Dangerous Games (The Adduci Crime Family #2)

Chapter 1

Chapter

One

brONWYN

Iclench my hand, digging my stiletto acrylic nails into my palm until it hurts. Maybe the pain will distract me from the sexist asshole who is in the shop right now. I’m one more comment away from stabbing him in the eye with a nail.

“You probably haven’t played this with how violent it is, right?

” Sexist asshole shakes the used video game toward me with a knowing smirk on his face.

His eyes dart around the store. “I’m wondering if it’s good before I buy it.

I don’t want to spend my hard-earned money on something that’s going to be a waste of my time.

Is your boss around? Maybe I can ask him. ”

My eye twitches at his condescending tone.

I usually love my job, but every so often someone like him shows up, convinced that a girl couldn’t possibly have played a video game.

Nothing would bring me more pleasure than to knock him the fuck out.

But I need this job.

I plaster my best patronizing customer service smile on my face. “Unfortunately, he’s not. But you’re in luck because I have played this. It’s an open-world fantasy role-playing game. It can be as violent as you want it to be.”

“Oh.” His smile falters slightly. “Well, in that case, I’ll take it.”

Halle-fucking-lujah.

I look at the clock that’s shaped like a controller on the wall.

Ten minutes after closing.

The fact that I should already be halfway home and that much closer to getting a slice of pizza I’ve been craving all day pisses me off.

“Great.” I smile tightly as I move behind the register and ring him up.

I lock the door as soon as it shuts behind him, the sound of the lock making him look back at me. I don’t care in the slightest that he heard.

Fucking dickhead.

I race around shutting the rest of the lights off and turning on the alarm so I can head out. My couch and fuzzy blanket have been calling my name all day, itching for me to settle in with food and video games.

I shudder as I flip up the collar of my coat, wrapping it tighter around me as the chilly night air bites at my skin.

I hate closing the store because it means walking home in the dark, but I hate getting up early enough to open it even more.

My apartment is about three blocks from the store, so it’s not that far; it just sucks when it’s cold.

I rented the cheapest place I could find, a small studio above a pizzeria.

I blame that for being the reason I’m constantly craving pizza now and where the ten pounds I’ve put on that has snuck up on me came from.

I wake up smelling it and go to sleep smelling it; it’s hard not to constantly want it.

Instead of going around to the back alley where my entrance to the apartment is, I circle around the front and enter the pizzeria.

It’s ten minutes to close, and at this point I would give my left tit for them to keep the oven on and give me a slice because I deserve a damn slice of pizza after dealing with that fucking asshole.

The front door closes behind me as I take in the empty restaurant.

Damn.

Did I miss it?

Just as I move toward the counter to ring the little customer service bell, a man in a crisp black suit steps out from behind the back.

His perfectly composed expression slips for a moment as shock flashes across his face at seeing me, before he quickly recovers and the mask slides back into place.

The air in the lobby goes electric as neither of us says a word.

He’s too busy looking me over as I do the same to him.

The man oozes danger. For being late at night, there isn’t a wrinkle or crease in his suit.

His neatly trimmed dark beard hides any emotion his mouth might give away.

Something in his eyes tells me he could kill me in the blink of an eye. But I can’t look away.

Drip…drip…drip…

A dripping sound echoes throughout the silent restaurant, drawing my attention down to the floor. A red liquid is dripping. My gaze moves until it stops at his hand that’s holding a part of an arm that was cut off just before the wrist.

Holy shit.

I prick my nails into my palm as I do everything in my power not to let it show on my face how freaked out I am. My brow hurts from keeping it in place when it should be hitting my hairline right now.

The man’s eyes move down to what he’s holding, his mouth parting in shock as if he’d forgotten he was holding someone’s fucking cut-off hand before his attention moves back to me.

Did he kill someone?

Oh god, is he going to kill me?

The silence is deafening. I don’t move, unsure of what to do next that won’t end with my hand joining that one.

So there we both stand, mere feet apart, both of us blinking at each other.

The silence continues to drag on with the exception of the blood that’s pooling on the floor near his polished black dress shoe that doesn’t have a smudge on it.

