THE ENFORCER: a Mafia Romance (Bad Romance Book 2)

by Shanna Bell

  Before Mary could blink, Hector landed an uppercut and the crowd started screaming.

  “Beast! Beast! Beast!”

  Judging by their chant, Hector’s reputation wasn’t exactly buried in the past.

  Then the running commentary started.

  “Oh! Beautiful little bow.”

  No, it wasn’t. There was nothing beautiful about that man’s elbow getting a jab at Hector’s head.

  “Great Muay Thai move by The Beast.”

  Mary was really beginning to loathe the microphone voice. When Mick kicked Hector in the stomach, her nails latched onto Kristoff’s skin. He didn’t even flinch.

  “How can you stay so calm?” she snapped.

  “Hector’s got this.”

  That was his big consolation?

  “What if he doesn’t?” She knew she should have more faith in him, and she did, but there was this swirling vortex in her stomach that sucked in every positive thought.

  “If he doesn’t, I’ll wipe that Irish fucker from the face of the earth,” Kristoff said, as if that were a given.

  “Don’t worry, doll,” Angel said from behind her shoulder. “If shit hits the fan, I’ll protect you. We have the place surrounded.”

  “But what about all these people?” There were over a hundred people in here who would get hurt in a crossfire.

  “What about them?” Kristoff remarked.

  She was learning that his mind was very singular. The world seemed divided, into people he cared about—a very select few—and, well, the rest of the world. And he couldn’t care less about the latter group. She didn’t have the illusion that she could change his mind. She could never be like that, and now had another reason to hope Hector would come victorious out of that cage.

  “And the Beast takes another kick in the stomach.”

  “He’s bleeding. Why isn’t he fighting back more?”

  “It’s the calm before the storm. You haven’t seen him fight like I have.”

  “When have you ever seen him fight?” When his lips thinned, she understood. “You watched him from afar when he was street fighting.” He didn’t say anything, and he didn’t have to. Yet another clue that Kristoff had never really been out of Hector’s life. Not that her stubborn husband would believe her if she told him.

  “You should think less about me and more about your own hide, dear nevestka.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nevestka means sister-in-law.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Not that. The other part.”

  “You put yourself in danger tonight. Scared the shit out of him. A man like Hector doesn’t deal well with fear. It makes him angry. It makes him draw out a fight, so he can get rid of his pent-up rage.” He looked back at the cage pointedly.

  “Are you telling me that he’s letting that guy hit him, so he won’t be so mad at me anymore?”

  “Da.”

  “You’re wrong. Hector’s not mad at me. Surely he understands why I couldn’t just leave my sister with those men.”

  A part-cheer, part-groan went through the crowd and Mary’s eyes shot back to the cage.

  “Flying knee! Wow… There we go. Here we go, peeps. This is the savage Beast of old.”

  “Perhaps,” Kristoff conceded, though his tone suggested she was wrong. “Then again, you could have let them take her, and called Hector. He’d have come for her without you getting in harm’s way. If you were my woman, I’d make sure you wouldn’t be able to sit for a week.”

  “Well, luckily for me, Hector is far more civilized than that.”

  “Beast! Beast! Beast!”

  “And that’s what I call a perfect knock-out!”

  Mary’s jaw dropped.

  Mick lay sprawled on the mat, beaten to a bloody pulp, his legs at a weird angle. Her perfectly civilized husband had snapped a man’s leg in two, like a twig.

  Hector loomed over the guy, like an avenging angel. Of course, angels also protected people. She was going to hold onto that thought.

  The referee made the universal motion of declaring Mick knocked out. Hector spun around, his eyes scanning the crowd until he found her.

  She offered him a weak smile when he stared at her. Never before had he looked so… distant and cold.

  This does not bode well for you.

  Ya think?

  The crowd chanted his name, crowning him king of the cage, but she knew that Hector had found no glory in the fight. Took no satisfaction from it.

