Page 1 of Assistant to the Mafia

one

Just Another Monday

Grace Mariner stepped off her treadmill, chest heaving and sweat dripping down the back of her neck. She silenced her music, patted down her face with the towel she’d set nearby, and double-checked the clock. There was just enough time for her morning shower, of course. After eight years of working at DS Industries—close to three in her current position—she had her routine down to a science. She was across the apartment and flipping on the shower in under a minute. Grace stripped out of her loungewear while she waited for the water to heat, but then her gaze snagged on her reflection and she paused. Her lips scrunched up to one side and she tugged ineffectively at the pudge around her middle. My routine’s really not cutting it anymore, though, is it?

She stepped into the shower, too tight on time to wallow in self-pity. She told herself, again, to see about adding another mile to her morning run. It would mean waking up earlier, which would mean doing her level best to get to bed earlier at least on work nights. None of that was appealing. As it always did, the mere thought of the extra exertion made her want to black out. Exercise had never been her thing. She only had the treadmill because her older sister had bought it for her three Christmases prior.

“You work such long hours, Gracie. I’m sure you don’t have time to get to the gym. But you’ll be thirty soon. Your body won’t keep shrugging off all that lost sleep and greasy food.” The words were bad enough, but Caitlin had added in a long, dragging rake of her gaze over Grace’s form while she’d said them, too. And the look in her eyes when she was done clearly said Grace already knew what she was talking about.

Grace shoved the memory down and scrubbed at her skin. It wasn’t like she was fat. She was just … full-figured. I sit at a desk for long hours every damn day. It was also true that sometimes they got deliciously unhealthy food delivered to carry them through meetings. Most of that food came courtesy of one of her boss’s separately owned restaurants, so she made sure to always be present for those meetings. Getting an actual reservation at The Dragon’s Roast was next to impossible, after all.

Perfectly rational justification aside, however, there was no denying that her figure wasn’t what it had been a decade before.

Grace worked the shampoo into her hair. Why was she even feeling worked up about this? Thirty-year-old women weren’t expected to look like twenty-year-old college girls. She wasn’t some perfectly polished, hyper studious girl still hoping to impress the world. That girl had grown up.

Grace stepped back under the spray of the showerhead, letting the water rinse the shampoo away. Her eyes closed, and she tried to focus on the feel of the water rolling over her skin. Immediately the dream her alarm had yanked her from whispered through her mind, overheating her body.

She gasped, water trickling past her lips, as a voice she knew well murmured words she’d never heard the man say in real life.

“Look at you, dripping for me.” He spread his hands over her thighs, pushing her legs wider, and leaned closer. Close enough that his five o’clock shadow nearly scraped her skin and she could feel the heat of his breath. “Is this my pussy, Grace? Can I do whatever I want with it?”

Grace smacked both hands to her face, water splattering audibly in her attempt to drag herself back to reality. Her morning routine was timed to the minute, and she’d already wasted several. She could not afford to be standing in the hot shower and getting herself all worked up—let alone about one of the men she worked for. She had to look him the eye nearly every day. It was always hard to keep her expression steady when she saw him the day after one of those dreams.

She groaned and quickly worked the conditioner through her hair, her movements agitated. The worst part was that her inappropriate dreams had become much too frequent.

Romeo De Salvo could have damn near any woman he wanted, what with his impossibly good looks, generational wealth, and natural charm. He was smart without being overbearing about it, spoke at least three languages that Grace knew of, and didn’t mistreat his employees. He was a successful businessman, a good father, and had strong family roots. He was a complete catch.

Romeo De Salvo would never even look once at a woman like her.

She tried to remind herself of that for the umpteenth time as she hurried from her shower, dried herself off, and tucked herself into her skirt suit. It was far too late to change her mind on which outfit to wear that day, but in lieu of the morning she was having, she wished she’d pulled out the pants. Oh well.

She was six minutes behind schedule when she stepped into the elevator. Fortunately, at this obscene hour of the morning, the elevator didn’t tend to get hung up with multiple stops on the way down. She had enough time to double-check that she’d gotten all the buttons on her coat, turned the volume back up on her cell phone, and remembered to grab her work bag. Her purse was hanging again off her elbow, phone tucked away, and work bag gripped firmly in hand when the elevator doors swished open on the ground floor.

Sean was already coming around from behind the desk when she stepped into the lobby. “Running behind, Ms. Mariner?”

Grace offered him a smile. Sean had been working the graveyard shift as the front desk and doorman for her apartment building for as long as she’d lived there, and she found it comforting to know someone was aware enough of her in the pre-dawn hours to notice if she happened to be off-schedule. She just hated actually being off-schedule. “Slow morning, I guess. Do you know if Filip—”

He slipped ahead of her and pulled the door open, already smiling. “At the curb, ma’am. Have an excellent day.”

Her building really did have wonderful staff. The rent was outrageous, but they were worth every penny. “Thank you, Sean.” She nodded to him as she passed, then to the newer employee who ran the overnight valet. He’d only been there since early November, but she liked him much more than the boy he’d replaced.

Grace moved quickly to set her bags in the backseat, where they were secure and wouldn’t distract her, then ducked into the driver’s seat and cranked up the heat. If she hit the lights right, she could make up the time she’d lost with her wandering mind. Please just don’t let the roads have iced over.

She couldn’t afford to swing by her favorite coffee place. But cutting that treasured detour out of her drive, and clenching her teeth through a critical yellow light, was enough to have Grace parking in her designated spot at her preferred time. She wasn’t entirely sure it was worth the sacrifice of the coffee.

“Good morning, Ms. Mariner,” the security guard at the door said with a tip of his head.

She smiled at him. “Good morning.” She returned the greeting three more times before she was finally up the private elevator and setting her bags down once more, this time in their proper places at her personal desk. The lights were more off than on, because as usual she was first to arrive. That was how she liked it.

She blew out a breath, booted up her computer, repaired her Bluetooth to her phone, and went about waking up the upper offices while she placed that much-needed caffeine order. Three new emails came in while she was doing her sweep, each one pinging in her ear, and Grace returned to her desk. Before she could open the first one—something from Wesley Richardson, so surely nothing exciting—her phone rang.

Grace froze at her sister’s name on the Caller ID. It wasn’t yet six in the morning. She couldn’t fathom why her sister would be calling. She glanced around from her mostly window-walled vantage point, able to see that her boss hadn’t arrived yet, and accepted the call. Just in case it was important. “Cait? What’s going on?”

On the other end of the line, Caitlin Hawkins-Burke sighed as if gravely inconvenienced. “Good morning to you, too, Gracie. Have they eroded your manners in New Jersey?”

Grace frowned, letting her eyes skim over the words on the screen in front of her. It was easy enough to at least filter out the spam emails that always slipped through the system. “You’ll have to forgive me for not assuming this is a social call, considering the hour. But if you’d rather discuss manners, we could talk about how rude it is to call to chat when you know I’m at work.”

Caitlin made a scoffing sound. “I’m sure the De Salvo brothers have a dozen secretaries. Spare your sister five minutes. We barely even talked over the holidays, you’re clearly working too hard.”

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