François, my captain, gives me a curious look as I return to the bar counter. “Did you get her number?”
My arms cross over my chest. “She doesn’t fuck Italians.”
He chokes with laughter. “Well, she picked the right place.”
It’s a connected bar. Everyone knows that. It’s my bar—and I’m the boss of the Cravotta Crime Family.
He beckons to me, leaning in to talk close in a hushed whisper. “Listen, me and the guys have an idea for getting a copy for the guards’ keys for the heist.”
I don’t feel like talking business. My desire for the party evaporated the moment that girl walked out on me.
“We’ll talk about it later. I’m going to head out.”
And jack off furiously when I get home.
* * *
That girl simmers in my head the whole weekend. The rage boils over, mingling with burgeoning lust. The fact is, I get around. I score a lot of easy pussy, but none of them ever fucked with my head like this. Rejection is not something I deal with as a boss of the family. Period. Women are eager to please me just like everyone else.
“Chris, let me out here.”
My driver stops the car in front of my mother’s house and I step out of the sleek Audi, shutting the door hard enough to make the windows rattle.
God, I need to get it together.
The last thing I want is to visit my ma, but I’m supposed to be a family man. It’s important to respect your family in this business, even if I don’t care for mine. At the end of the day, I do whatever the fuck I want, but it’s hard to shake off that feeling of duty to your family.
I knock on the door, my fist banging against the dense wood. Seconds later, Ma wrenches it open. She’s well kept, my mother, and that’s always something I admired about her.
“Johnny!”
She wears an apron over her yellow dress and looks at my suit, her eyes widening. “Look at you, looking so handsome. Do you have a date?”
Jesus Christ. This again.
I step inside her house. “No, Ma. This is how I always look.”
Her eyes wrinkle. “I wish you would get a girlfriend and settle down.”
“I did, remember? Twice?”
Married twice. Divorced twice. I married Stacey when I was too young, and all we did was resent each other. Karen, my second wife, left me. That part of my life is over. I guess you could say that I gave up on having the perfect family life. Fuck it. I like being able to go out whenever the fuck I want. I like fucking a new piece of ass every night.
Which inevitably reminds me of the piece of ass who teased me a couple nights ago. Who I can’t get out of my goddamn head.
“When am I going to get grandchildren?”
“Did you just invite me over to give me shit about this again?” My angry voice echoes in the small apartment as she guides me to the kitchen.
“Johnny, I don’t like hearing you curse.”
Mange d’la marde.
“Sorry.”
“Come, you need to eat. You’re too skinny.”
I’m always “too skinny” for her. She expects me to bloat like a beached whale, like my old man. He was a fat fuck.
She flaps her hands, motioning me toward the bowl of spaghetti alla Bolognese. Ma serves me at least a pound of pasta. The steam rises from it in spirals, the spices from the meat failing to distract me from my two ex-wives.
It’s really the only thing I’ve ever failed at in life. I have all the money and pussy I could possibly fucking want. The only thing I don’t have—a family—I failed at. Twice.
I’m not going for a third. I just won’t.
Besides, living a bachelor’s life isn’t bad at all. Tony did it, before he knocked up that girl.
I pick up the fork and wind the pasta around and around.
Then I think about how Tony talks about his baby girl all the time with a look in his eyes that I don’t understand, and my chest tightens.
I shove the feeling away.
Who needs a wife?
“So how’s work going?”
“Pretty good.”
Work is always a tricky topic to navigate around my mother. She knows exactly who I am, but I wouldn’t tell her, for example, that I’m planning the biggest heist in history. Millions of dollars in cash. That’s what fucking drives me. Nearly every restaurant, casino, and racetrack in this city gives me a piece of their action in exchange for protection from other gangs. If this heist goes as planned, all of us will be fucking rich. We won’t need that shit anymore.
She looks up at me from her plate of Bolognese, her eyes evasive. “I just find it hard to believe that you can’t find another wife.”
My fork clatters on the plate as I throw my head back and close my eyes.
Keep it together. Don’t fucking yell at her, or she’ll cry and you’ll be stuck here even longer.
“Ma, marriage isn’t for me.”
“I thought I would die of shame when you got divorced the first time. It’s a sin, Johnny. Marriage is a sacred vow—”
“Oh will you fucking please stop with this shit!” The chair crashes to the floor as I stand up abruptly. “Every fucking time I come over, it’s the same thing! I’m not getting married again. I’m not having kids. Get the fuck over it. I am.”
I’m stewing with the rage of being reminded of this failure over and over again, but then she bundles the tablecloth in her hands, and her face screws up.
Shit.
“How can you talk like that to your mother?”
Seeing her tears would be a bigger punch to my gut if she hadn’t done it a thousand times already. I shove my hands deep inside my pockets, filled with a rush of self-loathing.
She’s right. You don’t disrespect your mother.
“I’m sorry, Ma.”
“You’re all I have left. Your father left us.”
Oh, fuck him.
A fresh stab of anger hits me right in the chest as she looks at a family portrait hanging on the wall. I want to smash it, or at least cut him from the fucking photograph so I don’t have to see his rotten face staring back at me.
