Big Bad Neighbor: A Single Dad Next Door Romance

by Tia Siren

  He was close, and she knew it. She wanted to come at the same time as him. “Tell me. Tell me when,” she whispered. She began to touch herself.

  When he nodded, she rubbed herself furiously and cried out as they came together, kissing and pawing at each other.

  *****

  On the day Dritan was dropped into the Neva River, Jessie and Milan were married. It was a wedding attended by everyone who was anyone in Las Vegas society. The press turned out to photograph the rich and famous and those who were more infamous than famous.

  Jessie and Milan went to the Seychelles on honeymoon in Limonov's private jet. When they arrived back in Las Vegas, Jessie found out she was pregnant. Nine months later she had a boy named Milan the second.

  *****

  THE END

  MAFIA Romance – Dangerously His

  1

  David Carr was used to getting his way. He liked it like that. And he knew he deserved it. He had crawled up from nothing. He ran the drug business in Chicago, and he had done it on his own. He didn’t have family in it before him; he didn’t have friends. He just knew he wanted it, so he took it.

  Being the big man at the top had a lot of good and a lot of bad. He went anywhere, spent a ton of money, owned homes across the world, but he had to always keep one eye open. He knew that. Someone was always coming for him, coming for his position.

  David worked hard so he could play hard. He loved the clubs. He loved to drink. He didn’t do drugs; he just sold them. Doing them made you stupid, slow. Being slow made you dead. He loved women, and they loved him. Most of them, at least.

  There was one girl. She worked as a waitress at a club he went to a lot. The club was called Fire House, and the girl was named Cherry. Well, he was pretty sure that wasn’t her real name, but it was the one on the name tag she wore next to her luscious bosom.

  It was a Saturday night when David arrived at Fire House and was led back to his usual table, a small wooden circle with a booth-like bench around three-fourths of the surface. It was up a couple of stairs, kept away from the public by a velvet rope that stretched across the top of the small staircase. The woman, who led David and two men in his employ, was attractive, young, and blond, with a short skirt. But David didn’t return her smile as he sat down. Usually he had women with him at the club, but this time he hadn’t brought any. He wanted Cherry.

  She always waited on him, at his request. As soon as David and his men sat down, she was there, making her way up the three stairs on sky-high black pumps. She was wearing a black dress, the neckline cut low to show off the tops of her large, pale breasts. The hem was short, so short you could get a glimpse of the bottom of her butt cheeks if she spun too fast, which she often did to get good tips. Her skin was lily white, and her hair was red. David was pretty sure that was why she was called Cherry. Her lips were even redder, her makeup impeccable. She was beautiful. Sexy. Never trashy, like the other girls who worked at Fire House, or the ones who went there hoping to fuck men like David.

  The lights in the place were red, just like Cherry’s lips.

  “Hey,” the woman said as she stopped to stand next to the table. David looked her over. She continued. “The usual?”

  “Sure,” David said. The usual was three bottles of the most expensive champagne in America, at least to start with.

  “No girls tonight?” Cherry asked.

  “I came to see you,” David said. Cherry smiled and then rolled her eyes.

  “You’re just saying that.”

  Of course she knew the man wanted to fuck her. Most men did. And David was handsome, about to turn forty, with a thick head of coal black hair and dark eyes. He was tanned and tall, and his chest was wide and muscular. He was sexy. She wanted him to fuck her. But she knew who he was, in two senses of the word. For one, he fucked chicks, and that was it. She didn’t want to waste time with that. For another, he dealt drugs. Massively. He was rich and successful, but the business he was in was dangerous, and she didn’t want to get caught up in it.

  Of course, she had no idea that she already was, but that night she would learn it.

  “Tell me your real name,” David asked before she could go put his order in.

  She laughed. Cherry wasn’t her real name, of course, but it had been her nickname since she was a baby. Even then she’d had red hair. No one ever believed that Cherry was practically her real name. Only her mother ever called her Jillian, her given name.

  “Cherry is my name,” she said, and then, before the man could protest, she hurried away.

  David watched the waitress go, her ass swinging back and forth beneath that dastardly short dress. And then someone else caught his eye, and David sighed.

  “Here comes this prick,” David said to his men, Mark and Kyle. They looked over and smirked.

  The man who owned Fire House was young, only twenty-five. He had been born into wealth and had opened a few successful clubs in a few different cities by the time he was twenty-three. He liked Chicago, though, so he spent most of his time there. He was thin and nervous looking, with a large hooked nose and beady eyes. His name was Nathan.

  “Hey there, David,” Nathan said as he slid into the booth next to him. While Nathan had started out with clubs, he had expanded into the drug game, though he was nothing but a speck to David. Still, it paid to be nice.

  “Nathan,” David said in his cool and collected voice.

  “I got something big going,” the club owner said, unable to keep a smile from spreading across his face. “I thought I would come offer you a place.”

  David returned the smile, but his had malice. “Nathan, the day you have something you could possibly offer me other than bottles of champagne, I’ll jump off a fucking bridge.”

