Page 5 of Luciano (Belles & Mobsters 1)

I’d letyou go to the beach. Once in a while. I’m a great boss like that.

K

* * *

I chuckled again.At least he was being honest.

* * *

To:Ruthless King

From:The Ghost

But I’m a betterboss because I’d let myself go to the beach every day. You’re not that great at selling yourself.

Nice doing business with you.Till our next transaction.

* * *

Clicking the send button,I waited for the email to leave my outbox and shut the laptop right after. I strode to the little play area where Matteo kept trying to throw another toy into the bag.

“Who’s ready for the beach?” I asked excitedly.

His green eyes raised up to me and a big smile spread on his face. “Io. Io.”Me. Me.Matteo was answering more in Italian than English. He raised his chubby hands to me to lift him up, and I laughed out loud.

“You are a little boss man, you know that?”

He grinned, little giggles escaping him as he twirled around.

Ella swept into the room with a wide smile. “Okay, I’m ready.”

“Let’s go then.”

Our villa was small but the most charming place I had ever lived. I loved everything about our life here. People were friendly and kind, food was amazing, and it felt like the three of us belonged. I never wanted to leave.

It took us exactly five minutes to get to the beach, and that was with interruptions of running into familiar faces along the way and chatting.

“God, I love that the beaches are empty now,” I murmured as I laid out our beach towels. “Tourist season is finally over.”

It was the second week in September and all of Europe got back to their normal work lives and offices. Ella and I didn’t have normal work lives. Our biggest disadvantage when we came to Europe was our lack of language skills. Neither one of us could speak any other language besides English. Second disadvantage was that neither one of us had a useful skill. I studied music, she studied art. Third disadvantage was that I was pregnant.

So our choices were limited. But there were a few things I picked up during my marriage and while under my grandmother’s and uncle’s roof. My grandmother wanted me to be a perfect belle to a mobster one day. Just not to the mobster I ended up marrying. The ruthless Luciano Vitale.

After all, my grandmother and uncle told me on numerous occasions that all good mob wives should know three things - how to back her man, how to keep her mouth shut, and how to help the family when needed. Except nobody expected me to get a backbone and use those skills for myself. It helped Ella and me when needed. We refused to be used anymore. Both Ella and I had established new identities and changed our appearances just enough that if we ever ran into someone we knew, they wouldn’t recognize us.

Then we turned to not so legal business. Money laundering through several Bahama shell companies and Swiss accounts.

Ella dated a boy for a bit that was heavy into IT and firewalls. It turned out, she was really good at it. So we put it to good use.

She ensured our firewalls and messages were encrypted and untraceable. By the time anyone got any message from us, it went through at least ten IP addresses and locations. Our firewalls were thick. I, on the other hand, handled the transactions through shell companies in the Bahamas and Swiss accounts, along with all the customer correspondence.

I wasn’t exactly proud of it, but it kept us fed and off the streets. I shuddered remembering those first six months. We almost ended up living on the streets. Some nights when sleep wouldn’t come, I laid awake haunted by that gnawing hunger and fear. I was scared we’d never make it to our next birthday and my baby would die before even taking his first breath. We did what was necessary to survive.

Shoving the dark memories away, I focused on this beautiful day, my son, and my best friend. We were healthy, had a roof over our heads and food on our table. That was all that mattered. I would never again depend on anyone. Ella and I took only a limited number of transactions per month. We learned to be selective. We’d laundered for certain clients that didn’t deal in the type of businesses that we wouldn’t condone. Truthfully, they were all business we didn’t condone, but we tried to choose the lesser of the evils.

Any business that dealt in human trafficking, we stayed clear of. Same with any type of businesses that sold sexual services. It pretty much left us with drug and gun smugglers. Thanks to Ella’s IT skills, she was able to use the dark web to validate businesses our clients dealt in. In most cases, she was able to get the identities of our clients. Ruthless King was an exception however, we connected with a few other runners and his credentials seemed to hold true. He was against human trafficking and was known to turn away the business of laundering money for those like the Kings and the Romano family. Everything we checked on him panned out - he didn’t deal with any criminals that touched that type of business.

I connected with Ruthless King fifteen months ago and had dealt almost exclusively with him over the last six months. He kept it short, clean, and to the point. Plus, he paid the most commission, so it was good all the way around.

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