“He’s been dead a long time, Ma. You should meet someone else.”
“I can’t. I loved your father.”
I didn’t.
I don’t dare say that out loud.
“I’m so proud of you, Johnny. I just want you to be happy, and I don’t think you are.”
I am fucking happy. Aren’t I?
What the fuck is happiness? Is it whistling to yourself as you walk down the street without a care in the world? Is it being able to fuck gorgeous women, night after night? I search inside myself, but I only feel vague annoyance and that stirring need for more stimulation.
Bending over, I pick up the chair from the floor, avoiding my mother’s gaze. “I gotta go.”
“Already? But you just—”
I take a few steps toward her chair and give her a kiss on the cheek. “Yeah, thanks for the food.”
“Wait—I have to give you leftovers!”
“No, really. I got to go.”
I finally breathe the moment I’m out of that fucking house, and for some reason that girl pops into my head again, shoving all thoughts of my exes away. She was a fucking tease, and she talked to me as though I were just a regular guy. Hell, she acted as though she was better than me. It’s so rare that I meet a beautiful girl who is self-confident.
Then I think about how hot those haughty lips would look wrapped around my cock, and I hope she returns to the bar.
I’m not taking no for an answer.
MAYA
For a while I was content to sit there in my cousin’s badly fitting dress, surrounded by men I didn’t know as conversation and music boomed around me. It felt familiar and yet different from the obnoxious beat of the clubhouse. It was just as loud, but without my father’s men treating me like a princess. It was nice. Now it’s like nails on chalkboard, like an unpleasant shrieking sound, growing lou
der and louder. Kind of like my heartbeat, slamming against my chest.
Shit. What did I almost get myself into?
My chest rattles from my heartbeat as I totter in my heels, trying to look dignified as I focus on getting the fuck away from this bar as fast as possible.
That Italian guy in the bar had me wrapped around his finger. He just wanted to fuck me, to use my body. My father’s dire warnings against them ring in my head: Never ever let me catch you with an Italian, Maya. They’re no good. They’ll just use you for your body and dump you when it’s over.
Damn, I almost made a decision I would’ve regretted.
Don’t kid yourself. You would have loved stripping off your dress for him. He was sex on a stick.
He was. Fuck, the way his hands glided up my legs, just brushing my upper thigh. I was ready to give myself to him there, to let him smooth his hands all the way up my thighs and make me come the way he said he would.
Daddy will never know.
I shiver in the warm June air as I think of that desperately sinful smile, those dimples curving into his face, the small wrinkles near his eyes. Just having his hands on me in the office was almost enough for me to get wet. They felt so strong and confident, as if he’d held a woman many times before. There was no lack of confidence in that hot gaze, even when he told me to let him talk to my dad.
Hah. As if.
I’ve never met such a ballsy bar owner, but then again, I didn’t tell him who my dad was.
“You’re thinking about that hot Italian guy, aren’t you?”
“What?” I say in a voice that’s way too high-pitched. “No, of course not.”
My cousin gives me a sidelong glance, the corner of her lip tugging into a smile.
“You are.”
“Fine. So what? He was hotter than any guy in the MC.”
Beatrice shrugs one bare shoulder. “I don’t know about that.”
“Are you crazy?” My voice rings down the street. “What, you like those bearded, nasty assholes who get drunk every Thursday with those strippers my father always hires?”
She throws back her blonde head and laughs, the golden highlights harsh under the streetlights. “Oh come on, they’re not all like that.”
I stare at her wide smile as we walk back to her car, unable to understand her levity. We both grew up behind the same walls—both have restrictions on our comings and goings from the compound. Fuck, we’re not even supposed to go to bars without an escort. Let alone a bar rumored to be connected. Dad would flip.
How can she be happy about this?
“So what happened when you went into his office?”
My insides seize up as she walks past me with a shrewd grin. My hand slips on the door handle of the car as blood careens inside my veins. “I—I didn’t do anything with him.”
The sound of the doors unlocking makes me jump, and her grin widens. “Right.”
As much as I like Beatrice, I could never trust her with something like this. All it would take was one word from her to my father and I’d be fucked. She needs to understand that nothing happened.
I wrench open the car door and slide in next to her. For a moment there’s nothing but the sound of her keys as she slides them into the ignition. She won’t even look at me.
“Hey. Nothing happened.”
I touch her shoulder and finally she turns her head around. “I came with you here because you seemed determined to piss off your dad, and because you needed someone to watch over you.”
Anger rustles in my chest. “I have enough of that at home, Beatrice. I don’t need it from my cousin.”
“Actually, you do. You’re the president of the MC’s daughter. Every time you step outside, you put yourself at risk—”
“We’re allied with the mob!”
“That doesn’t matter!”
Her sharp voice rings in my ears, bouncing within the walls of the car. I look down at my lap and clench my hands.
“They’re no good, Maya—and whatever you did in that office with that guy—”
“Shut the fuck up!”
I lean over my seat, raising my fists as Beatrice backs up against the car door, looking at them with widened eyes.
“You’re right, I’m the president’s daughter. I told you that nothing happened and that should be good enough for you.”
