by Penny Wylder
Big Bad Boys
A Romance Collection
Penny Wylder
Contents
More Must Reads by Penny Wylder
Dangerous Love
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Epilogue
Deep In You
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Bed Shaker
1. Ram
2. Cadie
3. Ram
4. Cadie
5. Ram
6. Cadie
7. Ram
8. Cadie
9. Ram
10. Cadie
11. Cadie
12. Ram
13. Ram
Hard Fiancé
1. Phade
2. Sylvia
3. Phade
4. Sylvia
5. Sylvia
6. Phade
7. Sylvia
8. Sylvia
9. Sylvia
10. Sylvia
11. Phade
12. Sylvia
13. Phade
14. Sylvia
15. Sylvia
16. Phade
17. Sylvia
18. Phade
Epilogue
Sext
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
More Must Reads by Penny Wylder
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Copyright © 2018 Penny Wylder
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or businesses, organizations, or locales, is completely coincidental.
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Epilogue
1
“Your fiancé is this way, Ms. Marrón.”
That word, fiancé, makes me startle for a second. I don’t have one, of course. Not really. But this prison guard doesn’t know that. In order to meet one-on-one with the inmate I need to speak to, I needed a viable disguise. Posing as his fiancée was the easiest and most convincing, option. That’s why Dad sent me. None of his other “business associates”—big, burly men who are more accustomed to beating the answer they want out of someone rather than negotiating—fit the bill.
So I paste a broad smile on my face. “Thank you. How much time will we have in visitation?”
“Half an hour,” the guard says with a glance over his shoulder at me, sizing me up. His eyes linger on my chest, which makes me feel suddenly self-conscious, but I don’t cross my arms or back down.
Half an hour. Half an hour to get the information I need from this criminal.
I square my shoulders. You can do this, Ashley.
“Private visitation is unusual,” the guard comments as we continue to stroll down the corridor. “You two must have friends in high places.”
You could say that. In truth, my father arranged this meeting. Pulled some strings with his friends in the prison sector. Normally even a fiancée’s visit to the prison would be heavily monitored. But we’ll be left alone. Just Damon Tell and me.
Damon Tell, the bastard who screwed my father over, and killed an innocent man in the process.
I tighten my fists even as I smile politely and nod at the guard. “We’re very lucky,” I tell him as he leads me through the hallways of Upton State Penitentiary. “Warden Andrews is a family friend. He understands why I’d like some privacy when I speak to Damon.”
“I’ll bet he does,” the guard replies with a leer that turns my stomach.
Upton State Penitentiary is home to the most notorious and ruthless criminals in the tri-state area. Full of mobsters and murderers alike.
Lucky me, my so-called fiancé is both.
I spread my arms as the guard goes through the pat-down routine.
It’s not my first visit to Upton. The last time I was here, when I was only five years old, I held hands with my mother as she got this same pat-down on the way to visit my father. Now I’m twenty-three, Mom’s seven years in her grave, and Dad? Well, he’s still up to the same business that landed him in here way back then. Mostly racketeering, fixing races at the local tracks. Some petty theft. The occasional bank heist when money gets really tight at home. It’s not honest work, no, but it’s the family business. Has been for generations. And Dad is an honorable thief, at least. He gives back—hires his thugs from our local community shelters, tries to give back where we can.
My father is a mob boss, you see—a criminal and a thief—but he’s an honorable one.
Not like the man I’m here to see.
“She’s clear,” the guard announces, and another guard buzzes open a clear glass door, then waves me through. I step into the room. It’s mirrored on one side, and that makes me hesitate, checking over my shoulder at the guard. “Don’t worry,” he replies, sensing my question as I face the darkened glass panel. “There’s nobody behind the mirror. Not today. You’ve got the place to yourself. Like I said, half an hour.”
I nod briskly.
“Have fun,” he adds with a smirk as he waves me inside. I can feel his gaze lingering on me, even with my back turned.
I dressed as demurely as I could for this, in a long pencil skirt and a blouse that hints at my assets, but doesn’t actually reveal anything. But that doesn’t stop the guard from staring. I shoot him as haughty a glare as I can muster, then enter the room to greet my target.
Damon Tell.
He worked a few jobs with Dad over the last year. Enough to earn my father’s trust. Then, a few months ago, Dad set up a big job. We’d taken heavy losses in the winter season—times were hard, nobody was gambling much, and a few of our usual fixed races decided to go straight. We were struggling to make ends meet, to keep employing all the men on our payroll, and to make enough to keep the bigger mafia bosses out of my father’s territory.
