City Of Sin: A Mafia & MC Romance Collection

by K. J. Dahlen

  Her blue eyes are doubtful. “Are you sure about that? Because honestly, if you are, I’d rather you get it over with, and—”

  Thoughts and memories churn in my mind, and all of them are nothing in comparison to the woman standing in front of me. “I’m supposed to kill you, but I can’t do it. I never thought Alessia Ricci would be Sia Andrews. I never thought you’d be...you.”

  “I never should have done it,” she grumbles, but her body relaxes in my grip.

  “Should have done what?”

  “Had such a crush on you. It doomed me from the start.”

  16

  Sia

  Gio blinks down at me, dark eyes stormy with emotions that chase each other, one by one, across his face. Surprise. Hope. Confusion. Agony. All of it plays out right there in front of me until finally he laughs, an explosive sound.

  “You mean in school?”

  I pull him closer and let go, stepping back into the open space of the kitchen. I need to catch my breath. I’m saying stupid shit, and it’s no surprise. This constant dance between life and death is going to my head. “Why do you think I spent all that time with you doing homework?” I can’t help making a face. “I hated homework.”

  Gio rubs his hands over his face. “Jesus Christ, Sia. You had me fooled. I thought we were friends.”

  “We were friends,” I tell him helplessly, all those memories of his face in the afternoon sunlight colliding into one. “We were friends, and you were so—so handsome, and...”

  Gio’s face hardens. “You don’t have to say this to me because you think I’m going to kill you.”

  “I’m not,” I babble, but it’s the truth. “I felt that way. And when I saw you in my bedroom, I still—”

  My nerves get the better of me and I let out a choked sob. Gio steps forward, his hand rising to touch me, but he drops it to his side at the last moment. His cheeks go a mottled color that looks like anger, but I don’t know if I can trust myself. “Fuck,” he says, running a hand through his hair. “Fuck.”

  “Yes, fuck all of this.” I lift my arms, gesturing to the whole of his kitchen, his house. “I mean—” I whip a tear away from my cheek, my heart thudding against my rib cage. “Why? Why, Gio? Why do we have to do this? Why do we have to play this game?”

  His expression is dark. “This isn’t a game.”

  “I know that,” I tell him, trying to soothe, even though I’m the one in danger of dying. I step closer, taking his hands in mine. It’s awful, the way my heart picks up even faster when I touch him. It’s awful how fast every cell in my being wants to forgive him for the fact that he fucking kidnapped me, dragged me to his house, and is now....what? Toying with me? Genuinely regretting his actions? I feel like I haven’t slept. “I know that, Gio, but why do we have to play at all? What are we doing?”

  His eyebrows pull together and his gaze locks on mine, scanning for what, I don’t know.

  “You’re right,” he says. Then he straightens, bolt upright. “You’re right. Shit. You’re right.”

  Gio drops my hands and goes for the stairs. He climbs them so fast that by the time I’m in the hallway, I only catch the edge of his heel as he vaults up the last step. “Gio?” There it is—that nervousness, buzzing at the edges of my fingertips.

  He doesn’t answer.

  I’m not going to stand in the kitchen like an idiot, so I follow him up the stairs.

  Gio’s bedroom door stands open.

  It’s a disaster.

  In the five seconds it took me to get up here, he’s thrown piles of clothes onto the bed and torn the closet doors open. Only his head is visibility—he’s kneeling down in front of something in the closet, eyes fierce.

  “Gio?”

  “Get your stuff,” he says, his tone clipped and commanding. It sends a shiver down my spine, that tone of his—it reminds me that there’s a danger underneath the handsome face that I don’t fully understand.

  “I—” Obviously, I don’t have anything. I’m wearing most of the clothes I came here in, but I’m also not in any position to debate him on it, so I go back down the stairs. I collect my dress from the laundry room, and...that’s it. My shoes are long gone, back at my Uncle’s house, and I don’t have a single scrap of anything else. I close my eyes and wish to be transported to a TJ Maxx. Unsurprisingly, it fails.

