Copyrights Terri Anne Browning 2016
All Rights Reserved
Defying Her Mafioso
The Vitucci Mafiosos, Book 1
Written by Terri Anne Browning
Edited by Lorelei Logsdon
Photographer Shauna Kruse
Cover design by Sara Eirew
Models Alfie Gordillo
Formatting by IndieVention Designs
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
All rights reserved by the author. This is a work of fiction. Any characters, names, places or incidents are used solely in a fictitious nature based on the author's imagination. Any resemblance to or mention of persons, places, organizations, or other incidents are completely coincidental and subjects of the author’s imagination. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any other means without written permission from the Publisher. No individual/group has resale rights, sharing rights, or any other kind of rights to sell or give away this book. Piracy is not a victimless crime.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Prologue
Scarlett
The aching that was pulsing throughout my entire body woke me. The first thing I realized was that I was in a bed that wasn’t my own. The sharp, worn springs were digging into my back, making it ache that much more. I wasn’t some delicate princess who couldn’t sleep on a damn pea but, shit, those springs hurt. Slowly I lifted my eyes, but the dimness of the room didn’t help determine where I was. I barely made out a chair beside the bed and a sink across the room.
A toilet would have been nice. I had to pee so fucking bad my bladder ached too.
The smells hit me before I could even get my eyes open. Damn decaying wood. Cigarette smoke that seemed to linger throughout the entire room and burned my sinuses. Worst of all was what smelled like ripe garbage that had been left in the sun for days. It was enough to turn my stomach.
I blinked, trying to adjust my eyes a little faster so I could see what else was around me—what kind of danger I was in. The blurring of my vision slowed the process down, the ache in my head and the nausea rolling in my stomach telling me I probably had a concussion. I couldn’t feel the presence of another person, but given the amount of pain I was in, my senses could have easily been off.
Carefully I shifted my arms and moaned before I could call the noise back. Jesus Christ, that hurt. They ached the worst and I realized why almost immediately. They were tied above my head on the bed. There was no slack to let the blood flow freely through my limbs and the slight shifting of them had sent a shot of agonizing pain straight down my arms to my shoulders.
Ciro.
His name was like a balm to my mind if not my body. I wished he were there, but knew if he had been I wouldn’t have been experiencing the pain I was currently in. The person who had stupidly taken me would be dead for even daring to think of doing the things that had been done to my body.
Tears stung my eyes as the full force of the pain my body was in hit me, but I forced them back. I bit into my bottom lip to keep any more whimpers or groans from escaping as I took stock of the rest of my body. I had to keep a clear head. It could be the difference between life and death.
My legs were tied to the other end of the bed but they didn’t hurt nearly as bad as my arms. My chest was throbbing, especially on the right side, and as I sucked in a deeper breath I realized I probably had a broken rib or two. Lowering my head to the bed once more I tried to think through the fog caused by the concussion.
How had I ended up here?
The last thing I remembered was dancing at some club downtown with my sister. Victoria had needed a night out so we had gone out for drinks and to unwind with some dancing. I’d needed to go to the bathroom but she’d been so lost in her own misery that I’d left her at the bar before going alone.
I wasn’t expecting to be gone for more than five minutes. I’d walked into the bathroom and then… Nothing. I didn’t remember anything after that. Not even relieving myself.
Was Victoria okay? The thought had a new fear piercing my chest and anger burning through my veins.
Had they taken her as well? Was she in another room, hurt and afraid?
Just thinking about the possibility had my nausea threatening to overtake me and I nearly retched. I’d slaughter anyone who touched my sister.
I closed my eyes as I listened for signs of life outside the room I was in. Nothing. No creaking boards. No TV. No traffic. No birds chirping. If Victoria was there she wasn’t making herself known. Where the hell was I? The lack of noise was almost deafening and for a moment I had the real fear that they had fucked my head up so bad that I’d lost my hearing.
Another moan left me and my heart lifted slightly in relief as the sound echoed off the walls.
Damn it. I had to stop that.
A new sound reached me. Scratching feet that sounded like they were in the walls. Mice? Rats? Opossums? Maybe a raccoon? Hell, I didn’t know, and as long as they stayed in the walls I would be just fine. If I saw one though… Damn, I needed to pee so bad.
Ciro.
I swallowed back his name, knowing if I spoke it aloud then there would be no force in the world to keep my tears at bay. I wanted Ciro. Needed him more in this moment than I’d ever needed him before. I knew he would come. Ciro would save me.
And then he’d help me kill them all.
Ciro. I need you.
Chapter 1
two weeks earlier
Scarlett
Jetlag had officially set in. I didn’t want to move, let alone get out of bed, but apparently my day had already been mapped out whether I liked it or not.
“Come on, sleepyhead. Let’s have breakfast and then maybe we can talk Papa into letting us go shopping.”