So Dad decided to rob a bank.
He took his time planning it. Found a local bank without a lot of the high-end security you need to deal with at some of the bigger corporate chains. Got to know the owner, his routine, and found a pretty easy in. Every Saturday, the owner went in an hour before opening to personally inspect his safes. That was our opening. Sneak a man in, hold him up while the bank is empty, clean out the vaults, and get out without any collateral damage. No need to put innocent bystanders in harm’s way unnecessarily.
See what I mean? A criminal, but an honorable one.
Dad’s only mistake in planning was asking Damon Tell to be his right hand man for the job. The plan was simple: Damon would go in and do the talking with the owner. Hold the gun up to his head, have him fill our bags with cash, then meet my father out front in the getaway car. Dad says he didn’
t even plan on having Damon carry the gun loaded. That way, no accidents could happen.
My father’s cardinal rule no killing. We steal, we lie, we cheat, but we never murder.
Until that day. Until the morning of the heist, when everything went wrong.
According to Dad, he parked outside the bank as planned. Damon put on his mask and went into the bank to find the owner, Eric Brown. But unlike every other Saturday morning when we’d cased the place, Eric wasn’t alone.
This time, his wife and 6-year-old daughter were with him.
Dad doesn’t know exactly what happened. All he knows is that, from outside in the getaway car, he heard gunshots. He grabbed his own gun and ran inside, expecting trouble.
Inside the bank, he found Eric Brown, his wife, and his daughter, all dead. The vault had been cleared out, every last penny stolen. And Damon?
He was nowhere to be found.
Then, two weeks later, after Dad tipped off the police and started a manhunt, Damon was finally caught at the state border, trying to flee north to Canada. He was arrested, tried, easily convicted—since he confessed to everything—and thrown in here.
Now I’m here to find out the real story. To find out what happened inside that bank—why he killed that innocent family. And where he hid the money afterward. Because the police didn’t find it anywhere on him, not in the car he was driving, not in any of the motels they traced him to along his attempted escape route. Wherever he hid it, he hid it well.
My family needs that money, now more than ever. And I’m going to get it from this criminal if I have to wring it from him with my own bare hands.
But as I step into that visitation room to confront the man I’ve spent weeks dreaming about strangling, my steps falter.
Damon looks the part of mafia hit man, all right. He’s huge, at least 6’5”, with a snake tattoo curling down one arm, taking up almost the full sleeve, which I can see because he’s dressed in nothing more than a prison-issue undershirt and a loose-hanging pair of orange pants. Beneath the shirt, I catch a glimpse of his bulging muscles, a perfectly sculpted set of pecs, and biceps and shoulders to match. He wears his hair long, pulled back into a tight braided knot, and his eyes, when they meet mine, are hard and dark.
What I didn’t expect was the sudden curl of desire in the pit of my stomach. A desire that I stamp out quickly, try to ignore.
In another world, he’d be my type. Exactly my type, smoldering dark gaze and all. But when I remind myself who this man is—and what he’s done—any desire I might have felt curdles into rage.
“Damon,” I say, for the benefit of the guard still standing in the doorway behind us.
“My darling,” he replies, his smile narrow and sharp. He knows, of course, that I must be here on my father’s behalf. On behalf of the infamous Mauricio Marrón, the only man who could pull enough strings to arrange for private visitations in a max security prison. Damon might be many things, but he’s not a stupid man. He must know my father is behind this visit.
“I’m closing the door,” the guard behind me says. “Thirty minutes, that’s what you’ve bought.” He pauses, and I can practically feel that leer of his on my back once more. “Don’t care how hot your girl is, Tell, no making a mess in here. This ain’t the conjugal bin.”
“Noted,” Damon replies drily. His eyes never stray from mine.
I wait for the sound of the latch to click behind me before I begin. “Where is it?” I say, the moment the door shuts.
Damon pushes out of his chair and rises to his full height. He stands at least a full head taller than me, towering over, as his smirk widens. “Now, now. Is that any way to greet the love of your life?”
I ball my fists to stop them from shaking. Only now, only when I’m alone in this room, do I realize what a dangerous idea this was. Granted, it was my suggestion—when Dad told me about the heist, and especially about what happened to Eric and his family, I was furious. I wanted revenge. I told Dad I’d help him any way I could. When he admitted that there was something I could do—that he needed a woman to pose as Tell’s fiancée to get in here—I volunteered in a heartbeat.
