Bought By Mafia Daddies (The Forbidden Reverse Harem Collection #27)

Chapter 1

FRANKIE

My fingers shook as I pulled up the zipper on the side of my dress. The material was silk liquid beneath my touch, far more delicate than anything I’d ever worn.

It blew the thrifted pink gown I’d donned for prom a few years back out of the water. I swallowed, the nerves starting to set in for real. A rumbling in the pit of my stomach almost made me queasy. I was doing this.

Really, actually doing this, and now that I had the gorgeous dark blue dress on, it felt like there was no turning back now.

I wouldn’t have turned back anyway. The stakes were too high.

If I didn’t attend this event tonight, if I didn’t do what I’d agreed to do against my better judgement, Mom would have no choice but to sell our house to the predatory company that had been harassing her about it for months.

The place where I’d taken my first steps, where Mom had taken her last before her disease took that freedom away from her, would be turned into a cookie-cutter, short-term rental for people on vacation. This night was essential.

But that didn’t mean I wasn’t having second thoughts—and third, and fourth, and seventieth.

“Doing okay in there, honey?” Mom’s soft voice floated to me through the bathroom door, making me jump. I cleared my throat to clear out the cobwebs.

“Yeah, Mom! I’ll be out in a minute!”

As soon as I could gather the courage to stop looking at myself in the mirror.

It was just hard to conceptualize that the glamorous figure I saw there was me, regular old Frankie Taylor, and not someone much more exciting. Someone who made more sense as a potential guest of an exclusive underground auction with questionable legality.

This whole plan had come about because I’d reached out to my father, which should have been the first clue this was a bad idea.

It had been my most desperate attempt at solving our money problems after a part-time job at the library hadn’t made much of a dent.

Mom and I had never had a lot of money, since she’d raised me on her own, but ever since she got sick, the medical bills had drained our resources close to dry.

My father, on the other hand, was rich enough that I knew of his wealth despite knowing so little else about him. Robert Ferrara wasn’t in our lives, hadn’t ever been involved with me beyond sending an occasional nondescript birthday card in the mail over a month late.

But he had a certain sinister reputation in the area that told me everything I needed to know.

And in an unsurprising fashion, he hadn’t offered to help us with our money troubles out of the goodness of his heart.

Hadn’t offered, even, to help with my college tuition so I wouldn’t have to drop out of school, which I optimistically thought a father would feel obligated to do.

No, my father had offered me a chance to earn a “hefty sum,” as he put it, by attending the exclusive, invitation-only event I was getting ready for tonight.

Well, I guess I was ready. My outfit was on, my makeup as close to perfect as my mediocre skills could accomplish, but at least it made my brown eyes pop.

My dark hair was brushed out and actually shining. My precarious heels were buckled and all prayers that I wouldn’t break an ankle were said. I was just…procrastinating.

Now or never.

I added my last touch, a pair of sparkly earrings that dangled close to my collarbones and sparkled bright enough that I was sure they were made from real diamonds.

Then I opened the door and stepped out to see my mom in her wheelchair, looking up at me with moisture glistening in her eyes.

“Oh, Frankie. You look so beautiful.”

I smoothed my hands over the dark blue silk that hugged my hips, showing a subtle curve I’d barely recognized was there before.

The neckline of the dress was daringly low, emphasizing my chest in a way that made me blush.

And if I wasn’t so terrified for tonight, I might agree with her. Maybe I’d share that starry-eyed wonder at my Cinderella-like transformation.

“Thanks, Mom. You don’t think it’s…?” I trailed off, unsure how to say what I really meant. Mom didn’t tolerate self-deprecation, even if I tried to be funny about it. You don’t think I look ridiculous? Out of my element? Like someone slapped lipstick on a pig?

“You’re perfect, hon. I’m sure everyone at the dance will be begging you to be their valentine.”

“I don’t know about that,” I said with a nervous laugh.

“Well, I do.”

Mom had no idea where I was actually headed, and that wasn’t going to change. Not if I could help it.

She didn’t even know I’d reached out to my dad in the first place, and I had no plans to let her know that, either.

Instead, my story was that I was going to a Valentine’s Day dance held by a sorority some of my college friends had rushed.

