by Renee Rose
Table of Contents
Claiming The Don’s Daughter, Book Three of The Bossman Series© 2015 by Renee Rose
Praise for Renee Rose and The Bossman
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
About the Author
Other Riverdale Avenue Books by Renee Rose
Other Riverdale Avenue Books You Might Enjoy
Claiming The Don’s Daughter, Book Three of The Bossman Series© 2015 by Renee Rose
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
For more information contact:
Riverdale Avenue Books
5676 Riverdale Avenue
Riverdale, NY 10471.
www.riverdaleavebooks.com
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Cover by Sarah Stump
Digital ISBN 978-1-62601-241-7
Print ISBN 978-1-62601-242-4
First Edition December 2015
Praise for Renee Rose and The Bossman
“Nobody writes a bad boy hero like Renee Rose.”
—USA Today Bestselling Author Cara Bristol
“A sexy tale for modern women that’s as steamy as a locker room shower.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A face-paced naughty erotic romance that will tug at your heartstrings while making you squirm.”
—USA Today Bestselling Author Sue Lyndon
“The Bossman has it all—sassy, independent heroine and an alpha hero to melt your kindle. Put the fire service on alert and have fresh panties handy. This is one not to be missed.”
—USA Today Bestselling Author Ashe Barker
“The Bossman hits the ground running, my very favourite way for a story to start. The dialogue between Joey and Sophie is fun, real and knocks backwards and forwards like watching a tennis match.”
—Erotica for All
“The Bossman is an erotic mafia romance that should not be missed by lovers of dominant heroes.”
—The Romance Reviews
“The Bossman was a rollercoaster that I did not want to get off”
—Mad in Wonderland Reviews
“Renee Rose packs a full story into a small package, complete with complex, fun, sexy characters and enough hot, spanking sex to fill a novel!”
—Guilty Pleasures
“The Bossman was an absolute smash! Renee Rose has a way with words that draws the reader into the story and makes her experience every emotion of the protagonist.”
—Bottoms Up Book Review
“I savor Renee Rose’s books as if they were the finest of champagnes”
—USA Today Bestselling Author Sierra Cartwright
“Renee Rose has an ability to write the most captivating, most intriguing, and the hottest books around.”
—USA Today Bestselling Author Alta Hensley
Prologue
Sicily
Blood soaked Carlo’s clothes—too much to show up at his great-uncle Junior’s front entrance. He made his way to the back and tapped the heavy wooden door. He hoped Zia Maria didn’t answer, not that the old woman couldn’t handle the shock. Sicilian women—at least those in La Famiglia, were as tough as the men.
The door opened a crack and the muzzle of a Glock pointed through, followed by his uncle’s bushy white eyebrows.
“Carlo.” The door swung wide and his uncle grabbed him by the shirt and hauled him inside.
“Only some of it is mine.” He couldn’t get his damn ear to stop bleeding from the bullet that had gone through it. The bullet that had missed his skull by an inch.
“Get cleaned up before your aunt sees you,” the old man said, propelling him to the bathroom. “I’ll bring you some clothes.”
He stripped, the metallic smell of blood filling his nostrils. Ferdi’s blood. Fucking Ferdi. Carlo had left him alive after he’d beat the truth out of him.
Who tries to kill their own cousin? Ferdi, apparently.
Carlo wouldn’t though. He hadn’t. Ferdi’s soldier, though, was another story. Carlo had left a bullet in the middle of his forehead. Closing his eyes, he tried to erase the sight.
He washed in the shower and dried off, barely managing to keep the continuous drip of blood from his ear from staining Zia Maria’s towel.
His uncle came in without knocking and dropped some clothes on the counter. He gave him an up and down sweep of the eyes, probably checking for bullet holes. “Just the ear?”
“Yeah.” He yanked on the clothes.
“Who?” Junior handed him a washcloth and lifted his chin toward his still-bleeding ear.
“Ferdi.”
His uncle’s bushy eyebrows drew together. “Your cousin Ferdi? What happened?”
“Mario put a hit on me.” His voice nearly wavered when he spoke the words, unprepared for the sense of betrayal rocketing through his chest. His own fucking brother. His fucking brother ordered him killed.
Junior’s face turned to stone, his eyes black and dangerous. It was an expression he’d seen on his father’s face countless times. The Sicilian war face. Calculating, deadly. “What happened? Wait, come out of the fucking bathroom. I’ll get you a drink.”
At the kitchen table, the old man poured them both a glass of grappa and they sat down.
“My father named me Consiglieri. I think Mario thought he might pick me to lead when he dies.” His chest tightened at the thought of his father, so diminished from the cancer now.
“I see.” His mother’s uncle wasn’t part of the Romano business in Palermo, but his family had ties to them and ran their own network of semi-legal or illegal operations. He understood the dynamics. “What’s your plan?”
That was the fucking problem. He didn’t have one.
Junior read into the silence. “Are you going to tell your father?”
