Ruthless Empire: A Dark Mafia Collection

by Seth Eden

  I’d never even considered it before. All these sensations raced through me like river rapids, and I didn’t know what to do with them. My heart was pounding so hard in my chest that I couldn’t count the beats, and as I shifted, I noticed my panties felt damp.

  This moment with Marco had been electrifying. Rapturous, even. But it’d also scared me half to death.

  It still did.

  This whole thing had probably happened because I could not seem to make myself quit thinking about him. We’d been working together side by side for several weeks, and there’d been so many times I’d caught myself admiring him. He’d taken charge of the restaurant as if he’d done it a thousand times, hiring more staff and making small changes that increased efficiency.

  He trained me as his manager with that direct manner he had, the force of his personality commanding but not intimidating. At least not with me. Still, I could tell that this business venture mattered a lot to him. I saw it in the stiff set of his shoulders or how his fists would clench and unclench when even the littlest of things went wrong. He worried about things, stressed about them.

  It was something we had in common.

  He had this quietness about him that was more effective as a management style than anything I’d ever witnessed. Oftentimes, he’d correct someone by simply sending them a narrowed look. It was that intense thing he had going on. Marco Varasso often spoke volumes without saying a single word.

  When I’d first become a waitress, I’d been given next to no training. I’d been an inexperienced teenager, and it’d felt like being thrown to the wolves. It was either sink, swim, or get your head chewed off.

  Get out there and take their orders, don’t mess them up, and don’t dare forget anything. And dropping a tray? That was forbidden. I’d only done it once, totally by accident during my first week, but the manager on duty had yelled at me so viciously I’d had to hurry to the restroom so I could weep in private.

  That was another thing about Marco. Other than me, he hadn’t hired a manager. As the owner, I’d expected him to. The last general manager had left shortly before Ian did, and as employees we’d been doing our best to handle everything on our own. But Marco seemed to need to cover all the contingencies himself, to be personally involved with every aspect of the business.

  Maybe it was because he was running more than just Organic Eats out of this office. His other side gig demanded his attention, too. It also demanded mine. Much of my time was spent recording incoming and outgoing transactions for this other business and making everything balance at the end of each week. The work challenged me, but I enjoyed doing it.

  It made me feel like I could aspire to be more than what I had been. And the fact that I was able to be in Marco’s presence to do it sweetened the deal.

  But now that I knew what his touch could do to me, I felt conflicted.

  I felt like my body had snuck onto some insane amusement ride without my permission. Not a Ferris wheel or carousel either. The earth had dropped out from under me without warning, and I’d been left to flail in the wind. It would’ve been so easy to keep going until we wound up naked in the floor.

  Too easy.

  An awareness of what I’d done—what we’d done—settled over me. It terrified me to admit that even though I’d stopped him, part of me had been tempted to let him keep going. A significant part.

  Like the last time, I’d felt compelled to kiss him. He was just so drop-dead gorgeous I hadn’t been able to resist. For the first time ever, I understood what all the fuss was about when other women talked about sex. When he’d sucked my lip into his mouth and stroked my breast, I’d nearly come unglued, my body behaving in ways I couldn’t have predicted if I’d tried.

  I attempted to refasten my bra, but I wasn’t having much luck. My mind was too shattered, and my hands wouldn’t quit shaking. Yet, I’d wanted him to do what he did. Yearned for it. At least until my brain finally reengaged my common sense.

  What did this mean about me? Was I weak for initiating that kiss? Was I a bad girl for liking the way he’d kissed me back? Was I a slut for letting him touch and fondle me like that?

  I must be. I must be all of that. All of that and more.

  A ball of shame began to grow in the space between my stomach and chest. Nothing could ever excuse my lascivious behavior. How could I face my boss after this? Or my parents or brother?

  “Here, let me help,” Marco said, breaking into my self-flagellation. When he came around my back and put his hands on my spine, I flinched. “Hey,” he laid his hands on my elbows instead and whispered into my ear from behind me. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Let me help put your clothing back together.”

  I took a deep breath and felt him re-hook my bra. Then, he ballooned my loose-fitting t-shirt out to straighten it, his rapid reflexes catching something that fell out from the front.

  “Pepper spray,” he said, sounding bemused. “Were you going to mace me, Kelly?”

  “Do you get maced often?” I asked him tremulously without meeting his eye. I may never be able to meet his eye again, and yet, I was making lame jokes. What was wrong with me? Good thing he chuckled rather than taking offense.

  “It’s been at least a day or two since that happened.”

  “I shouldn’t have kissed you. Again.”

  In a motion similar to what he’d done a few minutes before I’d kissed him, he cupped my chin, nudging it upwards until my gaze met his. “I’m glad you did.”

  “But I… I shouldn’t have. Especially now that I know…” I trailed off.

  “Know what, Kelly?”

  “That you’re such an amazing kisser.” I’d hadn’t meant for this to come out as an accusation, but it did. Still, he took it in stride. In fact, those delectable lips of his curved mischievously.

  “Nice to know some things haven’t changed.”

  “I almost… I almost let you…” My mouth kept getting ahead of my brain, letting my words out before I could filter them.

