by Bella King
Pierre is three times my size, and I’m sure he has experience killing people. I’m not getting away that easily. My best bet is to hear him out.
“Are you going to explain why you’re here, or is this whole thing just to get yourself a free cup of tea?” I ask, not making any effort to hide the irritation in my voice.
He shrugs. “I’ll get around to it.”
I roll my eyes. “Why are you wearing that outfit? I’m sure you don’t actually work for the post office.”
“No,” he says, looking down at his shirt. “I just didn’t want to arouse any suspicion coming into the building.
I shake my head. That’s the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard. A man his size doesn’t have to do anything at all to arouse suspicion. Simply existing is enough to make people wary of him.
Pierre steps closer to the kitchen as I light the stove. “You should be the one answering my questions, Shaye. Why are you working at the King-Smith Gallery? What’s your deal?”
“I like art,” I reply. “Is there something wrong with that?”
“You’re a mafia girl. There’s more to it than art.”
“Not anymore,” I reply.
“People don’t just walk out of the mafia, Shaye,” he says.
I sigh, looking up at him and placing my hands on my hips. “They do when their parents get killed.”
“Yeah, I heard about that,” he says, “That’s really too bad.”
I sense empathy in his voice before reminding myself that mafia men are all fucking sociopaths, and there’s no reason to trust that any of the emotions he expresses are genuine. He’s playing a game, and I’d do well not to mistake it for authenticity.
“So,” Pierre says, returning to his confident and playful tone. “You’re just working at the gallery.”
I remove the kettle from the stove, pouring two cups of tea. I figure I might as well have one, too, if there’s a high likelihood of me dying tonight.
I look up at Pierre. His gun is lowered now, dangling by his side. He’s anticipating an answer from me, but I’m not keen on letting him question me without first knowing why the fuck he followed me home and held me at gunpoint.
“Well?” he asks.
“Well, what?” I reply, taking both cups of tea and holding one out to him.
“I’ll drink it in a bit,” he says, eyeing the tea but not accepting it. “You know what question I was asking. I’d rather you not play stupid with me, Shaye.”
I scoff, taking a sip of my tea and not caring as I scald my lip with it. “I’m just working. There’s nothing more to it. Everyone needs a job, right?”
“The mafia is more profitable,” he replies.
“I’m not into the mafia.”
“Your father was.”
I groan. “Pierre, I’m not my father, okay? I’m done with all that shit. It was never my choice, to begin with, and it tore my family apart.”
“Interesting,” he replies softly, more to himself than to me. “And I suppose you’re not in the business of stealing paintings.”
“What?” I ask, thoroughly confused. “Of course not. I’m supposed to be appraising them.”
He raises an eyebrow. “I have one for you to appraise.”
I take another sip of my tea before replying. “I’m sure you didn’t break into my place just to get me to appraise your art.”
“Actually, that’s pretty much why I’m here.”
“I don’t see any paintings,” I reply, looking around him.
He shakes his head. “No, Shaye. The painting I want you to appraise is at the King-Smith Gallery.”
Chapter 15
Pierre
“Let me ask you something,” I say, sitting down on the bed beside Shaye. She scoots as far away from me as she can manage, but it will do her little good. I’m still holding a gun as I sip my tea, and she can’t get away from me.
“Ask away,” Shaye says, placing her tea down in front of her and folding her arms.
My eyes flicker down to her bare legs, where a healthy portion of her panties are showing. She makes no attempt to hide them, which makes my cock ache with need. I really wish she wouldn’t do that to me. She must not realize how incredibly horny I am.
I clear my throat, diverting my gaze to the floor. “How important is this job to you?”
“Very,” she snaps, straightening her back proudly.
I smile. That’s just what I wanted to hear. “And I suppose you wouldn’t want to lose it.”
“No, so don’t try to make me do anything silly,” she replies.
She’s already defensive, but it won’t help her. I take a sip of my tea, tasting the soothing herbs. “If you don’t do what I say, then I’m going to expose you for what you really are.”
She frowns, wrinkling her nose. “And what is that?”
“A mafia girl.”
“I’m not.”
“History begs to differ,” I say with a smirk. “Do you really want your boss to discover how long you were involved in organized crime? I imagine he wouldn’t let you work there with all those expensive paintings if he knew.”
Her face turns bright pink, and I know I’ve hit a soft spot. She won’t be able to squirm out of this position. There’s far too much on the line.
“You can’t blackmail me like that,” she says, anger and fear mixing together in her soft voice.
“I can, and I will,” I reply calmly. “But I won’t make this harder than it needs to be for you. All I need you to do is appraise a particular painting, set the price down much lower than it is now, and I’ll buy it. Easy.”
“And how many paintings do you want me to do this for?” she asks, already jumping on board if it means keeping her job.
I knew she was capable of breaking the law. She was hiding it, but the mafia is in her blood, and that’s not something that ever goes away.
“Just one painting,” I say, watching her react.
She frowns. “One?”
I nod. “And then you’re free to go.”
“What’s the catch?” she asks, not buying that it could be so simple.
“No catch, dear. It’s a simple thing.”