He gave his head a decisive shake. “Hell no. He’s on his deathbed. It would kill him and he would die brokenhearted.”
“Let me ask you this, Carlo. Do you want to lead the family? I mean, how old are you? Twenty-three?”
“Yeah.”
“I mean, I know you’re smart and I’m sure you’re tough, but do you think the older guys are going to fall in line under you?”
He shook his head. “I wasn’t trying to steal the power from Mario, or any of them.” Hell, he was the eighth son, he’d never expected to be more than a capo. But as the youngest child, he had the special ability of reading people. Born from all that time observing from corners as a kid, he supposed. He saw through bullshit, saw into people. His father had used that talent in the last few years, coming to him more and more often than he did Mario or any of their other brothers.
They’d always been tight, he and his father. He was the baby of the family, after all. His father hadn’t been as much of a hard-ass with him as he had been with his brothers; and more than that, his parents had revered him as a special gift because Carlo had almost died during birth.
“Look, I don’t even know if my father would have shaken up the structure. But obviously Mario was worried. So now I’m in a bad place.”
The soft pad of Zia Maria’s slippers scuffing the floor signaled her approach from down the hall.
“It’s Carlo,
” Junior called to her.
“Carlo?” The joy in his aunt’s voice almost made him tear up. Jesus. He was going soft. Well, when your own brother wanted you dead, it was nice to know someone in the family still cared.
He stood and embraced the tiny woman, accepted her clucking over his ear and didn’t try to stop her from pulling out all the food in the fridge and heating it up for a full meal. You couldn’t keep an Italian woman from feeding her family.
When he finished eating, and he’d successfully warded off her pressure for seconds, she sat down with them.
“Mamma,” Junior said, covering his wife’s gnarled hand. “Carlo’s in a pinch. His brother wants him dead because he’s worried about his stealing power when their father dies.”
He hadn’t expected Junior to tell Maria. Usually the women were left out of business discussions—no one wanted to incriminate them. But this was a family issue, and right now he needed help from his family.
Zia Maria covered her mouth with her hand, but when she removed it, she already had a sharp look in her eye. She tapped the table with her bony fingers. “Send him to my nephew Alberto, in America. Just until this all blows over. He could use a smart young man like our Carlo. He’ll take good care of our boy.”
He swallowed. He’d be away when his father died. Miss saying goodbye. And his father wouldn’t know where he’d gone. But there was no way around it.
He drew a breath. America. Well, it sounded better than any plan he’d come up with. “Okay.” He nodded. “That sounds good. Thank you.”
Chapter One
Eight Years Later
Summer gripped the pole and extended one leg up into a perfect split. The BFA in dance and a lifetime of ballet lessons were finally paying off. Heh. Well, it wasn’t like she could perform for real anymore, not since her injury.
She considered stripping at The Candy Store to be a form of sex therapy. That’s how she framed it to her best friend, Maggie, anyway.
She didn’t strip for the money, and it sure as hell wasn’t to meet nice guys. But she liked the sense of power it gave her. Or was it the objectification? Either way, each time she took the stage and twirled around the pole, it repaired a small piece of her shattered sexual confidence.
She had her asswipe ex-boyfriend John to thank for her new career. Every night she worked, she fed off the lust in the men’s eyes, and sent a psychic F-you to the guy who had found her so unappealing. He’d barely managed to have sex with her once a month. When she found out he’d been cheating on her with multiple women, sometimes three different women in a week, she’d been ready to give up men altogether. But this was better.
So long as her father never found out. Because Al La Torre, the mafia don, would never recover from learning his spoiled little princess was taking her clothes off for money. He had some very old-fashioned ideas about women—they were either whores or the blessed Virgin herself, and nothing in between. And obviously he wanted her firmly in the blessed virgin category.
She pulled off her short plaid Catholic schoolgirl skirt to the applause of the crowd. The white blouse had already come off, leaving her in nothing but a bikini top and lacey white G-string. She crawled forward on the stage and accepted a five dollar bill between her tits, giving the man who offered it a nibble on his earlobe as she murmured, “Thanks.”
She stood up and twirled around the pole again, gripped it to flip herself upside down with her legs in a forward split. Rotating her legs, she opened them to a center split, then wrapped both ankles around the pole and slid down to land on her back with her knees bent up and spread wide.
In her periphery, she saw a couple of guys enter through the door. Maybe it was the well-tailored suit that made her look twice. Maybe it was just her instincts kicking into gear, but when she glanced through the low-lit club at the faces of the men, she went cold.
Carlo.
Her father’s right-hand man. Her drool-worthy, sexy Sicilian foster-brother of sorts, walking in like he owned the place. She recognized the face of the guy with him, but didn’t know his name. One of Carlo’s soldiers.
