Step Bride: A Bad Boy Mob Romance (Includes bonus novel Honored!)

by Hamel, B. B.

  I was going to get what I wanted. I was determined not to be a victim anymore.

  Chapter Seventeen: Liam

  I pulled the condom from my still-hard dick and dropped it in a trashcan in the bedroom. I walked back into the empty room with the papers and slipped my boxers and my T-shirt back on, sitting down with my back against the wall.

  I hadn’t expected her to come on to me like that. At first, I thought she was going psycho on me, and that I was going to have to subdue her or some shit. But then her lips were on mine, and I felt those perfect tits, and I couldn’t stop myself. I knew I should’ve stopped, knew that it was wrong to take advantage of her, or whatever the fuck it was, but I didn’t have that kind of strength. Especially not when her lips were wrapped around my dick.

  Fuck, but she was perfect. Everything, from her hips down to the noises she made. I felt my cock stirring again, like I was some horny teenager, just at the thought of her.

  I sighed, cursing myself. I’d known I had already been compromised, way too involved with her, but at least I hadn’t been fucking her. I mean, I had definitely wanted to, kept picturing her soft lips wrapped around my shaft, but shit. I had been controlling myself, trying to do the right thing.

  But it felt so fucking good to do the wrong thing.

  I heard the toilet flush and the faucet run in the other room, and I knew I didn’t have long to decide what I was going to tell her. I wasn’t sure if it was safe for her to know the plan; if they caught her, they could use what she knew as leverage. But then again, I felt like I did at least owe her something. And it wasn’t just because she sucked my dick like it was meant to be inside her mouth. She had been through some pretty intense shit, and she was still acting strong despite it.

  I shook my head. I couldn’t keep bullshitting her. I couldn’t keep jerking her around. It was time to let her be a part of everything. Fuck, she already was a part of everything, and her life was as much on the line as mine was. The difference was, I had all the power, and she was stuck watching TV all day. Maybe knowing what was happening would be some small comfort, at least.

  The creak of the floorboards announced her return before her perfect body slipped back through the doorway. She was still naked, and her thick blonde hair still tumbled down around her shoulders, languishing over her back. I stared at her perky pink nipples and her round breasts. She smiled at me as she pulled her shorts and panties back on and slipped her shirt back over her head. I wanted so badly to get up behind her, squeeze her tits and bite her ear, but we had work to do. We’d had enough distraction for one night.

  “Still want to know what this shit is?” I asked her.

  She blinked at me, like she was surprised that I was going to tell her.

  “Yeah, I do.”

  I nodded toward the box. “Papers, obviously.”

  She made a face. “Don’t do that.”

  I grinned. “Just a little joke.” I paused, trying to figure out how to explain it. “Like you said, it’s financial stuff, bank statements and transactions and checks and shit like that.”

  “Whose is it?”

  “The Mob’s, or at least it used to be.”

  “You guys keep your money in the bank?”

  I laughed. “Of course we do. Did you think we put it all in gold and buried it?”

  She shook her head. “It’s just, how do you hide it all? I mean, from the IRS and stuff like that.”

  “That’s called money laundering. That’s why we have restaurants and dry cleaners and all sorts of businesses all over the city. When we make some money illegally, we slip it into the revenue stream of those businesses, fudge the books, and boom, it’s legal, taxable cash.”

  “Okay, that makes sense.”

  “There’s a lot more to it, but that’s the quick and dirty version.”

  “So what does that have to do with us?”

  She walked over and crouched down in front of the box, leafing through the papers gingerly.

  “Three years ago, I took over dealing with some of the money stuff the old boss didn’t feel like doing anymore. We have a pretty complicated system for moving money around between accounts.”

  I shuffled over to the box and began to sift through it until I found what I was looking for. I held the paper out and Ellie took it, looking at the rows of figures and transaction statements.

  “See, that’s a bank statement from a particular account held by one of the minor bosses. Shows what he had, where it went, stuff like that. Each boss takes some of his income and gives it as tribute to the main boss. In return, the main boss supports people when they need it with muscle or legal help or whatever.”

  She nodded, looking over the paper. Her face was all screwed up, obviously thinking about what I was saying, and I wanted to kiss her pouting lips so badly. I clenched my jaw and concentrated.

  “It was my job to make sure the other bosses weren’t trying to bullshit anyone. And, frankly, I didn’t find shit. But then the old boss was ousted, and Colm suddenly started hiring huge amounts of muscle, all these expensive dudes from all over the place. That got me thinking: how the fuck could Colm afford all of that? He was bribing cops and city officials like crazy, too. I’m talking millions of dollars in those first weeks. My territory was bigger than his, I brought in more cash than he did, but even I didn’t have that kind of money lying around, nobody did. But there was Colm, shelling out lots of cash like it was no big deal.

  “So that got me thinking. My initial idea was, Colm had the backing of a more established boss. But as time went by, that became less and less likely. Really, Colm was making enemies of every single old boss. It made no sense that one of them was backing him, and anyway, there were only one or two that could have afforded it. Those two guys both fucking hate Colm.”

