Kane: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance (Mob Daddies Book 2)

by Alexa Hart

  I strip down to just my jeans and pull myself up above the bar hanging from my door. I do ten pull-ups fast and as the sweat begins to bead on my chest, the strain of the exercise finally begins to cool off the strain of thinking about her, about the whole thing. I keep pumping my body up and down. I get control back and manage to not exactly forget about the woman from earlier, but at least, shove her image back into my head. Instead, I start to focus on how pissed I am at Maddie, and more so at Julie. I’m not the only one in this house who’s pissed right now either. Maddie’s up in her room reading and being equally angry at me. She’s been like that since we got home. Like I’m the one who did something wrong when she’s the one who lied about her age at the bus station so she could get a ticket home alone and didn’t tell her mom she was leaving, causing all hell to break loose at her grandparents’ house. Her grandparents have called me a dozen times, but I ignored their calls. They’ve hated me since the first time Julie brought me home as part of their rich, spoiled daughter’s rebellious stage. Her mother took one look at the snake tattoos roping up my arms and actually clutched the string of pearls around her neck in horror. I was young and stupid then and sort of got a kick out of helping Julie piss them off. And she was fun back then. Her drinking seemed just like a thing to do, not something she couldn’t stop, and she was wild as hell. The only difference was she had the money to cover it all up afterward, whereas I was always sitting the night in a cell waiting for Danny to bail me out.

  So the irony of Maddie being mad at me is not lost on me. I do another pull-up. True, she’s mostly pissed that I was rude to her new baker friend, Summer, and she’s afraid Summer won’t teach her how to bake now that I gave her my, in her words, “mean face.” Nevermind that the little baker threw a cookie tin at me because she took a look at me and made all the same judgments as Julie’s parents, or worse.

  I rub my shoulder where the cookie tin had bounced off and crack a smile picturing her lobbing the thing at me. She couldn’t have crushed a spider with that toss, though she’d certainly put her heart into it. As Maddie pointed out, it was meant to protect her from me. But then my smile disappears. Where the hell does that woman get off judging me? She’s like everyone else I’ve dealt with my entire life, from teachers and cops to my ex and especially her snobby rich parents. They all think I’m trash the moment they look at me. Well, fine, I certainly came from trash, there’s no denying that my childhood was nothing but. But I fought and scrapped and pulled myself out of it, and I’ve done pretty well for myself. I don’t steal from anyone who hasn’t stolen first, and I only hurt people who deserve it. I get paid well for my work and thanks to that we always have food on the table and clean clothes and nobody drunk and smashing up the place like my dad used to do or Maddie’s mom still does. Maddie’s proof enough I did okay, though I think sometimes she’s more than I deserve — a bright little kid with an enormous, kind heart. Unlike me. What did Danny say? A ruthless dick? Maybe that baker had a point not thinking Maddie and I were related, but I don’t care. Ever since I was a kid I’ve dealt with types like Summer and they never give you a chance. You’re trash and always will be. The only thing you’re good for is a wild night or a rebellious weekend. No, even though Maddie wants to visit Summer again, I won’t allow it. She’ll turn Maddie against me. And the one person I can’t let think of me as dirt is my daughter.

  The night I’d taken Maddie from Julie to stay with me for good, I’d found Julie passed out in her own vomit in her parents’ pool house. She’d moved into the pool house with Maddie after a failed attempt at independence and they had her on an allowance. Their cook watched Maddie most of the time and Julie was still drinking and partying most nights. The cook had her day off that day, and when I’d arrived I’d found Maddie, who was still just a toddler, red-faced from crying in her crib, probably for hours, and her diaper soaked. I’d packed a bag of Maddie’s stuff, cleaned up Julie and put her in bed, and left a note for her to call me when she sobered up. I told her she could have Maddie back if she could prove she could take care of her, but honestly, I think she was relieved I’d taken her. I think that’s why she’d called me drunk and crying to come to visit even though she’d been ignoring my calls. When Julie had found out she was pregnant, I was shocked and scared, but I’d asked her to marry me without a second thought. I didn’t want Maddie to grow up without a dad. I was ready to be there for her in a way my dad had never been. But Julie’s parents had threatened to cut her off if she didn’t cut me off, and the one thing Julie loves more than alcohol is money. But for the last seven years since that night in the pool house, besides these semi-annual trips that always start with Julie trying to placate her parents and end with Maddie disappointed and hurt, it has been me and Maddie against the world. I do one last pull up and then drop down to the ground. I grab a towel and wipe the sweat from my head and neck. The doorbell rings and I know it’s Shana, the babysitter. I throw on a t-shirt.

