My Mobster

by J. L. Drake

  “Look, Evangeline, I can’t get into this over the phone. He couldn’t be a part of our lives. That’s the end of the story.”

  “Seriously? That’s your explanation for lying to me about my father for the majority of my life?”

  “It’s what he wanted.”

  “Great. Just fucking great.” I slashed my hand through the air, nearly hitting Gian in the chest. He snagged my wrist, and his strong arms curled around me, pulling me against his chest. I melted into his embrace, my heartbeat slowing fractionally and my legs weak. Like a vampire, I drank in his warmth, and I breathed in his unequaled scent.

  He pressed his lips to my forehead. “I’m here.”

  “I can’t talk about this right now, Mom. I’ll call you later.”

  “Wait,” my mom said, her voice high-pitched.

  “What?”

  “He wants to meet with you.”

  “Why the hell would he care about seeing me now? He hasn’t made any effort to see me for years.”

  “He checks in on you from time to time to make sure you’re doing okay.”

  “In New York?”

  “Yes. He lives near the city.”

  “Great. My father stalks me rather than talking to me. That’s exactly what every girl wants to hear.”

  “Evieee…” She drew out my name. “I know this sounds strange—”

  “Strange doesn’t begin to describe what you’re telling me. None of this makes sense. You kind of blindsided me here.”

  “I know. I know. He’s got it into his head that you’re hanging around the wrong kind of people. He wouldn’t go into the details, so I can’t really offer you any more than that.”

  “All right,” I said absently. “I don’t know where to go with that. I’ve known Carmela the entire time I lived here.”

  “Maybe he’s talking about something else. Maybe he’s overacting. I don’t have a clue. Just put a little thought into moving home. Okay? I think you’d be safer here with me. We could expand the dance studio, offer more classes, maybe summer camps.”

  “I have an audition in a couple of weeks, and if it doesn’t go well, I’ll start thinking about my next move, but I can’t promise anything. Even if I can’t make this work, it doesn’t mean I’ll move back to Nebraska.”

  “Okay,” she said after a long moment of silence. “I’m sorry for pushing. I’m just worried about you. I’ve tried to give you space for the past few weeks so you can sort out your breakup and your future without interference. If you’re not ready, I’ll let it go for the time being. I understand.”

  “Thanks, Mom. I’ll call you next week.” I disconnected the call, feeling way too tired for a person who woke up an hour ago. I buried my face in Gian’s shirt.

  “Talk to me,” he said. “What happened?”

  I closed my eyes momentarily. “I can’t. Not yet.”

  He frowned. “Why not?”

  “Because…” I struggled to find adequate words to explain the emotions swirling in my gut with the force of a Cat-5 hurricane. “I don’t know where to start, but here it goes. Apparently, my dad never really dropped out of the picture, which means my mom spent the majority of my life lying to me. He lives in the New York area and keeps tabs on me. Oh, and he wants to meet with me because I’m hanging around bad people.”

  I spun out of his hold and snagged my dance bag from the table. “I have to get going. I’m late, and I have less than two weeks to prepare for this audition.”

  “Wait.” He clamped his hand around my wrist.

  Sucking in a deep breath, I closed my eyes for a second. My life was a complete and total mess. I couldn’t fathom how far I’d fallen. How I had managed to make a string of bad decisions, and now my life was a virtual house of cards ready to collapse at any given second.

  “I didn’t mean to lash out at you, but just when I’m getting my life in order, someone lobs another bomb in my direction. I can’t handle much more. I want it all to go away until I can get my head in the right place. My ankle. The implosion of my career. Kevin. My dad.” I sucked in a breath. “You.”

  The second the word left my lips, I regretted it. He took two steps backward, his eyes carefully trained anywhere besides on me, his nostrils flaring, and his lips twisted. My stomach bottomed out. A hollow ache burrowed beneath my breastbone, and I wanted to kick my own ass. I didn’t want to fight with him. He meant too much to me. Somehow, he’d snuck into my life, and now I couldn’t picture living without him.

