Page 47 of Mafia Baby

“Find them?” Gianna asks me.

I hear the ladies calling for Gianna to come back and sit with them. I turn around and wave at them by wiggling my fingers in a silly way and they all blush and titter.

I turn back to Gianna. “Interested in helping me stake out the factory?”

She stretches up to kiss me and I’m careful not to dislodge the light blonde wig she has used to cover up her brown hair as I kiss her back. “If it means spending time with you, I’m down,” she says to me, her voice husky with desire.

“It’s a date,” I tell her, already thinking about logistics. This is the first solid lead that we’ve had, and I can feel that we’re getting somewhere. “Now, tell those lovely ladies that I need you to come back home with me. Right now.” I squeeze her round butt meaningfully, and she giggles.

“Give me just two shakes of a lamb’s tail,” she says, pressing another kiss to my lips and then hurrying off to tell the ladies at the little table goodbye.

I wish that our lives were different. I want so badly to tell Gianna how I feel, but what would be the point? I can love her all day long, but I can’t keep her safe.

I might not even be able to keep seeing her after this is all over. I’m sure her family wouldn’t approve of us being together after I hid her away from them for so long. Certainly, my friendship with William will be over.

I watch her kiss the cheeks of the girls at the table and then wave goodbye to them all. As she rejoins me, I nestle her against my side and bring her with me as we leave the club.

***

“This is cozy,” Gianna says to me as she tilts back her car seat and ties her hair up in a messy bun on top of her head.

I smile at her a little, but don’t take my gaze away from the factory across from us. It doesn’t look like the kind of place where anything interesting ever happens, but I should know just how deceiving appearances can be.

There’s a long-standing tradition of hiding dirty business in plain sight in my line of work, and this drab building is the perfect place to hide nefarious dealings.

“I’ve never worked with company before,” I tell her distractedly.

“Never?” she says back. She does a cute little shimmy to get more comfortable in her seat. I try not to let the wiggling of her hips distract me, but my cock has other ideas. “Not even when you were learning to do your…job?”

I shake my head. “Not really. Vince showed me the ropes, and then I was turned loose to do the jobs that were assigned to me.”

“Sink or swim, eh?” she comments drily.

I chuckle. “Mostly swim, thankfully.” I have to admit that she has a point, though. I hadn’t ever really thought about how much Vince had trusted me and at such a young age.

I had barely been shown how to do anything more than shoot a gun before he started sending me out to “take care of” the people he wanted out of the way.

In so many ways, it should be a heavy burden to be natively capable of such violence, but I haven’t ever wasted much time thinking about the morality of my job.

It’s better not to play devil’s advocate for myself. I have enough things to worry about.

“I think I saw movement by that little door under the overhang,” Gianna says abruptly, sitting upright in her seat.

I follow her line of sight and see that she was right. There’s a couple of men talking in the shadow of the metal overhang. One of them is dressed all in black and seems to have some kind of mask on his face.

What’s odd is that it’s not the kind of mask I would have expected, like a ski mask or a full-face rubber mask. Instead, it appears to be shaped more like a classic opera mask.

As I’m watching, the men go inside the building and shut the door. I glance over at Gianna. She’s drawn as tight as the string of a bow. I think about the next steps that I want to take. I just want her to be safe. Bringing her here was already a much greater risk than we should have taken.

“Gi,” I say to her, reaching out to touch her shoulder. I give it a squeeze. “Promise me that you’ll stay here. I’m just going to go check things out. Just lay low, okay?”

“Sure,” she says back with a jerky nod. Her eyes are still trained on the building, as if she’s expecting something more exciting to take place.

I know from experience that anything that is worth knowing about is going on right now, behind closed doors.

“I’ll be right back,” I tell her before slipping from the car. I pull the hood on my sweatshirt up over my face and slip on the leather gloves that I tucked into the front pocket as I move quietly toward the hulking, rusty building before me.

I stick to the shadows, making sure not to bump into anything or make any extra noise as I’m moving along the walls of the building. There’s some kind of machine running inside, which helps to cover the sound of my footsteps.

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