Page 3 of Morally Gray Daddies

Except the whole point is to make him underestimate you.

One day, I would find someone who would actually see me and respect me for it.

Still, I was annoyed enough with Gio that I patted his chest when the song ended.

“Thanks for the dance,” I said perkily, going up on my tiptoes like I was going to brush my lips against his. He was too tall, though, unless he bent his head down, which he didn’t. It didn’t matter. I’d gotten what I wanted. “It was nice.”

Pulling away from him, I kept my hands in front of me as I sauntered off through the room. I didn’t have to glance over my shoulder to know that he was watching me leave. Which was just fine. I wanted him focused on my backside and not on the pocket watch I was now hiding in my palm.

Men.

They were so easy sometimes.

Chapter One

Three Months Later

Gio

“We’re short again.” Paulie looked down in frustration at the till before lifting his head to look sheepishly at me. The problem was, I couldn’t blame him. This wasn’t the first time the thief had hit, and I’d been on guard one of the previous times. There was no rhyme or reason to it, no pattern we could discern, and we never knew what was going to go missing.

The first time, it had been a bottle of rum. We’d thought it was just a mistake.

Then, the mistakes kept happening. A bottle there, a bottle here. A wad of cash there, a wad of cash here. Little things that could easily be chalked up to a mistake, except when they all started to add up…

Last time, it had been a bracelet from a stash of jewelry that had been on its way to my aunt.

This time it was cold, hard cash again.

We weren’t the only ones. Not that we bandied about the fact that we had a problem with a thief, but we kept our ears to the ground, and we knew that there was a rash of small burglaries among the wealthy and elite in the city. Who was rash enough to also steal from the Familias, though… that was the question.

Someone with a death wish. Or someone who was too stupid to know they were Familias. It didn’t really matter either way; the end result would be the same. Normally, I’d let Tomas handle it—once I found out who it was—but this time, I was going to get more satisfaction out of doing the deed myself.

The thief was no more than a buzzing fly, but he was a hell of an annoying one. I wanted to be the one to swat him down.

“Just add it to the tally,” I said tiredly, scrubbing my hand over my face. I reached for my pocket watch, cursing when I realized I had done so. It had been missing since Jack’s wedding, yet my hand kept trying to find it when I wasn’t thinking. I still didn’t know how I’d lost it.

Grimacing, I turned my wrist to look at my watch. I missed my pocket watch, but I was determined to adapt to the new fashion now that I didn’t have the family heirloom anymore. Buying a new pocket watch would only make me angry at myself for losing the one my great-grandfather had given me.

Of course, looking at the one on my wrist did the same thing, but I was hoping that, eventually, the sting would fade with time because they were different enough.

“I have to go.”

It was two in the morning, and I wanted to check on Clara and make sure she’d gotten home safely. I hadn’t been able to spare anyone to watch her this evening—not that anyone managed to keep up with her for a full evening, anyway. She was good at slipping past my men and even better at pretending she was doing no such thing.

In fact, I still wasn’t entirely sure she knew I had men watching her in the evenings. Somehow, she always managed to lose them, but she never seemed to know they were there. It was a conundrum. Eventually, I would get to the bottom of it, but I didn’t have the time right now.

First, I had to find the thief.

Still, I stopped by the boarding house where she lived on my way home. I’d gotten a key from the landlady a long time ago, and she knew not to question my comings and goings. Not that she saw me much, since she was usually abed when I stopped in. A place that Clara was all too often not. Unfortunately, Mrs. Cunningham was in her eighties and far too old to stay up long enough to tell me when Clara came home, which was why I set a spare man on her as often as I could.

Slipping through the darkened hallways, I silently opened Clara’s door and breathed a sigh of relief. She was in bed, asleep, her short blonde curls spilled across the pillow like an angel’s. Walking carefully across the floor to avoid the board that creaked, I stroked my finger over one of those curls.

Another reason I was so cut up about my pocket watch being stolen. My first night here, I’d cut the end of a lock from her hair. I’d kept it in that watch, tied with a little blue ribbon that matched her eyes exactly. Sentimental nonsense, yet the impulse had been overpowering. I missed touching the curl in my pocket watch, so I touched her curl now.

She slept through it, of course, as she always did.

Stifling a deep sigh, I went back out her door, closing it gently behind me, and made my way back through the boarding house, locking the front door before I went. Another late night in my lonely bed, hand on my dick, and wishing it was Clara’s cunt… or mouth… or tight little ass. It was a routine I was becoming far too familiar with.

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