“Don’t call me dear,” she snaps.
“I’ll call you whatever I please,” I growl back. “Would you prefer whore?”
She grits her teeth. “I would prefer Shaye.”
I lean forward far enough to make her bump her head against the wall behind her. “I’m the one in charge, Shaye, and I’ll call you whatever the fuck I feel like calling you.”
She glares at me. “Shaye.”
I shake my head, cracking a smile. “You’re a fighter. Very nice.”
She wrinkles her nose at me again but doesn’t say anything to resist this time.
I respect her attitude, but I won’t let her have too much leeway. I find that if you let someone start disobeying you, she’ll stab you in the back just as quickly. I’m not going to make this messier than it needs to be.
“So,” I say, leaning back again. “The painting in question is called the Red Door.”
She squints at me, then realization hits her, and her eyes grow wide.
“You know the one,” I say, reading her expression.
She nods slowly. “Yes, I saw it just today. It’s not terribly large, and it has a dark wooden frame.”
“That’s the one,” I say, feeling a wash of relief at how easy it was for her to identify. Maybe this won’t be so difficult after all.
“That painting costs a half-million euros,” she states.
“Yes, so appraise it for fifty-grand, and we’ll call it a day,” I reply.
She tilts her head to the side, a smile forming on her plump lips for the first time since I barged into her flat uninvited.
“What?” I ask, growing uncomfortable under her unwarranted smile.
“You can’t afford it?” she asks.
“Not a half-million,” I reply.
She laughs. “My father was li
terally a billionaire, and you’re a sad little broke thing, aren’t you?”
I feel embarrassed and annoyed by her accusations. I was a very rich man before I went to prison, and I’ll be a very rich man again once I obtain the secret that’s hiding in that painting. I just need time.
I try to remain calm, not wanting to show weakness. I take a sip of tea. “This has very little to do with my capabilities and everything to do with the fact that I got out of prison a week ago.”
“So,” she says, still smiling. “Not only are you broke, but you’re also not very good at evading the cops.”
“Neither were your parents,” I reply dryly.
I watch the smile on her pretty face fall faster than a bag of bricks. I’ve caught her in a sensitive place, and I’ll twist the knife as much as I need to get her to shut up and do what I say. I’m not one to be trifled with.
“You want me to underprice your painting, and then you’re just going to buy it?” she asks. “Anything else?”
“Nothing else, unless you were interested in doing me any other favors,” I say, my eyes moving back down to her grey panties.
She pushes the hem of her sweater between her legs, clamping her soft thighs down on it to keep it in place. “I’d rather die,” she says flatly.
“We can make both happen if you’d like,” I reply with a grin.
“Are we done?” she asks, moving her tea off the bed to the windowsill and moving like she’s about to stand up.
“I just want to make sure that we have a clear understanding of how this is going to go,” I say, rising before she can. I step off the bed, waving my gun in her direction lazily. “Do what I say, or I’ll make sure they kick you right out of the King-Smith Gallery. I doubt the police are going to want to listen to your sob story either.”
She glares at me. “Done and done.”
I shrug. “That wasn’t so hard.”
She springs up from the bed. “Yeah, well, I don’t know how easy it will be to reappraise a painting. Charles still has a whole bunch that he wants me to go over, and it’ll be at least a week until I’m finished with those.”
“Charles?”
“Charles King-Smith – the owner.”
“Well,” I say, moving to the kitchen and placing my empty teacup on the narrow counter. “You can tell Charles that it’s very important that he sells paintings for the correct price, and the correct price for that painting is fifty-thousand euros.”
“Why fifty?” she asks.
“Because I said so,” I mutter, not wanting to have her tease me about not having much money again. I’ll be rolling in more cash than she’s ever seen once I get my hands on that painting, but until then, I’m on a budget.
She walks to the kitchen, moving around me without bothering to keep her distance this time. I can smell the floral scent of her body as she whisks through the air, leaving me feeling as though I’m floating in a sea of flowers. It’s delightful, but that’s not why I’m here.
“You understand,” I say, placing my pistol into my waistband. “I’ll be back tomorrow, and we’ll chat.”
“Tomorrow? I think it’ll take longer than that.”
“Tomorrow,” I say, opening the door to leave. “And you’d better have good news.”
Chapter 16
Shaye
As soon as Pierre leaves, I jump to the door and lock it. To have a man as frightening as Pierre come into my flat before I’ve even gotten the chance to settle in feels like a severe violation of my privacy. I shouldn’t have to be afraid of strange men following me home and harassing me about my past. I thought I was done with all of that.
Apparently not, and now, after almost ten years, I’m back to working for the mafia.
This is fucked up.
I walk to my dresser, pulling out a pair of sweatpants to hide the goosebumps that have occupied my legs since Pierre started staring at my panties. The feeling from his gaze was confusing because it was as arousing as it was repulsive.
I hate men like him.
I take my tea from the windowsill and bring it to the kitchen, placing both Pierre’s cup and mine in the sink together. Just touching something that he laid his selfish lips on makes me uncomfortable.
