Indebted to the Mafia King

Dante

The next morning, I wake in my rumpled sheets to a warm presence beside me. Eleni. For a small woman, she really does stretch out. Her hair, shining red-brown in the morning light, covers a whole pillow, so she's stolen a corner of mine for her head. She's on her stomach, so I can't see her truly spectacular breasts, but my memories of them make me consider getting into sculpture because breasts like that deserve immortalization in marble. What I can see is the curve of her ass, just disappearing under the blankets and still a little pink from her first punishment, and the possessive hand she has on my chest.

Possessive might be too strong of a word. She's taking up more than half the bed. I could just be in her way. But I like to think it's possessive. She was incredible last night, a natural submissive who danced between bratting and obedience in a way that made me never want to go to sleep, but when I slid into her for the first time, something changed. She wasn't just the sexy as fuck woman I've been trying to resist for weeks. She was...something I've never seen before. My chest aches even as my cock starts to respond to memories of last night.

Last night? What the fuck am I saying? I came home at basically dawn and fucked her into my mattress until the sun had already come up. I have to get my ass out of bed.

I ease myself out from under her hand, and though she grumbles and rolls over, she doesn't seem to wake. Her adjustment reveals a small drool spot on the pillow that makes me smile.

No! I'm not smiling! I'm kicking my ass into high-fucking-gear because Thano was closing in last night, and I'm not gonna miss out on a chance to drop Luca just because I had great sex. I rush through getting dressed in one of my many all- black suits and sprint out the door to grab the phone I know I left in my car last night.

"Oh, Sleeping fucking Beauty joins the party," Tony says as I reach the top of the stairs. He lounges in the sitting room with a view of the open stairs, flipping through something on his phone.

"Long night." I join him downstairs. "Did I miss much?"

He hands me a hot espresso. "You can say that again. Thano found the bastard."

I shoot the espresso and wince at the burn. "Fuck."

"Car's ready outside." He hands me a to-go cup of coffee and my favorite pistol. "I was gonna wake you, but you seemed to already have a roommate."

I glance at him. His smile is teasing, but not pointed. He might've opened the door to see me in bed with someone, but he didn't recognize Eleni. Thank god.

"Wake me next time," I say because that's what I would've said if it were anyone else. "I don't have anything you haven't seen."

"I saw everything you have in that one club in Atlantic City." Tony rolls his eyes as we stride out of the house.

I laugh, and the conversation drops. I'll tell him soon. Right now, though, I need everyone focused on splattering Luca Lombardi's brains against the nearest wall.

I hop in the driver's seat of the car Tony already started, the armored SUV with the bulletproof glass, and tear out of the neighborhood as quickly as I can without waking anyone after Tony joins me. Out here, it's easy to tell I didn't sleep as late as I feared. The wan winter sun is still high in the sky, and a quick glance at the dashboard clock tells me it's barely afternoon. My bruises from last night ache, and I'm exhausted, but the jet fuel coffee Tony brought starts to put a little pep in my step.

"I'm ready to end this." I pull onto the thankfully empty Verrazano mid-workday. Just us, a minivan, and a little shit-colored sedan behind us. "Seconded." Tony fixes his already perfect hair in the mirror.

"You're pretty enough." I nudge my caporegime as we turn off the bridge and GPS leads me through a few tight turns.

After the first, the shit-colored sedan is still behind us. The hair on the back of my neck prickles. I take the second and check my mirror. Still there.

"I think we've got something stuck to our shoe," I murmur.

Tony and I draw our guns in unison as I take the third turn into a tight alley of a road that leads nowhere but the place we're going, after one last T-intersection. The shit sedan turns after us. I nod at Tony, but the sound of a car accelerating rips through the air. "What the "

The sedan leaps forward and smashes into the back of the SUV. I snap forward, my neck springing back and forth like I'm a fucking bobblehead, but the armor plating holds. Tony and I twist to start shooting through the back window.

Fucking mistake. The shit sedan keeps flooring it, shoving the SUV forward. I squeeze off a shot, shattering the glass, and stomp on the brake to no avail. They put something else under the hood of that piece of crap. The gears whine, but we keep racing toward the wall of the T-intersection. Tony fires shot after shot. I fight with my seatbelt to reach the parking brake.

As soon as the nose of the SUV enters the T-intersection, two more cars gun at us from either direction. Metal screeches, crumples. My seatbelt snaps against my chest. Tony hollers, but my ears are ringing too loudly for me to know what he says. Arms work. Head feels like a bowling ball that just rolled a strike, but all my thoughts are in order. Legs-

"Cazzo!" My left leg is completely pinned and hurts like a motherfucker. My right's in a rough spot, but I think it'd hold my weight. "Tone?"

A round cracks into the bulletproof glass, but not through. We have a second.

"Still breathing." I hear the rattle of him reloading. "Better than you, I think."

Another round. The glass on my side turns into a spiderweb of cracks. I glance at Tony and find he's right. He could get out, if he had the space. "Ambush." I tuck my gun out of view of the window bitterly.

He growls something under his breath, and the glass shatters. Someone reaches in through Tony's window and opens his door, but I can't pay attention to that. A broad man with a gold tooth grabs my collar and begins yanking me out. "Jackass." I pull my gun up and fire a round through his throat.

A smaller man behind him charges forward, and I drop him with a bullet in the head. I'm not going to waste my ammunition on the bulky body armor they're obviously wearing under their suits. Then, I turn to check on Tony. Three men, as big as the first I dropped, have him by the arms and are dragging him back to the shit sedan.

"Motherfucker." I try to rip my left leg out of its prison but only succeed in nearly making myself scream from the pain. Something's seriously wrong.

Fuck it, I don't need legs for this. I twist in my seat, ignoring the next burst of searing pain, and wait for the men holding Tony to enter the oval of the back windshield.

One, two, three. Like shooting fish in a barrel, they fall. Tony salutes me through the back window and hops in the shit sedan to try to get me out.

It takes some maneuvering, but eventually, all the cars are far enough away that Tony can crowbar open the driver's side. I tumble out, and he catches me. As expected, my left leg can't hold any weight.

"Jesus." He catches me. "Maybe you should've stayed in bed."novelbin

I snort. "Check their fucking pockets, chuckles."

He deposits me in the relatively un destroyed backseat of the SUV, and I look at the cars. All completely average, shit-colored sedans. But the SUV crumpled like a tin can, so someone fucked with their innards. If these cars were what they looked like, they wouldn't be able to touch us. And, I realize, none of them have license plates.

Tony jogs back over with a couple cellphones in his hands. "You want the bad news or the worse news?"

I heave a sigh. "Bad."

Tony grimaces. "Thano Coppola set up the ambush."

My stomach drops. "Well, what the fuck is worse than that?"

He holds up a flower-patterned case. "One of these guys took his wife's phone to work."

I drop back on the SUV seats with a groan.