I clear my throat, the awkward and tense silence making me uncomfortable as I shift my weight to my other foot. “Are there any slices left?”

I’m going to do what I do best and act like the insane scene that’s playing out in front of me isn’t happening.

His brow lowers in confusion, his attention not wavering from my face. “Slices?”

His voice is rough and commanding as it slithers down my spine, leaving a chill in its wake.

Oh, I like that.

“Slices of pizza.” I nod toward the warmer on the counter that’s empty with the heat lamp on.

The man looks over his shoulder at what I’m talking about before slowly turning back to me. “No. We closed early. Didn’t you read the sign?”

Now my brows raise at his tone because, I’m sorry, but out of the two of us, which one seems to be in a place where it’s okay to throw some attitude around? Because I know it’s not him.

To prove my point, I slowly turn around and make a show of looking at the glass door, seeing nothing on it, and slowly turning back around. “No.”

The man glares at me before groaning, “Fucking Enzo. Can’t remember to do a goddamn thing I tell him.”

I look at him expectantly. “So, no?”

“No,” he clips, his posture growing more tense.

Looks like it’s time for me to go.

Before he can say another word to me or decide he needs to kill me because I’m a witness to…

whatever that was, I spin on my heel and walk out the door.

I held my breath the entire time. Part of me was waiting for him to snatch me back by the hood of my jacket and lock me in a basement somewhere from seeing what I saw.

Which could very well be nothing, right?

The hand probably wasn’t even real.

That’s what I keep telling myself as I walk around the block and hit the alley in the back where the entrance to my apartment is.

The smell of lingering pizza is stuck in my nose; I can practically taste it.

I’m pissed as hell. I need to find a new place to get pizza because how do I show my face in there after that? That would be diabolical.

The dim, flickering light in the alley helps guide me toward the metal staircase that’s seen better days.

I treat it like any girl would a car; when it creaks as I walk up or down it, I ignore the signs that it’s about to give out on me at any moment.

If you don’t acknowledge the problem, is it actually even there?

Just as a step creaks under my weight, the back door to the pizzeria flies open, slamming against the brick building with a crack, making me jump. I’m frozen in place as I watch the hot man in the suit prowl into the alley and grab a metal bucket near the dumpster.

What is he doing?

I stand there and watch as he paces with his phone to his ear and the bucket in the other. Whoever he called must not have answered because he stops his pacing to aggressively tuck his phone into the interior pocket of his suit jacket.

What am I doing standing here watching all of this play out?

Deciding it’s best not to have another moment with him, I start climbing the rest of the stairs to my place. What I wasn’t thinking about was the noise giving me away because as soon as I took another step, he whipped around, looking right at me.

Fuck.

“You,” he growls as he prowls toward me.

Great.

This is how I die.

For not minding my own fucking business.

“Did you track me down to bring me that slice of pizza?” I try to joke, but my smile comes out half-assed and forced, and well, his face hasn’t moved from the scowl.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

I look between him and my front door, wondering if I could make a break for it before he had time to make it to me.

He’s not extremely tall, but the wide, muscular shoulders fill him out.

I think I could beat him to the door; however, I think he could easily break the door down, so really I’m at a loss here.

“Going home.” I point toward my door.

The man’s mouth parts slightly before he runs his hand over the top of his head. “Oh fuck. Matteo is going to kill me.”

Uh oh.

If Matteo is going to kill him, that means he’s definitely going to kill me.

I take another step, wanting nothing more than to get away from this man and get on my way to pretending tonight never happened. Living in denial is the key to happiness, at least in my world.

The man looks up as I dart up the stairs with my heart pounding in my ears.

It’s the same feeling you would get when you were a kid when you shut the lights off downstairs and have to sprint up the stairs in the dark to your room because you think someone is randomly going to appear out of the woodwork and drag you back to their lair, except this time there’s actually someone there.

My shaky hands fumble my keys as I’m trying to place the key into the hole. On the third try, I’m shaking so bad they slip through my fingers. I watch in horror as they fall through the crack in the metal-grated step and land on the pavement.

