Assistant to the Mafia (De Salvo Family #3)

1. Just Another Monday

one

Just Another Monday

Grace Mariner stepped off her treadmill, chest heaving and sweat dripping down the back of her neck. She silenced her music, patted down her face with the towel she’d set nearby, and double-checked the clock. There was just enough time for her morning shower, of course. After eight years of working at DS Industries—close to three in her current position—she had her routine down to a science. She was across the apartment and flipping on the shower in under a minute. Grace stripped out of her loungewear while she waited for the water to heat, but then her gaze snagged on her reflection and she paused. Her lips scrunched up to one side and she tugged ineffectively at the pudge around her middle. My routine’s really not cutting it anymore, though, is it?

She stepped into the shower, too tight on time to wallow in self-pity. She told herself, again, to see about adding another mile to her morning run. It would mean waking up earlier, which would mean doing her level best to get to bed earlier at least on work nights. None of that was appealing. As it always did, the mere thought of the extra exertion made her want to black out. Exercise had never been her thing. She only had the treadmill because her older sister had bought it for her three Christmases prior.

“You work such long hours, Gracie. I’m sure you don’t have time to get to the gym. But you’ll be thirty soon. Your body won’t keep shrugging off all that lost sleep and greasy food.” The words were bad enough, but Caitlin had added in a long, dragging rake of her gaze over Grace’s form while she’d said them, too. And the look in her eyes when she was done clearly said Grace already knew what she was talking about.

Grace shoved the memory down and scrubbed at her skin. It wasn’t like she was fat. She was just … full-figured. I sit at a desk for long hours every damn day. It was also true that sometimes they got deliciously unhealthy food delivered to carry them through meetings. Most of that food came courtesy of one of her boss’s separately owned restaurants, so she made sure to always be present for those meetings. Getting an actual reservation at The Dragon’s Roast was next to impossible, after all.

Perfectly rational justification aside, however, there was no denying that her figure wasn’t what it had been a decade before.

Grace worked the shampoo into her hair. Why was she even feeling worked up about this? Thirty-year-old women weren’t expected to look like twenty-year-old college girls. She wasn’t some perfectly polished, hyper studious girl still hoping to impress the world. That girl had grown up.

Grace stepped back under the spray of the showerhead, letting the water rinse the shampoo away. Her eyes closed, and she tried to focus on the feel of the water rolling over her skin. Immediately the dream her alarm had yanked her from whispered through her mind, overheating her body.

She gasped, water trickling past her lips, as a voice she knew well murmured words she’d never heard the man say in real life.

“Look at you, dripping for me.” He spread his hands over her thighs, pushing her legs wider, and leaned closer. Close enough that his five o’clock shadow nearly scraped her skin and she could feel the heat of his breath. “Is this my pussy, Grace? Can I do whatever I want with it?”

Grace smacked both hands to her face, water splattering audibly in her attempt to drag herself back to reality. Her morning routine was timed to the minute, and she’d already wasted several. She could not afford to be standing in the hot shower and getting herself all worked up—let alone about one of the men she worked for. She had to look him the eye nearly every day. It was always hard to keep her expression steady when she saw him the day after one of those dreams.

She groaned and quickly worked the conditioner through her hair, her movements agitated. The worst part was that her inappropriate dreams had become much too frequent.

Romeo De Salvo could have damn near any woman he wanted, what with his impossibly good looks, generational wealth, and natural charm. He was smart without being overbearing about it, spoke at least three languages that Grace knew of, and didn’t mistreat his employees. He was a successful businessman, a good father, and had strong family roots. He was a complete catch.

Romeo De Salvo would never even look once at a woman like her.

She tried to remind herself of that for the umpteenth time as she hurried from her shower, dried herself off, and tucked herself into her skirt suit. It was far too late to change her mind on which outfit to wear that day, but in lieu of the morning she was having, she wished she’d pulled out the pants. Oh well.

She was six minutes behind schedule when she stepped into the elevator. Fortunately, at this obscene hour of the morning, the elevator didn’t tend to get hung up with multiple stops on the way down. She had enough time to double-check that she’d gotten all the buttons on her coat, turned the volume back up on her cell phone, and remembered to grab her work bag. Her purse was hanging again off her elbow, phone tucked away, and work bag gripped firmly in hand when the elevator doors swished open on the ground floor.

Sean was already coming around from behind the desk when she stepped into the lobby. “Running behind, Ms. Mariner?”