  She looked up at me and something clicked in her expression.

  “The only other explanation is that he’s been stealing all these years, right under our noses. Colm is a clever fuck, so I wouldn’t put it passed him, which is why I got all these records out of storage and began combing through them.”

  “And?” she asked me.

  “And, well, there are a lot of shady transactions.”

  Her expression dropped. “What do you mean?”

  “Little things, a few dollars here and there, but always to some random bank account. This goes back a while, back to when he first started in the Mob.”

  “Is that enough?”

  I shook my head. “No, but it’s a start. He was stealing, I’m beyond positive about that, but I need a little more. I need the definitive proof, and it’s somewhere in that box.”

  She looked down at it. “Okay, so you’re telling me that this master plan of yours hinges totally on some sort of paperwork miracle?”

  I laughed. “It’s not a miracle. It’s in there. When Colm started paying more attention to me, I stopped digging into it, afraid he’d catch on. But before I did, I grabbed every single document relating to his business going back years, and I shoved it all into that box. I just need to sort through it all and put it together.”

  She nodded, looking thoughtful. “I can help with this.”

  “No offense, but what do you know about laundering money?”

  “No offense, but you’re just some Mob asshole. And I happen to be pretty good at this sort of thing. And—”

  “Okay, okay,” I held up my hands, cutting her off. “You can help.”

  Her face softened and she smiled. “Thanks, Liam.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “When do we get started?”

  I shrugged. “Right now. Unless you got something better to do?”

  She gave me a look and flipped the box, dumping the papers onto the floor. I moved over toward her and crouched down at her side, staring at the huge pile of papers.

  “How long do we have?” she asked.

  “Let’s just get it done as fast as we can.”

  She frowned and turned back toward the papers, st
arting to page through them. I stared at her body, at her pale skin and smooth legs, and wished I could skip the paperwork.

  But the paperwork would save our lives; fucking was just fun.

  Chapter Eighteen: Ellie

  I looked out over the room, at the stacks of paper, and realized I never wanted to touch another bank statement in my entire life.

  Three hours of sorting. Three hours of meticulously going through each paper, figuring out what it was and sorting it into whatever pile we felt it belonged in. Three hours of mind-numbing boredom, although I had to admit that it was better than sitting up alone, wondering whether or not someone was going to break down the door and murder me.

  And Liam was shockingly attentive. More and more it was becoming apparent that I completely misread him. I thought he was some muscled Mob jock who didn’t know the difference between a 401k and a W-4, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. He was savvy, clever, and had an eye for details. I felt a little bad for stereotyping him, but then again, who could blame me? He really was all of those Mob stereotypes, crass and crude and violent and tough, but he had another level to him that he didn’t show at first.

  “I hate paper,” I grumbled as I finished off my stack.

  Liam laughed. “Was that the last of it?”

  I looked up at him. He was leaning against the wall, sipping a glass of wine, and grinning at me. When we first started, the room was covered in stuff; now, though, it was all stacked into neat little piles.

  “Wow, we’re actually finished,” I said, surprised.

  “Well, with the easy part at least.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He sighed and sat down next to me.

  “Now we have to start reading all this shit.”

  I nodded. “Right, because you don’t have the full picture yet.”

  “Exactly.” He took a long drink of wine.

  I blinked and yawned. “What time is it?”

  He looked at his watch. “A bit after midnight.”

  “Long night ahead of us, then.”

  “Listen, you don’t need to stay up. Why don’t you get some sleep?”

  I glared at him. “No, thanks. I’m helping.”

  He frowned and shrugged his shoulders. “You really don’t need to.”

  “Just show me what you found already, and we’ll go from there.”

  For a second, I thought he was going to argue. Instead, he leaned over me, his arm brushing against my chest, and grabbed a small pile of papers. Without another argument, he went through them one at a time, pointing out the tiny transactions to a foreign bank account. They took place over years; Liam said he did some rough math, and they equaled at least a half a million dollars. And those were only the ones that he knew about or noticed. Hidden away in the paper, there were bound to be more.

  We got to work, digging through the papers and making note of anything fishy or odd. It was slow going at first, but I quickly fell into a rhythm. It felt like the numbers were swirling around me in the room, and I felt like I was starting to get a picture of what Colm’s life was like. Fifty dollars for dinner on a Tuesday night, three thousand dollars from a jewelry store, two hundred at a bar, three hundred at a casino. On and on the transactions went, one little number after another, each one signifying something so much more than itself.

  Seen individually, each transaction was practically meaningless. There was no context. Sure, he spent eighty dollars at the grocery store, but there was only so much we could pull out of that single event. But that moment combined with every other moment gave a strange picture of a man’s life. Patterns started to emerge, habits and desires. For example, I quickly found out that he loved a particular deli; I didn’t know why or what he got there, but he went almost once a week.

  It was such a small thing, a bank statement, and most people kept them private because they didn’t want other people to know how much money they had or how much they spent. I realized that they were so much more dangerous than that, though. With someone’s full bank records, you could figure them out, get a sense of their habits and their likes and their desires. That could be so much more dangerous than just knowing how much money they had.