Now that I’m here, though, I’m starting to think about all the ways this could go wrong. Damon is bigger than me, stronger. If he attacked, could I shout for the guards in time?
Would the guards even come, after the privacy my father requested?
No time to worry about that now. Face him first, then deal with the fallout later.
“I asked you a very simple question, Mr. Tell. Where is the money you stole?”
“Mr. Tell?” Damon clicks his tongue, head shaking ever so slightly. “So formal. Tell me, little fiancée, how much did Marrón pay you to come in here?”
I clench my jaw and raise my chin. “We can make life in here more comfortable for you, you know. Or, if you’d prefer, we can do things the hard way. You see this room?” I gesture around me. “This wasn’t difficult to secure. We can arrange one just like it for you, down in solitary. Want to spend the next, say, six months there?”
“You’re a sexy little thing, I’ll grant you that.” Damon’s gaze rakes over my body, slow and lingering in a way that makes my stomach tighten and my chest feel two sizes too tight. “And you’ve got fight. I like that in a woman.” He takes a step closer. I force myself to hold my ground, to resist the urge to back away. Men like Damon can only understand one thing—strength. And that’s what I’ve always had. I narrow my gaze at him. “But you’re taking the wrong tactic with me. I don’t know who you are, or what you think you know, but barging in here and making threats isn’t going to intimidate me.”
“Who’s making threats? I simply told you how we could help you, Mr. Tell, as well as how we can hurt you. Now, I’ll ask one last time, nicely. Where did you hide the money you stole from the bank during that heist?”
He steps closer again. We’re just a foot apart now, close enough that I catch the scent of his body—soap and sweat and something underneath, something hot and adrenaline-filled that makes my palms tingle in a way I don’t want to acknowledge. His dark eyes haven’t left mine the whole time I’ve been in this room. Now, they narrow, searching. Finally, he huffs out a single laugh, shakes his head, and raises a brow. “Mauricio is going to have to do a lot better than sending in some random chick if he plans on bullying me into talking.”
“Random?” I laugh once, sharp. “More like his heir. And the next time you address me, Mr. Tell, it will be by my proper name. That’s Ms. Marrón to you.”
“Ms. Marrón.” His voice softens as he says it, eyes widening a little in recognition. I can see him piecing it together now. Recognizing my father’s features in mine—the wide brown eyes and black curls we share, as well as my small nose, sharp chin. “My apologies. I didn’t realize I was in the presence of the heir to Mauricio’s fortunes. Tell me, are you as cutthroat as your father?”
“Twice as bad,” I reply without missing a beat. My father is cutthroat, after all, a shark in business. The worst rumors about him, well, he uses those to his advantage to get ahead. He’s not nearly so great a monster as the world makes him out to be. But sometimes it’s useful to let people believe you’re worse than you are.
Like now.
“You’re going to tell me exactly where you put that money, Mr. Tell, one way or another.”
“Please, call me Damon.” He extends a hand. When I narrow my eyes and pointedly ignore it, he shrugs, then runs it through his hair instead. The motion makes the hem of his shirt rise just far enough to give me a glimpse of his washboard abs. “And why don’t we have a seat? Discuss this on more cordial terms.”
Fuck. My thighs clench. A tiny part of my traitorous brain can’t help but think about what those abs would feel like if I ran my hands over them. Or if I tugged off his shirt, ripped it off him right now and pushed him back into that chair so I could touch his chest, bury my hands in his long hair, what would he say then…?
I dig my nails into my pal
ms. Focus. “Damon. Are you agreeing to do this the easy way, then?”
“Anything for my dear fiancée,” he responds with a smirk. “And by the way, now that I know you’re as bad a girl as I am a man, I have to say, I could’ve done worse for myself.” He closes the rest of the gap between us, until his chest is inches from my face. I hate the move, since I have to crane my head back to glare up at him now, but I hold my ground, refusing to budge. “Now, little Ashley, is checking me out part of the interrogation technique, or just a benefit for you personally while you’re in here?”
I bite the inside of my cheek, hoping not to give anything away. “How do you know my name?”
“Everyone who works for Mauricio knows about Ashley. The light of his life, the reason he does all this, blah, blah, blah.” Damon tsks and reaches up to brush a strand of hair from my shoulder, slowly. The move is at once so forward and so familiar that it catches my breath in my throat, and I simply stare at him. Belatedly, I realize I should slap his hand away, but he’s already dropped it and cocked his head to study me once more. “I see now why your father is so proud and protective of you, Ashley. You’re quite a woman.”