I lifted the pillow off my head to look up at my twin. She was my exact copy in appearance, but our personalities were so different it was like we hadn’t even come from the same mother. Victoria was a morning person. She was actually fucking happy when she woke up—most mornings. She saw the beauty and the good in everything and everyone. Papa said she was so much like our late mother that it almost hurt.
I, however, was so much like Vito Vitucci there was no denying I was his daughter. It took a miracle—or my sister’s persistence—to get me out of bed before noon, and I sure as hell wasn’t happy when I opened my eyes each morning. I was moody—an all out bitch more often than not. I trusted maybe five people in the entire world, because I saw the darkness in everyone. A darkness that was in myself just as much as them.
“If I didn’t love you, I’d shoot you in the face,” I mumbled, only half joking.
Victoria giggled, a sound that rarely escaped me but I loved hearing from her. She was the light to my dark and I needed my twin to survive. “Come on, Scarlett. I’m bored out of my mind and I haven’t eaten since that
tiny little sandwich we had on the plane last night. If I don’t eat soon I’m going to be sick.”
She knew which buttons to push. My twin had to eat regularly because of her diabetes. The little minx was always using it to con me into doing things I didn’t want to. “I’m up,” I said with a huff. “But if you think I’m putting on clothes yet, you are out of your pretty little mind.”
“I promise to buy you an espresso while we shop.” She grasped my arm and started tugging, because even though I’d told her I was up, I was still lying there with my eyes threatening to close again. She was twenty-one years old, for fuck’s sake. She could eat breakfast alone in her own home, damn it.
“But…sleep, Tor. I want sleep,” I whined as she grasped my arm with both hands and used her little strength to pull me off the bed. As I reached the end, I just let gravity take hold and I fell to the floor, taking her with me.
She squealed loudly and seconds later my bedroom door was crowded with three huge men dressed in suits with their hands on their gun holsters. Tension filled me as I took the men in, my fingers itching for the gun I kept under my pillow.
Damn, I was going to have to remember we weren’t in Sicily any longer. Things had been more laid back at the compound in Sicily where we’d lived the last three years with our grandmother. Here, everyone was on red alert since we were home again.
“What happened?” I heard my brother demand and I lifted my head to glare at him. His dark eyes were taking in the room, looking for danger.
Really? The compound walls were surrounded by big—mostly ugly—men with guns. Dogs ran freely on the property and throughout the house, and there was a security system that I was sure came straight from the Secret Service. All of that didn’t really matter. I knew that. If someone wanted in, they would get in, but I also knew that, once they did, they would have to face my father’s wrath and there weren’t very many people in the world who had the balls to do that.
No one was stupid enough to show up at the Vitucci compound to hurt us, yet there my big brother stood, ready to annihilate anything he deemed a threat.
“Make Scarlett get out of bed, Cristiano,” Victoria said with a pout as he finally released his hold on his gun and crossed to where we were still tangled together on the floor.
Holding out his hand, he helped her to her feet and then crouched down to grin at me. “Still a grump in the mornings, I see.”
“Still a jackass, I see.” I reluctantly put my hand in his when he offered it and he stood, pulling me to my feet like I weighed nothing. Compared to him, I didn’t. My brother was six foot two of lean muscle. I was five foot eight barefoot, but according to my grandmother, I was too skinny.
He chuckled and glanced down to take me all in. Seeing my choice of pajamas, his chuckle abruptly ended. Remembering the two other men still standing in the doorway of my bedroom, he pulled me behind him and turned to face them. I rolled my eyes. Apparently he had forgotten that I could take care of myself.
“Back to work. Make sure every exit is covered before the meetings start,” he barked at the two men whom I instantly recognized. They had worked for my father since before I could remember.
They gave him a curt nod and closed the door as they left. Only then did my brother face me again. “What the fuck are you doing?” His normally nonexistent Italian accent suddenly was now thick and enraged. “You can’t go around wearing…”—his hands gestured to my camisole top and panties—“that.”
“I wasn’t going around,” I reminded him, holding on to my irritation by my fingernails. In the three years I’d been away, my brother had obviously forgotten that I wasn’t like Victoria and wouldn’t put up with his dick-headedness. The last time he’d pissed me off I’d punched him in the throat. “I was in bed. In my own room where I’m supposed to have the privacy to do whatever the hell I please. You’re the dumbass who barged in and let your men see me like this.” Shaking my head at him, I took the robe my sister handed over and slid my arms inside. Securing it in place, I tied the sash and took Victoria’s hand. I was up so I might as well make her happy. “You said something about breakfast?”
She smirked as we moved past Cristiano. “Coming?”
“You can not go downstairs like that,” he raged behind us as we started down the stairs. “The house will be full of men in an hour. Bad men, Scarlett.”