  “What are you doing?”

  I open my eyes. Gio stands at the doorway of the laundry room with a rolling suitcase dangling from one hand and a backpack slung over his other shoulder.

  I hold up my useless sequined dress. “Getting this.”

  “Are you ready to go?” He sounds assholeishly impatient.

  Irritation sweeps over me, sharp and pure and as stiff as the blanket of exhaustion that still hangs over my shoulders. “Yes, Gio. I’m completely ready to go. I didn’t have time to pack a bag when you dragged me out of my own house and—”

  He rushes toward me, the suitcase clattering to the floor behind him, and I freeze. This is it. I’ve done it. I’ve provoked him into—

  —kissing me.

  His lips claim mine, hard and hot and desperate, one hand rising to wrap around the line of my jaw. I feel it all the way down to every nerve ending, a glittering, unholy heat, and from somewhere deep inside a moan catches in my throat and escapes.

  The kiss deepens, gets rougher, and the thought floats up in the back of my mind that I honestly wouldn’t mind stripping down right here and letting Gio have his way with me on the floor of the laundry room. A keen nervousness is on the heels of that desire. Let Gio—do that? For the first time?

  He pulls back, eyes on mine. “Sia, listen to me.”

  My pulse thrums in my ears. It’s a hard sell, because I can still taste him on my tongue, the mint and aggression of him, and it’s so wildly distracting, even now, that I feel myself leaning in. “I’m listening, yeah.” Was that good enough?

  “We have to get out of here.”

  I let out a peal of laughter that crests with another wave of adrenaline. “Where? Are you taking me home?”

  “No,” he says solemnly. “I don’t think I can ever do that.”

  17

  Gio

  I want nothing in the world more than to keep her here, behind the locked doors, and explore every inch of her body, but my mind is a vast collection of gears all clicking into place beneath the sweet taste of her.

  My family.

  My family is the only thing keeping me from her, from more of her. My father. My aunts and uncles. My brothers. They have been guiding me all my life, steering me in the direction of manhood, but after that kiss—Jesus, what was I thinking?—the guiding hand iis a choking one instead. I always knew they were watching out for me, but even here, even in the privacy of my own kitchen, I feel their eyes burning into my back.

  They could take this from me. They could end her.

  “Where are we going to go?” Her blue eyes are wide, innocent. She is innocent. She is.

  It feels superstitious to say the words out loud, so I go to the next room. Sia follows close behind. The living room has a picture window in front that gives me a view of most of the block. Right now, at least, there are no strange cars. Better yet, there are no familiar ones. They’re not here yet.

  “There’s someone we need to talk to.”

  “We?”

  “Someone I need to talk to.”

  Sia blows out a frustrated sigh and I turn back to her. “About what?”

  “I need to know the truth.”

  “I told you the truth.”

  Her lips are still dark from where I kissed her, and the need to taste her again is electric. God help me, I love the anger in her eyes. The indignation. She might not know much about her history, but even in my sweatpants she is regal. I wrap a hand around the back of her neck and kiss her again. Mine, I think, ridiculously, when she parts her lips for me. I break it off before the urge to fuck her on the living room floor takes over.

  “I know y
ou told me the truth,” I tell her, her face inches from mine. “But there’s more I need to know.”

  She’s hardly breathing. “To make up your mind?” It’s awful, breaking with my family like this, but I am intoxicated by her.

  “I’ve made up my mind.” It’s almost entirely truthful. I’m a Moretto—I’m not going to discount the possibility that someone might provide me with information that would sway me. But the taste of her on my lips? Fuck me if I give that up for anything less than a damning revelation.

  Sia lets out a little sigh of relief. “Should we go?”

  I lead the way.

  Leaving the garage is uneventful, though waiting for the door to make contact with the concrete makes my heart beat painfully fast. No cars appear on either side of the street. One of my neighbors comes outside and puts a garbage bag in his company-issued garbage tote. That’s it.