  “Unbelievable.” He laughed, only it wasn’t kind. It was brittle. Dark. “I’m on the list of things you want to disappear. The same fucking list as your piece of shit ex?”

  He grabbed his car keys off the countertop and stuffed them into his pocket. “After last night, I thought we had moved past this.” When I reached for him, he dodged my hand. “No. Fuck it. I can’t talk to you right now. We’re both late. I have a shitload of work today, and I have to deal with Kevin.”

  “Gian, I didn’t mean it.” I cupped his face with my hands, desperate for him to look at me and see what was inside of my heart. “You’re right. You’re not on that list. Not even close. You’re the only thing good to come out of the last year. I’m being an idiot. I am an idiot.”

  I untucked his shirt, and my hands dove underneath the starchy material, seeking out the now familiar connection that drew us together. My hands explored the hard planes of his chest, and I peppered his pursed lips with kisses, whispering apologies.

  “Gian, I’m sorry. I feel like an ass. What can I do to—?”

  Groaning, he dipped his head, and his lips fastened onto the side of my neck, sucking hard on my skin. Without a doubt, I knew he’d left a mark, and I didn’t care. He licked a line along my collarbone, and the hair lifted on my arms. I arched my pelvis into him as his hands drifted up my ribcage, only stopping to cup my breasts. He pinched my nipples hard through my leotard, his teeth nipping my ear. Lust licked at my nerve endings.

  “Sweetheart, you taste so good.”

  “Mmm,” I hummed, rubbing my hand down his hard length.

  With a sharp grunt, he thrust his hips against me. His hardness rubbed against my lower stomach. On fire and burning for him, I yanked on his belt buckle.

  “Evie, we need to stop. We’re going to be late.” He dropped his hands to my hips and forced a few inches of space between us. “You matter to me. I meant it when I said it last night, and I mean it now. We’re in this together, so stop throwing shit in my face and questioning everything. Take a deep breath and enjoy the ride.”

  “For how long?”

  “For as long as we want. There aren’t any rules.”

  “I like that.” Somewhere deep inside of my heart, the bitterness eating me up for the last month or so withered and died. “Do you mind giving me a ride to the studio?”

  He brushed a kiss across my lips then knitted our fingers together. “C’mon. Let’s get going.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Gian

  I opened the door to Kevin’s art studio, not bothering to knock. The dumb fucker needed to keep his doors locked, but it worked to my advantage, so I didn’t give a shit. My black leather loafers clacked over the gray polished concrete floors. I spun in a circle, taking in the floor to ceiling canvases that dotted the white walls.

  I definitely wasn’t a fan of his work. The paintings looked like the bacteria I studied under a microscope in high school biology with a few arteries bisecting the blobs.

  “Evangeline, come on back. I’m setting up our lunch.” He sounded chipper. Hopeful even, and it made my temper run hotter than before.

  I paused at the entrance to the back room of Kevin’s studio. It resembled a small single-room apartment with a mini kitchen on the right side and a futon on the left side. A long rectangular table that could seat six to eight people divided the room in half.

  “I ordered your favorites,” Kevin said, his back to me.

  I leaned against the doorfram
e and jammed my hands in my pockets. Every cell inside of me buzzed with the urge to slam his face into the food on the table. “How thoughtful of you. I didn’t realize you knew what I liked to eat.”

  Kevin whirled around. “What the hell are you doing here? Where’s Evie?”

  I closed the door and flipped the lock, not wanting any interruptions. “Evie sends her regards.” I strode forward until I stood within punching distance of him. “She won’t be meeting you today or any other day.”

  “So you’re the infamous Gianluca Trassato.” His eyes narrowed, raking up and down me. “I recognize you from the club a month or so ago. She wanted to get back at me, so she left with you, only I didn’t think it’d go anywhere.”

  “I guess you were wrong, but it’s probably not the first time…or the last.”

  He folded his arms across his chest. “Say what you came here to say, and leave.”

  “Stop contacting my girl.”

  “She’s not your girl. She’s mine. She’s going to marry me.” He raised his eyebrows, a smirk on his pretty boy face. “It might not happen tomorrow, but it will happen.”

