Mafia King’s Surprise Baby (Mafia’s Scorned Vows)

Chapter 1

Leo

“Hey, catch!”

Fearful it might be a prank on the groom, I reach up and grab the object flying his way. As his best man, I can’t have something happen an hour before the wedding.

It’s a square box. Magnum-size, but still.

“Condoms? Seriously?”

“No baby-making on the wedding night,” Stephano replies.

“The baby would be born nine months after,” I counter.

“Forty weeks, people. A full-term pregnancy is forty weeks,” Angelo, a medical doctor, quips.

“What if it’s a preemie? Then he’s fucked.”

“My kid was born at thirty-two weeks. Thought Milly’s dad was gonna come at me with a shotgun, thinking I got her pregnant before our wedding,” Michael quips.

Mattia, the groom, turns away from the mirror. “No worries about a trigger-happy dad. Hana’s an orphan.”

The bottle of vodka making the rounds across the room where the groom’s side is getting ready reaches him. He declines, as do I.

Stephano takes a long glug.

“Damn it. Those Bratva boys always have the best vodka.”

I wince, thinking of our trip to Brighton Beach yesterday. Little Odessa has the best strip clubs, run by the Bratva. While I can’t say we’re associates, our families—the Pellegrinis and the Bonuccis—are on good terms with the Russian mafia. We don’t step on their toes; they don’t step on ours.

“Lucky bastard,” someone slurs. Gio, of course. He’s been drunk since yesterday morning. “Hana’s hot.”

“Shut your mouth.” There’s no bite to the words, though. Mattia knows it’s in jest.

“Now you know who else is hot? Bianca. Man, saw her earlier, and she’s a bomb—”

“Shut your trap or I’ll shut it for you!” Mattia says calmly.

Too calmly.

Quiet descends on the room.

“All you fuckers listen to me. Think of your grandmas. That’s how you look at my sister, capische ? Better, you don’t look at her. You don’t get near her. Any one of you touches her, I’ll fucking kill him. Bianca’s been promised to Ardian Abrashi, and this alliance better go without a hitch, or we’re all fucked.”

“The Accountant? You’re marrying your sister off to that bastard?” Angelo asks.

Mattia’s turning red, which is not a good sign. I place a hand on his shoulder and shake my head softly.

“It’s an alliance with the Albanians,” I say to Angelo.

“Those fuckers still angling in on us?” Stephano frowns. “Let’s all go kick their balls—”

“The Rosettis tried that,” I remind him.

“Damn Albanians.”

Loaded silence fills the room. Damn Albanians, indeed. Those guys sprang as if from nowhere. A few years ago, no one had even heard of them. They’ve muscled in on every base of operations in Europe. London? Down. The entirety of France? Dismissed. Now, it’s the US East Coast’s turn to deal with them.

At least the Bratva made legitimate plays for the strip clubs, prostitution rings, and general money laundering arms of the business.

Albanians? They come, they see, they conquer. You’d think it’s Italian’s who’d take a page out of Caesar’s playbook. Those bastards? They want it all.

Alliances between families is nothing new. That’s how things worked on the Old Continent.

But it all used to be within the family, so to speak. Even today, you’d never hear a Borgata reaching out to the Bratva.

Bianca Bonucci represents the hope of the entire syndicate of the New York region. The Albanians want our ports, but we can’t let them have those. Introduced into our system bit by bit, yes. Then we’d have time to cover our asses and level the playing field.

An heir of the Abrashi family marrying into a respected Borgata , a Mafia family? It builds a tie, one the Albanians will have to respect. They’ll have to stop blindsiding us with their devilish takeovers. There’s only so much violence anyone can take, even us.

We need this alliance, period. So this makes Bianca totally off-limits. Best these guys reckon with this already.

I clap my hands to regain their attention.

“Come on, guys. I know for a fact Hana has placed all of you at tables with single, eligible ladies. Not you, Angelo.”

He’d started to protest, and with good reason. His wife, Prema, is a brilliant surgeon and a true psychopath. On a good day, she could eviscerate a woman who looked a little too long at her husband. Good thing she’s been called in for emergency surgery today after a ten-car pileup on the road to Short Hills in New Jersey.

