
“I don’t need a fella,” I say, mimicking her Alabama accent. Decades in the city have tried and failed to iron her drawl out. “I get by fine by myself.”
If Vanessa was here right now, she’d be laughing in my face at my word choice. I can hear her voice in my head:
“‘You get by fine by yourself?’ Like hell you do! You live in an apartment building that’s been the scene of at least two murders, you risk setting the place on fire every time you turn on the stove, and you wash your hair in the sink. There’s nothing fine about any of that.”
She may be right about all of those things. But it doesn’t change the fact that my best friend is very, very annoying.
“I’m sure you do,” Mrs. Hammond continues.
I’m barely paying attention to the old nag, but she doesn’t care too much about that. I’m a captive audience—that’s all that matters to her.
“…And I know you young girls are all passionate about your feminism or whatnot. But every woman needs a man, darling. Trust me on that!”
I sigh again and clench my jaw. When will I ever learn the number one rule of city life?
Keep your head down and don’t engage.
“Well, I don’t need one, Mrs. Hamm—uh… Lisa,” I correct myself quickly.
“You know, I know a real fine young man who works at the deli down the way,” she tells me, completely oblivious to my less-than-enthusiastic tone. “He’s real handsome.”
“I’m not interested in meeting anyone.”
She sighs dramatically. “Why in heaven’s not?” she asks, as though I’m the one being difficult.
The easy answer rises to my lips.
Because I don’t want to end up like my mother. A twice-divorced forty-one-year old, still working two menial jobs to try and support the latest deadbeat that’s landed on her trailer couch.
That’s what I should say to her.
But I don’t.
Because as much as I disagree with my mother’s life choices, it feels like a betrayal to out her like that to a complete stranger.
I mean, she’s still my mother—even if she only calls twice a year.
December twenty-fifth, because it’s Jesus’s birthday.
And June seventeenth, because she thinks it’s my birthday.
(It’s not.)
“I’d love to stay and chat,” I say unconvincingly, because really, I’m too hungry for this conversation. “But I really have to get back home. I have to… uh, feed the cat.”
I start walking before she answers, throwing her a polite smile and waggle of my fingers as I go.
When she’s disappeared from sight, I can breathe a little easier.
Hitting the intersection at Broadway and 181st lands me squarely back into the shitty part of town. I take a right at the crossroads and keep walking ten more minutes until I hit my apartment complex.
Home, sweet home.
It’s a trash-strewn cul-de-sac lined with a motley crew of apartment buildings. The one thing they all have in common is that they’re cheap, rundown, and poor.
I pass the first two and turn into the third building, the one with slightly darker soot stains on its dirt brown walls.
That’s one nice thing about coming home late—at least the darkness masks most of the unadulterated shittiness of the place.
Meanwhile, I’m still racking my brain thinking about food.
I think there’s a half-eaten burrito in the fridge from Wednesday. I can have that.
Wait—did I eat it yesterday for dinner?
Yup. Sure did.
Fuck.
I walk down the narrow corridor. It feels as if the mildewed walls are leaning in towards me, trying to touch my face or my hair like a creep on the subway.
The whole building gives off “murdery vibes,” as Vanessa would say.
I repeat the Golden Rule to myself: Keep your head down and don’t engage.
Which means, of course, that a cockroach chooses that exact moment to scuttle over my foot.
As if the universe is giving me the middle finger and saying, Keep your head down all you want. There’s plenty of shit no matter where you look.
I stifle a scream and kick as hard as I can. The little brown bugger goes flying down the—wait, nope, he’s literally flying. Wings flapping and adding their buzz to the cheap fluorescent lights lining the ceiling.
Cockroaches have wings now? Fucking hell.
I wrench my attention back to the important question at hand: food. No burrito in my future, but I’m at least sixty percent certain that there’s a half-eaten loaf of bread on the top shelf.
It might be moldy by now, but I can cut away the bad bits and eat the rest.
Honestly, as long as it’s edible, I’m not gonna complain.
My stomach roils again just as I reach my door. I push my keys into the keyhole and twist hard.
Nothing moves.
What the hell?
I pull the key out with difficulty and try again.
Same thing this time around. No click.
I hold the key up to my face and examine it. As far as I can tell, nothing seems to be wrong. It’s the only key I own, so it’s not like I could have pulled out the wrong one. And it’s not broken or bent or anything like that.
Then I hear a callous chuckle that sends the hair at the back of my neck standing on end.
I whip around—just as Mickey steps out from the shadows of the stairwell.
He’s wearing his standard corduroy vest, the one that’s two sizes too small and smeared in the front with various different food stains.
He’s the type of guy you can see from a mile away and know without a doubt that he smells like a sewer stuffed with Doritos.
You’d be right about that, too.
“Having some trouble there, little lady?” he muses, clicking his tongue.
“My key’s not working.”
He gives me a leering smile that has me backing up against the door just a little.
God, I hate this motherfucker.
“It’s not your key that’s the problem,” Mickey tells me with obvious glee.
He runs his hand over his massive beer belly, a gesture he employs whenever he’s feeling particularly good about himself. His beady, deep-set eyes drink me in.
Honestly, I preferred the cockroach.
“You changed the lock?” I ask, my voice cracking in alarm.
“I can give you the new key,” he announces, “if you can give me the rent you owe.”
I wince against the naked hunger piercing the insides of my stomach. “Listen, Mickey…”
“Is that a no?” he interrupts.
“It’s been a tough few weeks.”
“Don’t you have a fancy job?” he demands.
“I’m a waitress in a fancy restaurant,” I clarify. “There’s a difference. My pay’s still shit. I survive on tips, and lately, I haven’t really been making much in that department.”
Mickey’s eyes skitter up and down my body.
I’m still in my waitress uniform. Black skirt. White shirt. Black, low-cut vest.
“You need to pop open that last button,” Mickey advises like he’s doing me a favor. “A man likes to see some real cleavage when you lean in to serve his meat.”
I swallow back my fury. I’m too hungry for this. For any of it.
That moldy bread on the other side of this door might as well be manna from heaven.
But instead, I’m trapped out here starving with the devi
l himself.
“Gee, thanks,” I reply sarcastically. “I’ll keep that in mind. Now, can you just give me the new key, please?”
Mickey sidles a little closer. “No.”
I wince again. Desperation and hunger and exhaustion all combining to beat me down like a trio of muggers.
Every part of me hurts—head, feet, heart.
I can’t do this.
I just cannot do this right now.
“Please, Mickey. I’ve had a crappy couple of weeks. Just give me a little time to get you the rent.”
“I’ve been giving you time,” he snaps. “For the last few months. I’m done with it. I’ve been warning you for a while now. You knew this was coming. Nothing in this world is free, Charlotte Dunn.”
I hate how he says my name. It makes me feel dirty, scummy.
And those eyes won’t stop slithering up and down, up and down.
“I’ve been warning you for a while now,” he repeats.
“Please,” I whimper again.
I know my voice sounds meek and pathetic but the hunger is ruthlessly snuffing the last of the fight, the last of the pride, the last of the dignity that I have in me.