I’d had to drop out at the end of the fall semester due to lack of funds—even with the partial scholarships I’d managed to land, I didn’t have enough to pay for more textbooks, traveling to and from campus, much less the costs for on- or near-campus housing now that Mom was drowning in medical debt—but Mom still wanted me to be as involved with “kids my age” as I could be.

She worried that I spent too much time taking care of her.

That I was wasting my youth being her caretaker.

It was no use trying to convince her that I’d rather be helping her, trying to repay her even a little for how she’d sacrificed everything to raise me, than off partying with college kids.

Mom was watching me with something like concern in her eyes. Focusing a lot on the dress, the bejeweled neckline that I suspected was made with real crystals.

She was noticing how far out of my price range my dress was, wondering where I got it. I was sure she was half scared I’d had a sudden and abrupt character change and started shoplifting.

“I, uh…borrowed the dress,” I told her to save her the trouble of asking. “Natalie from my Spanish class. She’s, well, she comes from money.”

Again, a lie. Though she didn’t push, Mom didn’t seem to buy it based on the subtle raise of her blonde brows, and that wasn’t surprising. I wasn’t a practiced liar.

Had I ever lied to my mom as much as I was doing tonight in my entire twenty-one years of life?

Definitely not, and the newness only amplified the discomfort.

I had no other choice, though. I couldn’t exactly tell my mom, Yeah, your rich, estranged ex-husband sent me this dress mysteriously in the mail with a note that I should wear it tonight and that I shouldn’t “tell Lois” where I got it.

He’s also sending someone to chauffeur me to an event you’d never, ever let me attend in a million years.

As if me remembering that last detail had manifested it, the low hum of an engine pulling onto the street in front of our house broke through the silence.

I darted to the window, peering through the blinds to see an honest-to-god limousine parked in front of our humble home. I couldn’t help but laugh.

“That’s my ride, I think,” I told Mom breathlessly.

“It’s about that time,” she agreed. She wheeled her chair alongside me all the way to the front door. In response to her “come here” gesture, I ducked my head down so she could kiss me on the cheek.

“Have the best time, my best girl,” Mom said, love shining in her brown eyes—a lighter amber shade than my own. “And be safe.”

I couldn’t guarantee either of those things. I nodded to avoid another lie, tacking on an earnest, “If you need anything, any help at all, you can still call me.”

Mom frowned at me. Lois Taylor was the strongest, most independent woman I knew, and as a result she was not a big fan of being handled this way by her own kid.

Ever since she got sick, she’d tried to brush off my help, even as it became clear she needed me.

“I just want you to be young,” she’d always tell me, even when she lost the ability to walk on her own and I had to take on more of a caretaker role.

I didn’t complain, not out of some attempt to be a perfect selfless daughter, but because I genuinely liked being able to help her.

I’d always been responsible, sensible past the point of my actual age, and instead of taking this as a truth of my character, my mom was always trying to encourage me to let loose.

“I won’t need you,” Mom said with a determination that set her jaw firmly. “I just need you to care for yourself tonight. Have fun. Find a little romance, maybe.”

I nodded, squeezing her hand once more before I left, and the next thing I knew, I was in the sleek and luxurious back seat of a limo, almost too warm despite the late winter chill beyond the windows.

We sped through an area of town that looked seedy in the fading evening light.

The further the silent driver drove me into the belly of the beast, the shadier it all looked, until the long vehicle pulled to a smooth stop in front of a nondescript building.

The driver was silent as he came to hold the door open for me. I blinked up at his impassive face, the unmemorable features scrambling before my eyes seemingly by design. “I…are we in the right place?”

He nodded. I blinked up at him again, looking around his wide form to take in the building, the dark alley, the silence.

It wasn’t just unimpressive or innocuous.

It looked almost abandoned. If there had been windows on this side of the structure at all, I would’ve expected smashed glass and graffitied boards.

I must have looked as confused as I felt, because the man in front of me let out a frustrated breath and pointed toward a small door that blended almost perfectly into the gray stone of the wall. If it was possible for a door to look locked, this one certainly did.

But I wobbled my way out of the car anyway, carefully avoiding the deeper grooves in the asphalt for fear of twisting my ankle past the point of survival.

By the time I reached the door, the limo was already gone, leaving me alone in the dark alley of my nightmares, shivering without a coat.