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Away From Home
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Taken by the Mafia King House Hunt
PaigeI shoved my sweaty hair back off my forehead and set the weights back down in the weight rack. Over the summer, I’d gotten in the habit of working out in the basement gym at least once a week, just to keep myself ready. Finally, my muscles were returning to the state I remembered from before my kidnapping, taut and powerful. I padded up the stairs to shower off and wait for Tom to come home.Something thudded on the other side of the wall. Then again. My heart skipped a beat. I knew, now, that the gym and storage areas weren’t the only rooms in the basement. Gamal, the prisoner still living in our house, was down here, too.After a moment, the noises stopped. Tom said he had some of his best guys down there. Gamal probably tried something stupid and got knocked around for it. Served him right.I hummed as I entered the first floor and locked the basement behind me, a habit I’d gotten into since we got our first house guest. Sun streamed in the windows, and I breathed in the feel
Taken by the Mafia King Apologies
PaigeI blinked, trying to stay focused on reality. I was in the bathtub in my old room in the guest wing with Tom behind me, scrubbing a washcloth softly over my back. Dimly, I remembered him barking orders to get the bastard out of his house and all the men disappearing one by one. I remembered whispering to Tom what I’d seen in the window, and a full search of the house while I still sat in the corner of the bathroom, shaking. And I remembered watching Tom start to run the bath in our room, then noticing a spot of blood—mine? The bastard’s?—on the floor. I’d thrown up from the sheer cocktail of emotions coursing through my body.“I’m so sorry,” he murmured again as he dropped a line of kisses along my shoulder.How long had we been here? Had I responded to that before? Everything but those few moments blurred.“It’s okay,” I said with a thick tongue and a dry mouth. I didn’t mean it, but I needed to say something. I needed to know I could.“No, it’s not, and we both know that.” He
Taken by the Mafia King Never Gets Easier
Tommaso“And I will handle Gamal’s guard rota personally,” Stan said.“Like you should have from the beginning,” I bit out in the top room of a commercial building I’d forgotten I owned.Stan nodded, looking chastened, and I gritted my teeth. I wasn’t mad at him. He’d even dug up this old facility of Niccolo Marino’s, a music store that had fallen off everybody’s books with an even more secure set-up than my house. And, in truth, I should’ve been handling Gamal’s fucking guards. He was in my house, where Paige was. I’d just let Marino take over my whole fucking brain.“I’m sorry.” I scrubbed my hands over my face. “I trust you. Thank you.”Stan nodded and left the small top room crowded with dusty instrument boxes. The business owner knew nothing of the cells in the basement or the bug-proofing up here, just that they hadn’t paid rent in a year and weren’t going to say anything until somebody else did. I’d told them they technically needed to pay me something to keep the lease active,
Taken by the Mafia King Shaken Up
PaigeSunday morning, I decided to go into work. I needed to do something other than sit at home and think about the bastard and the blood. Sera had asked about the bandage on my palm, where I’d held the jagged piece of metal to the fucker’s throat, and I’d told her in a whisper, but I wanted to lose myself in other people’s problems. Especially when she told me a story about a similar thing happening to her with a man named Matteo, and how Tom put a bullet in his head. I knew he’d saved her life, but the circumstances were more real now. Now, I couldn’t get the words on my laptop screen to stay in place.Someone knocked on my office door.“Come in!” I called.Hillary, a recent addition to the house on the run from her abusive boyfriend, leaned in. “Um, I’m so sorry to do this, but are we having your group today?”I glanced at the clock on my laptop. My Healing Together group was supposed to start twenty minutes ago. And I hadn’t prepped a damn thing.“Shit.” I leapt out of my chair.
Taken by the Mafia King Ramping Up
TommasoI kicked my feet up on my desk as the sun set behind me and smiled. In the days since I spoke with Killian and Stan about next steps, I’d been calling Mostafa almost daily. The phone rang, and rang, and he finally picked up.“I was starting to think you didn’t like me anymore.”Mostafa sighed. “May I speak to my son tonight?”“Not a chance,” I replied. “But I think we’re getting real close to that point. You owe me an update.”“Yes.” Mostafa shuffled some papers on the other end of the line. “Khaled is expecting a delivery from Zahur tomorrow night.”My grin stretched so wide it hurt. Mostafa hadn’t wanted to agree to broker a deal between the two men, but it only took a few insinuations to get him on board.“I knew you could do it,” I said. “Tomorrow your time, yes?”“Yes.”I ran my free hand over the arm of my chair. Good business sense dictated I nailed down the last details of the plan, not that I hung up and sprinted upstairs to tell Paige the good news, but my legs itche
Taken by the Mafia King Normal Enough
PaigeI drifted from the common room across the hall to the dining room. A couple of women circled the long table, laying out plates and cutlery for lunch. I nodded at them then glanced through the doorway to see Andi in the kitchen, swinging her hips in time with a dance beat blaring out of her radio. Everything looked normal. Everything looked good. I smoothed my hands down my pants and tried to make myself actually believe it. Of course, that caught the cut on my palm, still healing after almost a week because I kept accidentally opening it back up. A few dots of blood oozed up, and I wiped them away.Almost a week, and I was still jumpy. I was starting to feel ridiculous.The front door swung open, and I turned. We weren’t expecting anyone.A woman in six or seven layers of clothes stumbled in, and I sprang into action. Clearly, she needed our services. Judging by how many clothes she was wearing, I’d guess she was living on the streets. I grabbed my phone, texted Lily and Lauren,
Taken by the Mafia King Bossy
TommasoI looked at the crumbling rowhouse Stan had directed me to then at him.“He joined up because he needed money,” Stan said. “His mom’s a firecracker, but she’s on disability, has been for years, and his younger brother got a partial scholarship to his dream school. Jer’s covering the difference with the money he makes with us.”I groaned. “Could he possibly be more perfect?”Stan shrugged with a smile. “You can’t make this shit up.”“Fine.” I fixed my hair one last time, grabbed the food we’d stopped for on the way, and climbed out of the car. “Let’s get this over with.”“That’s the spirit.” Stan chuckled as we walked up the path and rang the doorbell. After a few minutes, Jer answered.“Hi.” His eyebrows shot up as he looked from me to Stan and back. “I, uh, didn’t—”“Think we’d be by to see you?” Stan filled in. “You got the wrong organization. We brought a couple trays of lasagna from the best chefs we know for you and your family.”I hefted the three lasagnas Rosemary and P
Taken by the Mafia King Haunted
PaigeTom and I sat at the kitchen counter as Miranda delivered steaming plates of a squid-ink pasta she’d been dying to try out.“Thank you,” he said. “Now please, take the rest of the night off. I know you worked through your break for this.”Her cheeks turned pink. “But—”“I’ll text you my review.” I smiled.After another split-second of hesitation, Miranda hurried off, and Tom and I waited until her bedroom door shut behind her to laugh.“Man, I feel like a dick, but this food looks cursed,” he said.I stared down at the pitch-black pasta. “It’s definitely spooky. But she busted her ass. We have to give it a fair shot.”We both gathered forkfuls of pasta, and Tom held his up to me as if to cheers. I knocked my fork against his with a smile, then took a bite.“Holy shit,” Tom said.I nodded. “Wow.”It was leagues better than most of Miranda’s dishes, the flavors complex and beautiful. We ate in silence for several long minutes, just enjoying the food and each other’s company. Then,
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