Page 7 of Married to the Mafia Devil

Plus the deal means a chance to fuck over the man who killed my parents. That’s my focus. Not some woman, no matter how gorgeous.

I glance around her room. The place is spotless. She’s still laid on the bed, staring at me, her chest heaving. I want to tell her I’ll protect her from now on.

“Stay there,” I tell her, pulling her door closed. I glance into the kitchen as I pass. There’s a photo on the refrigerator. I recognize that. The park my parents used to go to before it got razed. Soon, that land’ll be mine along with twenty acres of pure profit. Who’s the woman in the photo? Got to be her mother. Same face.

I realize I’m just standing here when the front door swings open and I haven’t even moved.

I get to it just in time. I reach out and shove the intruding figure back into the tiny corridor outside. I don’t want to do this where she can hear me.

“Mark Thompson,” I say as I grab hold of him, lifting his body so his face is pointing straight down over the bannister. “If I let go, you fall five floors. Reckon you’ll survive?”

“Please,” he replies in a panic. “I haven’t got it.”

I lift him back up, setting him on his feet. “You know who I am and why I’m here? That’ll make this faster.”

He nods frantically. “Matteo Rossi. You’re here for the case, aren’t you?”

“No.”

He realizes at at last that he’s about to die. “Please, I had no idea it was yours. I was just paid to move it.”

“You must have a death wish, wheeling it through the streets where my people could see you.”

“They could have said it was yours, I’d have handed it over.”

“Gave them the slip, didn’t you? Knew you were being followed but didn’t know why. Who hired you?”

My face is inches from his, the stench of alcohol on his breath a bitter reminder of the man I almost became. I remember drinking like that when my parents died, trying to control the grief. Got wasted and beat two men to death just for looking at me the wrong way. That’s when I swore off the booze. I don’t mind killing men to further my business interests but losing control like that? Couldn’t let it happen again. Life is about control. Lose it and you lose everything. “Talk,” I say. “It’s your only chance.”

He looks like he’s about to confess when some sewer rat appears on the stairwell. Beady eyes, pointed nose, greasy hair. “Fuck off,” I tell him as he takes in the situation unfolding in front of him.

“He owes me three months' rent,” he whines, the desperation in his voice grating against my last nerve.

“Not anymore.” Without breaking eye contact with Mark, I pull out a wad of cash, throwing it at the rat. “That covers his rent and your poor eyesight. You saw nothing tonight, got it?”

“Sure, I saw nothing. I get it.” He nods, scooping the money up off the floor.

“Now fuck off before I break your neck.” The words are laced with a venom that sends him scuttling away like the vermin he is.

Turning my attention back to Mark, I tighten my grip on his throat. “Where is it?”

He stammers, blurting out a pathetic mess of excuses and pleas. “I don’t know,” he says at last. “I swear it.”

“Bull fucking shit. Last chance or you’re going down that stairwell head first.”

I go to lift him in the air and then I think of her. Of her face when she finds her father’s corpse. Can I do this to her? I pause for a moment, holding him, his legs kicking uselessly.

“I did have it,” he says as I’m frozen. “But I already dropped it off.” If I’d thrown him, I’d never have known.

“Where is it?”

“Please, I have kids. Don’t kill me.”

“How old are your kids?”

“Amelia’s nineteen. Emma’s twenty-two.”

“Old enough to know what a fucking idiot their father is.”

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