  Nathan blinked, his mouth hung open. Then he shut it, smiled again, and nodded. He stood up and turned. “Fair enough,” he called over his shoulder, and then he was gone. David watched him go and then turned to his men, and they shared a laugh.

  2

  Cherry was tired. Her feet hurt, because her black pumps were uncomfortable. Her tits were sore, because the hard wire of her push-up bra cut into the soft flesh of her underboob. The thong she wore was uncomfortable, and after spending hours walking through a haze of cigarette smoke, vapor, and horrible smells that cheap guys sprayed on themselves before a night out, Cherry was covered in stench.

  Still, it was good money, working at Fire House. She couldn’t deny that. She was fresh out of college and had been working there for a year before she even graduated. Men liked her, so they left good tips and bought more drinks. Her boss, Nathan, liked her, since those men were buying more drinks, and although it was brain-dead work, Cherry liked it, since she was making a lot more than most of the people she had just graduated with.

  The nights that David was there were the best. He tipped a lot. He bought a lot. She knew he wanted her. She wanted him too, but she wouldn’t let herself get involved with him. She hadn’t been involved with anyone in a long time. School had been taking all of her time during the day, and work at night, but now she had a lot more free time, and she had been taking the offers she got from men at work a lot more seriously.

  “Hey, hon, can I take you out?” one man might say.

  “Come back to my place,” another would say.

  She definitely wasn’t looking for cheap sex, so those second guys would get a smile and an easy “no thanks” line. The first, though, she considered. She needed to go on a date; it had been so long since she had done so.

  And of course David Carr wanted to take her out. He asked her every night he came into the club. That night was no exception. He had been joined by a number of people at his private table, including a blonde bimbo with fake tits who seemed to be trying to get into his pants but was growing increasingly agitated by the fact that David was pawning her off on one of his friends.

  “You should come out tonight,” David said. “What time do you get off?”

  Cherry smiled and be
nt down, flirting with the good-looking man, making sure he got a nice view down the low neck of her dress.

  “Three in the morning,” she said. “You want to take me out to breakfast?”

  David laughed and nodded. She watched him. He had perfect white teeth. “I’ll take you to breakfast,” he said. “I know a place with the best pancakes.”

  Cherry straightened up and shook her head. “I can’t tonight,” she said, though she had never been so close to accepting the man’s offer to take her out before. She couldn’t though. She liked nice guys, and David Carr was the epitome of a bad boy. He dealt in crime. Everyone knew it.

  Cherry turned and headed back into the kitchen. Most people in the club were there to drink, dance, and hook up, but the place did have a small kitchen, white and silver and pristine, where a couple chefs made hors d'oeuvre for those who ordered it.

  She was hoping to sneak a snack; she hadn’t eaten much and was starving, and one of the cooks was a chubby guy with bad acne who yearned for her and was happy to make her whatever she asked for.

  But when she entered the kitchen it was empty, or at least it appeared that way from the doorway. She was about to leave, but she heard voices in the back, the people they belonged to blocked from view by a large island in the center of the kitchen with racks above holding various dishes. Cherry edged forward, hoping to find Billy, the chubby cook, but instead, as she turned the edge of the island, she saw Nathan, her boss, and two men she didn’t recognize. They were near the back corner of the room, next to a door that led to the alley that ran behind the club.

  Nathan was holding a large binder of sorts, flipping through the pages. From where she stood, Cherry could see that each page of the binder was a large photograph of a different woman. Her boss was speaking as he looked at the pictures.

  “Who could have thought there was so much money in this?” he said. The other two men laughed, and Nathan went on. “Seriously, these chicks are from Russia? They’re so fucking hot; I might buy one.”

  The men laughed again. It slowly dawned on Cherry what they were looking at and what they were talking about. She backed up, hoping to leave without them noticing her. Nathan was a scumbag. She knew that. But she’s never known him to do anything illegal, and now this, sex trafficking—it was horrible. How long had he been doing it? She didn’t have all the answers, of course, just a small sliver of a secret. She bumped into the island. The dishes above the island clanked and clattered. The three men looked to her.

  Nathan saw her and his face fell. “Oh damn,” he said. “I like you.” And then, Cherry hardly able to believe it, her boss pulled a gun from the back of his waistband.

  She turned and ran.

  What was he going to do? Shoot her? There in the kitchen? Surely people would hear. But as she exploded through the kitchen door and into the club proper, she realized that the music was so loud and pounding that surely no one would have heard a gunshot from the kitchen.

  She didn’t look back. She tottered quickly on her heels, pushing through the dance floor, heading for the front door. She was halfway across when she cursed in her head. She didn’t have her purse. It was in a locker in the employee room. Her car keys were inside. She would have to turn around, head back toward the kitchen if she wanted to get them. And she needed them if she was to get in her car and speed away from this place.

  She couldn’t though. She had no way of knowing if the three men were following her; she was too scared to look back. Cherry didn’t have a plan. She just wanted to get out of Fire House. That was step one. She kept going, one foot in front of the other, trotting on those sky-high heels. She saw the door, the crowd of people parted for her like the Red Sea, and hurried forward. She was ten feet away when she felt a hand wrap around her wrist and tug her to a stop. She yelped in fear and spun.