Grace offered him a smile. Sean had been working the graveyard shift as the front desk and doorman for her apartment building for as long as she’d lived there, and she found it comforting to know someone was aware enough of her in the pre-dawn hours to notice if she happened to be off-schedule. She just hated actually being off-schedule. “Slow morning, I guess. Do you know if Filip—”

He slipped ahead of her and pulled the door open, already smiling. “At the curb, ma’am. Have an excellent day.”

Her building really did have wonderful staff. The rent was outrageous, but they were worth every penny. “Thank you, Sean.” She nodded to him as she passed, then to the newer employee who ran the overnight valet. He’d only been there since early November, but she liked him much more than the boy he’d replaced.

Grace moved quickly to set her bags in the backseat, where they were secure and wouldn’t distract her, then ducked into the driver’s seat and cranked up the heat. If she hit the lights right, she could make up the time she’d lost with her wandering mind. Please just don’t let the roads have iced over.

She couldn’t afford to swing by her favorite coffee place. But cutting that treasured detour out of her drive, and clenching her teeth through a critical yellow light, was enough to have Grace parking in her designated spot at her preferred time. She wasn’t entirely sure it was worth the sacrifice of the coffee.

“Good morning, Ms. Mariner,” the security guard at the door said with a tip of his head.

She smiled at him. “Good morning.” She returned the greeting three more times before she was finally up the private elevator and setting her bags down once more, this time in their proper places at her personal desk. The lights were more off than on, because as usual she was first to arrive. That was how she liked it.

She blew out a breath, booted up her computer, repaired her Bluetooth to her phone, and went about waking up the upper offices while she placed that much-needed caffeine order. Three new emails came in while she was doing her sweep, each one pinging in her ear, and Grace returned to her desk. Before she could open the first one—something from Wesley Richardson, so surely nothing exciting—her phone rang.

Grace froze at her sister’s name on the Caller ID. It wasn’t yet six in the morning. She couldn’t fathom why her sister would be calling. She glanced around from her mostly window-walled vantage point, able to see that her boss hadn’t arrived yet, and accepted the call. Just in case it was important. “Cait? What’s going on?”

On the other end of the line, Caitlin Hawkins-Burke sighed as if gravely inconvenienced. “Good morning to you, too, Gracie. Have they eroded your manners in New Jersey?”

Grace frowned, letting her eyes skim over the words on the screen in front of her. It was easy enough to at least filter out the spam emails that always slipped through the system. “You’ll have to forgive me for not assuming this is a social call, considering the hour. But if you’d rather discuss manners, we could talk about how rude it is to call to chat when you know I’m at work.”

Caitlin made a scoffing sound. “I’m sure the De Salvo brothers have a dozen secretaries. Spare your sister five minutes. We barely even talked over the holidays, you’re clearly working too hard.”

Grace sat back in her chair to avoid compulsively breaking something. Or worse, throwing something she might need later across the room. “Cait, how many times do I have to tell you? I’m not a secretary . I would expect a lawyer to understand that.” Movement in her peripheral vision caught her eye and Grace pushed out a breath. “I don’t have five minutes for you right now, anyway. So if no one’s dying, I have to go. Call me back if there’s something important.”

She disconnected to the sound of her sister’s satisfyingly undignified sputtering and looked up again in time to see the CEO of DS Industries, Dante De Salvo, stride into the spacious room that functioned as her office. She pushed to her feet before she even registered the pair of steaming coffees in his hands. “Good morning, Mr. De Salvo.”

He held out the cup in his left hand, the office light briefly reflecting off the uniquely stylized wedding band that decorated his ring finger. “I heard you were waiting on a delivery, thought this might tide you over. Hard time getting ready this morning, Grace?”

She smiled almost sheepishly, accepted the cup, and allowed herself five seconds to breathe in the aroma. It wasn’t from her favorite local shop, but the office did supply good coffee, too. “You could say that.” She certainly couldn’t explain that morning’s particularly hang-ups to her boss, who also happened to be the brother of her ill-advised crush.

His head tipped to the side. “Work call or personal?”

She blinked at him. The main hall was paneled with glass between the lobby space and the elevator, enabling her to see who came and went, but she still felt surprised he’d noticed from there that she had been speaking to someone. “My sister,” she said. She shrugged. “It didn’t seem important, so I told her I couldn’t talk.”

Dante sipped at his coffee, which also looked to be from the office supply judging from the cup, before saying, “I can probably give you a few minutes if you need to call her back.”

Grace shook her head. “She’ll pester me if it really was urgent. It’s nothing to worry about, sir.” She took a large swallow of the deliciously scalding liquid in her own cup, then lowered back to her chair. “I haven’t gotten through the emails yet, but there is a new one from Richardson.” She skimmed the subject line and winced. “He doesn’t sound like he’s come around.”

