Page 22 of Mafia Don's Secret Baby

He was going to kill me. He didn’t care what his boss wanted. He was enraged, and he would do it. I knew he would.

“If you kill her, you’ll die,” the shorter man reasoned.

“She deserves it.”

He meant it.

I tried thrashing, but I had no hope of overpowering a man of his size without a weapon.

As my vision began fading, a bang erupted from right behind us, a crash following it. The man above me was jerked away, and I rolled onto the floor, forehead slamming onto it as I tried to regain control of my limbs.

I finally turned myself over and stared at the enraged form of the most terrifying Don I’d ever seen.

Despite that, all my fear left my body as I watched Matteo crouch over the man who had nearly killed me and start throwing punches.

Chapter Eight

Matteo Costello

I had a full team waiting on me before I arrived, all of them armed to the teeth and wearing bulletproof vests. There wasn’t time to spare—not with Anthony inside.

“Ready, boss?”

None of this added up. The attack here tonight. The attack on the warehouse in the projects a few days ago. None of these locations were high profile enough to matter. Vlad could have orchestrated the attack on the projects to get my attention without wrecking many of my holdings. It could have been a warning.

But why here? Why now?

Anthony had been dealing coke, but that was hardly treading on Vlad’s businesses. It hardly made a dent in mine, and he had to know that.

There was an angle—one I wasn’t seeing.

“Kill on sight,” I said to my men, strapping a bulletproof vest onto myself and clenching my jaw. I followed my men toward the door and clutched a pistol in my hand as they slammed open.

Gunfire rang through the warehouse, both from my men and our enemies. I counted a dozen rivals, and the moment we came inside, they all fled toward the back of the building, not bothering to fight.

“Go after them!” I shouted, looking toward the wall where six of my men were on their knees. Two more lay face down beside the group, and I exhaled slowly as I scanned their faces for Anthony.

He stood immediately, rushing toward me.

“It was a setup,” he said.

“It shouldn’t have been. We know the buyer. He’s bought coke from us before.”

Anthony shook his head. “From what I gathered, the Petrovs took him and impersonated his guys so they could take the blow. When they got inside—” he cut himself off and gestured to the carnage.

This wasn’t right. None of it added up.

“Why?”

Anthony licked his lips and shook his head. “I don’t know. They were just… waiting. They demanded that I call you.”

I looked around, taking in my surroundings. “Is it a trap?”

“It has to be, but I don’t understand why. They didn’t want to talk to you. I kept an eye on all the men, and nobody lingered to plant explosives. They didn’t talk about a sniper or killing you. They just wanted you here.”

When I missed something, people died.

Anthony knew we were missing something, too, and he began scanning the perimeter. I did the same as my men came back inside, reporting that only a fraction of the assailants had been killed.

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