  Then a new song started, and his second opponent appeared. What walked into the cage could only be described as a human mountain. The guy was huge. Sure, Hector was big—by far the biggest man she knew—but the reigning champion had an inch and at least thirty pounds on Hector. One side of his face was painted as a skull and he slapped his own chest, shouting at Hector.

  Damon put his head closer to his boss. “There’s a lot of cash going around here. Perhaps more than we knew. I just put down a hundred k on Hector, and nobody batted an eyelash. Which means Friar Tuck must have loads of cash somewhere in this joint.”

  “He does seem to draw in a nice crowd,” Kristoff conceded.

  “I take it if that pile of meat manages to kill your brother, we’re going to war?”

  “Nobody’s killing Hector,” Mary said, alarmed. “It’s just a fight. There’s a referee. Look. He even has a whistle.”

  “Don’t worry, doll,” Angel said. “If Hector gets crushed by that mountain, we’ll let you have a piece of Brian.” He sounded as if he were making a grand gesture.

  She grinded her teeth to keep in a hateful retort and concentrated on the fight.

  The mic guy announced the ruling champion as “Satan,” which wasn’t reassuring at all. Trembling from the inside, she braced herself for another round, all the while praying.

  And then it happened.

  It was a move she would never, ever forget in her life. Hector jumped up, one knee in the air, as if aiming for Satan’s stomach. When Satan put his hands up in a defensive move, Hector struck.

  His knee changed direction and only grazed Satan’s side. But his elbow landed to Satan’s temple and knocked him out cold. The pile of meat, as Damon had dubbed him, crumbled like a building under demolition, falling face flat on the floor.

  For a millisecond, there was a shocked silence, then the mic guy announced Hector the winner. The crowd cheered, yelled, and screamed obscenities.

  “Bratan. How very evil of you.”

  That’s when she noticed the angry, disappointed shouts of the visitors. Of course. Nothing was more disappointing than having placed a fight, and it ending in less than five seconds. The crowd felt cheated. Which left Brian with an angry mob.

  She looked up at the mobster in question. “He doesn’t seem too upset at his champion losing.”

  “Why should he be? I’m sure he bet on Hector. It’s what I would’ve done in his place. A man fighting for his woman against a suka on steroids. Not a difficult choice.”

  Speaking of choices. Up until now, she had always backed Gina up, finding excuses for her behavior. As she watched Hector leave the cage, covered in sweat, bleeding from an eyebrow, she swore never again. Never again would she be the reason for him getting hurt.

  ***

  He sent her home with Achilles.

  All she wanted was to wrap her arms around her husband, make sure he was okay, but he didn’t even talk to her after the fight.

  After she installed her sister in the guest room—Gina was in no shape to be yelled at, though she really wanted to—the waiting started.

  It was past midnight. As she lay in bed, waiting for Hector, she thought about going to the compound. She had a feeling he was there, pounding a punching bag. She decided against it, to give him time to cool off.

  Another hour had passed when she finally heard Hector come home. It took another hour to realize he wasn’t coming upstairs. She got out of bed and went looking for him.

  She noticed that not a single li
ght was on downstairs. Pulling the cord around her nightgown tighter, she walked down the hallway and into the living room. A dark figure was standing in front of the window near the deck. Hector had one arm braced against the top of the windowsill. Even though he must have heard her approach, he didn’t move.

  “Hector,” she said softly.

  He turned around slowly and faced her.

  “What did I tell you about sleeping apart?” she said.

  He chuckled, a bitter sound. “Don’t. Not tonight.”

  The rage emanating from him was like a wall. A wall she was determined to penetrate. There was only one reason for him to be this upset. She just wanted him to admit it. If it wasn’t to her, then at least to himself.

  She looked up into his storming eyes. “Please talk to me.”

  A pulse jumped in his jaw. “If you knew about the things I want to do to you… Run, gorgeous. Run, before I hurt you.”

  “You could never hurt me.”

