Page 38 of Mafia Kings: Dario

Bistecca alla Fiorentina,tender steak seared with spices and salt.

By the time we had a heavenlytiramisufor dessert, I was stuffed –

And more than a little bit tipsy.

Which meant my tongue was a bit looser than it should have been.

I’d said very little during dinner. Talk had consisted mostly of business dealings that didn’t interest me in the slightest. Lots of extremely mundane things involving shipping and bribing local officials.

Thankfully I didn’t have to listen to talk about people being ‘whacked.’

There were also a number of off-color jokes you would expect amongst a bunch of twenty-something men.

But I got the sense that if conversation veered too close to something involving thetrue‘family business,’ Niccolo rapidly shut it down.

Which irritated me.

It was all a show – a façade meant to pretend everything was normal when it most decidedly wasnot.

I wasforcedto be here.

I could not leave.

One of the men at the table had killed someone last night right in front of me.

And he had let it be known that my life was under threat by the man sitting directly across from me…

…the same one who had said he would make me his whore.

Bastard,I thought to myself angrily on more than one occasion.

What annoyed me more than anything was howhandsomehe was.

How powerful.

How rich and mysterious and dangerous.

There I sat in his house, eating his food, wearing the dress he had given me…

His prisoner.

I was furious.

Ihatedhim.

Partly because he was this oppressive, villainous figure in my mind…

…and partly because I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

His gorgeous face…

His broad shoulders…

The tattoos visible at the open neck of his dress shirt…

Dario mostly seemed to ignore me, although every so often he would catch me looking at him. His eyes would meet mine and he would hold my gaze.

The first couple of times, I looked away guiltily when he caught me –

---