by Krista Lakes
Crime Boss Baby
Krista Lakes
Zirconia Publishing, Inc.
Contents
About This Book
A Note to Readers
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
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Epilogue
Special Previews
Family Doctor’s Baby
The Billionaire’s Baby Arrangement
About the Author
Further reading
About This Book
Crime Boss Baby
From New York Times bestselling author Krista Lakes, comes a sensual, standalone mafia romance that will have you turning the pages at record speed.
I am a mafia princess.
My family is making me marry a rival crime boss.
At first, I go along with it because it's important to my family. But then I meet him.
Dante is dangerous and sexy as sin. I want him physically and mentally. His talented fingers and mouth have me panting for more before he even knows my real name.
But there are parts of my past that can ruin everything. My mother's murderer is catching up to me. If he finds me, he could ruin everything. Not only that, not everyone in Dante's family is as excited about the wedding as they appear.
And then, there's news that both overjoys and terrifies me. I'm pregnant.
Can Dante save me and give me the future we both desire? Or will my past destroy everything and everyone that I care about?
I bite my lip and smile, nodding. "Take me, Dante. I'm yours to take as you want.”
His eyes darken and he suddenly seems taller. He grabs my hair and pulls me to his desk. I sit on the edge of the wood, arching my back and thrusting out my chest. I want to tempt him. I moan loudly, just wanting nothing but his cock inside of me. He leaves one hand in my hair while the other one begins to hike up my skirt.
He caresses my inner thigh, working his fingers up the sensitive flesh to the cloth of my panties. Without warning, he slips a finger into me. Luckily, I want him bad enough that I have a little lubrication, but not nearly enough to make the penetration pleasurable. I wince. "Careful..." I whine as I look back at him.
He removes his hand and sticks the finger in his mouth, savoring my flavor. His face is emotionless while his eyes burn with a lust I don't recognize. "You said to take you. You sure you want to continue?"
I swallow hard. His erection is huge against my leg. "Yes," I whisper, looking at his pants.
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A Note to Readers
If you are an avid reader of Krista Lakes novels, certain passages of this novel may feel familiar to you.
This summer, Kindle Worlds shut down their program and I received the rights to three novellas back. I couldn't just let all that hard work and words just sit on my hard drive doing nothing. There was a story there that was worth telling.
However, I wrote those novellas with characters from another author's head. I couldn't just repackage and sell work with her characters in it. Besides, I had a new story that I wanted to tell.
So, I changed the characters. I changed the setting. I changed the circumstances around their story, as well as the key elements. I added chapters and removed huge chunks of old story line that no longer worked for the new characters.
This is a new story.
My protagonist is no longer an escort. She is the daughter of a power crime syndicate.
My hero is no longer dark and twisted. He is now a mob boss with a caring and wonderful heart.
I added characters. I added a baby. I added so much to the original novellas that it no longer resembles the original that I started with. It is its own story now.
Now, it has a happy ending.
So, some of the words may sound familiar. Some of them may feel like deja vu.
This is a new novel. This is a new story with the gaps filled in by old writing so that I can give my readers a new story. A better story. A love story.
Chapter 1
I don't remember much about the accident.
I was only twelve at the time.
My mother's boyfriend took me home and tried to kiss me when he found out my mother wasn't there. He was a powerful man, but I didn't understand that at the time. When I pulled away from him, he hit me. He said he owned me and my mother. He tried again and I punched him. I'd never been so scared in my life. I ran from his car and hid at my neighbor's house.
When I told my mother, she was furious with him. I'd never seen her so angry. She pulled out our suitcases and began tossing things into them.
“Pack a bag. We're going to your aunt's house. Be sure to bring Nan's book,” she'd told me, pointing to the small bookshelf in our living room. The book was an heirloom bible, passed down from generation to generation. It never left the shelf, but it was always in our house. I knew we were officially settled somewhere when the bible went up on the shelf.
That's how I knew that this was serious. The bible coming off the shelf meant we were leaving.
If I had known what was going to happen, I would have begged her to stay with me. I would have kept her with me and we would have run away together. Sometimes I blame myself, but I know that I couldn't have known. It wasn't my fault.
It was his.
We were almost packed when she got a phone call. It was him. Her boyfriend. She said she was busy, but he said it would only take a moment. He had something for her. She tried to tell him no, but he wasn't the type of man to take that for an answer.
She shut her suitcase hard enough to shake the bed and called her sister, but this time she kept the door shut. I didn't hear that conversation.
