The Mafia’s Fiancee (A Mafia Romance #2)

Chapter 1

Luke

“E mma!” I bellowed it , not caring if any of the guests at the Tropican heard me. They didn’t matter.

All that mattered was my fiancée—my fiancée of only a couple of hours who had just been kidnapped and taken away.

I ran as hard as I could, watching in horror as they van sped up. They took a turn sharply, recklessly zooming further away from the resort property.

Then they were gone.

The drive was empty. Mist from the rain hovered, slightly disturbed by the air current of the vehicle dashing off.

She was gone.

Gone.

They took her.

My feet slapped hard on the slick pavement as I dropped into a jog, then a walk. The vibration of my hard run traveled up my legs, but I was otherwise numb.

I was rooted in disbelief, unable to do anything but stare at the void of where she was a moment ago, trapped in the back of that van. It happened so fast that I struggled to process it.

If I wasn’t breathing so hard, from the sprint and the panic, I might have thought it was a dream. A nightmare.

Blinking hard, I strained to catch my breath.

“Luke?” Randy shouted out for me. The electric golf cart whined as it hurried to me as fast as mu coworker could get it to move. “Luke.”

His footsteps sounded louder. He jumped out of the cart and ran up to me where I stood, staring at the road. “What the hell—what’s going on?”

I didn’t turn to face him, too stuck in shock.

Underneath the fear and anger that someone dared to take Emma, I felt a sickening sense of regret.

Jimmy warned me. He told me to give her up.

It looked like he wasn’t joking. White-hot fury coursed through me, and I tried not to roar. Fisting my hands was the only action I could do to vent my violent energy. As I turned to face Randy, he furrowed his brow at my arms shaking with the force of straining.

“Luke.” He shook his head. “What the fuck is going on?”

I had so much to tell him. Too many things to update him with. At the top of that list was the fact that my brand-new fiancée was a mafia princess, the daughter of a crime lord. Right below that point was my newfound identity as the secret son of Marlo Rossini.

Jimmy warned me to give her up, and it seemed that someone else had shared the sentiment that Emma and I shouldn’t be together.

“I...” I had no clue where to begin. All my thoughts centered on finding Emma and getting her back. I had to, but I was limited in how to start that process. The men who dared to grab her like that, they were dead. The people who ordered them to kidnap her, they’d beg for my mercy—none of which they’d receive.

“I need to go get her.” Those were the only words I could string together. Honest words. I didn’t know how. I wasn’t sure where to begin, but I had to save her from her captors.

“Emma? Your VIP guest?” Randy frowned, looking around like he worried we’d be caught not on the job. He had been here all day, a normal, routine day at work. My day had been interspersed with so many surprises I once again struggled with the skepticism that this was really happening.

“Emma’s not my guest. She’s my—” I raked my hand through my hair and tore my gaze from him to stare at the empty road again. “She’s mine,” I clarified simply.

“For fuck’s sake man.” Randy stepped away then faced me again, shaking his head and muttering. “I get it. You’ve been sleeping with the guest. I’m not surprised with how she kept stalking you and you couldn’t stop watching her, but man...” He gestured at the road. “This is— What the fuck is this? Someone just kidnapped her and—”

He couldn’t connect the dots, operating on confusion and banking on too few details. Witnessing the tail end of a kidnapping was throwing him for a loop, but my friend had never been a dull one.

“Who is she?” He furrowed his brow, boring me with a worried gaze. “Because that shit looked practiced, man. Like the fucking cartel or something.”

Close. Now that I was a mafia man—at least by blood—I didn’t want to know what the cartel would think of me. Or how I should view them. Before this afternoon, they were an ambiguous and distant bad guy, just out there somewhere. Now that I was part of the organized crime world, I had to redefine my parameters.

“Not the cartel,” I answered. But I wouldn’t give him any more than that. “I need to go get her.”

“And not call the police?” he scoffed, putting his hands on his head and looking at me like I was insane. Randy didn’t care for the cops. His grandpa had been profiled and targeted for many years, and it instilled a generational weariness of the law. Still, Randy was an ordinary civilian, used to alerting the law enforcement in cases of emergencies.

In any other circumstances, I would’ve been thinking the same. If not to call the cops that someone had been kidnapped, then to report it to Tim and let him direct the security department here at the resort.

I had no plans to contact my supervisor though.

A couple of hours ago, Emma tried to explain to me that an arranged marriage could happen in mafia families. She summed it up bluntly: “We have our own laws.”

I didn’t need to ponder any further to know that kidnapping was also something they took upon themselves, empowered by their own authority.

I couldn’t go to the cops. I had to do this solo. Without help. And without interference.

I stepped toward Randy. “I need to go get her.”

“Fuck.” He muttered again, disbelieving that this was happening to me, that this was my life now. “You’re serious.”

“I am. Tell Tim that something came up.”

“Just like that?” He scowled. “This woman, this piece of ass, is worth losing your job?”

I narrowed my eyes. If he knew, if I’d had the time to tell him that I proposed to Emma and that I loved her, he wouldn’t disparage her like that. It wasn’t the time to explain though.

“Fuck this job,” I growled. I had to get her.

He opened his eyes wide, surprised that I’d talk so carelessly about the job I’d depended on for so long. Since I was a kid, the Tropican was my livelihood. I started under the table, helping Miguel in the gardens. Then in the kitchen, Anita let me wash dishes. As the sole provider and breadwinner for me and my mom, I’d been working here for about seventeen years. To throw it all away now...

