Page 12 of Bound By Her Mafia Bosses

They had been snowed in at the hotel for two days before they could get back on the road to the cabin. He just hoped that he could remember the way to the safehouse. It had been years since he was last there, but he knew that place by heart. It was one of the places that he had used to lay low after he got away from the Gallo family when he was only twenty.

He should have told Lucky when they were talking the first night. Lucky made him promise that they’d be completely honest with each other. Hell, he even asked if Zan had any deep dark secrets to spill, and he lied and said that he was an open book. He was a fucking liar—that’s what he was, but telling Lucky that now wouldn’t end well for him. He just needed to figure out how to keep his secret.

It wasn’t a bad one—not a secret that could tear them apart or hurt Jules and Lucky, but it was still a secret and something that he regretted even all these years later.

When he was just sixteen, his mom passed away and he was lost. His father was never really in the picture, so he had to take care of himself. That’s when he was recruited to be in the Gallo family. They made him feel like he belonged, and that was what he needed at the time. Little did he know—they didn’t give a fuck about him. They were using him to do the dumb shit that no one else wanted to do. He ran drugs, collected money, and even helped to hide the bodies. He really didn’t care about any of the bad stuff, as long as they let him stick around.

But then, when he turned twenty, his boss told him that it was time for him to earn his keep. They gave him a gun and an address. He was supposed to kill the man who answered the door and when he showed up to do the job, he couldn’t pull the trigger. The guy opened the door holding a crying baby and that shouldn’t have mattered, but it did. Zan knew that going back to the family after failing to follow instructions would end up getting him killed, so he went on the run. He ran for years and when he finally gave up running and joined the police academy, he knew that he’d never run from a fight ever again.

He worked his way up through the ranks quickly and when he made detective, he decided to start doing some undercover work. He’d go into the families, pretending to be one of their own, and when he finally came out, he had brought down most of the family members with him. He loved his job. For the first time in his life, Zan felt as though he was making a difference in the world. When the job came up to go undercover in the Gallo family, he wasn’t sure if he should take the job. He worried that someone might recognize him, but the guys he had worked with weren’t in the family anymore. Most of them had died off. Isabella’s husband was in charge when he was in the family, and she wasn’t really involved. Her boys were all too young to remember him, and he couldn’t believe his luck. He fit in because he knew his was around the organization. Isabella even trusted him, which helped to lead to her downfall and prison sentence. They had assigned him to be Lucky’s partner since Isabella wanted Zan to keep an eye on him. He didn’t give a fuck what she wanted him to do, but he pretended to. He liked Lucky and honestly, had come to think of him as a friend, not just some guy who Isabella wanted him to babysit. And now, he was breaking the only rule that they had come up with together—complete honesty.

Maybe he could let it slip that he forgot to mention that he used to be in the family. No, Lucky would never believe that he forgot to tell him something like that. He was going to have to wait for the right time, sit Jules and Lucky down, and tell them the truth. He’d wait until they got to the cabin and then he’d find a way to come clean with them both.

* * *

He pulled onto the back road that led to the cabin just as Jules was waking up next to him. Lucky had stretched out in the back seat to catch up on some sleep while he drove. “Where are we?” Jules asked.

“We are about two miles from the cabin,” he said. “You slept the whole way here.”

“Sorry,” she breathed, looking at Lucky in the back seat. “He finally fell asleep.”

“Yeah, he doesn’t sleep much. He fell asleep about an hour ago,” Zan said.

“You two are loud,” Lucky grumbled, sitting up in the back seat of the SUV. “Are we there yet?”

“Jesus, you’re a toddler,” Zan teased.

“Shut the fuck up, man,” Lucky grumbled, making Jules giggle. Every time she laughed, Zan lost a piece of himself to her. She was magical—that was the only way to describe why he was so drawn to her. As soon as he saw her, he felt an instant, unexplainable attraction to her.

“Why the hell are you laughing?” Lucky asked, without any real heat.

“Because I like seeing you this way,” Jules said. “It reminds me of how you were when you rescued Michael and me from your family. I don’t know, you just seem more carefree.”

“Yeah, well, that’s what sex does to a guy,” Lucky teased.

“No,” Jules countered, “it’s more than that. We didn’t have sex six months ago, and you acted this way.”

“She’s got you there, man,” Zan said. Every time they brought up the past; reminding him that they knew each other so well prior to now, made him feel like a third wheel. He hated feeling that way, but he had no way of controlling it.

“It’s a softer side of you, Bruno, and I happen to like it,” Jules insisted.

“Yeah, well, don’t get used to it,” he grumbled. “I’m not making it a habit to be all gushy and mushy on the inside just to make you happy.” Zan could tell that was a lie. Lucky would do just about anything to make Jules happy—they both would, even after just a couple of nights together.

“Oh, don’t get your boxers in a twist. I was just teasing you, Lucky,” Jules said.

“I thought we’ve already been over the fact that I don’t wear boxers, honey. I don’t wear anything. Do you need a refresher course?” he asked, unzipping his pants.

“How about you keep it in your pants until we get to the cabin?” Zan asked. “We’re just about there.”

“Fine,” Lucky grumbled. Jules even pouted at Zan in the rearview mirror, and he rolled his eyes.

“We can christen every room in the cabin if you two want to, just let me get us there.” The roads were barely passable and the one leading back to the cabin was impossible. The only reason that they were making any headway was because they had an SUV.

“Now, I like the way you are thinking, brother,” Lucky said. “Drive faster,” he ordered.

“I wish that was possible, but it’s not. Unless you want to get stuck in a snow drift and have to walk a mile back to the cabin in this stuff.” None of them had the proper clothing for this type of weather. Back in Chicago, it was just beginning to get cold and there wouldn’t be any snow for at least a month. Plus, they left town in quite a hurry, not packing any necessities that they might need for their trip to Colorado. The plan was to take Jules directly to the Gallo headquarters and turn her over. Zan didn’t want to think about what Isabella was going to have her sons do to Jules, especially not now that she was his. Getting her out of town was their only option and one that he and Lucky would make again if they had to.

He pulled up in front of the cabin and cut the engine. “This is us,” he said.

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