Madame Moll (Gun Moll Book 3)

by Bethany-Kris

  “That’s exactly what you’re doing in a circumvent way.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right, doll.”

  “Of course, I am. A woman is always right.” Melina winked at him to lighten the tension in the room.

  “I’m slowly learning that.”

  “Learn it a little bit faster then,” she teased before becoming serious. “Is everything ready?”

  Mac nodded. “Yeah. Downstairs in the car.”

  “All right, then I’d better be going. I need to get there first.”

  Turning, Melina headed out of their bedroom and down the hallway.

  “You don’t want to see Marquise before you go?”

  She stopped momentarily and shook her head before she kept walking. “No. I’ll see him when I get back.”

  She would have loved nothing more than to hold her son.

  To kiss his cheeks and inhale his scent.

  But that would only make her soft and right now she needed to be harder than she’d ever been before. There was no room for softness now.

  Melina remained silent as Mac followed her out of the house to where an indistinctive black sedan with dark tinted windows waited for her. Not even an emblem to identify the make and model of the car was evident.

  “Everything you need is inside,” Mac said.

  “Thanks.”

  “Do we need to go over things one more time?”

  She faced her husband. “No. I’m good.”

  Mac swallowed hard. “Come back to me.”

  It was half order, half question. For a split second, Melina considered abandoning the whole thing. The half concealed fear on Mac’s face was enough to undo even the firmest of resolves, but she couldn’t give in to her emotions. There was too much at stake. Instead she smiled and wrapped her arms around him holding him close.

  “Always.”

  Their lips met in a kiss that was full of all the things they were momentarily incapable of saying.

  A forever love.

  A fearsome passion.

  A hope for a future beyond their dreams.

  All the reasons why quitting now was not an option.

  Melina stepped away from Mac. “I’d better go.”

  “Yeah.”

  She didn’t miss the gruffness in his voice as he opened the driver’s side door for her. Soon it would all be over, and their lives could get back to normal. Their new normal anyway. Sliding into the car, Melina turned the key that was already in the ignition and started the vehicle.

  “I’ll be back soon. Okay.”

  “I love you, doll.”

  “I love you too, Mac.”

  Closing the door, Melina quickly put on her seatbelt and pulled away from the house. She glanced in the rearview mirror, watching her husband become smaller and smaller in the distance. She hated to see the internal struggle Mac was having with himself, especially when it was unwarranted. But after tonight it would all be over. Melina was sure of it.

  Her drive to The Dollhouse seemed to be shorter than usual. In no time at all, she was parking the sedan in an alley two blocks away. The small handbag she carried was a heavy weight against her shoulder. A reminder. Melina watched her surroundings as she made it closer to the rear entrance and let herself in. It hadn’t been hard to convince her employees to take a day off. She closed and locked the back door behind her before turning on the lights and doing a quick walk through the place.

  Melina unlocked the front door before going behind the bar to pour herself a drink. The rum and Coke was soothing as it went down her throat. She glanced at the clock on the wall. It wouldn’t be long now. Downing the rest of the drink, Melina washed the glass and put it away before heading to the last room on the right. The one Erika usually frequented. Stepping side, she turned on the light and deposited her bag on the plush queen sized bed as she sat in the lounge chair next to it. The only bed she had an interest in being in was her own.

  Minutes ticked by and she wondered for the first time if perhaps things might not go the way she wanted. Then she heard footsteps, and the door opened. Anthony Corelli stood in the doorway.

  “Melina, what an unexpected surprise.”

  Anthony entered the room, removing his jacket.

  “I’m sure it is.”

  “Did something happen with Erika?” he asked. His eyes roved over her.

  “She had a family emergency.”

  “And she couldn’t have called?” he pressed.

  “Actually I asked her not to. I wanted to see you.” Honey dripped from her voice.

  Anthony sat down on the bed. “Hell must have frozen over. Why would you want to see me, Melina?”

  Melina crossed her legs and smiled at Anthony. “Because we have something to discuss. Something important.”

  “Dare I hope you’ve finally come to your senses and realized that it’s time to switch to the winning side?”

  “And you’re the winning side?”

  Anthony moved closer to where she sat, leaning close enough to stroke the outside of her thigh. “A war is coming, Melina, and I will be the winner. I’d hate for you to be caught in the fallout, especially when you have a much more attractive option.”

  “And that would be aligning myself with you?” she pressed.

  “I’m thinking something more permanent … like marriage.”

  The man had no shame. No shame at all.

  “I’m already married.”

  “You’ll be a lovely widow, Melina, and then an even more beautiful wife.”

  His hand rose higher on her leg, toying with the hem of her skirt.

  “What about my son? How does he figure into your plans?”

  “He’s half yours and young enough to not remember his father. Marquise is in no danger from me, especially if you agree to give me a child of our own. I’ll need a boy off you.”

  She had to give it to him. Anthony had everything figured out. In his mind, he could have whatever he wanted and that included her. To a man like him, her husband was only a bump in the short road to his rise to the top. It was obvious from the cool, predatory manner in which he watched her that he expected no pushback. From her. From anyone.

  “You seem to have this all figured out.”

