by Jagger Cole
The Boss’s Temptation
Jagger Cole
Contents
A Special Present
The Boss’s Temptation
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
Epilogue
The Bodyguard’s Weakness
Also by Jagger Cole
About the Author
The Boss’s Temptation
Jagger Cole © 2020
All rights reserved.
Cover by Plan 9 Book Design | Editing by MJ Edits
This is a literary work of fiction. Any names, places, or incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Similarities or resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events or establishments, are solely coincidental.
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No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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The unauthorized reproduction, transmission, or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal and a violation of US copyright law.
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A Special Present
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The Boss’s Temptation
I’m torn between a hero I don’t know, and a monster who makes my knees weak.
I come from Bratva royalty. But this is no fairytale, and I’m no princess. Right now, I’m a bartering chip. I’m being pushed to marry the cold, hardened kingpin boss of the Scaliami Crime family to smooth over a wrong I didn’t commit.
He’s known as a savage. A cold and calculating villain. He’s a monster, and yet he’s also captivatingly gorgeous. He’s twice my age. He makes me think forbidden thoughts I’ve never had before. He makes me crave things I shouldn’t.
Years ago, I fell for a hero. But now I’m in lust with a villain. One is the fantasy. The other is my future. And the lines between them are blurring by the second.
But there’s more to this than meets the eye. The walls are closing in. My own criminal family wants me to play the double agent. Outside forces want to use me against him.
But he just wants me. He wants me to scream his name. He wants to make me his in every possible way. And God help me, I want him to.
Prologue
Ten Years Ago:
All I see is fire. The flames engulf everything I know—my entire reality. Smoke burns my lungs and knocks me to the ground. The wall behind me explodes in a hail of bullets. Glass from the hanging pictures and dust from the sheetrock shower me, cutting me.
I scream, but I can’t even hear myself over the roar of the flames. My voice is drowned out by the booming of gunfire and men yelling. Wetness drips down my face. I taste copper. I reach up and wince in pain. My hand comes away red with blood—a cut from the falling glass near my temple.
“Zdes! In here!”
The man’s voice is close. He’s right outside the door to the office I’m hiding in. I scramble, gasping. I manage to lunge under the desk just as he kicks in the door. A piece of burning ceiling crashes to the floor. A shower of sparks explodes through the small room. The man swears in Russian, but I hear him enter anyways.
“Where are you, little girl!” He roars. It’s Russian, but not a voice I know. He’s not one of my uncle’s men, which means he’s from the Abramov family—a rival Bratva faction. I don’t know much about my uncle’s business. But I know he’s been hammering them out of the competition for supremacy. I know his meeting today with the powerful Scaliami mafia family was to solidify his power over the other Russian families.
I’m guessing that’s why during the meeting, the Abramov family set the building on fire and came in shooting.
“Come out, little girl!” The man roars. “Come out so I can make your uncle watch when I cut you into little pieces!”
As terrified as I am, that threat hardens me. My uncle wouldn’t care if I were killed. Except that it would deprive him of a punching bag when he’s had a bad day. But the man stomps closer to the desk I’m hiding under. Fear grips me again.
“She’s in here?” It’s a second man’s voice.
“Ya ne znayu,” the first man grunts. “I don’t know. But if she is…”
More of the ceiling suddenly collapses in flame. Burning embers shower down like flaming hail. A few bounce under the desk and land on my leg. I clamp a hand over my mouth. But it’s not fast enough to cover the scream. Instantly, I hear the men chuckle. I hear the sound of a gun being cocked.
I squeeze my eyes shut. My hand slips into my sweatshirt pocket and grips the locket. My uncle hates when I wear it. But it’s all I have from my parents. I hold it tightly in my fist.
“Come out, little girl!” One of the men sneers. “Come out and play—”
A shot bangs out. I scream and flinch. But it’s not me who’s been shot. I hear the thud of a body hitting the floor. The second man yells, but a second shot bangs. A second body hits the floor on the other side of the desk.
My pulse races. I’m hugging myself, rocking in fear. I hear footsteps approaching. The wall near me begins to burn. The entire ceiling starts to creak and groan. Suddenly, it collapses. Fire rains down over the desk. I scream and lunge from under it.
Suddenly, hands grab me. I scream and thrash. But the hands are so strong. The arms attached to them are even stronger. I’m being lifted from the floor and thrown over a muscled shoulder.
“Let me go!” I scream. I scratch and kick. I hammer my fists down on the man’s back. “Let go of—”
“I’m going to get you out of here,” he growls. His voice is deep and sounds like honey. I raise my head to try and look at his face. But the whole room is full of smoke. Just the same, his firm hands and deep voice seem to burn right into my very soul. I tremble. My heart races.