Spirits restored, the men start to jest again as a new vodka bottle gets passed around. I don’t refuse a sip this time when it comes my way. Mattia declines.

“Damn fuckers. I knew they’d be onto her like birds of prey.”

I laugh. “Come on. It’s Bianca we’re talking about. She can hold her own.”

“Yeah. Let’s hope so.”

Something in the way he says this rankles me, but I can’t give it any attention as a knock comes at the door.

My hand freezes on the door knob at the sight the receding panel reveals.

A woman, tall and graceful, with an hourglass figure showcased to perfection in the iris-blue sheath she’s wearing. Her waist seems tiny, hips lush, and her chest… Dio santo , have mercy. Bountiful globes of dusky olive flesh encased in the crisp edges of the strapless bodice.

Her thick dark hair is piled on top of her head, one long ringlet dipping onto her left shoulder, flirting with the pronounced lines of her collar bone. Diamonds sparkle at her earlobes, which draw my attention to her face.

She has strong features, but they merge into a magnificent whole. Slashing cheekbones, a pointed chin, the line of her straight nose prominent, forehead wide.

And her eyes. They’re dark, glimmering against the sparkly eyeshadow and the heavy, full lashes.

A man can get lost in those eyes, and he wouldn’t mind never finding his way to the surface again.

“Ah, so you are here,” she says with a small laugh.

I blink. Do we know each other? It sounds like she knows me, because she’s looking right at me.

I would definitely remember such a ravishing creature. Most importantly, I would definitely have made it my job to bring her to my bed so I can assuage all my fantasies upon her delectable body and that sinful, full mouth with the pronounced cupid’s bow.

Where have you been all my life?

“Hana’s gonna kill you if you don’t look perfect today,” she’s saying as she beelines to Mattia. “What have you done with your hair?”

“Argh, get your grabby fingers off me, Bianca.”

Everything inside me freezes as I stand there, stunned.

This is Bianca?

Granted, I haven’t seen her in seven years. She was sixteen, I was twenty-one. But adults don’t become a whole other, completely different version of who they were as teenagers, do they?

Bianca Bonucci used to be skinny, as coltish as the newborns in the stable, all knees and bones. Yet, more prominent was her never-ending smile, from which her braces shone almost blindingly. With her chin-length hair, she easily passed for a boy.

But the woman she’s become… God have mercy.

“Go pester Leo, will you?”

She huffs, and my body unfreezes as she steps my way. My hand falls from the door knob, letting the panel finally close.

I’ve been standing here like a dolt staring at her all this time. No wonder Gio’s lost his mind over her. Any man with a sane mind would.

Any man with a libido would.

My pants are growing tight, and I shuffle uneasily to try and quell the erection growing with a mind of its own. She’s the embodiment of every guy’s wet dream…

“Leo!” She giggles as she throws her arms around me and presses her body to mine for a hug.

Goddamn it, her breasts are plush and full. I can already feel their heaviness in my palms, imagining her nipples are slightly darker than her skin. Are they tight or puffy? How much do they like a greedy mouth suckling on them?

“It’s me, Bianca.” She pulls away and stares at me with a slight frown. “Don’t you recognize me?”

I blink, realizing I stayed as unmoving as a rock when she hugged me.

“You’ve changed.” The words escape in a whisper.

How much of a dumbass will she think of pinme now, stating the obvious like this?

Bianca laughs. The sound is rich and throaty.

Is this how she’ll moan in my arms?

Focus, Leo!

“I’ve grown, yes.”

“I can see that.”

Her eyes grow wide, though a smile’s still lingering on her lips, flirting with one corner more.

How come I never realized she has a slightly crooked smile?

“I can also see you haven’t won that battle.”

I frown. “Hmm?”

“Your bow tie. Still haven’t learned how to make it stick.”

My mind hurtles to a night seven years ago. A star-studded sky. A pier edging out in the dark. A thin figure in white sitting at the edge, silver shoes behind her on the planks, legs dangling over the water’s surface.