  “Yeah,” he sighed out, not looking as mischievous as he had. “It’s probably best that we brought everything to a halt when we did.”

  “I know why I wanted to stop, but what reason do you have?” My brain was still on vacation. If I could’ve kicked that brain to make it shut up, I would’ve.

  “Remember that first day we met?”

  “Yes.”

  “My burns?”

  “Yes,” I said again. It’d been a month and a half since then. “Aren’t they better now?”

  “They are better,” he said, but he didn’t sound as pleased about that as I would’ve expected. In fact, he sounded… perturbed. It made me forget about my shame enough to press for answers.

  “So there’s no pain?” I prompted.

  “Tightness but no real pain. Not anymore.”

  “Then, why do I feel like I’m missing something?”

  He didn’t respond for a few moments, and when he did, it was to change the topic. “Are the deposits ready?”

  Marco’s tone had turned brusque. Even aggravated. But I didn’t know why.

  Did he feel like I was giving him mixed signals? Maybe instead of being a slut, I was a tease. And maybe that was worse. The shame I’d felt came back full force.

  Still, somehow I managed to murmur, “The deposits are ready.”

  He nodded, then stepped back out of the office. I went to the door and watched him leave the bistro, feeling baffled by everything that had transpired between us. We’d gone from having a serious conversation about my job, to the two of us making out, to me being mortified at my loss of control, to him vanishing out the door. All of this within ten minutes.

  Was this what it felt like to suffer whiplash?

  I’d had this brazen sexual encounter with my boss. A Varasso. A man my brother believed might be guilty of who knew how many crimes. Beyond that first vague inquiry into who the Varassos were, I hadn’t mentioned anything else about them to David.

  He didn’t know t
hat the ownership of the bistro had changed hands. He didn’t know that I was working side by side with one of them, and he certainly didn’t know that I’d kissed Marco. I knew what my brother thought of the Varasso family, and I had enough to flip out over without adding that to the mix.

  Especially now that I was making so much more money because of it.

  I’d been careful to conceal this from both David and my parents. Instead of saying anything, I simply paid the bills without any fanfare. I took care of all the payments, catching up each of the late fees and shut off notices. I’d decided to chip away at my mom’s medical debt next. It may be a losing battle, but it meant I could keep the collection companies from haranguing them.

  At least for as long as I could keep this job.

  And I had to keep this job. I was so glad that Marco and I were on the same page where getting romantically involved was concerned. We had this heated chemistry between us, but it couldn’t go anywhere. I didn’t really think Marco was what David thought he was at all, but kissing him again would not only be crazy, it’d be reckless.

  Which meant no matter what, I couldn’t instigate any more contact between us. Both the kisses we’d shared had been my fault. He hadn’t laid a finger on me until I threw myself at him. I had to make sure I didn’t do such a thing ever again. That’s all. I had to keep all our interactions strictly business.

  So I would.

  All I had to do was concentrate on maintaining the appropriate distance between me and my boss. As long as I did, I could get my parents out of debt. My brother would remain none the wiser about me working with someone he believed to be part of a criminal organization. And Marco would have an office manager he could count on.

  Everyone would win.

  10

  Marco

  I picked at my chicken parmigiana, not having enough of an appetite to eat much. The conversation rose and fell around me without my participation.

  “You’re doing so good with your chicken parm, sitting at the table like a big girl,” Molly cooed at my almost two-year-old niece, who was sitting in a booster seat beside her. No one looking from the outside in would ever assume Anna wasn’t Molly’s biological daughter, they adored each other so much.

  Though the tradition had been to not include children at the table until the age of five, my eldest brother had decided to break with it so his growing family could share in our Sunday meal. He balanced baby Antonio on his shoulder as he ate his own food, interacting with all of us informally as patriarch of the family, husband and dad to his two young kids.

  He sat in our father’s place, but instead of Molly being situated all the way at the other end, she sat beside him, with Anna stationed between them. He’d also asked that we not talk shop at the table, or at least not about anything that wouldn’t be family friendly. Due to this, there tended to be a disproportionate amount of baby talk over adult discussions, which could be irritating on occasion, even if it was nice to see Luca relax for once.

  Another thing that could be irritating was the way he and Molly would look at each other.

  Sometimes, they’d just stare at one another as if Sandro, Gabriel and I weren’t even in the room, their infinite devotion obvious. It’d taken six months to rebuild the mansion, and Luca and Molly had celebrated their wedding in the midst of the rebuild, settling back into her cottage outside the boundaries of the estate.

  Much of that time for me had been spent in the hospital going through various surgeries, so I hadn’t been privy to the goo-goo eyes brigade. Maybe because of this, the time I’d spent at home around the two lovebirds hadn’t bothered me.

  But it bothered me tonight.

  I didn’t know why, but I felt so edgy. I attempted to distract myself by concentrating on the conversation between Alessandro and Gabriel instead.

  “Ricky and I have been conferring back and forth about it, so now we’ve got this one focusing in even tighter. The lens is controlled by remote access so we can zoom in on a face so close it’ll seem like we’re taking a selfie,” Sandro was saying, his excitement all over his face.

