Page 7 of The Mafia's Captive

“Fewer bodies and more… body parts.” His tone is so casual you would think he’s talking about chicken, but it’s enough to make a chill run down my spine. I take a step back, subconsciously. He smirks at my reaction. “You’re here because I want you here. You’re my prisoner, nothing more.”

“But I didn’t steal your fucking money!”

“That’s only part of your crime. Which you’re going to have to repay, by the way.”

Part of my crime? He did say something about this before. “What other crime are you piling on top of me this time?”

He shakes his head in apparent exasperation, which grinds my gears. “You think you’re so good, don’t you? Your fake innocence doesn’t work on me.”

I step forward, deliberately getting into his space, “What other crime,” I say, looking up at him. He breathes in deeply, his nostrils flaring. An energy radiates between us, an energy I had ignored before but can’t now. Not when I can see how dark his eyes are. Deep pools of black that are mesmerizing. His perfectly structured face. His intoxicating musk and sandalwood scent. My awareness of it all ramps up the energy. I forget everything and wonder how his lips would feel on mine. He drops his head and moves closer. He feels it too. I’m sure he’s going to kiss me when at the last minute he takes a few steps back and the look of lust is replaced with revulsion. “If you’re going to seduce me, you’d have to do better than that.”

It’s like a slap to the face and if I wasn’t aware he had the same level of attraction for me as I have for him, he might fool me. “You’re the only one here thinking about sex, Mr. Morelli. All I want to know is what other crime you’re accusing me of.”

He glares at me for a moment and then stalks over to the corner where a bar is located. He pours out a light brown drink from a decanter, raises it at me as an offer. I shake my head. He takes another glass and pours into it as if I had said yes. “A little bird of mine,” he says casually, “informed me of a spy within our ranks.”

“So, you have a spy tell you, you have a spy?”

He stalks back to me with two drinks in his hands and hands me the other one. I shake my head again and he nudges the drink at me. I take the glass, but I don’t drink. At this moment, I don’t trust this guy at all. “Not only that,” he says, “the spy told me it was you.”

A scoff escapes me. The idea is so ludicrous. Much more ridiculous than me stealing money. “And you have evidence of this? Of me spying on you, on behalf of who exactly?”

He takes a swipe of his drink and then says, “You don’t have to act oblivious. It won’t work. I have evidence.”

“And where is this conclusive evidence you have against me? More planted shit? Who am I even spying for, according to you?”

He smiles. More like a smirk and pulls out his phone. With one hand he taps and scrolls for a moment then he shoves the phone in my face. On it is a picture of me entering through the back door of a club. It’s one of the most exclusive clubs in town. And the owner of that place is Saccone. The picture looks to have been taken a year ago. It is me. I can’t deny it, but it means nothing. I’m about to say so when he scrolls to another picture. This one is of me with a group of guys. One has his hand around my waist. We’re in the club laughing at something and there are drinks on the table. I look a little tipsy. Fuck. He scrolls again and shows me another photo. This time it’s me with the same guy who had his arm around me. This time we’re kissing. And another photo, with the same guy. He scrolls through more photos of me with the same guy ending with the last one where I’m in an office with the same guy and another person, a middle-aged man with black hair peppered with white, sitting behind the desk with his head slightly turned away. This last one looks like it was taken using a long lens camera. This is the most damning one of them all. Although you can’t see who that other person is, it is easy to tell from the angle. It’s Saccone.

“Why aren’t you drinking? There is nothing in it, not even a truth serum, as much as I would want one right now.” He knows he’s got me. And the images look bad, lacking context.

I take a sip of the drink. It goes down my throat smoothly and lights a fire in my body. Whatever it is, it’s a high-quality cognac. It gives me the courage I need. “It’s not what you think.”

“No? Are you going to say these are faked, too?”

“It is me, but I’m not working with Saccone. The other guy, Hugh, is my boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend, actually.” Our relationship ended the day I caught him with another woman in his bed. Turns out, I was the only one who was being serious about our relationship and he was cheating on me with two other women.

“I know about all of that. But I gotta say, I wasn’t aware of the ‘ex’ part.”

“So, you understand that there’s nothing more going on?”

“And I’m supposed to dismiss you meeting with Saccone regularly?”

“It was one time! That time. The one you captured! He wanted me to—” I stop at the last second, realizing how he would misconstrue the end of that sentence. When Hugh got me the meeting with Saccone. Which I gotta say was a surprise. Hugh didn’t strike me as someone that connected to Saccone. Even though he worked in his company as a tech security expert, I assumed it was a low-level backroom job and not a high level position. Hugh had told me Saccone had a job offer for me and unfortunately, or should I say fortunately, we never got to it and something came up for Saccone. A few days later, I found Hugh in bed with another woman and that severed my ties with that part of the world. Now that I think about it, the job offer was maybe to spy on Dante.

“What did he want?”

“Nothing.”

It’s his turn to scoff and even though I did nothing wrong, I feel like I’ve been caught in a lie. I take another sip of the drink to calm myself down. “So why am I here if my crimes are so horrible? Not only am I a thief, I’m also a spy.”

“You’re right. You should be dead by now, but there’s something special about you, Corina.”

“And what is that?”

I hear the door close behind me. We both turn in time to see the guy he called Tiny. A giant of a man carrying three suitcases in his hand that look like purses in proportion to his body. I spot a familiar hello kitty sticker on one of the suitcases. Is that my luggage?

“Put them in the guest room,” Dante says to Tiny. Tiny nods and he marches out of the room.

“What’s happening?”

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