“Remember Nan's book,” she said, picking up her purse. “It's important. I have to go do this or he'll chase us forever. I'll be right back.”
She kissed my forehead and held me to her, her heart pounding in her chest.
“I love you, pumpkin.” Those were her last words to me. “I love you so much.”
Then she was gone. She wore a yellow sweater and a soft gray dress. Her dark hair was up in a ponytail.
The next time I saw her was at the morgue. There had been a car accident. They said she hadn't been wearing a seat belt and had been ejected from the car. That didn't make any sense to me. My mother was religious about seat belts. She made sure she wore hers even just driving across the parking lot. She wouldn't even start the car until I had mine buckled.
Even then, something felt wrong about her death. Everyone kept avoiding saying something. My uncle came, but even he couldn't seem to get any information out of them. I knew that he was a powerful businessman, yet everyone seemed to avoid telling him anything.
I was young, but I remember everyone looking nervous. They wouldn't answer any of our questions.
“You're a part of our family now,” my Aunt Sophie told me. “You're safe with us.”
She'd held my hand when I went to identify my mother. She had the same dark brown hair and nose as my mother. Her eyes were blue instead of brown. She did
n't smile as much as my mother, though.
No one told me much about the car accident. I'd watched enough crime shows to know that someone should have wanted to speak with me about what happened, but no one ever came.
Now that I'm older, I think I know why.
Senator John Norwood murdered my mother and paid to have it covered up.
Ten years after the accident...
* * *
“The boss doesn't like you being here,” Ethan says, crossing his arms. The muscles flex under his long sleeved t-shirt.
“Well, then he shouldn't have put my name on the lease,” I reply, closing the door to the warehouse and making sure it locks. “I'm the one who has to answer the security company calls when the alarm goes off.”
Ethan looks around the deserted warehouse parking lot. “You could have called me.”
I sigh and cross my arms. “I did. You were busy.”
Ethan isn't blood family, but he is family. My uncle took him in when Ethan got out of the military and had no where to go. My uncle needed reliable muscle, and Ethan provides that plus enough common sense to make him valuable.
He's big, strong, scary, and loyal to my aunt and uncle. He treats me like a big brother who has to babysit all the time. I feel like I'm a two year old kid that needs constant supervision the way he watches out for me sometimes.
He glares at me, but I don't back down. Just because he has ten years and fifty pounds of muscle on me, I won't let him intimidate me. He could beat me in a fight with both hands tied behind his back. I know he's deadly. Still, I'm not about to show any weakness.
“Besides, it was nothing. The sensor just didn't fit right. Again,” I tell him. I know that we've both walked around the place twice. Nothing is missing. Nothing is out of place. This is the third time this week this exact sensor has done this.
“You know I'm still telling the boss,” Ethan says. Always loyal to the family.
“You think I won't?” I ask, raising my eyebrows. “I always tell him. That's probably why he put my name on the lease. If he'd just let me replace the sensor, then we wouldn't have to deal with this crap.”
Ethan just glares at me.
“What are you doing out here anyway?” I ask. It's a cold November afternoon in New York. There's snow coming later tonight and I can feel the temperature dropping already. I want to get back to the city. “When I called earlier, you said you were busy. Now you're not?”
“Your aunt wants to see you.”
I try not to make a face, but obviously fail. Ethan chuckles.
“Don't let her see that face,” he tells me.
I love my aunt. She's a strong woman who taught me my place in the world. But she's a ball buster. She's all business all the time. I like seeing her for Thanksgiving and family related things, but work related business always makes me feel like I've screwed up somewhere. She's the exact opposite of my mother, who was always all about family and business second.
“You need to come with me,” Ethan tells me. There's no arguing with him, so I don't even try.
I test the locks one last time, making sure that everything is secure. There are mattresses in this warehouse. They aren't easy to steal, but I'm not taking any chances. I know it's just a flaky sensor, but we have competition that would love to find our warehouse with open doors.
“What does she want?” I ask, following Ethan to his car. I notice that Frankie, the guy who drove me here, already bailed. He probably saw Ethan and took off before he could get in trouble for bringing me to the warehouse. I couldn't blame him. Frankie was low on the totem pole. I wasn't.
“I didn't ask,” Ethan says, getting into the drivers seat of his black sedan. The windows are tinted to almost illegal darkness, but I doubt he ever gets pulled over for it. “But she seemed like she was in a good mood.”
“Really?” I shrug, putting on my seat belt. I give Ethan a pointed look until he puts his on as well. “Maybe she just wants to give me the leftover turkey from Thanksgiving.”