  Ricky, his best friend since childhood as well as our trusted defense attorney, sometimes worked with him on stuff like this. I got the feeling that being a lawyer didn’t ignite Ricky’s creativity as much as fiddling around with my brother’s drones did.

  They were two geeky peas in a pod.

  “I’ll check it out after dinner. Though the last thing you two took a picture of with that thing was a chick strutting down Chadwick Street, and you didn’t seem to be focusing on her face,” Gabriel said, keeping his voice low.

  “What are you two talking about?” Molly asked, looking peeved.

  Sounded like they hadn’t kept their voices low enough. But Alessandro didn’t seem worried at all.

  “Those new drones I’ve been developing with Ricky. The cameras are out of this world good.”

  “Well, I’m glad. For a minute there it sounded like you were talking about scoping out boobs,” Molly said, totally on to them.

  “Boobs!” Anna hollered out, nice and loud. Gabriel’s eyes went three times their normal size, and I thought Luca would be ticked, but before he could react, Molly took care of the issue.

  “That’s right, Anna, boobs. Just like Mommy’s got.”

  “Yeah, like Mommy’s got,” Luca muttered with a wolfish grin, shocking the hell out of me. He probably hadn’t meant for anyone but Molly to hear him, but the fact that we was willing to flirt with his wife—whose dress had been cut low enough to show off the body parts in question—was such a conventional newlywed husband thing to do.

  She waggled her eyebrows at him, leaning in to sneak a brief kiss, and I couldn’t help but marvel at the change Molly had on my brother. He hadn’t been this carefree since before Alana had died.

  And even then, he never would’ve dared to flirt with her at our mother’s enormous and formal dinner table. Not that this table was the same one. The original had been destroyed in the fire.

  Of course, back then our father had been at the head of that table, glaring down at everyone. Demanding reverence and throwing his gloomy weight around.

  I didn’t miss the old man.

  But as happy as I was for my brother, and I was, I didn’t see any such happiness coming my way. My last doctor’s appointment had confirmed that my grafts had finally succeeded in closing the majority of my wounds, so except for a couple of inch long raw-looking areas, I was essentially good to go.

  Which was great. I was now out of the woods as far as infections or anything life threatening went. I also had no significant pain and only minimal discomfort due to the scar tissue.

  But that scar tissue…

  Let’s just say I wouldn’t be winning any modeling contracts going forward.

  Those patches of skin were rougher than most city pavements. And though the scarring looked so much better than it had, it was still hideous enough I couldn’t imagine showing it to anyone who hadn’t already had the misfortune to see it. Which was basically medical personnel and everyone living in this house.

  So despite that lovely moment I’d had with Kelly earlier that day, unless I planned to keep my shirt on, things couldn’t go much farther between us. Not that they should probably go farther anyway. Especially since her brother was a member of the Philadelphia Police Department. A fucking cop. One we hadn’t put on our payroll, either. I’d checked.

  The second she told me about him I’d been tempted to renege on the whole I’m-not-going-to-fire-anyone deal. But I couldn’t cut her loose. It would’ve been an asshole move. Besides, she’d been doing a fantastic job there at the restaurant, and she was just naïve enough for me to pass off what I did as legitimate.

  Not that I thought of her as any kind of intellectual slouch. She had book smarts coming out the wazoo. But she wasn’t someone I’d call streetwise. Which, honestly, I considered refreshing. There was an innocence about her that made me want to spend more and more time in her presenc
e, just so I could soak up all the wholesomeness.

  Not that I could ever be wholesome myself. Christ, I couldn’t even call myself decent. She had no idea who I really was, what I’d done. What I was still capable of and would do without compunction if I had to.

  Maybe today happened because I’d hoped some of her sweet upright nature would rub off on me. Purify me a bit. Lighten my dark soul. As if such a concept was even possible for a Varasso. Particularly this late in the game.

  Talk about a snowball’s chance in hell.

  “What’s got your undies in a twist?” Alessandro mumbled to me, eyes peeking over his glasses, trying to avoid the attention of the blissful little foursome at the head of the table. “I thought you heard good news during your last doctor’s appointment.”

  “I did.”

  “Then why the glum expression? You look like someone melted your Glock and transformed the metal into a knife to stab you with.”

  Ah, Sandro. Such a delightfully debauched sense of humor.

  “I’m not wearing a glum expression.” Denial didn’t have to just be a river in Egypt.

  “Bro,” Gabriel chimed in next, reminding me more of a mother hen than our half-brother. “You hurting again?”

  “No. Christ, can’t a man eat in peace around here?”

  “But you’re not eating,” Alessandro pointed out.

  “Maybe I’m not hungry.”

  “You?” Sandro went on, his tone so full of sarcasm I wondered if he was channeling Dr. Perry Cox from Scrubs. “You’ve always eaten more than the three of us. Often combined.”

  Yes, but that had been back when I’d been building muscle and lifting weights every day. Which had been nearly a year ago now.

  “Something’s not okay with you,” Gabriel continued. “You seem… depressed.”

  “He needs a woman,” Alessandro concluded, rolling his last bite of pasta around his fork and tossing it into his mouth.