Dante grunted and continued forward. “Read it, but let it wait unless it sounds compelling. We have more amenable business to tackle today.” He paused at the door to his private office and glanced over his shoulder. “Iris should be dropping by around noon for lunch. Keep my calendar clear.”

“Of course, Mr. De Salvo.” Grace reached for a pen, switched her coffee to her other hand, and jotted a note to herself while her boss slipped into his office. It was up to him whether or not his mid-morning meeting ended in time, but she could certainly not schedule anything that conflicted. He didn’t have another appointment before two, and likely he knew that. She fought back a giggle as she returned her attention to the emails. She’d never known her scowly boss had it in him to be such an enamored, doting husband, but he definitely was. She found it adorable.

She gulped down some more coffee and opened the oldest email. It was possible some part of her was also jealous. Not in the coveting-her-friend’s-man way, but in the lonely-nights way. It was hard to date when her life was consumed by work, and the few times she did get out to try, they inevitably ended in disaster. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a third date. Hell, she could hardly remember the last time she’d had a first date. So she figured she was allowed to feel a few twinges of discontent as she sat on the sidelines and watched other people do the romantic things.

It would probably also really help if she could get Romeo out of her head. She could not afford to even indulge that fantasy, not with how closely she worked with his brother—and sometimes the man himself.

The thought was barely through her head when her gaze alighted on another email that had come in overnight. It was addressed to her, requesting Dante’s attention, but it was from Romeo’s assistant. Something twisted in Grace’s stomach as she skipped ahead to click on it, her eyes soaking up the abrupt message.

You have got to be kidding me.

Grace blew out a breath, gulped down the last of her coffee, and pushed to her feet. She strode across the space between her desk and her boss’s door and knocked twice.

“Come in, Grace.”

She took only a single step inside, unsurprised to see him on his own computer. She didn’t wait for him to turn his stare on her before speaking. “Tina emailed in her resignation last night, effective immediately. She says she’s sick of these Jersey winters and is moving somewhere warmer.”

Dante leaned back in his chair, looking at her now. “Romeo’s Tina?”

Grace fought to keep her displeasure at the simple question off her face. “Yes, sir.”

Dante’s brow pinched. “See if you can convince her to come in for at least a couple of days while we find a stand-in. Remind her about her employee agreement.”

Grace nodded. “Yes, sir.” She slipped from the room and reached straight for the phone as soon as her butt hit the chair. If Tina refused to come in and do the bare minimum, the slack would fall to her . And no matter how much she liked and might even desire to work closer to Romeo, Grace was only one woman. She couldn’t do two full-time jobs simultaneously.

Tina answered after the third ring, sounding exhausted. Or half asleep, maybe. “You must’ve got my email.”

Grace drummed her perfectly manicured nails on the desktop. “Yes, Tina, I got your email. And we both know you can’t just walk out without notice. You signed a contract that stipulates—”

“I don’t care,” Tina snapped. “Do you know what I do care about? My heater cut out two days ago, and somehow it doesn’t matter that I can afford to fix it, I can’t get anyone to do the fucking job. Or find the part. I’m fucking cold, Grace. And I’m sick of it. Frankly, I’m sick of that hyper-demanding, ungrateful job, too. Everything gets dumped in our laps and those bastards barely remember to say ‘thank you’ when we save their asses. I’m so fucking over it.”

Grace caught herself gaping at a thankfully empty office. “If you hate your job, then you’re right, you should quit.” She sharpened her own tone, unappreciative of being barked at or of the idiocy of expecting to be thanked for doing the things expected of her. “However, that doesn’t mean you get to violate your contract. I really shouldn’t have to explain to you the consequences—”

“What consequences? Losing my last paycheck?” Tina scoffed. “They can keep the damn thing! I’m already out. I left on Saturday. By the time I sent that email, I was out of state. Sorry, Grace, but I wouldn’t come back right now if you put a gun to my head.” She hung up before Grace could do more than draw breath to respond.

Grace bit her lips to hold in her frustration. Of all the people. She hadn’t exactly been friends with Tina, but the woman had been assistant to the COO for years. If anyone should have understood the mess she was making and now dumping in someone else’s lap, it was her. She had a lot of nerve for claiming to hate the unfair workload of the job. She seemed to have a lot of attitude in general, actually.