“Don't bet on it.”
The tires grind on the gravel as we leave the warehouse behind. I sigh and resign myself to my fate.
Chapter 2
The FBI would classify my family's business as an organized crime syndicate. Given that I've seen the filing system my uncle prefers to use, I'd hesitate to call us organized.
Still, our business is on the shady end. We launder money. We organize online sports betting and gambling. We have escort services that provide services that aren't exactly legal in this state. We have interesting goods come through our warehouses that may or may not be legal.
We run it all through our mattress company. It's the perfect cover. Mattress are big and expensive. The profit margin is huge on a mattress and it allows us to have access to the docks and warehouses. It's the perfect money laundering company. No one asks questions about mattresses.
As far as most people are concerned, we're mattress moguls. As long as you don't look at the books, that's where my family's money comes from. If you look at the books, mattresses don't make much money.
My aunt however is a mobster with morals. We don't deal with drugs. We don't deal in people. No children, no murder for hire, no slavery. My aunt won't work with those that do. She makes sure the escorts are all well taken care of. In her eyes, they are just doing a job and deserve to be paid and treated as such. She makes sure that a portion of our profits are always donated back into the community and to gambling addiction help centers. There are legal companies with less moral standing than my family.
We're not legal, but we're not evil, either.
The Savio family has been in the “mattress” business for generations. It wasn't always mattresses, but always something just a little less than legal with a legal cover. We aren't the biggest or most famous crime family, but we are one of the richest. We were one of the first into online gambling and it has paid off in spades.
My cousin Vinnie is a computer genius. He created one of the best programs for online sports betting as well as online poker games. He did it right as the internet opened up the options. With the mattress stores, we're able to safely launder all of that money.
My uncle and aunt are the head of the Savio family. They adopted me and I'm their only child. I've been trained since I was twelve how to run this business. It's in my blood. It's who I am.
I am a mob princess.
Ethan walks into my aunt's office before I do. I'm glad it's warmer in here. My coat isn't heavy enough for the cold of the day. I can hear my aunt talking on the phone, obviously wooing a customer. I stand outside, waiting and trying to ignore the glances from the people working in the cubicles surrounding her office. It's all part of the business. The cubicles add legitimacy to our finances. They think they're working for a mattress supply chain.
Aunt Sophia finally hangs up the phone when she realizes Ethan is in her office.
“Is she here? Send her in.”
Ethan motions to me and I walk in. Aunt Sophia is fishing through a mess of papers on her desk. She's wearing a tailored dark blue skirt and business jacket. Her dark hair is streaked with silver. She sometimes jokes that it's from having to raise a headstrong girl like me.
“I hear you were at the warehouse.” She frowns and my chest tightens a little bit. I don't know how she already knows I was at the warehouse. Somehow, she still makes me feel like I'm twelve years old and need to prove myself.
“The alarm went off. It's that faulty sensor. I know the warehouse is half empty, but if we're going to have a security system, it should at least work most of the time,” I tell her.
“Your cousin Danny put it in,” she says, sitting down in her office chair. “He's family.”
“Yeah, so he should fix it,” I reply. She gives me a stern look. Aunt Sophia doesn't like being talked back to like this, but she knows I'm right. Still, I'm not to speak ill of family. I soften my tone. “I'll ask him again.”
“He's a little absent minded,” Aunt Sophia agre
es. She waves her hand through the air as if brushing the topic away. “But that's not why I called you here. Have a seat.”
I was hoping that that this meeting was for leftover turkey. Aunt Sophia made really good turkey. Sitting down made my dream of turkey a little less likely.
“Do you love your family?” She folds her hands on the top of her desk.
“Of course I do, Aunt Sophia,” I quickly reply. “You know I do.”
She nods. “Then I'm going to ask you to prove it. You have the option to say no. You always have the option to say no, you know that.”
Butterflies flutter in my stomach. She's never asked me anything like this before.
“What do you need me to do?” I ask, tugging on the edges of my jacket.
My aunt slides a photo across the desk. The man looking out at me from the picture is handsome. His dark hair hangs loosely over his eyes and he has an almost sarcastic smile on his face. There's a darkness in his eyes that makes me a little nervous. He looks familiar to me.
“That's Dante Russo, heir to the Russo Family.”
I do a double take. The Russo family is an old world mafia family. They have power and influence that my family could only dream of. They are rivals, only in the sense that we work in similar legally gray areas. They are much more in the import/export business than we are. Still, we run into problems with them every once in a while. Our two families aren't really friendly. More like wolves that share a border.