  “Maddie, Shana is here!” I call down the hallway before shuffling down the stairs to the door. Shana, like most of the folks on the block where we live, thinks I do work in finance and as I always tell Maddie, the secret to a good lie is to keep it close to the truth. I do work in finance, just more the taking and collecting of debts and loans from some of the less desirable folks in this city. To keep Maddie safe, I keep my work and home life separate. It’s hard not to make enemies in my line of work, Maddie is a vulnerability, and I won’t ever let her get hurt because of what I do.

  Shana is an art student who lives with her parents down the street while she’s at college. She’s wearing a tight miniskirt and tank top even though it’s too cold outside, and her nipples agree. She’s got the same look as Trixie, and she stands the same chance of success. For me, finding a decent babysitter is far harder than finding a decent woman to sleep with. And like I said, no mixing business with pleasure. I nod at Shana coolly and sluff on my leather jacket. Maddie comes down the stairs.

  “Hey, Shana,” she says. “Want to bake a cake tonight?”

  “A cake? Like from scratch?” Shana asks. “I thought maybe we could watch a movie on tv instead?”

  Maddie frowns. “Sure. Whatever.”

  I lean down and kiss Maddie on the head. I can tell she’s cooling off too because she lets me. “I’ll be home after the game and a few beers with the boys,” I say.

  Maddie looks up at me and winks. She knows I’m not going to play in a recreational baseball league and then hang out with my fake teammates as Shana thinks. I’m going to do my job. I grab my baseball bat and sling it under my arm.

  “Sure,” Maddie says. “Be safe.” I can tell she doesn’t like this. I’ve tried to keep what I do from her, but she’s too smart not to know that it’s dangerous. That there is a reason for all the lies.

  Shana leans over and surprises me with a kiss on the cheek that lasts a beat too long. “Hope you win!” she says.

  “Yeah,” I nod. “Sure.”

  I leave quickly. Shit, I frown. Now I definitely need to find a new sitter. Preferably an old man or a nun. I start the car and check my phone. Danny’s sent me the address for the guy I need to give a good warning to. I know the name. He’s a real perv who’s even been blocked from a couple of bars for filming women. It will be a pleasure to beat some sense into someone who deserves it tonight.

  Chapter 6

  Summer

  I soak in the hot water of the bathtub in a state of exhausted triumph. In the last few hours I’ve managed to clean up the kitchen and living room, and enough of Rudy’s room for me to sleep in. I won’t go near Angelo’s room or my mom’s old room without full fumigation gear or minimally, a big bottle of wine. Besides, Angelo should be cleaning up too. I’m here to help Rudy, not be Angelo’s maid so he can get a free pass for being such a mess of a stepson. I just want Rudy to be comfortable when he does come home from the hospital and I’d prefer not to catch any weird diseases from the mold that had been growing in the sink. But that was then.
Now, I am soaking in a freshly scrubbed bathtub, and feeling really glad I packed some emergency lavender bath bubbles. Nothing relaxes me like a hot bath and the smell of lavender—I like to think I have an old soul, but Becca likes to tease I just act like an old lady. So fine, I like a good bath. With my eyes closed and some music playing from my phone, I can almost pretend this situation is fine. Totally okay. That I am not lonely at all. That when I close my eyes, I don’t see the intense grey eyes of a very strong and sexy man who hates me for treating him like a criminal in front of his daughter, and rightly so. I doubt even helping Maddie bake the world’s best birthday cake for him will ever make up for the way I dismissed him.