  I grabbed the collar of his pansy-ass tight t-shirt and jerked him within a few inches of my face. I inhaled deeply, trying to calm the feral pounding of bloodlust inside of me. “Listen, jackass, if I hear you tried to contact my fiancée again, I’ll cut your dick off and shove it down your throat. She’s mine, and I’m not the kind of man to turn the other cheek when another man comes sniffing around his property. Got it?”

  “Get your fucking hands off me, you lunatic. You’re not the only one with connections. I know people who’d be happy to make you disappear.”

  Rage coiled inside of me, and I smashed my fist into his nose. A sickening crack echoed through the room. He dropped to his knees, cupping his face. Blood oozed between his fingers, and he howled like a fucking baby.

  “Get up.” I flashed the gun strapped to the holster inside of my suit jacket. “Get the fuck up before I end you.”

  He crab-walked backward, stopping only when his head hit the wall. He scrambled to his feet. “Get out of here, or I’ll call the cops.”

  I pulled a chair to the center of the room. “Sit. You’re not calling anyone until we’re finished talking, and I have a hunch you won’t be so keyed up to contact the police when we’re done here.”

  His eyes darted around the room, finally landing on the exit door. I ripped my gun from my holster and aimed it at him and then at the chair. “Sit.”

  “No fucking way.”

  I pulled a silencer from my pocket and screwed it on the end of my gun. “We can do this the easy way or—” I pulled the trigger, and the drywall exploded, showering his sissy man bun with white powder “—the hard way. It’s up to you. Keep in mind that I’m not opposed to carving a few parting gifts into your face.”

  His eyes widened, and he shook his head. I wouldn’t be surprised if this guy pissed his pants. I stomped forward, grabbing his hair.

  “What the hell?” he screamed.

  I dragged his ass across the room and practically threw him in the chair, pulled a plastic cable tie out of my pocket, and secured it around his wrists. “Are you ready to talk?”

  “Talk about what? I get it. You don’t want me to contact Evie. What more do we have to discuss?”

  This fucking prick wouldn’t quit. I whipped the butt of my gun across his face. “I want to know everything about Ana Ivanka.”

  He blinked. “Ana?”

  “Yes. How did you meet her?”

  “I don’t understand what this has to do with Evie.”

  “Answer the fucking question,” I growled through clenched teeth. Despite my earlier threat, I didn’t have all day to toy with this piece of shit. “You don’t need to understand.”

  He swallowed. “Ana and I were introduced by a mutual friend. She wanted to raise her profile in the art community.”

  “Who’s the mutual friend?” He started to shake his head. “Stop right there before you piss me off even more. If you want me to leave you in one piece, I need to know everything, including Ana’s ties to the Russian mob.”

  Kevin sagged against slats of the blond wood chair, quietly fuming as he realized his chance to avoid coming clean had slipped through his fingers. A vicious satisfaction surged through me.

  “About six months ago, an acquaintance invited me to a high-stakes poker tournament. I played. I won around a hundred grand, and I was hooked. Three months later, my luck turned, and I lost a shit ton of money.”

  “How much?”

  “Five hundred grand.”

  I whistled. What a dumbass. This was how it always happened. It was the oldest trick in the book. You roped in a pretentious asshole who recently started making good money. You propped up his ego with a few wins. You showed him your power and made him think he was part of something important. Then you went in for the sucker punch. Bam, he was in debt up to his greedy eyeballs, and you took him for a ride.

  “Let me guess. You didn’t have the money to repay the debt.”

  “No. I wholesaled a bunch of my paintings. I raised two hundred grand, and I tossed him another hundred grand from my savings. Needless to say, he wasn’t satisfied.”

  I frowned. “Who?”

  His faced paled, and he cleared his throat. “Alimzhan Trincher.”

  “Alix? You went to a poker game organized by Alix Trincher?”

  Alix was a sociopath. On the street, they called him Bloody Alix, partly because of his red hair and partly because he’d left a sizeable path of blood and death in his wake when he rose to power.