She spun around to hide her face, praying he hadn’t seen her. He would probably head straight up to the VIP section for private dances. He certainly had the money and seemed like the type who would prefer that. Hopefully he wouldn’t even give the stage the time of day. Thank heavens no one around here would object to the sight of her ass instead of her face. She put her two hands on the upstage wall and rolled her hips and head in concentric circles, letting her thick brown hair fall down her back. She wondered if she could just stay back there, pinned to the wall until her set was over. Two more numbers and she’d be off the stage, and then she’d tell her boss she wasn’t feeling well and split.
But already some young frat boys were hollering to her, waving their five dollar bills in the air for her to come over. She pretended not to see them.
“Hey, over here,” one of them called. “What? Our money’s not good enough for you?”
“Milan.” Her boss, Sam, hissed her stage name, jerking his head toward the guy. She tossed her head around as she strutted toward him, letting her hair fall over her face. Crouching down, she pulled out the waistband of her G-string for his offering.
With her back to the audience, she went back to the pole and wrapped one leg around it, humping the stainless steel. Going for another high kick, she slipped and stumbled back. It turns out sweaty palms present a serious impediment to pole dancers. To recover, she took a strut around the perimeter of the stage, trying to keep her hair over her face.
She didn’t look at Carlo. He had climbed the stairs into the VIP section, but he sat at the balcony, looking down. It was probably just her imagination that he was staring straight at her. When she rounded the corner she darted a glance in his direction. They locked gazes and her stomach twisted.
Carlo’s lips flattened. Surging to his feet, he jogged down the stairs and stalked toward the stage. Jimmy, The Candy Store’s ex-marine bouncer, flexed his muscles and stepped forward.
She darted toward the stairs to intercept. As the daughter of one of Chicago’s largest crime family dons, she probably knew even less than your average American about the workings of the mob, but there was one thing she understood: Family men didn’t take shit from anybody. They were dangerous when provoked.
“It’s okay, Jimmy,” she said breathlessly as she navigated the stage steps in her heels.
“Milan, what the hell are you doing?” Sam called from the other side of the stage.
She sent an apologetic glance at him and tried to push past Jimmy, who put his body between her and Carlo. He held an arm out to hold her back.
“What do you want?” he demanded of Carlo.
Carlo ignored him and lifted his chin at her. He didn’t need to speak. She knew he could only have one agenda—to haul her out of there as fast as possible, before anyone else saw her scantily clad body.
“It’s okay, Jimmy.” She gripped the bouncer’s bulging bicep.
Carlo looked at the place where her hand connected with Jimmy’s arm and his lip curled into a snarl.
She snatched it away. “I’m going to leave with Carlo. I have to go.”
“Is this guy giving you problems? You don’t have to go anywhere with him.”
The stupid bouncer was going to get himself killed. Why couldn’t he leave it the hell alone? “No, no. You have it all wrong. He’s family.”
With a capital F.
“He’s my ride and I have to go now.”
By this time, Sam had shoved another girl on stage. He made it over to them, looking irate. “What in the hell is going on here?”
“I’m sorry, Sam. I have to quit. You can keep my last paycheck. I’ll just get my stuff from the locker room.” She said the last bit to Carlo who acknowledged it with an almost imperceptible nod.
Jimmy caught her arm. “Are you in some kind of trouble?” he asked in a low voice.
“No! I’m not. I’m real
ly not. But I do have to go. I’m really sorry.” She pulled away and rushed off toward the locker room, carrying her clothes from the stage. She threw on her plaid skirt and white blouse and grabbed her purse from the locker.
Carlo and his soldier stood waiting in the hall. Carlo stood out from the rest of the lame-ass men who frequented The Candy Store. Tall, expensively dressed and darkly handsome, he’d caught the attention of all the girls working the place, but right now he was looking only at her and he appeared lethal. Something about seeing Carlo as such a badass made her entire body vibrate—and not just from fear. She scooted past them, not wanting a scene in The Candy Store, and headed out the back door with her two bodyguards—or in this case—prison guards, behind her.
“You drive my car back,” Carlo said to his soldier. The guy took the keys and disappeared. Carlo followed her to her car.
“Are you going to tell me what in the fuck is going on?” Carlo’s green eyes flashed. His panty-melting Italian accent grew thicker when he was mad.
She shivered and shook her head.
“No?” He cupped her chin. Despite the hard lines and the anger on his face, his touch wasn’t harsh. “You can’t possibly need the money.” He gave a questioning look.
“No, it’s not that. I like dancing, okay?”
“Dancing?” He snorted. “Give me the damn keys.”
She searched in her purse and produced them. “Are you going to tell my dad?”
He snatched the key ring from her hand. “Of course I’m going to tell him. I’m going to drive you to his house right now so he can straighten you out.”
The thought of her father’s reaction brought a wave of panic. It wasn’t that she was afraid of him. It was what this would do to him. She was his little princess. His perfect girl—the ballerina, the straight-A MBA student who her parents hoped would someday marry a doctor or lawyer and be as straight-laced and square as they were marginal. She didn’t want to ruin her parents’ little fantasy.