“Who—”
“We have to go,” he grunts. “Now.”
He starts to stride from the room. But suddenly I panic. “Wait!” I pound on his shoulder. “Wait, please! My locket!”
We shouldn’t wait. I know that. The whole building is on fire. The heat is burning my skin and singeing the ends of my soot-streaked hair. But the man stops.
“Where?” he growls.
I’m panicking. My eyes dart quickly around the room. But suddenly, I see it.
“There!” I point by the burning desk. I twist out of his arms and go to lunge for it. But the man grabs me and yanks me back.
“Don’t you move.”
He bolts across the room. I can barely make him out in the smoke, but I can see he’s huge, and muscled. Fire erupts from one of the walls. He hisses and dives to avoid it. He crashes to the floor, and I scream in terror. But his hand darts out and snatches up the locket. The man roars in agony. His fist clenches tight along with his jaw. But he gets to his feet. The floor begins to sag, and he rushes for me, fast.
He hits me hard, grabbing me in his arms and knocking the wind out of me. I gasp, but he keeps running down the burning hallway. Fire engulfs us. The
ceiling is falling. The floor creaks and starts to give way. I start to cry, but the man hugs me tightly as he runs through the fire.
“Close your eyes, sweetheart,” he hisses. He’s panting hard. I glance up and see the window at the end of the hallway quickly approaching.
“Wait…”
“Close your eyes.”
He twists and hits the glass shoulder-first. He groans, and I scream when we drop into thin air. But the drop is short. We land on the roof of a car with a sickening thud. Or he does. I land on him. Above us, flame explodes out of the window we’ve just come through.
The man rolls us and slides off the car. I hear yelling in Russian and English. My uncle is there. He hugs me briefly and then passes me to a more welcoming embrace. Masha, my tutor and babysitter hugs me long and tight. I sob into her arms.
A hand takes mine. I turn just in time to see my savior pressing something into my palm from his. It’s the locket, and it’s still quite warm. I catch sight of his hand and gasp in horror. It’s red, swollen, and bleeding—burned from the scorching hot locket when he picked it up.
It’s dark outside. When I look up at his face, all I see is shadow. But I can see him smile at me briefly. I can’t really see them, but there’s a glinting twinkle in his eyes. The building behind us groans. Fire explodes out of more windows, and he quickly turns away. He shouts something and pulls a gun out.
“Wait…”
But he’s off and running, barking orders at some other men. Masha hugs me again and quickly rushes me to a waiting car. My uncle and his advisor climb in. My uncle barks at the driver in Russian, and the car peels away.
I turn to look out the window. But I don’t see my savior again. All I see is the building collapsing into smoke and fire. My fingers clench tightly around the warm locket in my hand.
1
Micheal
Cigar smoke curls around the low-hanging lights in tendrils. It’s dim, but not dark in here. The gold light fixtures with the bare Edison-style bulbs gleam. They exude class and sophistication. So does the thick mahogany table we’re sitting around, and the wood panel walls. The leather high-backed chairs, the silver-rimmed crystal tumblers filled with the finest scotch money can buy… it’s all about power.
This is my war room. At least typically it is. Typically, I’m planning the next moves for the family from this very table. I’m plotting the next attack, or takeover. But tonight’s meeting isn’t about waging war. It’s about avoiding one.
I sigh and rub my hand. The scar tissue is old and faded now. But the mark remains. It always seems to throb when I have the dream, like I did last night. A therapist once told me it was my brain trying to cope with “a trauma.”
I stopped going to that therapist after that. He was never going to fully comprehend that my entire life is a series of what normal people would call “traumas.” I’m the head of one of the most powerful mafia families in the country. Being shot at or burned isn’t a trauma. It’s a Tuesday afternoon.
Beside me, Don Salvestro Scaliami puffs quietly on his Cuban. In his tailored suit, he puffs, strokes his grey mustache, and says nothing. But he doesn’t have to. Him merely being here and not in Sicily speaks loudly enough. That’s how important this meeting is.
Across from me sits our problem. If he plays his cards right tonight though, he’ll be the solution, too. Anton Korolyov looks smugger than I’d like him to look. He looks amused to be here. A piece of me wants to get out of this chair, walk around to his side, and slam his face into the fucking table until that smug grin breaks.
But I’m not an enforcer for the family anymore. That was for my youth. At forty-three now, I’m a man of power. I’m the seat of control for the Scaliami family. At least here in the States. I still report to Don Salvestro Scaliami and his cousin Don Bernardo in Sicily. I might not be a Scaliami by blood. But I am by having bled for the name for most of my life.
“Mr. Korolyov,” I growl thickly at Anton. “Will your son be joining us?”
