Page 14 of Mob Bride

I’m not looking forward to seeing him since it inevitably means I’m going to have to go to bed with him when he gets back, but he talks in his sleep and not like some shitty eighties song. He really does. I don’t know if his men know or not, but when he’s with me, he falls into a deep sleep. I suppose that says something if he trusts me enough to relax. Being with him all the time also means I’m privy to a lot more than people realize. So far, I’ve turned most of that evidence over. But not all of it yet.

I’m not ready to file a full report. If they knew half the things I had to put up with, they’d probably yank me out. It’s not that I’ve been in direct danger, but the places where Bartlomiej has meetings and the men who attend definitely make me think I’m a cat with nine lives. And there are some meetings where I think I’m on my ninth.

These are the men who are the lowest of the low among the Polish mob, the lowest of the low among the Armenians and the Albanians. He also meets with their leaders. Bartlomiej has more spies than a medieval royal court. He needs them in those syndicates and some of the other lower-level ones because he can’t get any into the Four Families.

The O’Rourkes, the Mancinellis, the Diazes, and the Kutsenkos. Those are the four families who rule New York. They all think they have the biggest slice of the pie, and sometimes they do. It goes back and forth. Right now, none of us are really sure who has it, but the Kutsenkos are my target. So that’s why I put up with all this bullshit and why I didn’t run for the hills and demand to be taken off the case.

Now it’s just a waiting game. I take a nap for a few hours, but I can’t go anywhere until my meeting at one a.m.

It’s quarter to one, and the city is quiet. That’s all relative since it’s New York. There’s still plenty going on. Plenty of lights and noise. But there aren’t the crowds on the sidewalks like there would be at one in the afternoon.

I head to the car I keep parked a few blocks away in a garage I pay cash for. Bartlomiej and Jacek don’t know I have one. They believe I get around either by subway or rideshare. At least before I knew Bartlomiej, and he started sending drivers for me. I know that’s not a courtesy. It’s his way of keeping tabs on me.

It surprises me he hasn’t called yet, or at least texted. He’s somewhere between protective and possessive. It changes by the day. Sometimes I can almost imagine him as a normal man who dates and cares about his girlfriend. But two minutes later, he reminds me of who he really is. A man who has no limits, no boundaries.

I’m one of the few people he appears to respect. I think it’s because I played hard to get in the beginning. He saw me as a challenge, but he also respects I’m among the few who don’t bow down to him and grovel or nearly piss their pants in his presence.

I pretended not to know who he was or how important he was when I supposedly moved into the neighborhood. That was five months ago, and it only took a month before I became his girlfriend. Or at least that’s what everybody believes.

I pull up to the house in Queens and go straight into the garage. I don’t turn off the engine until the garage door is two inches from the ground. I don’t get out of the car until it stops rattling. I slip into the house and greet the two guys. I go straight to my boss.

“You look like shit, Carys.”

“I feel like shit, Johnny. Thanks. In case you hadn’t noticed, I got the shit beaten out of me last night.”

“Yeah, your future brother-in-law certainly didn’t take well to you asking a few too many questions.”

“They weren’t questions that should’ve pissed him off as much as they did, unless he has more to hide than any of us thought.”

I’d managed to shoot off a text before I got to the construction site, telling my handlers what happened. I sent pictures of my face and my ribs, but I didn’t tell them where I was running to hide. I didn’t know where I was going to go. I didn’t know the construction site I picked belonged to the O’Rourkes.

I never would have imagined my mother would show up. I wouldn’t have gone there. I wouldn’t have gotten her or the O’Rourkes involved.

But that’s what ended up happening.

“So, what’s the deal, Carys? Did you see him today?” Johnny’s the least patient person I know which makes him a shit handler. But I don’t get to pick. At least we get along, and I don’t mind him.

“No. He went out of town. He didn’t text me to let me know.”

“That’s pretty unusual, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, and it makes me wonder what’s going on. I don’t know if he really left this morning without knowing what Jacek did last night, or whether he knows and he left, anyway. I have more questions than answers about that. Same thing about Jacek. He’s definitely doing more than what his brother ordered. But I can’t tell yet if that’s a benefit or a mutiny.”

“Do you really think he’d go against his brother? Do you think Jacek would go against anybody? Even his mother?”

Zofia Nowakowski. Those two men are boys when they’re around their mother. They turn into spineless, sniveling shells of men. I don’t blame them. The woman is terrifying. I did my best to make sure I got on her good side from the very beginning. I’m the docile little woman she believes her son deserves. She is straight up former Soviet Union gymnast. Not Olympic level. Pretty damn close. She has the discipline of a Soviet general, and she runs her family just like that.

Bartlomiej may head the Polish mob, but she’s definitely the matriarch. She doesn’t call the shots in business. But if she had her druthers, she’d already have Bartlomiej married to me and me four months pregnant. That shit’s never happening.

“Hard to breathe, hard to talk?”

I’ll look over at Steven, the other guy who keeps an eye on me. I only nod. I don’t need to let them know my mind’s wandering, and it’s not because I’m in so much pain. Let them think I’m dazed and confused.

I don’t want them to figure out I met Shane last night, and I definitely don’t want them to know my mother showed up. But I need to know what they know. I need to know if they’ve been tracking her all along, and that’s why I got this assignment.

Steven nods and turns back to the computer he’s sitting in front of at the house’s dining room table. He speaks to me over his shoulder.

“We lost your tracker last night. It didn’t come back on until this morning. What was up with that?”

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