Page 61 of Mafia Boss

Chiara: Underage vids. Roxie might be … well, you know. I don’t know how old the videos are, but Alessandro has been talking with Charlie for a while for any info.

Chiara: Meet me at 8 p.m. Our usual. Don’t mention this to Roxie. I don’t want her to freak out. She’s already stressing over you.

Balling my hands into fists, I swallowed hard. My grandfather had killed Roxie’s grandfather, but he hadn’t eliminated the problem in our family—or hers either. I should’ve already done it. I should’ve known that there was more Roxie had been through.

“Have you seen my phone?” Marco asked, walking into my office and looking around, as if he had dropped it in here earlier this morning. But he hadn’t been in this office for fuck knew how long.

I didn’t want him in here or close to Roxie anymore. And last night, at the party, he had gotten too fucking close to her.

Kept staring at her.

And I fucking got it—Roxie was hot. But she was mine now.

I ran my tongue across my teeth and tightened my hands into fists under the desk, club music thumping through the thick walls. “Maybe you lost it last night when you were ogling my girl. Did it fall out of your hands while she was in the pool?”

Marco cut his eyes to me. “I wasn’t looking at her.”

Before I could stop myself, I shot up, grabbed him by the collar, and shoved him up against the wall, my jaw twitching in anger. “You’re fucking lying to me now, Marco. I keep giving you the benefit of the fucking doubt. You lie because you want her.”

Gritting his teeth together, Marco stared back at me and tried—hard—not to blow up in my face, but I could tell that if I pushed him more, he would break, and I would have another excuse to kill him right here, right now. I just didn’t want that excuse to be my jealousy. Not after what had happened to my parents.

“Of course I like her,” Marco said, tensing. “She’s hot, feisty,tight. Is that what you want me to tell you, Cristian? I’ve been trying my best to avoid her, but she keeps coming back to me to piss you off. I’m not asking her to.”

After glaring at him for another moment, I knocked him into the wall and released him, my hand aching—aching—to reach for my gun in my waistband and kill him dead. I had wanted to do it from the moment I saw the way she looked at him with all that excitement in her eyes.

Betrayal was fucking deep.

If I couldn’t trust Marco, I couldn’t lead this family.

I’d become just like my father.

“Get the fuck out of my office,” I said, forcing myself to sit before I did something that I’d regret. “I have work to do, Charlie to deal with, and people to kill. And you don’t want one of those people to be you.”

Marco flared his nostrils. “That’s it? That’s all you have to say to me? Because keeping this shit about your father—about everything going on—bottled in, Cristian, is going to make you look weak and vulnerable to everyone else in this family, and you know what happened last ti—”

“OUT,” I shouted at him, fury rushing through my veins. “NOW.”

With that, Marco stormed out of the room and slammed my office door behind him, disappearing into the packed club. I didn’t have the fucking time or patience to see his face anymore tonight. If I did, I would be weak, and I would kill him.

51

roxie

After I’d been hidingin the hallway three floors down from Cristian’s apartment for hours, Alessa finally walked out of an apartment and typed a code into her door to lock it. Dressed in a little skirt, probably out to slut it up with Cristian’s sister, she tossed her hair over her shoulder and walked to the elevator.

I was here for information.

I waited for her to descend on the elevator, eyed her apartment door, and burned the room number four into my memory forever. I hurried down the hundreds of stairs to the lobby and was about to sneak out the front doors when I saw two guards standing directly in front of them and blocking my way.

Grumbling to myself, I walked up to one and pleaded with him to take me to the flower shop just across the street to buy some flowers tospruce up Cristian’s apartment. It wasn’t what I was planning to do at all, but he didn’t need to know that.

Once I bought a dozen red roses, I scurried back into the apartment building and rode the elevator up to Alessa’s floor. I pulled out Marco’s phone and typed in his passcode—4576—which I’d seen him do about a hundred times now. I might’ve stolen his phone last night at the party because I needed to contact Alessa without her thinking anything of it. See, Marcowasuseful.

Me: Cristian has a surprise for you. He wants me to drop it off.

Within a moment, Alessa texted back.

Alessa: He does???

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