Page 99 of Desperate Desires

I knew instinctively the latter wasn’t directed at me, and I hurt for him. For his suffering. I didn’t want him to be upset. Wished I could save him from it, the same way he’d rescued me too many times to count.

From loneliness.

From myself.

From being hurt.

And scared.

I ran my hands up his arms, over his chest, feeling the muscles ripple beneath his clothes. I settled them on his shoulders, massaging him gently, waiting for him to continue.

“The first night we met, when I, uh, got creative with your back door, somebody tried to take me out,” he said gruffly, and my whole body shivered.

I couldn’t stand to think of a world without Ono in it. My chest squeezed and I could hardly breathe. My stomach flipped and nausea rose in my throat.

No, I didn’t want to think about that at all.

“Easy, I’m alright. You saved me, Doc,” he murmured, kissing my temple before returning to his story.

“The guys after me were low-level puppets. Guys connected to my father. But someone was pulling their strings.”

“Don’t you know who it is?”

“No, but I knew who they hired. And I took care of them. But this goes deeper. They targeted me and missed. After that, they hit my business. Several times now, actually. Then they went too far. Now, they made it personal. They declared war.”

“Why now?” I asked, brows furrowed as I pondered his serious expression.

“Because now they targeted you.”

Chapter 31-Ono

I wasn’t sure how much about this kind of life my wife really understood.

I mean, she was a doctor, and aside from her association with the Volkovs, Michelle was no mafia princess.

Not that there was such a thing.

There was something all the people who profited off romanticizing the mafia didn’t understand. And that was simple.

The mafia wasn’t fucking romantic.

Not in the least. The real mafia wasn’t run by handsome young men and women with hidden hearts of gold. It was run by nasty old pricks set in their ways.

These people didn’t have hearts. They were not kind or sweet. Not the family men directors depicted them as on TV.

They were ruthless.

And not in a sexy or attractive way.

There was nothing noble about the way they lived. Nothing poetic about the blood they spilled or the fear they wielded like a sledgehammer.

They weren’t tragic antiheroes with brooding stares and complex codes of honor.

They were men who smiled while making others disappear, who ruined families as easily as they lit their cigars.

The stories painted them as kings of vast underworld empires, but the truth was far uglier.

Beneath the veneer of loyalty and respect lay greed, violence, and betrayal—their true currency.

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