She turned to me when a plank creaked under my foot.

“Hey. Come on over.”

I sat down quietly next to her.

“Had enough of the party?” she asked.

“I can’t go another minute wearing this ridiculous bow tie.”

She laughed.

“What about you?” I asked.

“I wanted some peace and quiet, before…”

Before she left the next day. She was going to a boarding-slash-finishing school in Switzerland for the next two years.

“I’m disturbing you. I should go—”

Her hand with the long, bony fingers clasped mine as I started to get up.

“No. Stay. I like having you here.”

I sat back down.

“You know why, Leo?”

“No. Why?”

“Because you don’t judge me.”

“Come on. Nobody’s judging you—”

“They all are.”

If she’d sounded like a petulant child throwing a tantrum, I would’ve laughed and pulled her to me in a side hug. The fact she didn’t, it made me pause. Something wasn’t right in her world. I’d never stopped to think about it, but she’s a daughter of the Mafia. Whole other set of rules to live by for them, unlike us boys who’ll one day take over. Girls are bred to melt into the background and come forward only to be married off and dance to the tune set by their husband.

“Can I ask you for something, Leo? You won’t be mad?”

“Of course not.”

How could I, when it just dawned on me what sort of restricted life she was embarking on now she was growing into a woman?

I waited for her question, but it never came.

Instead, Bianca Bonucci turned my way, leaned on her hand, and pressed her lips to mine. One second, two. Then, she retreated, and I was still too stunned to react.

“Thank you for my first kiss,” she said, then got up and went back inside.

I can still recall her face as she stared at me in that moment, lit by the moonlight in an ethereal glow. She wasn’t a child then—she was a girl.

And now, it’s the woman staring back at me as I focus on her face.

“May I?”

Again, before I can answer her, she’s doing it. Except, this time, she isn’t kissing me. She’s undoing my bow tie and then expertly tying it back with deft flicks of her fingers. Occasionally, her knuckles brush against the skin of my neck.

Can she feel the shivers coursing down my spine from her touch?

Does she know what she’s doing to me, not just in my pants, but in my blood? In my entire being?

I’m suddenly parched for her, needing to drown in her, stave all my hunger through her. Desire, lust, wanting, need—they’re all coursing through me like electrical signals gone haywire.

“There. All done.”

She pats my shoulder, then all too quickly, she’s turned away. Her ass swings side to side provocatively in that skin-tight dress, though I know she’s not putting on a show. Bianca Bonucci walks like sin itself.

“Don’t be late,” she says to Mattia, then she’s gone.

There’s a collective exhale in the room, like her being here sucked in all the oxygen and all of us men had to make do with what we’d pulled into our lungs already. Well, all of us except Mattia. And Angelo, too, with his psycho wife.

Mattia steps up to me, and I shake myself from the Bianca-induced stupor.

“I hadn’t seen her since the night of her departure gala.”

“Yeah. After Switzerland, she stayed in Paris. Padre preferred for us to visit her in Europe rather than for her to come home.”

“Sorbonne, right?” Seems he’d mentioned it a couple of times.

“Yeah. And thanks to it, she can have an argument with an empty room.”

He places a hand on my shoulder. I tense.

“Listen, Leo. I can count only on you. You know Bianca, she knows you. It won’t seem strange if you’re around her tonight. I need you to keep an eye on her. Can’t let any of those pissed fuckers try to get it on with her, you know.”

I gulp. “Because she’s promised to Abrashi.”

“Yeah. I know I can count on you, my brother.”

Fifteen minutes ago, I would’ve agreed with him wholeheartedly. All of us on the East Coast need this alliance with the Albanians. RICO—The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which can nab someone for two acts of racketeering or other relevant crimes over a ten-year period—fucked us up already when it happened in the seventies. It severely limited the scope of our operations. Ruthless, fearsome competition like the Albanians’ would strike the death blow in areas we do still control.

Except now, I’ve seen Bianca Bonucci again.

And the last thing I want is to let her out of my sight.

Because if I had my way, she would be mine.