  We’re two blocks away from my townhouse when I see it.

  The car.

  It glides into the street behind us, half a block back, out of nowhere. I rack my brain. Was there a side street it could have been hiding in? I’ve been dragging my eyes back and forth over everything on the street.

  Sia doesn’t notice. She’s looking at the divide between the houses and the shops. A single road separates the residential area from the stores and strip malls that surround the freeway exit. A white two-story brick house overlooks a CVS that’s next to a Rite Aid. When it rains, it fucking pours.

  Calm down, I tell myself, steering through the intersection. I glance back at the car. There’s nothing special about it. It’s a dark blue sedan, and from here I can’t tell what the make and model is, but it doesn’t matter. If I saw this car in a catalogue it would be labeled nondescript.

  The way it moves is the thing that pushes me over the edge.

  The driver, whoever it is, is too careful, too measured, too focused on me. I tap the brakes and the reaction is instant, though the car is still half a block behind.

  The hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

  “Hold on,” I tell Sia.

  “What?”

  Out of the corner of my eye I see her turn, see her hand rise to tuck her hair behind her ear, but adrenaline surges through me. She’ll have to wait. Her questions will have to wait.

  The next light is yellow.

  We’re too far away to make it, but I stomp my foot down on the gas pedal with all my strength. My car responds without missing a beat and I thank God that I’ve always been obsessive about upkeep.

  I hope there aren’t any cops. God, I hope there aren’t any cops.

  We sail into the intersection a few heartbeats after the light turns red. Sia gasps, a strangled sound that could turn into a scream, and the vicious sound of a horn, too close to the passenger-side window, blares. I press down harder on the gas pedal. It’s already on the floor, and I release it.

  I risk one glance in the mirror when the screech of brakes echoes through the back windshield. It’s the blue car, skidding to a stop just before it enters the intersection. A flash of white—a hand, coming down on the steering wheel?—and the car is hidden by the traffic.

  The on-ramp to the freeway is clear and I take it gladly, as if this road can save us from whatever was back there. I know that’s not true, but that’s what it feels like. Sia leans heavily into her seat. “Jesus,” she whispers, so quiet I almost don’t hear.

  My heart races until we’re up to speed, miles away.

  18

  Sia

  “I can’t do this.”

  “Can’t do what?”

  We’re hurtling around the west side of Chicago, going to who knows where, and Gio’s eyes are constantly moving. Rearview mirror. Sideview mirror. I don’t know what—or who—he saw when we left his house, but it has him scared. No. Scared isn’t the right word. Determined.

  “The silence.”

  Those eyes settle on me for an instant before they’re back on the road. “The radio’s on.”

  I do the only thing I can think to do. I reach for his hand. “Let me in. Tell me what you’re thinking. Tell me where we’re going, at least.”

  He doesn’t flinch away from my hand, doesn’t pull away, only threads his fingers through mine. Another glance, this one full of heat. A knot in my chest releases. For the first time, I feel like it’s the two of us against the world.

  I wait for Gio to speak, and it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I want to talk to him—talk at him—but I know instinctively that men like him need to fill the silences for themselves.

  “I thought I was alone in this,” he says finally, changing lanes to pass a cherry-red Honda. As soon as he has both hands free again, his hand is back on mine. “This...mission for my father.” His forehead knits together. “I thought it was in my hands.” Is it subconscious, the way he gives my hand a gentle squeeze as he says this? “But my father’s too powerful to leave this to his youngest son. I should have seen it. I should have known.”

  A cold dread trickles down my spine and pools deep in my gut. I’d thought we were running to something, but Jesus, could I have been any more oblivious? We’re also running away.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We were being followed,” Gio confirms, as if he can read my mind.

  Shit.