Blowing out a hard breath, Grace went back into the email and forwarded it to her boss along with a message relaying the phone call she’d just had. She debated CC’ing the email to Romeo, whom she noticed had not been included in the original, but opted to not overstep. A decision which she found herself questioning even after the task was done. If she weren’t feeling hyper self-conscious about all things Romeo, would she have hesitated to include him?

She couldn’t say.

So she pushed the concern as far from her mind as she could and aimed her attention to her remaining emails. It was finally six o’clock, the rest of the staff should have started pouring in, and that meant her preferred coffee order should be on its way up the elevator any minute. She still had another email of Wesley Richardson’s whining to get through, now she had to put together at least some basic criteria for a new assistant position as well as begin evaluating in-house employees for eligibility, and she had at least a dozen follow-up calls to slog through before noon.

None of which she had the chance to get started on before the desk phone rang, demanding her attention. It seemed one of their newer foreign market contracts, based in Ireland, had been keeping an eye on the clock. Time to work.

Romeo really hated February. Mostly he hated it because it was cold as fucking Antarctica, and he’d had more nightmares than he knew how to process thinking of all the ways the icy roads and stupid-ass drivers could kill his little girl without even trying. But he’d hated it before he became a father, too. It was February. The month where everything was filtered through shades of sparkling pink and everything revolved around romance. No one, not even his brothers, understood what it had been like growing up with the name Romeo and having to endure all that expectation.

Not that he hadn’t gone through a phase of trying his level best to live up to it, too.

Now he had a school-aged daughter and he was starting to have new nightmares. Nightmares about the day she didn’t see boys outside the family as gross and annoying. His hands were bloody enough, frankly, and even Dante frowned on hurting kids.

“Daddy! Where’s my jacket?” Lucia’s voice carried from down the hall, the pout as clear as if she were standing in front of him.

Romeo tossed back the last of his breakfast coffee and set the mug in the sink. “Be more specific, Lucy. You’ve got five .” And though it felt like she came back a little older and a little less his baby girl each time she went off to school, he knew they needed to get their asses in the car. Icy roads or not. So he strode from the kitchen and off toward the foyer closet, where he knew she was.

Sure enough, the closet door was wide open and three different perfectly acceptable coats were tossed on the floor. Little Lucia De Salvo was nowhere in sight, though her backpack, with her favorite airplane keychain dangling from the zipper, rested beside the door. Romeo sighed. “Lucy, we need to get going or you’ll be late.”

“I can’t find it!” Lucy jumped out of the closet, her brown eyes big and pleading. “Where’s my sunset sky jacket? The one with all the pretty colors and the clouds!” She made senseless motions with her hands while she talked, as if her movements would paint the image for him.

He didn’t need her to, of course. “Lucy,” Romeo said, moving to rest a hand on her shoulder. “It’s at the drycleaner, remember? It got dirty last week. I’ll pick it up on my way home today, I promise.”

She latched on to his sleeve. “Can we go now? I want to wear it! Please!”

Romeo sighed and scooped up the faux-fur trimmed winter coat in shades of blue. “We don’t have time, princess.” He wrapped the heavy and sufficiently warm material around her shoulders. “Wear this today for me, okay?”

Lucia gave him her best puppy dog eyes. “But—”

He pressed a fingertip to her forehead. “No buts. There’s nothing wrong with this jacket. I promise you’ll have the other one for tomorrow. Now, button up while I clean this mess so we can get going.”

Lucia scrunched up her face but didn’t argue again.

Somehow, Romeo managed to get Lucia out the door and all the way to school without incident. He watched from the side of the SUV as she disappeared into the building, as he always did. This was his least favorite part of the day, no matter the season.

His phone buzzed in his pocket almost the instant she was out of sight. He answered without checking the ID. “Yeah?”

“Still stalking Lucy at the school gate?” his elder brother, Dante, asked.

Romeo grunted, turned, and ducked back into the warmth of the vehicle. He shouldered the phone to buckle himself in and motioned for Mo to get moving while he talked. “Hilarious. I can’t wait to throw this back at you in like six years.” He was genuinely looking forward to that, but he’d make sure to save the barbs for when Iris was out of earshot. She didn’t deserve them.

Dante actually chuckled. “You underestimate me, little brother. I’m going to buy the fucking school.”

Romeo barked out a laugh. “You’re an asshole. What’s so important you couldn’t wait fifteen minutes for me to get to the office?” Fifteen to thirty, anyway, depending on what so-called drama Tina threw at him.

“About that,” Dante said, already calm again. “Come straight to me. There’s something you need to know, and you’ll need to provide input on how we move forward.”

Well, fuck. That didn’t sound good.