Page 28 of Mafia Boss

“No.”

“Don’t fucking test me right now. I’m not in the mood.”

“I’m not touching that fucking thing. I have no use for it. I’m not killing that man.”

Cristian growled and wrapped his hand around the grip. “You will use it, and when you do, you need to know how to use it,” he said to me.

He started pointing to different parts of the gun, naming them and telling me what they did.

While I didn’t want to know a thing about it, I decided to pay attention to him for once. If I was going to kill anyone, it would be Cristian Ricci. Every Manhattan cop who had been looking for him and every rival mobster who wanted to kill him would be disappointed because I would be the one to end this man’s life.

But I needed to know how to use a gun to kill him.

When he finished, he placed the gun down on the sidetable next to me. He stared at me for a few moments, then tore his gaze away. “I don’t want you touching Marco ever again. You will not invite him into your house. You will not use him for your dirty work. You will not think about him.” He clenched his jaw and turned away, walking toward the door. “You will kill who I ask you to kill yourself.”

“No,” I said, my voice trembling. I clasped the gun in a shaky hand, lifted it, and pointed it directly at the back of his head. Sick of trembling and crying and seeming weak, I shook my head and glared at his back. “I’m not fucking killing an innocent man, but I’ll kill a guilty one.”

Cristian turned around, eyes widening slightly when he saw the gun pointed at him, but he quickly recollected himself and straightened out his back, staring intensely at me with those devilish brown eyes. “Do it,principessa.” He stepped closer to me. “You want to kill me? Put a bullet straight through my head?” He moved even closer, grabbed the barrel of the gun, and pressed it against his forehead. “Fucking do it.”

I could kill the man if I wanted to. I could end this all for good, end all the pain and suffering of hundreds of families across New York, get revenge for my grandfather, who had been tortured by the Ricci family and so traumatized that he refused to speak to any of his family anymore.

“Do it,” Cristian taunted me.

My fingers trembled against the trigger.

“What are you waiting for?”

After glaring at him for a few more moments, I threw the gun onto the couch. “Fuck you.”

Cristian shook his head. “You have a lot to fucking learn,principessa.The next time you aim that gun at me, you’d better pull the trigger, or I’ll fucking teach you to obey. I’ve waited too fucking long for you.”

I tore my gaze away from him and glared down at my feet. What the hell did he mean that he waited for so long to be with me? I had just met him a couple days ago, and he already wanted tomarryme?

“Stay away from anybody you don’t know,” Cristian said over his shoulder while walking to the door. “Now that you’re part of the Ricci family, you have a target on your back,principessa.Everyone will want a piece of you. Don’t be afraid to use that gun.”

20

cristian

“Your total isfour thousand three hundred fifty-six dollars,” the associate said the next day, folding all the clothes I’d bought for Roxie and placing them in three separate black bags. After I handed her my card, she finished ringing me out and waved me off. “Next time, bring her with you, so we can get her measurements.”

I grabbed the bags and walked out of the store to find Chiara waiting for me at the exit.

“What’d you get the woman who hates you the most?” she asked me with a smirk. She took a peek in the bags and scrunched her nose. “God, you have bad taste. Next time, just give Roxie your black card, and I’ll take her out.”

“You don’t think she’ll like it?”

Chiara arched a brow. “It’s too prissy for her. With all her tattoos and that dyed hair, Roxie is spunky. She stands out. She’s not going to want to dress in some old-lady-looking clothes. These might help her fit in with the other girls in the family, but it’s not her.”

“You have anything else to say?” I asked, feeling on edge ever since I’d left her this morning.

She crossed her arms. “You have your hands full with her.”

“Don’t remind me,” I said through clenched teeth.

After last night, that was fucking clear. That woman had dared to hold a gun—one that she’d sworn she didn’t want to use—right to my head. Nobody—nobody—had fucking dared to do that before. Not even Alessa, my crazy ex-fling.

“Did you bring me what I’d asked for?” I asked Chiara.

---