I rolled my eyes at his description of the men my father was meeting with later. Bad men? That was the most hilarious thing I’d heard in forever. Describing the Cosa Nostra members as simply bad men was like saying the Ebola virus was a really bad cold. Those guys were not just bad men. They were cold-blooded criminals who ran the city—the damn country—under my father’s ever watchful eye.
“Relax,” Victoria told him as we reached the bottom of the stairs and he was still trying to get me to go back to my room and change. “We’ll eat and then go shopping. That way we won’t even be under the same roof as those guys.” She released my hand and turned up the wattage of her smile as she looked up at him with her big brown eyes. “Okay?”
I hid my amusement at how well my sister could turn our brother—hell, almost any man—into her minion with just that smile. I had no idea how she did it, because I didn’t have that superpower. Our hardass brother turned to putty in her hands right before my eyes.
“You’ll have to take some security with you,” Cristiano told her as he followed us into the dinning room where the table was already laid out with breakfast foods.
“Of course,” she murmured and shot me a wink while his back was turned away. “Whatever you think is best, Cristiano.”
“I’d feel better if Ciro or myself could accompany you, Victoria.” He sat across from us at the table and poured himself a cup of coffee. “But we’ll both be in meetings all day.”
Meetings. Right. I liked that they called what was going to happen today meetings. It sounded more civil. Political, even.
“We’ll be fine,” my twin assured him as she delicately buttered her croissant before stuffing half of it in her mouth.
While I watched the two of them, I reached for the pot of espresso and a coffee mug. I poured most of the contents into my mug and then took my time letting the rich coffee wake me up. It was a slow process and one I didn’t enjoy. Coffee was the giver of life. Without it I was sure I would have murdered someone by now.
“Good morning, my daughters.”
I was thankful the espresso was kicking in when my father walked into the room. I was able to give him a welcoming smile rather than my typical glare that wished whomever it was graced upon to the deepest bowels of hell. He stopped behind Victoria’s chair first and pressed a kiss to the top of her head, reminding me of how it had been when we were little girls. Our father might have been the biggest Cosa Nostra boss in the country, but when it came to his children, in my eyes he was the best papa in the world.
As I watched Papa, I couldn’t help but see the pain that flashed in his eyes as he smiled down at Victoria. For him, Victoria was our mother incarnate and it would always hurt him when he thought of her. He’d both adored and at times hated our mother, but he would always love her. All too soon, he was turning away from her and his pain faded as he gave me a grin that touched my soul. “There you are.”
While he was taking in the sight of me, I was doing the same to him. Dressed in a hand-stitched Italian suit, he didn’t look like the man I knew could order the death of his enemies with just the flick of his wrist. He just looked like my father, the man who loved me more than life itself. Dark hair, streaked generously with silver, a few wrinkles around his dark eyes that could just as easily be filled with the kind of coldness that made grown men shake in their boots as the warmth and love that was shining out of them right then. Vito was still a very handsome man in his late fifties, but he’d gained a few pounds over the years. His waist was a little thicker than it had been the last time I had seen him.
Without hesitation, I stood
and wrapped my arms around his slightly rounded body. “I missed you, Papa.”
His hug didn’t last nearly as long as either of us would have liked. Hell, we could have stood there hugging for hours and it wouldn’t have been long enough for me. There were few people in the world whom I loved as much as I loved my father. To say I was a daddy’s girl was just as much an understatement as calling the guys about to arrive ‘bad men’.
Pulling back, Papa tapped the tip of my nose twice, something he’d always done that told me without words he loved me, and then turned to face my brother. “Is he here?”
I tensed, immediately knowing exactly who ‘he’ was. I glanced at Victoria, who was already watching me closer.
“He had some things to deal with, but he’s on his way now.” Pushing his coffee away, Cristiano stood and gestured toward my robe. “Make her put some clothes on, Papa. She’s practically naked under that thing.”
Vito’s dark eyes assessed my brother dispassionately. “If you can’t control your sister, how will you control your men? Should I be leaving everything to Scarlett instead of you, Cristiano?”
I crossed my arms over my chest, glaring from one Vitucci man to the other. “I’m not someone who can be controlled, Papa. Cristiano could control his men with the snap of his fingers. I, on the other hand, have a brain of my own and don’t need a man to tell me how to use it.”
Vito threw his head back, a deep chuckle making his thick gut shake. “Dear Lord, it’s been so boring around here without you, Scarlett.” He shook his graying head at me. “But go put some clothes on. Ciro will be here soon and I need all attentions focused on the issues at hand. Not the ones you cause.”
“I’m sure Ciro won’t even care if I’m dressed like a nun or a tart, Papa.” I gave him a kiss on the cheek. “But since Tor will likely murder me in my sleep if I don’t hurry so we can go shopping, I’ll get ready.”
“Shopping?” he boomed. “Who said you could go shopping? I don’t want you girls out of the compound for a few days.”
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