by K. J. Dahlen
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
This is a work of fiction. All characters, places, businesses and incidents are from the authors’ imaginations, or they are used fictitiously and are definitely fictionalized. Any trademarks or pictures herein are not authorized by the trademark owners and do not in any way mean the work is sponsored by or associated with the trademark owners. Any trademarks or pictures used are specifically in a descriptive capacity.
Content Editor: Leanore Elliott
Book Design & Formatting: Wicked Muse
Cover Art Provided By: Book Cover Luv
Published by Butterfly Publishings
Contents
Mailing List
Authors
Amelia Wilde
By Any Other Name
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
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Epilogue
A Freebie from Amelia Wilde
About Amelia Wilde
J.L. Beck
Indebted
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
Acknowledgments
J.L. Beck
Inevitable
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
Epilogue
About J.L. Beck
Connect with J.L. Beck
Also by J.L. Beck
K.J. Dahlen
Never Had a Choice
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
Freebie from K.J. Dahlen
K.J. Dahlen
Spawn & Spitfire
Spawn & Spitfire
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Revenge & Retribution
Satan’s Spawn & Sin’s Bastard MC Series
K.J. Dahlen
Blood Brothers
Bratva Blood Brothers
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Jackson Kane
Break Hard
Special Thanks
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
The Steel Veins MC Romance Series
Freebie from Jackson Kane
About Jackson Kane
More from Jackson Kane
N.J. Cole
Flirting with Danger
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Also by N.J. Cole
About N.J. Cole
Roxy Sinclaire
Payback
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
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Epilogue
About Roxy Sinclaire
Also by Roxy Sinclaire
Nikky Kaye
Mafia Mistress
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
Acknowledgments
About Nikky Kaye
J.R. Ryder
Damned
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Roxie Odell
Stalked
A Steamy Hot Alpha Biker Romance Series
Stalked
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
About Roxie Odell
More by Roxie Odell
Molly Barrett
Daze of Reality
Daze of Reality
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
About Molly Barrett
More Books from Butterfly Publishing
Mailing List
Mailing List
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Authors
Amelia Wilde
J.L. Beck
K.J. Dahlen
Jackson Kane
N.J. Cole
Roxy Sinclaire
Nikky Kaye
J.R. Ryder
Roxie Odell
Molly Barrett
By Any Other Name
A Moretto Crime Family Novel
Amelia Wilde
1
Gio
I wish he’d let me kill someone.
I let the wish float aimlessly in the air in front of me, as insignificant as a speck of dust drifting in the sunlight streaming through the window of my childhood bedroom. Why did I even come up here? The fading color of the paint on the walls makes me feel expectant, impatient. I don’t know what it is that I’m most impatient to have happen. The meeting itself? The assignment? Moving on with my life?
Below me, the front door of the house opens and closes, a heavy, measured click.
My father is home.
In a matter of hours, this house will be filled to the rafters with his brothers and sisters for the weekly family dinner. Too many people will crowd around the sturdy oak table in the dining room, shouting over each other to be heard, filling their plates over again and again with the platters of family favorites my aunts will prepare. Real Italian food. They’ll have my uncles in on it, too. It’s a special day, they’ll say, a special day because little Gio has turned twenty-one.
Twenty-one. The age when a Moretto man becomes a full-fledged adult in the family. The age when he takes his place in the humming structure that’s kept all of us afloat for four generations. That’s how the legend goes, anyway. Most of it is bullshit, but some things are true: my father, Marco Moretto, is the man at the root of most of the crime that happens on this side of Chicago.
The door to his office, across the hall from the dining room, shuts with a heavier thud.
It’s time.
I stand up from the desk—the same desk I sat at for hours, doing bullshit homework—and straighten my tie. I’ve been working as a teller at one of the banks downtown for the past month. It’ll look good, the frontline experience, if I want to go to grad school. I know it already—the double major in political science and finance won’t be enough. I need more money than that. More power. More than my father, with his legitimate empire of laundromats planted all across the city, could have ever dreamed of having.
But first—this.
I wish he’d let me kill someone, because negotiating with the gang leaders can be tedious as fuck. I’m strong enough for it. I’ve put in my time at the gym. I run every day. If he’d let my brother Vince go with me, it’d be a fucking cakewalk, but I can’t count on that. No, the assignment will probably be something dry, like negotiations over territory, providing an explanation about the way Morettos run things to one of the new gangs in the city. The Hundred, maybe. The kind of shit where you sit in a public place and pretend that your heart isn’t pumping the blood of a criminal.
I’m not a criminal. Not yet.
It would be faster, at any rate, to shoot someone than to play the negotiation game. There’s less risk in talking, though, which is why I’m certain that’s what I’ll be sent to do. It’s a symbolic exercise, anyway. The days of Moretto family men shooting guns out car windows are mostly over.
I march down the stairs and square my shoulders in front of my father’s doorway. My blood thrums in my veins. The anticipation settles deliciously in my gut. On the other side of this door is the rest of my life.
I raise my hand and knock, three times.
“Come in,” my father calls.
I know something’s off the moment I open the door.
He’s not seated behind his desk, like he always is for these meetings, the ones when his sons turn twenty-one, when they are no longer boys, but men. My brothers all told me the same thing. Walk in. Shake his hand. Regard each other as men. Get assignment, complete assignment, welcome to the family, big boy, you made it.
My father stands in the center of his office, hands in his pocket, eyes on the floor. This is not the stance of a man who plays two roles at all times, the lines blurring with every step he takes. Head of the city’s most powerful crime family. Upstanding citizen with a chain of profitable businesses in every neighborhood. Which one is he playing now? What's happened?
Sweat beads under my collar as he shifts his weight from one foot to the other. Is he...sad? What the hell is going on?
I’m about to fucking lose it when he raises his head, and I notice his eyes, dark and shining.
It’s not sadness in those eyes. It’s revenge.
“Gio,” he says, as if he didn’t invite me in here a minute ago, as if he’s only now realizing my presence. “Happy birthday.”
“Thank you, Dad.” I eye him warily. His mouth stretches into a strange grin.
“Get the door.”
I close it behind me and extend my hand for him to shake.
“Twenty-one,” he says wonderingly. “Twenty-one years old today. Your mother would be proud.”
“I hope so.” I wouldn’t know. I have to take his word for it. That’s what happens when your mother gets murdered before you’ve had a chance to graduate from preschool.
He looks at me like he’s seeing a ghost, but then he smiles even wider. “Your twenty-first birthday,” he says again, his expression hardening into steely seriousness. “You know by now what we’re here to discuss.”
“Of course.” I straighten my back, lift my chin, the family pride flowing in my veins. “I have been considering the possibilities. A meeting with the Hundred, maybe. They’re new enough in town to—”
“Naturally. Naturally,” he says, cutting me off. “A reasonable assumption.” His eyes flick to the wall behind me. “Those young men aren’t doing my laundromats any favors, that’s true.” My father rubs his palms together. “If your birthday had been yesterday, that’s where I would have sent you.”