  I climb out of the bathtub and as I wrap a towel around my body I think I hear something downstairs. A thump maybe? I look at my phone. It’s almost midnight. There’s no way anyone should be down there unless maybe Angelo is finally home. I hurry into Rudy’s room and look through my suitcase. I curse my best friend Becca who has replaced my favorite and very demure long-sleeve pug pajamas with a cute, far too small to be comfortable to sleep in, pink silk and lace camisole and matching lace shorts. She’d bought them for me to bring to London where she wanted me to finally get a little crazy. From downstairs, I hear Angelo shout. I throw on the camisole and shorts and then grab my cardigan and wrap it around myself like a bathrobe. My hair is up in a messy bun and I’ve already taken out my contacts, so I grab my glasses and shove them on my face. I hear another voice, deeper and angrier, and I grab a freshly scrubbed frying pan from the stovetop in one hand and my phone in the other as I hurry down.

  As I creep down the stairs, I see Angelo hunched over the cash register. He looks like a mess, roughed up by someone and he is also drunk. He’s slurring his words.

  “I’ve got twenthy...twenthy five…” he drunkenly attempts to count the cash in the register.

  “Unless you’re talking in thousands you aren’t going to solve your problem in that cash register.” I can’t see the face of the tall, muscular man talking to him, but the way he talks with authority and menace makes the hairs on my skin stand up. He doesn’t seem like a friend. I take in the scene, Angelo beat up and a man ordering him around near the cash register, and I assume he’s robbing the place. I inch forward with the frying pan in my hand.

  “I need more time,” Angelo says, he’s crying a little and I can see that his nose is bleeding. “I was winning tonight.”

  The man laughs. “If I hadn’t stopped you tonight, you would have been in even bigger shit than you are now. And Vinnie’s team isn’t nearly as polite as we are.”

  Angelo hiccups. “What can I do? I could make a trade. You know I know a few girls. I have movies too. Cute girls up with me in my room. I could sell you those?”

  I freeze. Did Angelo just offer to sell sex tapes to this man? I suddenly can’t decide who to aim this frying pan at. And I am not the only one angry by the offer. The man threatening Angelo takes his baseball bat and taps it on the counter next to Angelo. Angelo eyes it with total terror in his eyes. Then the man raises the bat and crashes it down on the cash register, smashing the thing and sending loose change and the little cash in it clamoring down to the ground. “Let’s not ever hear you make a suggestion like that again. We don’t want anything to do with that filth, got it?”

  “Okay….okay…” Angelo looks around. “But I need more time.”

  “We already gave you time, Angelo. Too much time, according to my boss.”

  The man takes his bat and swings it against the glass of the display case. It shatters and Angelo starts to cry again. I place my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming.

  “What do you want then?” Angelo says.

  “What you put up as collateral,” the man replies.

  Angelo looks up at the man. “You...you want the bakery?” He stutters. “Kane, man, I didn’t think that would interest you…”

  The man shrugs. “Sure. We aren’t really in the bakery business,” he says. “But we are in the real estate business.”

  “Okay ...but it doesn’t exactly belong to me…yet.”

  The man growls, “You mean you lied to us?”

  “No...it just, I maybe exaggerated. But if you give me time I know I can get Rudy to hand it over. He’s sick. It will be easy to make it happen. I can get you the bakery.”

  “This is not what we want to hear,” the man taps the bat threateningly on another glass case. Angelo looks truly terrified, and I’d feel bad for him if he hadn’t just offered to sell this place to someone by tricking my uncle out of it. I quietly take my phone out of my sweater pocket and start to dial 911. They can both get arrested for all I care, but I don’t want any more damage done to the bakery.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” the man’s voice says. It takes me a moment to realize he is talking to me, his eyes meeting mine as he turns away from Angelo to face me. My whole body, so warm and relaxed only a little while ago in the bath, goes rigid with icy fear.

  “Get out here,” he orders. His voice drips with cold hostility.

