Page 59 of Taken By the Mafia King
I moved to my door and held it open. “I think you should go back to your room.”
She cut me off. “This house is so dark compared to Rose Hall, or whatever the Marino mansion is called. One of the girls I was with before the auction said the ceiling trim was decorated with real gold. Can you believe that? I told her the color of the wallpaper matched her hair, which made her cry. Paige was a really strange girl.”
“Who?” I gasped, my blood suddenly running cold. Was this the redhead she’d mentioned before?
“Paige,” she said nonchalantly.
Something about Delaney’s incessant ramblings the day Tommaso introduced us had been nagging at me. “Paigewho?”
I only knew one Paige, and she was part of the same Hell I’d lived as a child. Children born to men in the mafia. Children stuck watching their mothers cry over mistresses. Children whoknew where the suitcases of cash were kept in case we needed to run in the middle of the night.
But I hadn’t seen Paige in years.
“Paige Bruno, of course. I bet she fetched a big bid that night. She’s beautiful.”
My world shattered around me. I choked on my own breath, but Olivia grabbed my arm, squeezing tight. The look in Olivia’s eyes told me everything I needed to know. Shut up. Don’t say a thing. Don’t let her know you’re acquainted with Paige. Period.
“Who bought her?” I asked shakily. Paige had been one of my dearest friends as a child. She was always too good and too sweet, and I’d prayed she’d gotten out of this world like I had.
“How am I supposed to know?” Delaney shrugged, picking at the corner of my dresser with her nail. She glanced between Olivia and me, then rolled her eyes and started for the door. “I’ll go bother someone else. This is boring too.”
“Go back to your room right now,” Olivia hissed, using a tone I’d never heard come out of her before. Delaney eyed her for a moment before disappearing. Olivia smoothed her hands over her skirt and gave me a smile that lacked her usual sparkle. “I need to go take care of that mess. I’ll come back and make your bed.”
“Wait,” I said before she left. Olivia turned back to me. I fidgeted with my hands and swallowed past the lump in my throat. “You mentioned Killian has been holed up in his office?”
For a moment, she didn’t say anything. She just eyed me, curious and contemplative. “I did. You know the way, don’t you?”
I nodded through the burn of tears that threatened to overwhelm me. I needed him now more than ever, regardless of how furious I was with him.
Olivia backed out into the hallway and rapped her knuckles on the door. “Blame Francesco for leaving your door unlocked, okay?”
I counted to sixty, giving her enough time to be far enough from my room that nobody would see us together.
Then I bolted.
CHAPTER 44
FRED
Iwanted no part of any of this fucking mess. I’d done my time, paid my dues, and somehow gotten out of the mafia unscathed. Most men in my position, my age, would’ve been six feet under two decades ago, or have their bones resting at the bottom of the Atlantic by now.
But not me. I knew for fucking certain it wasn’t luck. This was God’s spite, I was sure of it. Letting me live a long life while I watched men like Andre Bianchi continue to thrive.
I’d bought my way out of the mess I’d made as a young, idealistic man. I’d groveled at Andre’s father’s feet and climbed the ranks to Caporegime while Andre was still licking the toes of strippers and swinging his gun around. He was the Bianchi prince at one time, capable of nothing, wanting for nothing, and somehow getting everything while the rest of us died or went to prison with RICO charges.
Then he’d become my boss, and I spent the rest of my miserable existence doing his bidding in the name of the family.
Andre wasn’t the kind of man to have a fancy, wood-paneled office in some mansion upstate. Old school and set in his ways, Andre preferred a more public place to sit around and pretend he had control over this city.
I walked downstairs into the basement of a butcher shop in the bowels of east Philly, wrinkling my nose at the stench of cigar smoke and cold cuts. I could be sitting in my armchair watching the game, but I hadn’t been able to sleep since finding out Seraphina was caged up in Ricci’s house.
Apparently, I was the only motherfucker who cared.
I’d been down in that basement countless times, more than I liked to admit. But now this place, with its bloodstained concrete floor and smoke-yellowed walls, made me feel a smidge of claustrophobia. Had it always been this small?
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Andre boomed, laughing heartily from behind a desk far too big and grand for the shitty basement. The other bosses had no understanding of the kind of boss Andre truly was. Ruthless. Jealous.
Merciless.
