Lahat ng Kabanata ng Taken by the Mafia King: Kabanata 311 - Kabanata 320

TommasoI pulled my coat a little tighter around myself to ward off the early spring chill wafting in through the open bay door of my main warehouse and watched my men load wooden crates of guns onto the back of an eighteen-wheeler. For the first time since I’d returned from Egypt, I was happy with the number of subordinates I was sure were loyal to me. Carp, Stan, and I had been working hard on weeding out the motherfuckers who’d turn a second time, and damn near everyone nodded at me when they noticed me standing against a shelf now.Not that I’d shown up for the nods. No, I’d dragged myself out of bed in the middle of the goddamn night because Tony was doing another fucking pickup. And because, in the handful of weeks since Paige drunkenly kissed me, any and all nighttime visits had stopped. Part of me missed it. Another part of me was glad my own willpower wasn’t being tested like that. I couldn’t stop dreaming about the taste of her lips.Tony wandered out of the cab of the truck

Tommaso“I don’t want to eat inside,” Paige declared as we pulled up to the cheesesteak place.I glanced at her. She seemed good today, strong, and her statement about leaning on her wouldn’t leave my mind. If I had a normal problem, sure, but would she really want to know about a bunch of girls locked up somewhere in the city when I only had a ghost of a lead? Wouldn’t that just set her back?“What are you thinking?” I said.She buzzed down the window and stuck her hand out. “It’s not totally freezing anymore. You know a park or something near your place?”The chilly air stung my face, but I had a thicker coat in the back. “Tiny little spot. More like a patch of green than a park.”She grinned. “Perfect.”***I led her to a picnic table surrounded by trees, clutching my warm, foil-wrapped sandwich close. The wind tousled her hair, exposing the way her cheeks were finally beginning to fill out a little, and she shivered.“Maybe this wasn’t my best idea,” she admitted as she sat. “I ju

TommasoI slammed my fists into the speedbag attached to the ceiling of my home gym, imagining Zahur’s face on the leather. I had him in my fucking sights now. I could feel it. This plan might not work, maybe the next one wouldn’t, but I’d have him. Maybe I’d swallow up his two-bit operation and take mine properly international. If only anybody would fucking get back to me. I knew it had only been twenty-four hours, but I was ready to feel his piece-of-shit nose crunch under my fists.The door to the gym opened, and I stopped. Paige stood in the doorway, wearing a pair of leggings and a sweatshirt like usual, but this time, she’d added sneakers. I caught the speedbag before it could swing into my face.“Miranda said you were down here.” She stepped in and closed the door behind her. “I, uh, have a favor to ask.”“Anything.” Despite the sweatshirt, I could see her legs had started to fill out a little to match her face, and her cheeks actually had some color.“My dad taught me to fight

TommasoOne of these days, I’d stop expecting everything to change at the drop of a hat. Nearly a week had passed since the training incident, and Paige wasn’t avoiding me by any means, but she hadn’t sought me out again. Since I had my own place now, I tried to work out once a day in my home gym, even if only for a little while, and I always made sure to tell Miranda I was going. No sign of Paige. We ate dinner together every night, and breakfast most mornings, and she’d been perfectly pleasant, but she didn’t even tiptoe up to that line again. She just worked and went to therapy, and I kept finding her journaling in the evenings, a new habit she’d picked up. I wasn’t disappointed, exactly, just a little confused. But I’d give her whatever space she needed.Plus, it wasn’t like I wasn’t busy. I ran my hand though my curls and knocked back the remainder of a glass of scotch I’d been refilling since dinner. Lyle had gotten me some information, and so had Stan and Carp. I flicked on the

TommasoI paced back and forth in my office. McKenna had given the go-ahead to come to London whenever we wanted the day after she got home, and Paige said she wanted to go right away. I wanted to do that for her. But taking her on a commercial jet seemed fucking awful every time I thought about it. Over the last month, I’d learned she’d only been on one flight before her kidnapping, so her main experience with commercial planes would be the flight back from Egypt where I kept her handcuffed to me, and she expected me to sell her at any moment. It would only make sense to take a private plane. But I didn’t have one, which would mean borrowing Killian’s. Even though he’d sold the bird that had taken a nosedive and had landed me in jail for a day, he got a new one, but I was still nervous.Fuck. Okay. I just needed to get over that. I might never like flying enough to make it worth having a private plane of my own, but I could take one flight to England and back. For Paige. Everything h