  “A man with ambition always makes time to think his plans through.”

  “Is that so?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  Catching his hand, Melina removed it from her thigh and stood up.

  “Well there is one thing you didn’t consider.”

  “And what’s that, dear?”

  “Just how much I love my husband.”

  In one fluid motion, Melina reached between her thighs and unsnapped the black Ruger 380 and aimed it at Anthony’s head.

  “You bitch!”

  Before he could move, Melina squeezed the trigger. She watched dispassionately as Anthony fell back on the bed, dead. A bullet between the eyes signaled the end of a man that had never deserved to lead. A man who had discussed murdering her husband like someone discussed the weather. Inconsequential. She was glad he was dead. Opening up the bag that lay on the bed beside his dead body, Melina fished out the burner phone and pressed one.

  “It’s done,” Melina said.

  “We’re on our way.”

  She ended the call and threw the phone on top of the bag. Anthony’s blood continued to seep into the bedding but it didn’t matter. Soon this room would be cleaned and scrubbed as if nothing had ever happened. And Anthony … Anthony Corelli was just another piece of trash lying in the gutter. His reign was over.

  Mac held the back door to The Dollhouse open, and allowed the two men he had brought along for the cleanup to enter ahead of him. He was unaccustomed to seeing The Dollhouse as quiet and inactive as it currently was. Usually, Melina always had a girl or two on the floor, someone behind the bar, and patrons milling about.

  He almost wondered why Anthony wouldn’t have noticed those things himself, and questioned it. Then again, when a man had a
goal and purpose, his attention tended to focus in on only those things.

  Like pussy.

  Melina sat at the bar nursing a red martini. Mac nodded for the two men to head towards the back and begin their cleanup without him. Once they were gone from his sight, he headed for his wife.

  Mac came up beside Melina, and slid onto a barstool. “Needed a drink?”

  Her russet gaze turned on him, and she smiled. “I figured I had earned at least one.”

  Sure she did.

  Mac had worried—just a bit—about this plan of his wife’s. If only because he had been raised to believe that women should not dirty their hands in the business of famiglia. They should not concern themselves with the business between men. He wasn’t so stupid to think that was the way it should be, though.

  He was quite aware, and had been for a long time, that Melina was not like other women, or other made men’s wives. She was unique to her, and to him. She was more than capable of getting her hands into a pot, and stirring it. She was fully able to get a job done that a man could not do, and more so, because she was a woman.

  His woman.

  What man wouldn’t be proud of that?

  “Do you want to talk?” Mac asked.

  Melina lifted a single shoulder. “About what?”

  “Anything. Tonight. Anthony. How you’re feeling. Any of it, doll.”

  “Like most men, he thought with his cock and not his head. Something he had wanted for a long time was dangling in front of him, and he couldn’t refuse it, even if he should have known better. His loss was our gain, Mac. There’s nothing more to say, really.”

  Well, he just wanted to make sure.

  Mac leaned over and kissed his wife on her temple. “Do you want to wait and head home with me?”

  “I’d like to go home and hold my son. Soon, preferably”

  He understood that feeling all too well.

  “Call me if you need me home sooner, all right?” he asked.

  Melina nodded. “Okay.”

  Mac slid off the stool, ready to get to work and be rid of Anthony once and for all. He turned on his heel to head for the back hallway when Melina grabbed his wrist. She tugged, turning him back around and pulling him in for a hard kiss that froze him in place and made all the worries in his mind drift away.

  God, he loved his wife.

  Her lips brushed over his, soft yet insistent. Her tongue stuck against his mouth, demanding and teasing.

  “I love you, Mac,” she whispered against his lips.

  Mac kissed her twice, one right after the other, on her smiling mouth. “Love you, doll.”

  “Can we have a break after this is all over? Just us, and Marquise, I mean. Maybe go somewhere, and do something. Without business and people? Something?”

  “That sounds …”

  “What?”

  “Perfect, doll.” Mac grinned, and stroked his wife’s cheekbone with his thumb. “I will figure something out for us to relax, and have a break.”

  It wouldn’t be easy. Especially not considering if he was going to take over the family, his first order of business could not be to run off with his wife and have a break. But fuck all that noise because he would do it for his wife. Or he would figure something out for her.

  Anything to make Melina happy.

  Melina downed the rest of the red martini, and set it to the bar top. “I’m going to head home.”

  “How many of those things did you drink?”

  She shot him a look. “Just the one, Mac. Don’t worry about that.”

  He patted her on the backside with a smirk as she headed for the door. “Drive safe, doll.”

  Melina waved a hand over her shoulder, and then she was gone out the door. Mac made sure to lock the door behind her, which left him and his men only the back exit to use. That was fine, though, because all that was back there was their cars and a dumpster.

  Mac found his guys wrapping up Anthony’s corpse in clear plastic overtop a blue tarp. The two enforcers worked silently, rolling the man’s body until nothing was visible, and never saying a thing to one another.

  “The bed and rug needs to go,” Mac said, noting the bloodstains.

  “Will do, boss,” said Ross, the taller of the two.

  Teddy nodded at the wall. “Bit of blood spray there, too. We’ll get it all, no worries.”