  “I can’t imagine my dad doing something like this,” Liam said, jolting me out of my daydream.

  “What’s that?”

  “My dad. I can’t imagine him combing through bank statements.”

  I was surprised. He hadn’t spoken much about his father since I met him. “Why not?”

  “He was an old-school gangster, thought problems all existed out in the real world. Would have said that it was a waste of time to look at all these fake numbers and fancy bullshit.”

  “So why are you doing it?”

  “Because the world changes. These words and numbers are as real as anything else.”

  I nodded, understanding. “They have power.”

  “Exactly. This stuff has power. Might be nerdy or whatever crap you want to call it, but it’s this kind of shit that rules the world these days.”

  “What was he like? Your dad, I mean.”

  “Like I said, an old-school mobster. All violence and tough-guy act.”

  “Must have been hard to be his son.”

  “Yeah, sometimes it was. He was strict, and he beat the shit out of me a few times. But he taught me stuff, like how to fight and how to pick a lock and how to tell if someone was lying to me.”

  I could almost picture the young Liam, growing up with a violent, complicated father, and it made sense that he grew up into a violent, complicated man. That violence seemed tempered somehow, or at least suppressed enough to let him think the way that he does.

  “Where did you learn all this stuff?” I gestured at the papers.

  “Figured it out on my own, I guess. Talked to dad’s people sometimes, let them teach me a bit about how his business worked. But mostly I just fucked around and learned as I went. I made a lot of dumb mistakes in the beginning.”

  “Like what?”

  He laughed. “Dumb stuff, like lending money to the wrong guy, or investing in stupid shit. One time, I tried to open an upscale strip club, but that was a terrible move. Nobody wants to sit in a velvet-covered chair in a strip club, at least not in these neighborhoods. They’re trashy for a reason.”

  I laughed, imagining swanky gentlemen in top hats and monocles cheering as a woman slowly unveiled her ankle. I was sure Liam’s idea for the club was a lot dirtier, but I liked mine.

  “It’s weird. I was just thinking about how all this equals a man’s life. Like, we can read his habits and what he loves just by looking at a bank statement,” I said.

  Liam nodded. “It’s a little scary, I guess. How much you can learn about a person from all their data and whatever the fuck you call it.”

  I laughed. That was more like him.

  “What are you going to do if we find what we’re looking for?” I asked softly, hoping he was still in a sharing mood.

  He paused and seemed to scrutinize me for a second. His eyes were deep and harsh, like vast whirlpools for my own, and I almost felt myself getting lost in them. Frankly, I was losing myself in him, and not just in his eyes or his arms, but in the way he held himself. I wanted to move closer but resisted the impulse.

  “Like I said before, not everyone in the Mob is happy with Colm. The problem is, I don’t know who I can trust. I thought O’Brian could be our guy, but he’s not interested in helping us.”

  “How many bosses are there?”

  “Twelve, and there’s at least one more I can ask. But, I don’t know. I can’t go to him with what we have, not yet at least.”

  “There’s twelve of you? Why not go to any of the others?”

  He shook his head. “They’re probably in Colm’s pocket. The Right People have a code of honor, but they’re still people, and people fucking love money.”

  “Why do you call them ‘Right People’?”

  He shrugged. “It’s an old term, a really old te
rm. It used to mean any thief or someone like that, but now it means anybody who’s in the Irish Mob. Like how the Italians have a Made man, we have a Right person.”

  “Never heard that before.”

  “Yeah, well, the Cosa Nostra is loud. We like to be a little quieter.”

  I laughed at that. I couldn’t imagine his people could be any louder, especially with dumping bodies into a public river. But I decided not to press.

  “Okay, so who’s this other guy?”

  “His name is Boss de Barra. Frankly, he’s fucking terrifying.”

  “I can’t imagine he’s any scarier than Colm or any of the other psychopaths you deal with.”

  “He is, though. He runs out of north Philly, which isn’t exactly our typical home turf. He staked out some neighborhoods, cut a bunch of throats, and made it his own. People say he’s a complete nut, like crazier than the craziest guy in Colm’s entourage.”

  “What do you mean, people say?”

  “I’ve never met him.”

  I stared. “You’ve never met him?”

  “He doesn’t come down from his territory very often. It’s basically a little fortress he runs up there.”

  “So let me understand this. You’re entrusting our lives to some crazy guy who lives way up in the north and barely ever comes down here?”

  “Basically, yeah.”

  “That’s insane.”

  He nodded. “It’s a little insane.”

  I groaned, shaking my head, and looked at the piles in front of us. Not only did we have nothing so far, but if we did find something, it was totally up in the air whether or not it could even help. Liam’s plan hinged on an insane guy, someone he had never even met.

  Then again, at least it was better than nothing.

  “I guess we should get back to work.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I guess we should.”

  I grabbed another piece of paper and began to skim it. My eyes felt heavy and frustration was welling up in my chest, but I forced myself to keep going forward. I had to keep going forward. I felt Liam watch me for a minute or two, and then he turned back to his own pages, getting back to the hunt.