Married to the Don - A Mafia Romance

"Who are you?" he asks.

I drop to one knee in front of him, my gun arm resting across my leg, the barrel pointed at his head. "I think you already know."

He shakes his head, still looking down at the floor, but I can tell by the lowering of his shoulders that he knows exactly who I am. The nervous glancing out the front window before I even walked inside confirmed that he was nervous. He had every right to be.

"It's been weeks," he says in a near-whisper.

"Yeah, well, without my brother around to help out, I've been a little behind. Trust me, I would have come here sooner if I could have."

"Damien was my friend," George says. "I had to do what I could to make sure he got justice."

"My brother delivered his justice."

George glances up at me, and I feel the urge to look away. We both know that isn't true. Still, I hold his gaze, narrowing my eyes until he looks away. George is a brave man, but he's smart, too. He knows I hold his life in my hands right now.

He had to be brave to take the stand he did against the Kornilov Bratva. Anyone who has even considered it in the past received a visit from some of our enforcers. They all changed their minds pretty quickly. The only reason George slipped through the cracks was because the prosecution kept his identity anonymous until the very last minute. We didn't know he'd take the stand until he was being sworn in. By then, it was too late to do anything about it.

I'm angry with George for putting my brother in jail, but completely separate from that, he made me look weak. It was under my leadership that a witness finally dared to come forward and testify. No one would ever have considered doing such a thing when my father was in charge. That's part of the reason I'm holding a gun to his head.

The other reason is that the most important and difficult tasks should always be handled by the leader. My father would disagree-he disagreed with me on many different points-but I learned a lot from watching him lead. He delegated everything, sending his men around the city to do his business. They feared him, but they didn't respect him. I want their fear and their respect alike.

If I'm not willing to get my hands dirty, then how can I ask anyone else to do it for me? So, in this matter that intimately involves my brother, I want to be the one to pull the trigger. I want to show my men that I'm not above them, but with them. For my Bratva. For my family.

"I have a family," George says, his voice shaking. "A wife and children."

"I don't care."

George looks up at me, his eyes wide. His face is wrinkled, and he looks tired. "My wife wanted to leave town as soon as I testified. She wanted to change our names, but I told her I wanted to stay."

"That was your mistake," I say coldly.

"Was it?" he asks. "If your father had still been in charge, I never would have dared."

Just as I thought. I ready my finger on the trigger. Enough people have told me I'm too weak to be a boss; I don't want to hear it from an overweight liquor store owner too. I'll kill him before he gets the chance.

"But you're fair," he says, surprising me.

I let the gun slip slightly as he talks.

"At least, I believed you to be a fair man," he says. "It's the only reason I kept my family here. Because I didn't think you would kill me for telling the truth."

He meets my eyes for another second before looking back down at the floor, and I'm glad. I don't want him to see what I'm going to do next.

AS I WALK BACK into the parking lot, a man is idling in front of the store, squinting towards the store hours. That sign says it should be open, but the neon one is dark. He rolls down his window. "Are you open?"

If he'd gotten out and tried the door, he would have found it unlocked, but he didn't. He asked me. So, I shake my head. "Nope."

The man curses under his breath. "Update your hours!" he yells as he screeches out of the parking lot, in search of another place to quench his late-night thirst.

I just cost George some business, but he isn't in any state to care.

2

MOLLY

I

bend over and wrap the towel around my hair. The towel is still damp from drying my son off after his shower, but it should help dry my hair a little bit before we have to head out into the cold. Walking around with frozen, crunchy hair all morning is not my idea of a good start to the day. Though, neither is showering in a gym locker room, when I really think about it.

My jeans feel sticky against my skin, and I make a mental note to set aside some of my tip money to make a laundromat run. My shirt also sticks to my skin, but that's because the towel was too wet to do much good drying me off. I pinch the thin material and try to pull it away from my breasts, but when I let go, it resumes clinging to my every curve.

I look up and scan the shower area again. There are no partitions or even curtains. Just one long row of showerheads protruding from a white tile wall. Even though we've been coming to this same gym for months, I can't seem to grow comfortable with the arrangement. I always feel like I'm being watched. It's why Theo and I shower so early in the mornings. The first arrivals of the day are still in the middle of their workouts when we show up. It gives us fifteen or so uninterrupted minutes to shower before any of the other members can complain to the front desk about a child being in the showers.

If they're so worried about children seeing a bunch of naked adults, perhaps they should spring for stalls, I think to myself. That would probably require a higher membership fee, however, which we don't have the money for. And showering in full view of other women beats smelling like body odor and diner grease, so I'll take what I can get. Though, I'll have to find another solution before Theo gets much older. At this age, he's too busy playing to pay any mind, but that won't last much longer.

Theo makes a loud roaring sound, pulling me from my thoughts. I turn around just in time to see his little face squished in fury as he squeezes a bottle with all his might, squirting shampoo up into the air in a tall arc.

"No, no, no!" I blurt out, rushing forward to yank the bottle out of his hands. I squeeze the sides of the bottle lightly, trying to assess how much shampoo we lost. I'd be annoyed even if it was the cheap dollar store shampoo, but I found this bottle in one of the showers last week. It's a salon-grade shampoo, way out of our price range and probably left behind by one of the stay-at-home moms after a private Pilates class. Probably one of the same moms who glower whenever they see me waiting in the lobby with Theo for the bus. I didn't mind taking the bottle because whoever left it probably wouldn't even notice. Things like shampoo are easy enough for them to come by that they don't worry much about it.

"It's a volcano," Theo says playfully, rounding his lips around the final "O," emphasizing it in a way that makes it hard to be angry. The little sucker is cute when he wants to be.

"This volcano is dormant from now on," I say, tucking the bottle into my stained duffel bag. "We can't afford to waste shampoo right now, buddy."