Page 2 of The Boss's Temptation

“Close your eyes, sweetheart,” he hisses. He’s panting hard. I glance up and see the window at the end of the hallway quickly approaching.

“Wait…”

“Close your eyes.”

He twists and hits the glass shoulder-first. He groans, and I scream when we drop into thin air. But the drop is short. We land on the roof of a car with a sickening thud. Or he does. I land on him. Above us, flame explodes out of the window we’ve just come through.

The man rolls us and slides off the car. I hear yelling in Russian and English. My uncle is there. He hugs me briefly and then passes me to a more welcoming embrace. Masha, my tutor and babysitter hugs me long and tight. I sob into her arms.

A hand takes mine. I turn just in time to see my savior pressing something into my palm from his. It’s the locket, and it’s still quite warm. I catch sight of his hand and gasp in horror. It’s red, swollen, and bleeding—burned from the scorching hot locket when he picked it up.

It’s dark outside. When I look up at his face, all I see is shadow. But I can see him smile at me briefly. I can’t really see them, but there’s a glinting twinkle in his eyes. The building behind us groans. Fire explodes out of more windows, and he quickly turns away. He shouts something and pulls a gun out.

“Wait…”

But he’s off and running, barking orders at some other men. Masha hugs me again and quickly rushes me to a waiting car. My uncle and his advisor climb in. My uncle barks at the driver in Russian, and the car peels away.

I turn to look out the window. But I don’t see my savior again. All I see is the building collapsing into smoke and fire. My fingers clench tightly around the warm locket in my hand.

1

Micheal

Cigar smoke curlsaround the low-hanging lights in tendrils. It’s dim, but not dark in here. The gold light fixtures with the bare Edison-style bulbs gleam. They exude class and sophistication. So does the thick mahogany table we’re sitting around, and the wood panel walls. The leather high-backed chairs, the silver-rimmed crystal tumblers filled with the finest scotch money can buy… it’s all about power.

This is my war room. At least typically it is. Typically, I’m planning the next moves for the family from this very table. I’m plotting the next attack, or takeover. But tonight’s meeting isn’t about waging war. It’s about avoiding one.

I sigh and rub my hand. The scar tissue is old and faded now. But the mark remains. It always seems to throb when I have the dream, like I did last night. A therapist once told me it was my brain trying to cope with “a trauma.”

I stopped going to that therapist after that. He was never going to fully comprehend that my entire life is a series of what normal people would call “traumas.” I’m the head of one of the most powerful mafia families in the country. Being shot at or burned isn’t a trauma. It’s a Tuesday afternoon.

Beside me, Don Salvestro Scaliami puffs quietly on his Cuban. In his tailored suit, he puffs, strokes his grey mustache, and says nothing. But he doesn’t have to. Him merely being here and not in Sicily speaks loudly enough. That’s how important this meeting is.

Across from me sits our problem. If he plays his cards right tonight though, he’ll be the solution, too. Anton Korolyov looks smugger than I’d like him to look. He looks amused to be here. A piece of me wants to get out of this chair, walk around to his side, and slam his face into the fucking table until that smug grin breaks.

But I’m not an enforcer for the family anymore. That was for my youth. At forty-three now, I’m a man of power. I’m the seat of control for the Scaliami family. At least here in the States. I still report to Don Salvestro Scaliami and his cousin Don Bernardo in Sicily. I might not be a Scaliami by blood. But I am by having bled for the name for most of my life.

“Mr. Korolyov,” I growl thickly at Anton. “Will your son be joining us?”

Anton’s idiot son Sasha is the very reason we’re here. The short version is, the Scaliami crime family has a loose truce and trade agreement with the Bratva-connected Korolyov family. Or, wehada loose truce. It’s up in the air now after Sasha decided to get drunk and drop a fucking nuke on that arrangement.

The kid is the son of a Russian gangsters, and he can’t hold his liquor. It would be amusingly ironic, if not for the damage it’s done. A few days ago, Sasha showed up to a card game run by some of our guys out of the back of a bar we own. He got too drunk. He did too much coke. Then he started losing, and it tipped him over the edge.

Luckily, he’s also a shitty shot. The kid pulled a piece out and started firing. He only managed to wing two of ours. But the real damage was that a neighbor called the police. They didn’t nab anyone. But that bar is definitely on their radar now. Considering it’s a bar we do business through, that’s heat we don’t need. That and I’ve got two good men in the hospital with bullet wounds now.

In normal circumstances, this would be war. I’d have taken my full power and squashed Anton Korolyov and his Russian goons in an afternoon. It’s the excuse I’ve been waiting years for. Except the Scaliami-Korolyov relationship is a profitable one. Lucratively so. A war would be bad for business over-all. We know that, and the Russians do too.

So that’s why we’re here. This war room meeting is about brokering a peace. Anton’s come, allegedly, to apologize. He’s also come bearing a gift—a token of truce, he swore. And yet, no Sasha.

“My son is…” Anton smiles. He drinks heavily from his scotch. It makes me wish I’d served him piss instead. “He is indisposed.”

“Indisposed,” I growl. My temper flares. My hand curls to a fist on the table.

“Is there a broad side of a barn he needs to practice his aim on somewhere?”

I smile. I know I shouldn’t. I should admonish the upstart captain who’s spoken out of turn behind me. Dominic might be a young hothead. But one of the men in the hospital right now is his cousin. I turn to him and lift a single brow.

“My apologies, Mister Genovese,” he mutters. He looks sheepish. But I wink, and he nods. He knows I’m not actually mad.

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