  “Did you not see me tonight? Did you not hear what they called me?”

  “I saw you, and I heard them. And I don’t care.” Her husband was no beast, no matter his nickname.

  He grabbed her hair, pulling her close. “You should,” he snarled. “I want to hurt you. I want to turn you over my lap and blister your ass so bad, it will have a permanent mark of my hand. I want to beat you, so you will never, ever do something this stupid again. And don’t fucking tell me you couldn’t leave your sister behind. See, that’s what I don’t fucking care about.” His grip tightened.

  She refused to cower. It felt as if this moment, right here, would be their breaking or making point.

  “You won’t hurt me.”

  “Are you sure?” His grip tightened, almost to the point of pain. “Because I really want to. I want to unleash myself on you. You’re not allowed to get yourself hurt. You are not allowed to fucking… scare me like that.”

  He roared that last part. She wondered if he knew he was yelling at her. She didn’t believe he did, but was smart enough to keep her mouth shut.

  His grip loosened, but he didn’t let her go. Instead, he yanked her close to him. She could see the golden swirl at the edge of his pupils. They were like orbs of green fire.

  “What would Zoe do without you?” His roar had changed into a soft tone.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You are her whole life. Her whole fucking life!”

  And… the roar was back.

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated, unsure of what else to say. She had never seen him this unhinged before.

  “I never wanted you to see me like that,” he admitted, looking away. “There’s this thing a cage does to you. Even when you get out as a victor instead of being dragged out, it’s difficult to shuck the feeling.”

  “I know you didn’t like to fight in there.”

  He let out a harsh laugh. “Oh, I went in voluntarily.” He finally let go of her hair. “Nobody gets to hurt what’s mine and walk away. Brian knew exactly what he’d get when he got me in that cage. They nicknamed me The Beast because I was one once I got in a fight. Sometimes I didn’t even go looking for one; it found me just because I was big for my age. Like in the old days, in the Wild West, when you carried a gun and people challenged you because you were expected to know how to use it. Thing is, you can take a gun off, but I couldn’t hide my large frame.”

  “I’m sorry you had to go through that again, because of me. It’s still no reason to stay down here, though.”

  She pushed the straps from her shoulders and exposed her breasts to the chill air. Her nipples immediately hardened.

  He couldn’t look away and she knew she had him.

  “You have no idea what you’re in for.”

  “I trust you.”

  He tugged her nipple piercing. “Be careful what you ask for, beautiful. The state I’m in right now, I want to fucking pound you into the mattress. I want to gag you with my cock until tears are streaming down your face.”

  “I trust you.”

  “This isn’t going to be gentle. It’s going to be a long, rough, and hard fuck. I’ll use your body any way I want.”

  She placed a kiss on his knuckle. “I trust you.”

  CHAPTER 27

  HECTOR

  Hector passed the newly-formed ‘family wall of fame’ in the corridor as he made his way into the living room. It held their wedding picture, one of them with Zoe at the zoo, various ones with the Dettas, and Mary with her cousins.

  He’d waited until Mary had left to take Zoe to school, so he would be alone with Gina.

  It was the second day after his cage fight and time for his long overdue talk with his sister-in-law. She’d been hiding, huddled up in their guest room. This morning, Mary had mentioned Gina would be leaving today, destination unknown. Hector didn’t give a fuck what rock she would crawl back under. He was, however, first gonna set her straight.

  It didn’t take long for Gina to show her face and find her way to the coffee machine.

  “Glad you’re up.”

  She jumped up when she heard him. “Oh, Hector. Um, you’re still here.”

  “Yeah, ain’t that a bitch?” He walked over to the kitchen island, taking a position across the table from her.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Cut the crap. We both know that you’ve been avoiding me. Only reason you got off your butt this morning is because you thought you had the house for yourself. Now Mary, bless her heart, believes your ‘I’m traumatized’ bullshit. I don’t. Not only because I know it’s bullshit, but mostly because I couldn’t care less about your whiny, selfish ass.”

