Page 236 of The Trouble With Bad Boys

“How’s that?” I ask as I rub my finger over the small brass placard screwed onto the table. Table number twenty.

“I seldom meet someone beautiful, pure, and savvy,” he says as his dark eyes rake over me.

I feel goose bumps form on my skin just from his gaze. What am I doing here? I’m playing with fire and I know I’ll get burned. When I searched Rocco online, I was surprised to find that most of the search results were about Rocco’s playboy lifestyle. It mentioned here and there that his grandfather was the head of their mafia family and those articles on Vince were shocking. I felt like I didn’t know Vince at all. I couldn’t marry the sweet, old man I ate with every week with the cold-blooded murderer who somehow evaded being charged by the police for over fifty years. But Rocco’s history showed image after image of him with different women. Seldom the same one twice.

There weren’t any articles about him being a murderer, but the apple can’t fall far from the tree and Rocco oozes a certain vibe that screams “I could kill you with my bare hands.”

If I was a smarter woman, I’d have not come back here at all. I’d let our one strange encounter be it, a mere story I tell my grandchildren someday. The time Mom ate dinner with the newly appointed head of a major mafia family.

But Rocco intrigued me. He thrilled me sexually without even really touching me and I’ve never experienced that before. I’m curious, and I just hope that doesn’t make me the cat that used up its ninth life.

“Why’d you come back this week?” I ask as Antonio sets down dinner and I begin to cut my chicken.

“I wanted to see you again,” he states as he also begins to eat.

I drop my fork and stare at him. “Why?” I ask.

He doesn’t stop eating. “Because something about you intrigues me, Lena. And I wanted to see you again.” He pauses and looks at me. “Is that so hard to believe?”

I shrug. “Maybe a little. I mean, we come from two different worlds. And you could have lots of women, clearly you already have. So, I don’t get what is so intriguing about little old me.”

He cocks his head to one side a bit as if considering my question. “You ate dinner every week with my grandfather, not even really knowing who he was. That alone makes you the most interesting person that I’ve ever met,” he confesses.

“Were you close with him?” I ask.

He nods. “As close as you could be. I think only my grandmother was truly close to him. He changed after she died. He was always…well, how he was, but he became colder, meaner. It was like all the light in his world disappeared with her,” he states.

ROCCO

We’re finishing our chicken when I hear a commotion. My head whips toward the front. A man in a hooded sweatshirt standing in front of the large picture window pulls out a gun. Fuck!

I throw myself at Lena who shrieks, and we hit the floor, my body covering her much smaller one just as a bullet shatters the front door of the restaurant.

“CJ, the fob,” I scream to my bodyguard. He tosses his car’s fob to me and he and Jake begin firing toward the man who begins to run. Marco. It has to be Marco.

Jake turns to me to lead me toward the back. “I got it. Stay here,” I command. CJ glances over at me and I shake my head. Just as another round is fired into the restaurant. I don’t have time to deal with this, and right now, all I know is that I have to get Lena to safety.

“Out the back,” Antonio yells and I waste no time picking Lena up from the floor where she’s trembling in shock. I carry her out the back and straight into the SUV. I lock us in and take off down the alleyway.

I glance over at her. “Lena, are you OK?” I ask as she trembles, not saying a word and barely blinking. Fuck, she’s in shock.

I steer us back to my compound in less than ten minutes. She doesn’t say a word. I keep my hand on her thigh, gently rubbing circles on it. She needs body heat. I pull up to the garage and throw the car into park.

Then I’m around the vehicle, pulling Lena out and into my arms. I hold her close as she continues to shake.

“I got you, tesoruccia,” I whisper in her ear as I breathe her in and realize how delectable she smells. “I got you.”

She looks up at me. “W-where are w-we?” she stammers, her eyes wide.

“My house. Well, my family’s house. Come inside, let’s get you warmed up,” I insist as I take her hand and lead her into the side entrance of the home and straight up to my suite. I open the double doors and escort her inside.

I bring her to my bathroom and turn on the steam shower. “Get in, warm up. I’ll be right back,” I state. “I need to take care of something.”

I hurry from the room and go to find Joe as my phone begins ringing. It’s CJ.

“Did you get him?” I bark.

“No, he got away. It was Marco. For sure,” he states.

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