  Mac sighed, and folded his dress sleeves up to the elbows. “I’ll get the bleach, then.”

  “Here, boss.” Teddy held out his hand, and offered an item to Mac.

  He plucked it from the enforcer’s hand.

  Anthony’s signet ring.

  “I would rather eat shit than wear this,” Mac said, more to himself than the men.

  “Yeah, but at least if you have it, then the famiglia men will know there’s only one way you got it, boss.”

  “Truth.”

  Mac slid the ring down his finger. He’d destroy it the first chance he could. The snake had finally lost his head, and would not be coming back from this one.

  “Let’s get this done fast, but clean,” Mac said. “I’ve got better places to be tonight.”

  His enforcers agreed.

  Mac went in search of bleach.

  Mac slid the French toast onto a plate, and added it to the serving tray. He made his wife’s coffee just the way she liked, and added it with the rest of the breakfast. Scooping up the tray, he headed for the upstairs, making sure to check on Marquise as he passed the baby’s nursery.

  Marquise, fed and changed, had already fallen back asleep. Likely until ten or later.

  The kid liked to sleep.

  Mac closed the baby’s door, and headed down the hallway to the master bedroom. Melina still slept contently under a pile of blankets. She didn’t stir as Mac came in, set the tray on his side of the bed, and began untangling the blankets from his wife’s sleeping form.

  She, like their son, enjoyed sleep.

  Maybe too much.

  “Doll, wake up,” Mac murmured.

  Melina rolled over, grumbling under her breath.

  Mac wasn’t giving up that easy.

  “Melina,” he said, tugging the last sheet off his wife’s body, “wake up.”

  “It’s too early, Mac, go away.”

  “First, it’s eight. That’s not early.”

  Melina psht’d under her breath, never turning back to look at him. “The baby hasn’t made a sound, so it is not eight in the morning. If you’re looking for an early morning lay, you might as well go rub one out in the shower because I am not getting up.”

  Mac glanced up at the ceiling, determined to keep his laughter in. “Marquise did get up. I fed him with the extra bottles you had prepped in the fridge, and laid him back down once he was changed. He’s out like a light again—gets it from his mother.”

  “Liar.”

  He grabbed the clock on the bedside table, and put it in front of his wife’s face, ignoring how the cord pulled against the stand and almost knocked off Melina’s book. “See, I am not lying.”

  “Ugh.”

  “So, you don’t want the coffee, French toast, and strawberries, huh?”

  Melina sighed. “I guess.”

  “Keep acting like you’re not preening inside.”

  “That’s right—you keep letting me act like that, Mac.” His wife turned over, peering up at him with an amused gaze. “Are you going to feed me, too?”

  “If you want me to.”

  “Might as well,” she mused.

  Once Melina had propped herself up against pillows, Mac joined her in the bed. She sipped on steaming coffee, while he cut pieces of French toast for her to eat from the fork he held out.

  “I am, though,” she said, half yawning. “Tired, I mean.”

  “Mentally tired is just another form of exhaustion, doll.”

  Melina hummed an agreement under her breath.

  “Also, you take this being spoiled thing far too seriously,” Mac added, offering his wife another bi
te.

  Melina took it with a sexy grin. “Someone makes it easy for me to do, Mac.”

  He chuckled. “Point taken.”

  Melina was halfway through her breakfast before she spoke again. “What’s going to happen now?”

  Mac shrugged. “We’ll stay quiet for a few days, let Anthony’s people figure out he’s gone missing, let them make their loops for a bit on where he could be, and then I’ll call a meet. The rest is history.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it, doll. Threats tend to work well on men who have little interest in the effort it would take to take over a family, never mind run one. They only need a boss to answer to. I will be the one to give them that.”

  Melina dragged her fingers through her hair, and then piled it high on top of her head to set in a messy bun. “And Anthony’s body is …?”

  In the bottom of a river, inside a deep freezer that had been filled with cement. It was never coming back up, and good luck to the fucker who found the deep freezer and wanted to pull it up from the water.

  “Gone,” Mac said.

  “Mac.”

  “Gone, doll. That’s all you need to know. You did your job, and I did mine.”

  Melina pursed her lips. “I waited up for you last night.”

  “You made a bit of a mess. We made sure that room was perfect before leaving.”

  “Sorry about that,” she said.

  Mac laughed. “I’ve seen worse. You finished?”

  “One last drink of this, and yes.”

  Melina tossed back what was left of her coffee, and then Mac made the tray full of empty dishes disappear outside of their bedroom door. His wife was stretching like a little kitten against the pillows as he came to stand by her side of the bed.

  “Do you want to sleep a bit more? I’ll look after the little principe.”

  Melina winked up at him. “After, sure.”

  Mac didn’t even get the chance to reply to what his wife was suggesting. She snagged his wrists in her grasp, and tugged him back into bed with her. Her lips met his as her thighs widened to let him fit their bodies together, while their tongues warred.

  Their kiss was always so familiar to him, now. All teeth, and tongues, and lips. He couldn’t get enough of the taste of her, and he’d happily die from simply forgetting to breathe. Her mouth was his drug—a sweet poison that made him high. A sin he could never quit.