Page 44 of Mafia Boss

Because I …

Because I …

I fucking liked him.

Not that much. Barely at all. But I did. Just a bit.

“That’s none of your business,” Cristian said to me.

“None of my business?!” I shouted louder than I should’ve. A couple of people looked over at us, but I didn’t give a fuck. “If it’s none of my business, then what I do with Marco is none of your business.”

Cristian clenched his chiseled jaw and stepped away from me, raising his brows as if something finally made sense to him. “You’re jealous of her, aren’t you?” he asked me, then laughed right in my face. “You’re jealous of Alessa?”

“Don’t say her fucking name,” I snapped.

The corner of Cristian’s lips curled up. “All along, I thought you hated me.”

I shoved my hands against his chest. “Shut up.”

Something must’ve clicked in Cristian’s mind because his facial features seemed to relax even more. “You do know that if I asked Alessa to kill the man that I’d asked you to, she would’ve pulled the trigger already.”

My nostrils flared, and I crossed my arms. “Well then, fucking ask her if you like her so much.”

Cristian suddenly got quiet. “I asked you to do it. Not her because I want you to kill without thinking about it. You don’t have time to fucking think when you’re getting shot at. All I asked was that you kill one person to prove yourself to me, one man who had done the same thing to some child that your grandfather had done to you.”

“And I told you that I didn’t want to kill anyone,” I said through clenched teeth.

Knowing that the man he had asked me to kill had molested a child did change my mindset a bit for me, but … I didn’t want to killanyoneever.I couldn’t imagine ending someone’s life just by pulling a trigger. Just the thought was traumatizing.

“Fuck!” Cristian threw his hands up in the air and turned around, the gun stuck in his waistband on full display for me.

It was dark in here, but I could see the light’s reflection off the side of it.

When he turned back to me, his whole relatively calm demeanor that he usually had with me had vanished and was replaced with that sinister look he had given Charlie right before he hammered that nail into his skull. “I fucking have to teach you this the hard way, don’t I?”

He went to grab my arm, but I yanked it away.

“Don’t touch—”

He reached for my arm again and captured it, shoving me onto my knees in the corner of the club. After pulling the gun from the back of his waistband, he pressed it against my head. All my feistiness and brattiness disappeared almost immediately.

Though I knew he wouldn’t pull the trigger, what if his finger slipped?

“This is what it feels like to stare death right in its face,” Cristian said, shoving the muzzle harder against my temple, the cool metal making me shiver. “One moment, you’re alive, and then the next, you’re fucking dead, Roxie. One moment, you’re having lunch on a yacht, and the next, you’re drowning in a sea of your own blood. You don’t want that.”

“Says you,” I spat up at him.

He chuckled lifelessly, pulled the gun away from my temple, and stuck the muzzle right between my lips, pushing as much of the barrel into my mouth as he could. “You fucking want this, Roxie? You fucking want me to pull the fucking trigger?”

Mouth stuffed full with his Glock, I froze. Tears welled up in my eyes. I might not know why I’d kept fighting him before, but I knew my reason for fighting him now. I didn’t think that I was good enough for him. So many late nights, I’d wondered where Ben was, believing he was cheating on me with someone prettier, and now … fucking watching Alessa put her filthy hands all over Cristian made me jealous. And we weren’t even dating.

Yet, if I was going to kill anyone, it would be her.

“Answer me, Roxie,” Cristian said, pulling the gun out of my mouth.

I spat up some spit and looked around the room to see if anyone had been watching. Nobody. Nobody had noticed a damn man putting a gun to my head, except Marco. I wiped the tears from my cheeks. Cristian followed my gaze, saw his right-hand man, and growled.

Fucking growled.

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