  “I didn’t realize who he was at the time. If I did…” his Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat, “I would have stayed far away from the whole thing.”

  “So Alix asked you to help Ana Ivanka.”

  “Yeah.” He closed his eyes briefly and jerked his head up and down. “He showed up here one day with Ana, wanting me to teach her everything I knew and get her a couple of gallery showings featuring her work. If I succeeded, he agreed to forgive the rest of my debt.”

  I snorted.

  His shoulders tensed. “What?”

  “There had to be more.”

  “No. He hasn’t been back. He hasn’t asked for anything else.”

  “So that’s it. You started mentoring her, which led to fucking her, and Evie caught you in the act.”

  “Pretty much.” His voice sounded strangled. “I didn’t mean to hurt Evie, but Ana…” his gaze went distant, “she screwed with my head. She was always touching me and brushing against me. She’d show up here wearing next to nothing. It was like Alix sent her to me to make me cheat on Evie and ruin my life. I mean, there’s only so much a man can take. Right?”

  My spine stiffened. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know,” he whined like the man-child he was. I had no clue what Evie saw in him. “I never cheated on Evie with anyone else.”

  I lifted my eyebrows. “Do I have sucker written across my forehead?”

  “No. You’re right. I wasn’t a choirboy by any stretch of the imagination. I’ve had protégées hit on me. Granted, I’ve crossed the line a time or two, but it never went too far if you know what I mean. Ana was different, though. She wouldn’t take no for an answer. She’d strip naked and ask me to demonstrate a painting technique on her body. She’d drag me into closets at parties and stick her hand down my pants while Evie was in the other room. She was everywhere, and I couldn’t get away from her. Every time it happened, I promised myself I wouldn’t do it again—only, she was like a shot of heroin. I was hooked, and I couldn’t stop.”

  “Where’s Ana now?”

  “I don’t know. She disappeared after that night we ran into you guys at that club. She disconnected her phone and vacated her apartment.”

  “Did you ask Alix?”

  He groaned. “Yeah, and he won’t tell me shit. He said we both did our jobs, and my debt was forgiven.”

  “Tha
t’s it?”

  “He said he’d end me if I ever turned up at one of his poker tournaments, again.”

  “Has Ana’s artwork showed up in another gallery, or is she working with another artist?”

  “No.” He shifted in the seat. “That’s the strange part. The day after we ran into you and Evie in the bar, she went radio silent. A few days later, someone broke into my studio. They took all her work and stuffed it into the dumpster out back.”

  I frowned. That didn’t make sense unless Ana’s appearance didn’t have anything to do with being mentored. “Was Ana talented?”

  He grinned. “In bed, yes. As an artist, not so much. Don’t get me wrong; she wasn’t awful, but under different circumstances, I would’ve never agreed to mentor her. It was clear she’d taken some painting lessons, and with the right exposure, she could’ve made some money. That’s it.”

  Impatience stirring in my gut, I pressed the gun to the side of his head. “Is there anything else you’re not telling me?”

  “No. I swear.” His voice quivered. I flipped open the pocket knife on my keychain and cut the cable tie around his wrists. He scrambled to his feet. “Is that it?”

  “Yeah.” I stuffed my gun in the holster. “Unless you contact Evie or tell someone I paid you a visit.”

  His shoulders slumped with defeat. “I won’t tell anyone.”

  His ripped jeans and white t-shirt were crumpled and blood stained. The bun at the back his head had come undone. One of his eyes had swelled shut, and I didn’t feel an ounce of remorse. He made his own bed, and he’d never win Evie back. He had his chance, and he pissed it away by getting involved with the soul-sucking Russians.

  “Good, because if you fuck with Evie or me or even whisper either of our names, I won’t hesitate to kill ya.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Gian

  Evie kicked, dipped, and twirled, or whatever a dancer did, and wisps of sunset red hair floated around her face. She didn’t have on any makeup. Her eyes were dreamy. A soft melody poured from her lips. It was hauntingly beautiful, and I couldn’t look away.