Fuck.

My.

Life.

The weight on my chest feels like it’s squeezing the life out of me as I watch the man slowly move over to the keys and bend down and pick them up.

My breath catches in my throat, waiting to see what happens next because there’s nowhere else for me to go.

If I make a run for it back down the stairs, he’ll just meet me at the bottom.

And the door to my apartment is locked, so I’m stuck.

I watch frozen in place as the man tosses my keys up in the air, almost as if he’s testing the weight of them.

Oh my god.

What if he cuts my hand off slowly with my keys? Is that possible?

He studies them, turning them around as he flips through the keys on my keychain.

There isn’t much, just two keys, one being to the apartment and one to the store, and a trinity knot keychain I refuse to take off.

His thumb slowly strokes the knot, making sure to touch each tip.

He abruptly tilts his head up, his hard gaze aimed right at me, making me jump.

He lifts his arm and draws it back. I flinch as he throws my keys toward me.

On reflex, my hand darts out and snatches them.

The metal that is usually cool is warm from his touch, but it sends a chill down my spine all the same.

He gives me one last look before he prowls back inside with the bucket he came out to get, leaving me alone in the dimly lit alley.

I let out a deep breath, finally feeling like I can breathe for the first time since I walked into the pizzeria.

I find my apartment key and this time stick it in the lock on the first try.

Once inside, I slam the door shut, flip all three locks and slump against the back until my ass hits the floor.

My head falls between my knees as I try to process what the hell just happened.

Whatever it was, I don’t have a good feeling about it.

“Ugh,” I groan as I slowly lift my head back up, resting it against the door. It’s almost painful because it feels like it weighs a hundred pounds.

I look around my apartment, questioning if I need to move in the middle of the night so he doesn’t come back later when he realizes he should have killed off the witness.

But where would I go?

I highly doubt I’d find another place in my price range. It was hard enough to find this. I love my job, but working at a gaming store doesn’t exactly have me rolling in the big bucks.

I let out an exhausted sigh. I was really loving this place too.

It’s just me. I didn’t need much space, and it’s close to work.

The landlord doesn’t bother me, and I don’t bother him.

It’s a perfect setup. Yeah, it’s only a studio, but sometimes the smallest places are the coziest. And surprisingly, despite it being above a restaurant, I don’t hear anything that happens below.

I don’t have much furniture-wise, just a queen-sized bed shoved up against a wall in the far corner to give me more room.

I have two floor-to-ceiling windows that face the alley, a small window in my bathroom that faces the street, and one above the kitchen sink.

A cheap sofa I found on the sidewalk ready to be taken to the dump the next day on my way home is in the middle of the room, facing the two windows, which have a small TV stand and a small TV on it in between.

I don’t have a dining room table because, well, there isn’t room for one, and it’s just me, so what’s the point?

Picking myself off the floor, I strip out of my clothes and hop in the shower to wash away my shitty day.

I swear it’s always on the days when you wake up and think, “This is going to be my day” that are the absolute shittiest. The water is scalding hot; the steam swirling throughout the bathroom proves that, but I don’t feel a thing as the water pelts my skin.

My mind is on what the man is doing downstairs.

And I can’t help but think that whatever it is, no matter how bad or how angry he was, he looked fucking hot doing it.

A guy in a suit has never been my type. And it’s not the fact that I don’t find them attractive, because I do, obviously.

It’s just that whenever I’m around a man like that, I feel completely out of my league.

I turn the water off, feeling no less relaxed, but I also can’t afford to spend the night under it and rack up my water bill. I’m always sticker-shocked every month that bill comes.

I wrap my scratchy towel around myself and wipe the fog off the mirror with a swipe of my hand. I look as exhausted as I feel. And I have to do it all over again tomorrow. I pull on a pair of boy shorts and a ratty tee before I throw my wet hair into a sloppy braid and climb into bed.

I strain to hear if anything is happening downstairs, but the only noise I can hear is my steady breathing. He must have called it a night. It takes me forever to fall asleep because I can’t shake the feeling that what I walked into just changed my life forever.