Page 3 of Vicious Little Games

For now, well, I don’t bother trying to outrun Dante or his guards. Off to my right, there’s a line of SUVs with blacked-out windows, clogging up the airport pickup lane, no doubt reinforcements of the mobster’s. No, I won’t be leaving until he’s good and ready to let me walk away.

“How did you know my flight just landed?” I lift my cheap sunglasses to the top of my head to ask the mobster, forgoing a greeting that would only be fake.

“Because it’s my job to know things in this city, especially about my wife’s son. Let’s go.”

Interesting word choice. I’m not his stepson, but his “wife’s son.” And fuck, I hate being ordered around by this asshole.

“No, thanks. I don’t need a ride. And if I wanted to see my mom, I would’ve called her.”

“Tough shit. She’ll want to see you, you little bastard, so get in the fucking SUV before I have you thrown in the trunk with your luggage.” As if on cue, a guard exits the middle SUV and opens the passenger door, then waits for Dante’s next command. The mob boss has an entire army of meathead genies ready to do their master’s bidding.

I don’t know how they do it. I know there are some battles I can’t win, but I will never bow down to any man, much less a mobster. There’s nothing Dante can take from me since I’m broke as hell. He would never seriously hurt me, my friends, or my mother, because my mom would kill him or leave him for it. That’s why I feel relatively safe being a dick to him.

“So where is she? Waiting in the SUV?” I ask. Dreading confronting her face to face, I slowly roll my luggage down to the tailgate where the waiting guard loads it. Going to school on the other side of the country worked out great for avoiding my mom this past year.

“No, Vanessa is having a spa day. I wanted her nice and relaxed while you and I have a little chat,” Dante replies as he follows me with his four henchmen a step behind.

“Great,” I huff before climbing in the backseat since it’s got more leg room than the trunk.

Once we’re all loaded up and pulling away from the airport, Dante sitting next to me, he says without glancing in my direction, “You have no idea how much it hurts your mother when you won’t return her calls or texts.”

“I don’t have anything nice to say. And if you can’t say anything nice…” I trail off, tapping my fingers impatiently on the armrest.

“You need to get over it.”

“Get over it?” I scoff. “She’s lied to me my entire life! I don’t know who my fucking father is, and now I don’t know who the hell I am.”

“You also know she had a good reason for keeping you in the dark.”

“When I was a child, sure. But by the time I was fifteen or sixteen, she could’ve explained everything to me. She knows I would’ve kept my mouth shut.”

Dante snorts his objection to that statement. “Teenagers are hormonal little jackasses. If you had gotten angry at her and told the wrong person…”

“I wouldn’t have told anyone,” I reiterate slowly.

“That was a chance Vanessa couldn’t afford to take without risking your safety and her own. Do you know what her father did to her the week she was his prisoner?”

I can’t help but wince at the word prisoner. “No.”

“He locked her in an outdoor storage building under guard with no food for an entire fucking week. She had to drink water out of a faucet, and it was probably a hundred and twenty degrees in there if not hotter. He also beat the shit out of her for hours every single day. And do you want to know why?”

I swallow around the knot in my throat, imagining my petite, gentle mother being hit once, much less for hours every day for a week. “No, but I bet you’re going to tell me why.”

“For you.”

I shake my head because that doesn’t make any sense.

Before I can voice my disbelief, Dante says, “Yuri wanted Vanessa to tell him where you were. You’re the reason she was starved and beaten so badly, I barely recognized her face.”

My fists clench, wanting to hurt the men who would hurt her so badly. I didn’t know any of that shit went down. I didn’t see my mother for weeks, not until Dante finally brought us back from the secluded island he’d tossed me on with my three best friends, his two daughters, three dozen guards, and a ton of beautiful women employees literally catering to our every need. My mom didn’t look any different when we got home, or at least I didn’t notice if she did when she finally dropped the bomb on me about who Dante had been waging war against—her father. My grandfather. The head of the Russian mafia.

“If you think that bastard wouldn’t have done the exact same thing to you for any little thing you did that he didn’t like, you’re a fucking idiot. That’s why she didn’t tell you,” Dante tells me. “Vanessa was abused by that son of a bitch for sixteen years, so this little existential crisis you’ve been having is nothing compared to what she did to protect you. You want to know who you are? You’re the son of a strong, stubborn, amazing woman who loves you more than you could ever possibly imagine.” Taking a deep breath as if to calm himself down, he then adds, “It’s time for you to grow the fuck up and forgive her.”

I stare at him a moment, my jaw clenched tight, hating that his words make me feel like a giant pile of shit, but unable to resist saying to him, “You loathe dealing with shit that’s out of your all-powerful control, don’t you?”

Turning his head to face me, no doubt glaring at me behind his sunglasses, he replies, “When it comes to the people I love, I will always find a way to be completely in control, no matter what it takes.”

In other words, he’ll figure out how to pull all my strings to make me sing or dance, anything to make my mom happy, even if it’s a lie.

---