I’ll pound her fucking face in if she makes another stupid comment. Beatrice eyes my hands, a scowl twisting her face. “You don’t have to be a bitch.”
“If you say a word to anyone, I’ll beat your fucking face in. Understand?”
She says nothing as my heart pounds against my chest. Threats are a way of life in the MC. There’s no getting around the fact that we both grew up knee-deep in violence. I watched my mom beat the shit out of some poor girl she found in my dad’s bed. As the president’s daughter, I’ve had to flex my power a few times to keep the other girls in line.
I do whatever the fuck I want, and you’re not going to stop me. Bitch.
Beatrice backs down, the fire disappearing from her eyes as she starts the car.
It’s important to watch their eyes for the change. She needs to respect me, and for that, she needs to fear me.
And I can see her hair trembling around her face.
I won.
* * *
My cousin and I glance at each other as we gaze up the concrete walls of the bunker we call home. Getting back inside the compound isn’t too hard. It just takes stopping at a gas station and changing out of your slutty clothes, so that your dad won’t know you went out partying instead of shopping like you said you were.
She lays on the horn, and I wince at the sound. The guards walking the walls recognize us and wave their hands. The massive steel doors shriek as they roll to the side, and Beatrice pushes on the gas pedal to move us inside.
“Your dad would freak out if he knew about that Italian guy.”
Just the mention of him sends a rush of heat to my skin that suddenly makes me feel sick. Yes, Dad would fucking flip out. He would march over to that bar and put a bullet in his head, all for the crime of being Italian and hitting on his daughter.
“I thought I told you to shut up about it.”
“Relax. My ass is on the line, too.”
My ruffled feathers settle down somewhat as we park in the compound and step out of her car. I imagine how odd the sight of this place must look to an outsider. Reinforced steel and concrete, barbed wire, and men patrolling the borders with guns big enough to shoot you in the ass a mile away. They wear their leather cuts with “THE DEVILS” emblazoned in a white font.
We walk together over the paved concrete toward the clubhouse where we both live. It’s always loud in there, filled with smoke and drunk assholes. Whores occasionally fill the entire place when my dad thinks that his men need another fucking party where everyone gets wasted. Then it’s inevitably the women’s job to clean up the mess. The puke. The beer bottles. The cigarette butts. Jesus Christ, I’m sick of it.
Sounds like there’s another party going on. The walls rattle with rock music and I’m greeted with the sight of scantily clad women. They wear pasties and G-strings as they strut around the club, grinding on the members as the prospects keep watch or pour drinks.
I’ve seen so much shit that it hardly fazes me, but the irony doesn’t escape me. I’m surrounded by sex, and yet I can’t have any. Daddy won’t let me date any outsiders, and because he’s president I have to do what he says.
Everyone does what he fucking says.
Beatrice spots Paul, one of the prospects she has a crush on, and joins him at the bar with a wide smile on her face. Unlike me, Beatrice doesn’t have a burning desire to leave this fucking place. In a few years she’ll get married to one of these assholes and spend the rest of her life trapped in this concrete hellhole.
I make my way through the maze of the clubhouse, finding my room in the back, which is across from my dad’s. Of course. I open the door and shut it, wishi
ng that I had a lock. Then I grab the too-small dress from my purse. I borrowed it from Beatrice, and a hot blush fills my cheeks when I realized how bad the fit was on me. Even Johnny said so.
“Your tits are popping out of your dress.”
Instant heat spreads across my chest. He looked at me as though I was a piece of meat. I was desirable. I can’t remember the last time a man expressed interest in me. The only men I hang around with are part of the club, and they don’t dare hit on the president’s daughter. Not that I’m interested in any of them.
The door bursts open, swinging inside as I fling the dress away from me in surprise, looking up into the eyes of my livid father.
He stands up straight, but I can tell that he’s already fucked up. Red-rimmed eyes bore at me as he clutches the frame of the door.
“Maya, where the fuck have you been? Julien tells me that you just got in.”
“I told you, Beatrice and I went out for shopping and a movie.”
He stares at me for a little longer and nods, almost accepting the lie, and then his eagle-like eyes fall on the discarded dress.
“What the hell is that?”
I try to stuff it out of sight with my foot, but he reaches down and snatches it.
It would almost be funny to see the horror transforming his face as he lifts up the skimpy dress, imagining it on me.
Almost.
“You fucking lying bitch. You wore this and went out to party, didn’t you?”
“I—I didn’t—”
My father’s grizzled face comes within inches of mine as he inhales.
Is he sniffing me?
His nostrils flare as he catches a whiff of my perfume and smoke and God knows what else.
“You went to a bar, didn’t you? Wearing this thing?”
I hate how he makes me feel ashamed just for putting on a stupid dress and feeling alive for once in my goddamn life.
Yes, I did, and I met an Italian I almost had sex with.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
The acidic tone cuts right through me. He acts as though I committed treason.
“What, I can’t go out like a regular person and have a good time?”
“You’re not a regular person!” he bellows. “You’re my daughter, and I won’t have you acting like some fucking slut!”
Knocked Up by the Bad Boy Page 3