  I step very slowly out of the shadow. The man looks me up and down, my lace nightie peeking out from my cardigan with the frying pan in one hand and the phone in the other.

  “You?” I gasp. The man staring at me with murder in his eyes, and a baseball bat in his hand is the same man from the bus station. Maddie’s dad.

  “Summer?” Angelo stands up, broken glass crunching under his feet and says between sniffles.,“when did you...what are you doing here?”

  I walk forward with the frying pan held up over my head. “Leave him alone,” I say in my toughest voice, which I think is definitely still trembling. “Nobody is getting this bakery from Rudy.”

  “I think you’re misunderstanding this scene,” Maddie’s dad says. “It isn’t your fight.”

  “Like hell it isn’t,” I say.

  “I thought you didn’t swear,” he smiles. But the smile doesn’t reach his eyes. In fact, he looked totally unamused. It is clear he is very unhappy that I have barged in on this scene. He turns back to Angelo. “And you told me nobody was here.”

  “I….” he stutters.

  “He didn’t know,” I say. “I just arrived. But now he does. And you should both know there is no way in hell I will let you get your hands on this bakery. Over my dead body!”

  “It’s not your dead body you need to worry about,” the man says. “It’s his. Because he is dead if he doesn’t deliver what he owes. Got it?”

  I bite my lip as I nod, and the man, Kane I think is what Angelo called him, he looks like he is ready to take me over his shoulder and ...well, like my body is on his mind, but in a good way. I pull the cardigan closed and he snaps his eyes up to my face. He looks so masculine. So strong. And while I know I shouldn’t feel this way, despite the violence I just saw, he makes me feel like he would murder someone to protect me, not the other way around.

  He kicks at the glass. “Angelo, clean this up. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  He heads toward the door. I regain some backbone and step toward him. “I’m not afraid of you,” I say.

  “Don’t move,” he growls. He turns back and stalks toward me. I should be frightened but I am not, even when he picks me up, nearly throwing me over his shoulder.

  “What are you doing?” I ask. He grips me tightly but not in a way that hurts. And God, he smells amazing. He carries me back to the stairs and sets me down on the third step so we are now eye to eye. He looks at me with the most impenetrable and annoyed eyes. He has a fleck of blood on his cheek and without thinking about it, I reach out and rub it away with my thumb.

  “The floor is covered in glass,” he says, answering the question I’d forgotten asking.

  I look down and realize I’m barefoot and he has taken me to the steps so I won’t cut my feet.

  “Thank you,” I say. “But you can’t have this bakery.”

  The man chuckles. “You’re either very brave or very stupid.”

 
I look into his eyes and feel myself wanting to touch his face again, pull it toward me. The man chuckles as he turns and crunches across the broken glass toward the entrance. He unlocks the door and heads out into the darkness, baseball bat in hand.

  “Stupid,” I whisper. “Definitely stupid.”

  I sit down on the steps as Angelo stumbles over and starts drunkenly apologizing. What the hell just happened? And what the hell am I supposed to do about it?

  Chapter 7

  Summer

  The next morning I go to the hospital to see Rudy before Angelo wakes up. He stayed up late sweeping up the broken glass, but I doubt the bakery will open today. The bigger issue is that if he gets to Rudy first, I know Rudy will agree to sell the bakery to get Angelo out of trouble, and I can’t let that happen. I’ve got a little savings and I’m going to offer to buy the bakery. It isn’t nearly enough to get Angelo out of trouble, but right now, I’m not interested in him.

  When I get to Rudy’s hospital room, I find him sitting up in bed eating breakfast from a tray and watching a game show on the television.

  “Summer!” he says. “You’re here!”

  I go over and give him a kiss on his cheek. He looks small and fragile in the hospital bed. And his famously thick brown hair is grey and thinner. He looks old. I wonder if my parents would have aged like this. The idea pains me, both for their fragility and for the fact that I would trade anything to have them around. The hospital room is missing cards or flowers, and I know without a doubt that Angelo hasn’t been to visit once.

  “Uncle Rudy,” I say. I squeeze his hand. “It’s good to see you.”