Page 44 of Married to the Mafia

Everything seemed to go silent as Wesley sucked in a breath, his Adam’s apple dragging down his throat. “I don’t know the name of the company,” he said finally. “I just dealt with a rep who was trolling the casino where I was. That guy stopped calling over a year ago, so I figured they gave up.”

Mikey frowned.

“You expect us to believe that at no point did an organization which loaned you money, and then attempted to collect that money, tell you their name?” Dante asked.

“That’s what I’m telling you!” Wesley exclaimed.

“Bullshit,” Mikey snapped. “You never intended to pay, so you didn’t bother remembering the information.”

Wesley leveled a glare on him. “Same difference. Enjoy your goose hunt.”

Behind them, Cris stretched something that made an echoing, ominous cracking sound.

Mikey kept his glare on the man who would never be his father-in-law. “I hope this fucking hurts.” He waited only long enough to see the glare fade from Wesley’s eyes before twisting the dagger around so the blade was pointed up and burying it just above the man’s pelvis.

Wesley gasped, his eyes going wide once more. The shock had clearly delayed his processing of the pain.

Mikey didn’t wait before dragging the blade up and standing with it to avoid at least most of the arterial spray that resulted.

Wesley finally opened his mouth to scream, but only half the sound escaped his mouth before drowning out in the surge of blood and complete failure of his internal systems. The last thing he saw was Mikey pulling a borrowed dagger from his chest before his head fell back, eyes glazing over.

Cristiano let out a whistle as Mikey stepped back from the thorough mess that had become of Wesley Richardson. “I gotta say, cousin, when you decide to get dirty, you don’t mess around. Nice work.”

“The tarp was a smart choice,” Dante said. “The Beta crew will appreciate that.”

Mikey blew out a breath and looked down at himself. He’d done what he could not to get covered in blood, but he hadn’t been wholly successful. “I can’t go back in the house like this. It’s the last thing she needs to see.” He glanced at the weapon still in his hand. “I’ll clean this up before I get it back to you, Cris.”

“Fine with me,” Cris said. “I’ll grab you a change of clothes. Think your woman will mind me walking in?”

Mikey frowned. “Announce yourself, at least.”

As Cris disappeared down the hall, Dante said, “Shame we don’t know who he owes. I’d be willing to ship his head to them to see how they take it.”

“Something tells me they’d take it as our inheriting the problem.”

thirteen

Beautiful Mess

Brandi startled at the sound of Mikey’s voice calling for her from somewhere beyond the bathroom door. Unsuccessfully conquered emotion swirled to the surface, clogging her throat. She sat in the soaker tub, the water up to her chin, and tried once again to shake the reflexive fear that the confrontation with her father had triggered.

Her father ruined everything. He always had. She didn’t want him to ruin what she’d only just started building with Mikey.

Mikey knocked on the door. “You better be fucking alive in there.”

Brandi wiped at her face one final time. “I’m in the bath,” she called out. He didn’t reply right away and she assumed he’d simply accepted her answer as what it was. She let her eyes close and tried once more to relax.

The quiet sound of rustling fabric caught her attention just a heartbeat before Mikey’s much-closer-than-before voice cursed, “Christ, this water’s fucking cold. Are you trying to get pneumonia?”

Her eyes snapped open to find him kneeling beside her, fingers dipped into the bathwater and a frown etched onto his handsome face. “Mikey!”

He didn’t even smirk. “Cris said you were in one of the rooms when he came in to get me a change of clothes earlier. That was almost an hour ago, Brandi. Have you been in this water the entire time?”

Her eyes managed to widen and she cast a worried look to the bathroom door he’d left open. “You could at least have closed the—”

Mikey huffed, grabbed the chain at the bottom of the tub, and yanked the plug from the drain. “They’re gone. They left twenty minutes ago, which you’d know if your phone wasn’t next to the bed instead of with you.”

She felt extremely confused. He’d been talking about going out, she presumed to take part in the execution of her father, and now he was talking like he was staying home. Brandi ignored the swirling, draining water and the way her skin grew even more chilled as it became exposed to the air. “Wh-what he said, it’s n-not true,” she stammered. “I didn’t t-tell him—”

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