I’m done with crime. I’ve changed, but Pierre isn’t going to let me.
I bang my fist on the counter. I want to strangle that man for what he’s doing to me. I wanted this job so badly, and now that I have it, someone is looming around my space, threatening to take it all away from me.
But Pierre is right, and he does have the upper hand. Nobody wants a mafia girl working with expensive paintings. I was lucky enough that I didn’t have any criminal records, since I was let off as a supposed victim of my father’s organization, but that’s only what my lawyers managed to do for me. They couldn’t erase the truth, and that will follow me around for the rest of my life.
I’m Shaye Dawn, daughter of the ruthless leader of the Dawn Mafia, but he’s dead, and the only thing left I have from him is my last name, which I’ve refused to change. I don’t hate my family, and to be honest, I wish they were still around. I just wish that they weren’t mafia, so life wouldn’t be so damn complicated.
Like, how would a normal person react to a man barging into their home and sticking a gun against their ribs? They would curl up into a ball and tell him to take what he wanted, but I didn’t do that. Hell, I even mocked Pierre for not having enough money to buy his stupid painting.
I know that my brain isn’t screwed in the right way, but that’s not something I can change. I tried therapy, I tried hanging out with normal people, but once the darkness changes you, there’s no going back. You can’t uncorrupt a person, just like you can’t take the addiction out of a smoker. Once it’s there, it’s there for life. The only thing you can do is suppress it and pretend everything is alright.
I’ve done well doing that for the past ten years. I’ve managed to shove all the horrors I’ve seen, the death and the drugs and the guns, all into the depths of my stomach, at the very bottom of it so that nobody would ever find them.
But Pierre knew.
He brought it all back like a wave of nausea brings bile into the back of your throat, and now I have no choice but to deal with it.
I run water from the tap in the sink, rinsing the teacups under it without soap. I forgot to buy some, and it’s too late now to go out, especially when Pierre could still be lurking. I bet he’s watching me, waiting to see if I’ll run away and go to the police.
I’m not a pussy, and I don’t ever talk to cops. They didn’t treat me nicely when I was taken from my family’s estate during the raid, and I remember being dragged off my father’s bleeding corpse as others in the room were shot dead. There was no mercy, and I’m still certain that the only reason I wasn’t killed was that I froze. Everyone who fought back died.
I probably should’ve died too.
I considered tossing myself off a building for years after it happened, but my father didn’t raise a quitter. Maybe he screwed me up for life, but at least I have a life, and I’ll take what I can get.
The cup in my hand falls into the sink, a little piece of ceramic chipping like a tooth and slipping down the drain in the running water. Everything I touch is poisoned by my carelessness, and now the King-Smith Gallery will succumb to the same fate. I don’t know what Pierre intends to do when I’m unable to drop the price of a legitimate painting to fifty-thousand. I doubt he’ll just walk away.
But I can’t walk away either. I’m not leaving my job just because some mafia creep wants to manipulate me. I’ll do what he says, but perhaps I can find a way to screw him over. Maybe I can still get out of this and keep my job.
I doubt it, but I have to try. I’ve come this far already.
Chapter 17
Shaye
“And you think it’s been overpriced?” Charles asks, placing his hand on the dark wooden frame of the Red Door painting that Pierre wants so badly.
I nod awkwardly. “I’d go lower on it if you want it to sell.”
Charles rubs his chin, looking down at me through his thick glasses. “I see, and you don’t have any personal interest in this, do you?”
My heart rate picks up, and I feel pins and needles on the back of my neck. I rub my hand over it, trying to rid myself of the unpleasant sensation. “I don’t really like it, personally, so no,” I lie. The truth is that I’m quite intrigued by the painting, and it’s undoubtedly worth half a million euros, if not more.
Charles looks at me for an uncomfortably long time before speaking to me again. “I’m asking because I had this one appraised quite some time ago by a very well respected professional. I doubt he made such a grave mistake.”
I swallow hard. “Well, it’s always possible, but I wouldn’t place it quite so high.”
He glares at me as though he knows exactly what I’m trying to do. There’s no way in hell that he’s going to agree to lower the value of this painting all the way to fifty-thousand. I’d be lucky to get him to drop a single euro off the price with the way this conversation is going.
Charles clears his throat. “Shaye, I respect your profession, but I’m not comfortable changing prices of anything in this gallery unless they’re proven beyond a shadow of a doubt not to be authentic.”
I nod, feeling like I’m sinking into the floor. “Yes, I mean, it was only a suggestion.”
“Well, I also have a suggestion for you,” he replies. “How about you go back to your office and finish the paintings that I laid out for you. There’s a lot more where those came from.”
“Yes, sir,” I reply, turning around, eager to get away from his scolding glare. I can’t believe I even tried doing what Pierre said. I should’ve just told Pierre that I did, and the result would’ve been the same, save for my humiliation.
I shuffle away from the painting that Pierre is so eager to get his hands on, leaving behind any hope of getting away from his manipulation with it. All I had to do was to drop the price, and I would’ve been free, but Pierre had to realize that it wouldn’t be so easy. There’s no way he actually expected me to pull this off for him.