  It was never going to be as easy as running away together, letting the dust settle, a plan of his cobbled together in fifteen seconds while he packed his bag. If that’s even what his plan was. All I knew is that we were going to talk to someone. Someone with more information. God, it seems vague. Can I even trust him?

  I have no choice but to trust him.

  “Okay,” I say slowly. Gio is one of my oldest friends, one of my oldest loves, if you can call it that, if that aching puppy love counts as the real thing. It seems real now, throbbing under the knot of my heart, but it’s blended in with fear and exhaustion and adrenaline, too. Will I ever be able to separate them out? “What do we do?”

  Gio gives my hand a reassuring squeeze and I feel it, through his solid grip—what we had between us still there, an ember waiting to be nurtured into a flame. “Same plan,” he says. “I need information.” There’s a cautious tone to his voice. “It’s a risk.”

  “For me or for you?”

  “For both of us.”

  I am already living from one risky moment to the next. “What kind of risk?”

  “We need to talk to my brother.”

  While we wend our way toward one of the outer suburbs, Gio tells me about his brothers.

  I’ve heard their names before, but it was so many years ago that they’ve long since blended into meaninglessness. Vincent is the brash one, he tells me. “He works as a security guard. Impressive clients, too, from what I understand.” Luca’s the studious one, and at the mention of his name Gio nods. “He’s impressive as hell, too. His firm downtown services all kinds of high-profile people.” His mouth curves in a smile that makes me wish we were parked so I could kiss him again. “Not that he names names.”

  “Of course not.”

  It’s basically a separate city, where Luca lives, not truly part of Chicago at all. “He likes to keep his work far from his home,” Gio comments as he steers us past a group of older women working at the soil in a flowerbed. The flowerbed accentuates a recently painted wooden sign that reads Welcome! I relax. How much of a risk could Luca be, if he lives in a town like this?

  “Are you sure he’s at home?”

  “He spends his Saturdays away from the office,” Gio laughs. “Not that it matters, because he always brings his work home with him. But he’ll be here.”

  It’s only a few more minutes until Gio pulls us into the driveway in front of a neat house, painted white, with navy blue shutters thrown open wide.

  It reminds me of my uncle’s house and my heart twists. Is he worried about me yet? I’m old enough to go out on my own for a night, so he might not think anything’s wrong for a long time. When Gio’s finis
hed with all this, I’ll ask to call him. I’ll let him know that I’m still safe for the moment.

  We both look out the window toward Luca’s house. The lawn is mowed and the hedges underneath the shutters are trimmed. Is he the kind of man who hires this kind of work out, or is this what he spends his Saturdays on? If he looks anything like Gio, I wouldn’t mind seeing him outside sans shirt. I keep that thought to myself.

  Still, a prickling unease settles at the back of my neck now that the hum of the car is gone. “I think I’d better wait here.”

  Gio raises my hand to his lips and kisses my knuckles. “I think that’s a good idea. I won’t be long.” He throws open the door and steps out, leaning back in once more before he heads for the front door. “Don’t worry, Sia. Nothing bad will happen here. He’s the one I trust the most.”

  19

  Gio

  Luca isn’t surprised to see me. He welcomes me in with a fatherly pat on the back, wearing a fucking sweater like he’s waltzed straight out of the nineteen fifties. Somehow, he still makes it look good. “Come in, come in. I was working on something for a client.” He has his phone in his hand and presses absently at the screen, then sets it on a side table in the entryway.

  “You’re always working on something for a client.”

  “That’s how you get rich.” Luca grins like he’s joking, but I know he has more money than he lets on. Moretto men don’t talk about finances openly, the same way they don’t talk about the women they fuck, except in oblique terms, so it’s no surprise when he steers the conversation away from his work. “But that’s not what you’re here to talk to me about.”

  “No.” I have a dull sensation that this was a bad idea, a still small voice kind of moment, but this is my brother. He wouldn’t rat me out or go to my father or any of that shit. I’m here alone. That’s enough for him to know that whatever I say is between brothers. If I can’t trust him...