I have to. Emma had my heart. She was my future, not this job. “Tell Tim something came up.”

“With what ? The guest you had no business fooling around with?”

“Tell him it’s a family thing.” The irony wasn’t lost on my that the word family would mean so much more now. Family no longer consisted of me and my mom. Us against the world. I had a father, an uncle, a fiancée. Those three represented members of mafia families.

“Shit.” Randy rubbed his face, still unhappy about this. “Fine. I will. But fuck, dude, be careful. For fuck’s sake. I don’t even want to know. I don’t even wanna fucking know what kind of shit you’re getting involved with.” He’d started walking away, like pacing to vent his frustration and bewilderment, but he faced me again, frowning. “And she’s worth it? You realize this could be the biggest mistake of your life, right? Emma is worth it?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“Shit.” He shook his head as he reached into his pocket. After he tossed me his keys and I caught them, he stared at me with more concern than he did when I first told him I was a street fighter. “Be careful.”

“I will. Thank you.” I held up the keys, grateful for his offer to use his car. Mine was still at the shop, held hostage with a bill I couldn’t pay and wasn’t sure I would pay. It’d only be paying for a Band-Aid on a piece-of-shit car that should’ve been demoed years ago.

He frowned and waved me off, like shooing me. “Go. Hurry.”

I’d pay him back. I always did, slowly but surely. He was the kind of friend, the kind of brother, that everyone needed in their life, but it felt strange to run away with the idea that he was looking out for me this time, instead of the other way around. This hero complex that reigned in my mind and soul wouldn’t let me just accept charity, but in this case, I had no other option.

I’d pay him back, for epically covering for me and loaning me his car.

But first, Emma.

I ran to the employee staff lot and didn’t waste time getting in the driver’s seat.

Randy told me to go. He gave me the means to track down Emma, but I didn’t know where she’d been taken. The men who grabbed her looked like those Marchese soldiers. But then again, all those mafia men looked the same. Blank expressions. Fine suits. Cocky swagger. The were a dime a dozen, and I was too new to all of this to be able to identify any of them specifically. Not to mention, I barely had a chance to see them with how they’d rushed to get Emma in the car.

Emma was a Giordino. Her supposed betrothed was supposed to be a Marchese.

I was a Rossini, though. And Jimmy Rossini, my uncle, was the one who’d just told me hours ago that I had to give up Emma. Her being taken wasn’t a coincidence. It couldn’t be. If Jimmy had the knowledge of why Emma and I couldn’t be together, it stood to reason others did as well. Someone not only thought we couldn’t be together, they’d acted on splitting us up by kidnapping her.

I had no clue how to find the Giordino or Marchese men. I was lost for where to start.

My only connection was Jimmy, so I started there.

Fuck. What if he had her taken?

I started the car and drove in the direction of where I assumed the Rossini residences were in the city. Miami was a huge metropolis, but everyone who’d lived here was aware of the general areas where the mafia families lived. The same as everyone with any street smarts knew to avoid certain neighborhoods the cartel operated from, and the spots where stings and drug busts happened.

That was where I headed, loosely toward where I’d heard the Rossini family lived. It wasn’t a short drive, nor an easy one with the traffic, but I aimed for the sprawling estates, the oceanfront properties.

It was taking too long though, and with every minute Emma was absent, missing and taken, dread and anger built within me. I couldn’t take it. Driving toward the Rossini area was a first step, but it didn’t feel like I was doing anything.

I grabbed my phone and called the one contact listing I had for Jimmy. He was labeled as manager , and I scowled at knowing he was so much more. He was my uncle, one who’d lied to me all my life.

He answered, and I didn’t hesitate to let him know how pissed I was. “Did you arrange this?”

“Arrange what?”

“Emma. Did you have her taken?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

I slammed my fist on the steering wheel, furious at the idea that he might be playing games with me. That he might be playing dumb.

“Emmalina. Did you arrange to have her taken?” By asking him this, I was giving away the news that she had be taken. “You just told me to give her up. To stop being with her, and now she’s gone.”

“Lucas, I tried to tell you—”

“Did you fucking take her?” I roared, feeling tension in my neck from how hard I strained and yelled. I felt taut everywhere, like a bomb collecting pressure before an imminent explosion.

“No. I didn’t, Lucas. But I tried to tell you. You messing around with Emma won’t end well.”

I didn’t know how things would end. No one ever did. But I’d be damned if someone tried to force us apart.

“This is only proof of what I tried to tell you. War will be coming. Antonio Marchese won’t be happy to hear about you and Emma. Damon Giordino will be furious. If someone has taken her, then it’s only a sign of someone knowing and reacting. Just like I fucking tried to warn you.”

I braked sharply as a tourist forgot how to drive.

This wasn’t the time or place to get answers.

I hung up, focusing on driving to get out of this clogged area. Heading toward where I assumed the Rossini residence was, I gritted my teeth and tried to speed out of this backed-up downtown stretch.

It’d be far better to have a direct conversation with this uncle of mine. I needed more answers, more background on Emma and this engagement that wouldn’t be happening between her and Antonio.

I was engaged to Emma. She wore my grandmother’s ruby ring. She was mine.

And come hell or highwater, I’d beat the answers out of my lying uncle so I could get her back as soon as possible.