But I wasn’t going to shackle myself to a wife I didn’t find attractive in the process.
I’d just been getting out of my car in front of the warehouse when I’d seen the van with two of my soldiers in it pulling up.
You could say I was pleasantly surprised to see the tiny woman break free from their hold and attempt to run for her life.
She probably thought that people were inherently good.
That was her mistake.
No one was going to save her.
No one was going to get in the middle of my business.
She was in my neck of the woods.
Which meant she was completely at my mercy.
She was even smaller up close and personal. Her arm felt a little too breakable when my hand closed around it to drag her back toward the warehouse, giving my men a hard look that had them shrinking into themselves, likely worried about the repercussions of making me finish a job I’d hired them to carry out.
I’d have to punish them.
I was not the kind of man who ran his organization based on trust and understanding of mistakes.
I reigned with rules and ruthless consequences.
So while I knew that my neighborhood would not fuck around and get in my business, no matter what their moral compass was saying, I couldn’t look the other way when some of my men aired my business out like dirty laundry either.
I led the woman around the warehouse toward the back service entrance, taking her up to the third floor where the conference room and offices were. If this day went like I planned for it to go, she would end up on the top floor. A floor where only close personal friends and high-ranking men in my Family were permitted to go.
My home.
Where I planned to keep her.
Indefinitely.
Maybe reluctantly at first. But, eventually, willingly.
But until the deal was made and the vows were exchanged, she wasn’t a wife, she was a prisoner. Which meant she got tossed in the empty storage room that served as a cell when necessary.
“Here you go,” I said, yanking open the door to a room that had a small cot, a bottle of water, and nothing else.
When her feet refused to move forward, I grabbed her other arm, pushing her into the small space.
“I’ll take this off,” I told her, reaching for the end of the duct tape. “You can scream as much as you want in here. No one will hear you. And if they do, they won’t save you,” I said, taking an uncharacteristic level of gentleness when removing the tape from her lips. Those were lips I would need to have a first kiss with if or when the plan was in motion. I’d prefer they weren’t all ripped up. “We can do better than this,” I added, gesturing toward her duct-taped wrists.
I watched as her eyes widened when I reached into my pocket for a set of handcuffs I almost always kept on me. Experience told me that you never knew when you might need a set.
I clipped the bracelets on her wrists before removing the duct tape. If she struggled against the tape, she could fuck up her wrists. And this deal wasn’t going to happen if her Family thought I was harming her.
Finished, I took a step back.
“Sit tight. We have a meeting to attend in a few hours’ time,” I said, making my way to the door.
“Please, don’t,” she begged, voice choked, like it was killing her to do it. But there was something inside that was stronger than her pride. “Please, don’t leave me in here. I won’t try to escape again. Please,” she cried, voice taking on an edge that hinted at tears.
I wasn’t a gentle man.
But I felt the unfamiliar urge to go back on my word, to take her out of the room, to keep her from continuing to panic like she clearly was.
Which was exactly why I couldn’t do that.
“It will all be clear in a few hours,” I told her, then closed and locked the door. “You,” I called, snapping at one of my soldiers that was standing around. “You guard this door. No one goes in, or they answer to me,” I told him, the threat clear in my tone. “And she does not come out, either, unless it is cleared with me first.”
“Got it, boss,” the soldier agreed, nodding like his life depended on proving to me he could handle the job.
It did.
Alright.
That was one prisoner down.
Now it was onto the next. And, arguably, the much more difficult one. Though, luckily, she was only around temporarily. She was just the bait to draw the wolves out into my neck of the woods.
Alessa Morelli wasn’t the typical mafia sister and daughter and cousin. Meaning she didn’t stay at home and cook and raise kids or just live a normal, working life. No. She was actually in the Family. Which was surprisingly progressive for the Morellis. Though they didn’t officially give her any sort of position; they just hired her out to do jobs. She did the work with none of the respect. It fit with how I was currently feeling about the Morelli men.
The men who’d made my brother disappear.
I wasn’t a fool.
Men in our business didn’t simply disappear.
They got killed.
And their bodies were disposed of.
In this case, my brother, Due, got killed by Alessa Morelli’s brother who had been in hiding ever since. Which was why I needed Alessa on top of Isabella Costa.
With Isabella, I would get her brother, Emilio, and the Capo dei Capi, Lorenzo. But to get the Morellis to the meeting as well, I needed something of theirs.
Alessa was all I had to work with.
And she was a fucking spitfire. Trained and capable with a hell of a fucking mouth on her.
I liked her spirit.
Even when she was trying to stab me with a knife as I fetched her from my office, taking one of her cuffs and attaching it to my own wrist, dragging her along with me while I worked, not sure I trusted any of my men fully with her.
Men in our businesses tended to underestimate women.
Not me.
I knew there was nothing more fierce than a woman in a male-dominated industry. Of any sort. They were not to be underestimated. They would slit your throat and then step on your bleeding-out body to get a step higher in the organization.
I gave that ambition the kind of deference it deserved.
So I kept her at my side.
Even as she berated me about being a neanderthal for my plan to form an alliance between the families with an arranged marriage.
Was it old school?
Sure.
But it worked.
History had shown it again and again.
They wouldn’t come at me because I had one of their loved ones in my camp. And I would have the peace of mind knowing I had Isabella as a bargaining chip.
“They’re never going to go for it,” Alessa Morelli said as I dragged her around the conference room.
It wouldn’t be long.
Pretty soon one of my scouts would get word back to us that the Morellis and Costas were on their way to come pick up Alessa.
They didn’t know about Isabella yet. That was the part I was going to go ahead and keep to myself until the right moment. Until we got shit ironed out with Alessa’s family.
“I heard you the first five times, babe,” I said, rolling my neck. “I think you overestimate how good of men your family and the Costas are.”
“Better than you,” Alessa shot back, full of fire and spit. When we’d made the video call to her loved ones, she’d attempted to slice my throat. I had to give her credit for the attempt, even if she ultimately failed.