  Her knuckles holding the cup turned white. “If you’re trying to tell me you want me to leave, then rest assured—”

  “I never try anything, I just do. See, the first time you slithered into our home, it was to warn Mary off me. Feeding her bullshit about her divorcing my ass and taking me for all I have.” That memory still pissed him off. Had she been a man trying to get between him and his wife, he would have knocked out his teeth.

  Gina paled. “I—”

  “I’m not finished. Don’t fucking interrupt me again. I let that insult slide, thinking that perhaps you were just looking out for your sister. After all, you didn’t know me; neither did Mary much at the time.” How things had changed. He couldn’t remember his life before Mary, nor did he want to. “But this time, you really fucked up. You put Mary in danger and that’s where I come in.”

  Her eyes darted at his scars, looking afraid. The two sisters couldn’t be more different. Mary didn’t focus on what others deemed as imperfection. Gina was all about looks.

  “If you ever put Mary in danger again, I will dig a nice hole in the desert for you. No one will ever find your body.”

  Her eyes widened. “You wouldn’t.”

  “Have you not listened to a word that I’ve just said? I’ll do it, and won’t lose any sleep over it. See, I’ve got a woman and kid to think about. I’m the fucking wall between them and nasty bitches like you. Get your act together, or I will fucking make you.”

  He was about to really reel into her when suddenly, he noticed a movement in the window behind her. For a second there, he saw a ghost from his past.

  Decker.

  He threw open the door to the patio and ran outside. There was nobody there. Just a mostly empty street, and a neighbor walking his dog.

  Not again.

  Fuck. Fucking fuck. He was losing it. Must be the stress.

  It makes you start seeing shit.

  He had to get out of here. To the one person who could center him. To the most real thing in his life.

  The yoga studio Mary frequented was two blocks from the center she worked at. A little over a dozen people with rolled-up yoga mats were standing outside. Some were chatting, others were on the phone, or getting to their car.

  He was there just in time to see Mary leave the building. Her hair in a messy bun on top of her head, a radiant smile on h
er face. He’d liked to think he was the one who put that smile on her face. Maybe she was thinking of last night too. Fuck, for a moment there, he felt like some kid in high school asking himself if his crush was into him.

  He parked his bike, toed the kickstand down, and walked over to her. There stood a guy next to her. Seeing the man watch Mary with scarcely veiled hunger made him want to plant his fist on his face, but he restrained himself. He’d be the first to admit that he was perhaps a tiny bit territorial when it came to Mary.

  “Oh, hi.” She looked surprised at seeing him. The immediate smile that spread across her face reassured him that she liked having him there.

  “Hey, gorgeous.” He nudged himself between her and the asshole and pulled her close.

  “I didn’t know you were going to pick me up.”

  “I wanted to take my wife out for lunch.”

  “Lunch sounds great. I could use pancakes. Lots and lots of pancakes.” She leaned against him. “Storm, this is my husband, Hector.”

  Storm? Yeah, Hector could see one forming on the fucker’s face. This must be Jodi’s father, the widow.

  “Really?” Storm looked surprised. His expression said, “What is a nice girl like Mary doing with a scarred grunt like you?”

  “Yeah, really.”

  “Nice to meet you.” Hector had never heard a more blatant lie.

  “It sure is.”

  Not wanting to spend another second in Storm’s presence, he took Mary to his bike.

  He saw the man’s envy at both his woman and his Harley. The douche could look all he wanted, but he couldn’t touch. The second he did, Hector would finish him.

  He took her to a diner down the street. A graying waitress with big glasses guided them to a booth and took their orders. Their pancakes with hash browns on the side arrived in no time.

  “I’m so ravenous,” Mary said, squirting a generous amount of maple syrup on top of her pile.

  The waitress smiled. “Oh girl, I was just like that when I was pregnant with my first one. How far along are you?”