Page 30 of Owned By The Bratva King

“Hi, babe.”

“Don’t call me ‘babe,’ you idiot.”

“Aw, come on,” Leon laughs. “Who else loves you like I do? Only your tailor and that's because you pay him a fortune. It's not your fault you have to get all your pants taken in at the crotch.”

“I’m not engaging with this. It’s too childish.”

“Okay, so you’re all business? Then listen. Vercotti got pissed with Lubomski at the brunch and slapped the fuck out of him for hiring some no-mark to take you out. He's backing off from any more hits; apparently, he changed his mind and would rather see you suffer.”

I give a sharp bark of laughter. “Ha. If Vercotti hasn’t balls enough to take me on himself, how’s he gonna torture me instead? Invite him round, and I’ll get him to sing; that’ll do it. Remember that wedding last year? I thought someone would shoot him during his Nessun Dorma.”

“Puccini was probably spinning in his grave. But mediocre opera skills aside, I wouldn’t write Vercotti off too soon. Pay a few watchers and snitches well enough to come down on our side and see if we can get ahead of any nasty little skirmishes. Petty disputes can still get ugly.”

“Yeah, don’t I know it.”

Leon hisses through his teeth. “My bad. I forget sometimes. I’ll make it happen and let you know if we need to be scary.”

I hang up and consider my options. It’s part of my job to make a show of strength; a man tried to have me killed, and while that’s hardly a unique event in the criminal underworld, this is my city. I should make an example of Vercotti, so my enemies know they better shoot straight the first fucking time.

I return to my car and slump in the driver’s seat, watching people enter and leave the bakery. Ordinary people who want coffee and cakes and presumably think Quinn is a regular person, like them. A young woman with a shy smile, bright eyes, and a mouth that can milk every last drop of come from my balls.

Except the last part, of course. Only I know that, and there’s more to know. So much more.

I can keep Quinn a secret. In fact, I have to; letting her go is unfathomable. I may as well cut my own fucking leg off, or gouge out my eyes. At least then, I couldn’t watch her all the time.

I’m furious at the thought that her customers are giving her their orders, saying please and thank you like she’s just a shop girl and not the princess who has me helplessly in her thrall.

My mother used to tell me a tale about a sea nymph, a rusalka, who had been hurt by humans too many times. Her trust and kindness were eaten away, replaced by bitterness and an urge for revenge.

She draped her beautiful body over the rocks and sang songs of desire and longing, her voice carrying on the salt breeze to the ships that came close to her bay. The sailors followed the sound, captivated by the promise of romance with this ethereal creature, only for their boats to be dashed to splinters on the jagged coastline.

As a kid, I always thought it was a weird bedtime story. No woman could have that kind of hold on a man, so I figured he’d have to be pathetically weak-willed to fall for it. Mama laughed and said I'd missed the point.

“A wronged woman has strength, Roman,” she would say as she stroked my hair. “She has pain in her heart, and knowing that can drive the man who loves her to insanity. Beware the angel with steel inside; she'll be the one you can't quit.”

My mother was right. When I first met Quinn, I saw her bowed head, compliance, and innocent naïveté. Yet I also couldn’t miss her skittishness—the darting eyes, the hypervigilant glances. Her pain has gotten under my skin, and I’m eaten up with fury.

I will find out who hurt my Quinn and see them suffer far worse.

My train of thought is derailed by a familiar figure heading for the bakery. If that's who I think it is, I have to intervene.

I step out of my car and shout. “Silvio!”

Vercotti gawps at me, his gold tooth catching the sun. As heads my way, I have a short debate with myself in my head. Do I need my gun? No. It’s broad daylight on my turf, and he wasn’t looking for me; he has not long since finished brunch at a place a block away. Can’t mention that, of course.

“Roman.” Silvio Vercotti stops beside the hood of my car, maintaining some distance so he doesn’t feel obliged to shake my hand. I want to tell him to fuck himself after what Leon told me, but I can’t blow Lubomski’s cover by letting on that I know.

“I haven’t seen you out and about in a while,” I say. “How’s it going?”

“Cut the shit,” he snaps. “I heard someone put a hit out on you.”

“Yeah. Bit fucking dramatic, right?” I smile at his irritation. “If they had succeeded, there’d have been a full-scale war. This city would have been torn apart.”

Silvio sniffs derisively. “It didn’t happen. Whoever it was probably won’t try it again. Most mafia men can’t buy as many friends as you can.”

“Not all my friends are bought and paid for, and you know it—you were one of them.” I narrow my eyes at him. “My people wonder why I don’t call you to heel. Some think I should kill you and steal your assets. But I don’t like to do business that way, and we were comrades once. Do you hate me so much just because I warned you off Bianca?”

“She and I loved one another.” The seething resentment in his voice catches me off guard. “The streets ran with blood back then at your hands, and you thought you could keep that girl out of the mess you were making? She only got with Antonio because you wanted to see her married to a guy who wasn’t part of our dirty world. And look what happened. He got pulled into the hell we created, and she paid with her life.”

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