Luka: Perfectly Damaged – a Bad Boy Mafia Romance
Page 21
This standalone, novel-length adventure races with passion, pulses with action, and climaxes again and again, rises higher and higher to a full, complete, satisfying and surprisingly happy ever after ending. It’s a bad boy romance like no other and you’re going to love it.
The next afternoon, the job of babysitting the Bonaventura twins got off to a bad start.
I showed up at the address at the designated time. Paulo, a tall, rangy guy with the expensively floppy black hair and scowly cherubic Sicilian looks opened the door. Took plenty of time not letting me in. Told me he was the Bonaventura boys’ ‘Major Domo,’ whatever the fuck that was supposed to mean.
“We don’t really need you. I run the security here and we’re tight.”
I nodded like I understood. It was to be expected. Kids from a big-time family like theirs were bound to have about a truck full of their own protection. Honestly, I didn’t understand why anyone wanted an outsider there in the first place, unless there were concerns about the inside team. I hadn’t been briefed, so I would just run my job by the numbers, guarding in a hostile environment.
“I’ll do what I’ve been asked to do.” I told Paulo. As far as I could I sounded and acted like, we were soldiers, just doing a job. Either he didn’t have the experience to appreciate it, or he just wasn’t inclined to get along with me. In my experience, working with strangers was often a stretch for Sicilians.
“Hopefully we’ll stay off each others’ toes.” Must have been fifteen minutes he kept me out in the front yard – yup, a house in Little Italy, just south of Washington Square, with a front yard.
I worked my neck from side to side, trying to pull out the kinks from last night, it reminded me of how she smelled. And how she tasted. I saw Paulo watching me with his dark scowl.
Two or three calls on his cell phone later, mumbling in Sicilian, and he looked up and down the street . Finally, and reluctantly, he showed me inside.
He wasted no hospitality as he took me in and around the property and gave me a walking tour of the mechanical and electronic security. While he did, I watched him hard for all of the things he didn’t tell me. When he watched me checking him I gave him an insider smile. A conspiratorial, you and me, eh? kind of a smile. That didn’t get me anything, either.
I noticed that he showed me the surveillance but not the recording backup. He pointed to the alarms and cameras, but he didn’t tell me where an alarm signal would route, other than through the box under the staircase. And he didn’t tell me the codes.
He also didn’t give me lists of the people in the house, or of expected visitors. Without knowing who was supposed to be here and who wasn’t, who was friend and who was foe; simple babysitting could be a tough gig.
He introduced me to Georgio and Armando, the other men on his team. They were big and seemed capable, although they had no organization or structure. When Armando shook hands with me, he held the underside of my arm and I had the sense that he was judging my weight and strength. A famous hangman used to calculate the drop for his clients by handshake, I remembered from somewhere.
The Bonaventura twins themselves, Adrianu and Costanzu, I only saw from the far end of a long room. Lanky, dark haired and in their early twenties, they talked with their heads bowed together, eating finger food from a long table. The room had sliding doors that lead out to a garden terrace. They both wore red sweaters, and they looked stylish the way an Italian man can in a sweater. Paulo called from the doorway, his hand aloft, a finger pointing down at me.
The twins looked at him over their shoulders, flicked their eyes only for a second onto me, nodded and returned to their conversation. In that instant I saw two serious men. They gave off an attitude of superiority and entitlement, but they didn’t seem like fools.
Paulo spent most of what was left of the afternoon keeping me as far from the twins as possible, and out of sight of anybody else. He even tried to entice me down to the cellar but I told him I would take a chance to check it out later.
“There could be something vital down there,” he told me, half-heartedly.
“Cool,” I said, “I’ll wait here while you go down and get it.” I felt like I was being dragged around the edge of my fraying patience. The last night had been great as far as it went, but it was incomplete and it had left me edgy. I wasn’t in any mood for the Sicilian’s junior mobster games.
The house was set back, at the front and rear. One side was freestanding, though the other side attached to the house adjacent. It could have been breached through a side wall, so I told Paulo the twins should remain in the rooms on the east side.
He looked at me pityingly. “Look, Paulo,” I was holding my temper, but he wasn’t making it easy. “I have no idea what kind of threats we’re up against. I’ve been told to come here and protect the twins. If you really want to get in my way while I try to do it, well then, fine, but I have to wonder why you aren’t more concerned about the safety of your employers.”
“And now you listen to me.” He moved close and his voice hissed through his clenched teeth. “We don’t know why you’ve showed up here out of the blue, or who sent you, but we’ve all got our eyes on you.” He pointed two fingers to his eyes then to mine. “Minchia.” I knew what that meant, and the way he said it was not friendly.
Paulo didn’t allow me into the room where the twins were, so, in the end, all I was able to do was to sit on a chair outside wherever they were hanging out, and follow them up and down stairs and down hallways. Late in the evening, and bored stupid, I sat in a draft outside an upstairs dining room. The Bonaventura twins were inside and food and drink had been brought up from a second floor kitchen.
I remember a waiter leaving the room. I saw something in the reflection on his silver tray. A colossal whack hit the back of my head and I was face down on the floor. Then all the light drained away.
Minchia.
How about a read on the dark side…
Severe, devastating billionaire Magnus Lord is used to getting what he wants. When he enters a top Chicago law firm and his eyes fall on Tanya White, the lovely personal assistant to the senior partner, he commands her to join him in a meeting. Abruptly he compels her to leave with him. His demands have hardly begun.
He takes her on a motorcycle, then he takes her blindfolded in a restaurant. He flies her to Florence, Italy and has her taken in public view in the Uffizi Gallery.
How much can Tanya endure? How far will Lord’s depravity drag the beautiful, curvy and innocent young girl?
AND…
HOW ABOUT
Sexy Biker Thrills
How deep into the biker MC world of bare-knuckle fighting will a good-girl schoolteacher be dragged, on just one fateful night?
Young Christa has always been a really good girl.. When a friend takes her to a motorcycle clubhouse, Christa is given a blazing fast lesson on what the bad girls do, and how really bad the bad boys can get. A pair of gray eyes lock on her across the barroom, and good girl Christa’s fate is sealed.
Ax loves his bike and he loves his club, and he loves a bare-knuckle fight. When he sees Christa in danger, he senses something else that he loves.
These few short moments will have huge consequences for Christa and Ax. How far will the explosive cocktail of violence, desire and naked lust take young Christa?
Innocent
HE IS SO NOT THE KIND OF MAN I SHOULD BE WITH
Belle. Most of her innocence was shredded when her douche boyfriend left her homeless, broke and almost out of gas in the middle of the desert.
IT’S SO EASY TO FOR ME FALL FOR A MAN LIKE HIM
Hammer is a brown-eyed biker in black leather who makes Belle a proposition. She knows that her judgement in men is off, but even she can see that she and this man are a dangerous combination.
SOMEHOW I KNOW THAT IT CAN TURN OUT DIFFERENT THIS TIME
What will he force her to go through for a job at the biker clubhouse?
© Alice May Ball 2016-2018
Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, or to any actual events is purely coincidental.
All the people portrayed in this story are over the age of eighteen, and entirely imaginary. If you think that you know some of them, or that you may be one of them, then you should consider writing fiction yourself.
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