  3

  David turned down Layla’s request to dance for the fifth time. Tiffany was young and hot, but David wasn’t in the mood for that. He was going through one of his spells, as he liked to think of them. He was so used to getting what he wanted that when he didn’t get something, he obsessed over it. He knew it wasn’t healthy, but he couldn’t help it. He wanted Cherry since she wouldn’t give herself to him.

  And then he saw her, rushing across the dance floor. She looked frightened. David stood up, sliding out of the booth. He looked behind her at the crowd. She was obviously running, so what was she running from? David saw two men in dark suits, and then, a half step behind them, Nathan. Nathan held a gun in his hand, pointed downward, held tight against his body. David couldn’t believe the man could be so stupid.

  David didn’t know what the problem was, but he didn’t care. “Go get the car,” he said, turning to the two men who had come to the club with him. They both nodded and forced others to move out of the booth so they could stand up. They went to the door.

  David angled across the floor, hoping to cut Cherry off. He just missed her, coming to a stop behind her. He reached for her arm, curling his strong fingers around her wrist. She gave a short yelp that drew a few nearby eyes and turned.

  “You,” she said.

  “Trouble?” David asked, nodding his head backward. She looked over his shoulder and her eyes went wide. David didn’t wait for her to answer. “Come with me,” he said and led her out the door.

  His men were fast, and as he and Cherry stepped out onto the sidewalk, a black sedan was pulling to the curb. The man in the passenger seat opened his door, planning on getting out and opening the door for David and Cherry, but David waved him back inside and opened the door himself. They both climbed into the backseat, Cherry first. David shut the door and glanced out the window just in time to see Nathan and his two stooges burst out onto the sidewalk. David waved as the car pulled away from the curb.

  “Where to?” Kyle asked. He always drove.

  “Home,” David said, and he glanced to Cherry to see if she would argue, but she stayed quiet, her face one of shock and terror. She knew how close she had just come to dying. The question, to David at least, was why? He wasn’t sure she was ready to talk about it, so he was content to stay quiet, as was she. They drove to his apartment, the penthouse of a tall building smack dab in the middle of downtown Chicago. They pulled into the private parking garage, Kyle using a keypad before a large gate to punch in a code and open it. Kyle and Mark walked ahead after getting out of the car, and David took Cherry by the arm gently and led her to an elevator.

  They got in, Mark slid a keycard into a small slot, and the elevator shot up to the top floor. When the doors opened, they were faced with another door, which Mark unlocked and pushed open. David’s two men went inside and searched the place, something they did every time David came home. David and Cherry waited for them to return.

  “All clear,” Mark said, and David nodded. His two most trusted men then stayed outside the front door but didn’t enter the elevator quite yet. They would be at the front door until six in the morning, when two new men would come relieve them, allowing them to go to their own apartments, in the same building but on lower floors, so they could get some sleep. David shut the door after wishing them good night, even though he knew it would be a few hours before they went to bed.

  “I’ve never gone home with a man who has bodyguards,” Cherry said, and she tried to smile. David laughed.

  “I have to. I have a chef, a personal trainer, a lot of employees, really. Those two were both my friends long before they became my bodyguards.”

  Cherry nodded. She walked into the living room. The whole apartment was a huge open space, except for a bathroom and a bedroom, which were walled off behind closed doors. She sat on the couch and took her heels off. David stood before her.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “My fucking boss went crazy,” Cherry said. “It looked like he was going to kill me.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged and looked up at David.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you
hear something? See something?”

  Cherry sighed and rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands. “I saw…he had this folder, with pictures of women. He said they were from Russia and that he might buy one himself. It looked like…”

  David nodded. He knew exactly what it had looked like. “That would explain it.”

  Cherry shook her head. “I knew Nathan was a scumbag, but I never knew…I thought maybe he had gotten into drug stuff, but this…”

  David nodded. “It’s big,” he said. “And he’s going up against Rubio.”

  Cherry didn’t understand. “Who’s Rubio?”

  “If you want Russian brides, you go to Rubio. Not my sort of thing, to be honest. I don’t do the whole slavery thing.”

  “Honor among thieves, huh?” Cherry cracked, though she didn’t smile.

  “Something like that,” David said grimly. “But if Nathan has something going, he’s at the beginning of it. He doesn’t want word getting out, and that’s why he was willing to kill you. If this spills too early, Rubio is going to kill him. He has to build up the business, show he’s capable, and maybe just cut Rubio in if he wants to keep on living.”

  “So what now?” Cherry asked.

  “He’s going to come looking for you, and I’ll talk to him.”

  Cherry had opened her mouth to speak again, but David’s cell phone rang in his pocket, and she closed her mouth. She sat and watched as the man answered his phone.

  “Hello?” he said. It was Nathan.

  “Give me the girl,” he said.

  “Your balls are getting big, Nathan,” David said.

  “Don’t turn this into something. She needs to be dealt with.”

  “She didn’t see anything,” David said, lying. “She doesn’t know what’s happening.”

  “She didn’t see anything? Why did she run?”