Anton’s idiot son Sasha is the very reason we’re here. The short version is, the Scaliami crime family has a loose truce and trade agreement with the Bratva-connected Korolyov family. Or, we had a loose truce. It’s up in the air now after Sasha decided to get drunk and drop a fucking nuke on that arrangement.
The kid is the son of a Russian gangsters, and he can’t hold his liquor. It would be amusingly ironic, if not for the damage it’s done. A few days ago, Sasha showed up to a card game run by some of our guys out of the back of a bar we own. He got too drunk. He did too much coke. Then he started losing, and it tipped him over the edge.
Luckily, he’s also a shitty shot. The kid pulled a piece out and started firing. He only managed to wing two of ours. But the real damage was that a neighbor called the police. They didn’t nab anyone. But that bar is definitely on their radar now. Considering it’s a bar we do business through, that’s heat we don’t need. That and I’ve got two good men in the hospital with bullet wounds now.
In normal circumstances, this would be war. I’d have taken my full power and squashed Anton Korolyov and his Russian goons in an afternoon. It’s the excuse I’ve been waiting years for. Except the Scaliami-Korolyov relationship is a profitable one. Lucratively so. A war would be bad for business over-all. We know that, and the Russians do too.
So that’s why we’re here. This war room meeting is about brokering a peace. Anton’s come, allegedly, to apologize. He’s also come bearing a gift—a token of truce, he swore. And yet, no Sasha.
“My son is…” Anton smiles. He drinks heavily from his scotch. It makes me wish I’d served him piss instead. “He is indisposed.”
“Indisposed,” I growl. My temper flares. My hand curls to a fist on the table.
“Is there a broad side of a barn he needs to practice his aim on somewhere?”
I smile. I know I shouldn’t. I should admonish the upstart captain who’s spoken out of turn behind me. Dominic might be a young hothead. But one of the men in the hospital right now is his cousin. I turn to him and lift a single brow.
“My apologies, Mister Genovese,” he mutters. He looks sheepish. But I wink, and he nods. He knows I’m not actually mad.
Beside me, Don Salvestro grunts. Sal and Bernardo are old school, Godfather types. Speaking out of turn at Salvestro’s table could get your tongue cut. The grunt says he doesn’t approve of my man speaking out of turn. But he also understands that this is my war room.
“Shooting practice!” Anton roars with a laugh. “Yes! Perhaps so.” His smile holds too long. His eyes linger on Dominic behind me. “Perhaps next time, he puts one through your cousin’s balls, nyet?”
The smile drops. Thankfully, hothead though he is, Dominic is smart enough not to take the bait.
“Enough,” I growl. “This is not a negotiation. We’re here because of a wrong your family has done to mine. As such…”
“As such, I give you something shiny, yes, I know,” Anton grunts. He looks at me. “And I have brought you something shiny I think you will like.”
Money won’t interest me. I have more than I know what to do with. I’m too busy to spend much of it anyways. But power though, I would take. A slice of the Korolyov import business would be good, for instance.
“This gift…” Anton looks at me. “This will settle the matter with my son?”
I glance at Salvestro. He nods quietly and puffs his cigar.
“Yes,” I turn back to Anton. “It will.”
“Good. That is good. Good for business.” He smiles. “And I think you’ll like her.”
My brow furrows. Her?
“Excuse me?”
“A woman,” Anton leers.
I scowl and shake my head. “I have no interest in one of your whores,” I hiss. I’ve had no interest in women for years, actually.
Anton chuckles. “No, not like that. This is a gift for a man like yourself. She’s not a whore. She’s a wife.”
I blink. “I think you need to re-think
this...”
“A wife?” Salvestro’s heavily accented voice is like whiskey and sandpaper.
Anton looks eager. “Yes, Don Salvestro. A wife, for Micheal here. To ease this tension between our two families. For business, yes?”
“No,” I snarl.
“Si.”
I startle. My head whips back to Salvestro. “No…”
“Si,” he grunts. He nods quietly. “Si, you will accept, Micheal,” he growls. “You will do this.”
I understand that Sal and his cousin are old school. I understand that they’re my bosses. But this is a step too far. This is far too old school. This is fucking medieval.
“Don Salvestro,” I growl. I lean into him. “The answer is no.”
“Si, Micheal.”
My jaw grinds tight. “Salvestro,” I hiss quietly. “When I assumed command of your interests here, our agreement was autonomy—”
“Then I am amending our agreement, Micheal.” Salvestro says without emotion. He puffs his cigar. My temper rises.
“I am not…”
“On this, I insist, Micheal,” he grunts.
“Don Salvestro…”
But he just holds a hand up. I know the conversation is over. I may hold absolute power over the organization here in the US. My word is law. But even kings have something above them. For me, it’s Sal and Bernardo.