Married to the Mafia (De Salvo Family #4)

1. Fuck Mondays

one

Fuck Mondays

Brandi waited until the last possible second to flip on her blinker, thankful that the odd time of day meant traffic in the area was light. Her gaze flicked again to the rearview mirror, then quickly out to the side mirrors as she turned the car into the parking lot she needed.

A breath of mixed frustration and relief rushed from her when the mid-sized SUV she was sure was following her zoomed past.

Asshole. She didn’t know who owned, or was known to drive, the SUV. She only knew that she’d seen it around nearly everywhere she went for over a week. She’d never seen anyone climb out or ducking in. It was just there, parked nearby or coasting slightly behind her in traffic. Everywhere. But whoever it was never got close enough for her to see inside, so she wasn’t even sure what her apparent stalker looked like.

Though she certainly had a theory as to how she’d ended up with one, and the thought was enough to piss her off all on its own.

Brandi pulled into the closest available parking space a little too abruptly and killed the engine. This was not the time to be thinking about things she couldn’t do anything about. Particularly not things that would only get her in trouble if her bad mood got called out. She tugged the keys from the ignition, dropped them in her purse, and took a deep breath. Forget the asshole, Brandi. You are a strong, capable woman. And you have work to do.

She pulled the tray of coffee she’d managed not to spill from the passenger seat, beeped her car locked, and fast-walked into the building. Winter had fully melted away and the summer heat was building with its usual too-fast pace. Barely eleven in the morning, barely the second week of June, and it was already too warm for sleeves.

Thank goodness she didn’t still need to wear long sleeves all the time.

“One of those for me, Brandi?” a colleague called as she walked into his line-of-sight. She wasn’t entirely sure it was the coffee he was eyeing, but she chose to pretend for both their sakes.

“You had your chance, Tony,” she replied without breaking stride. She was only one woman, she couldn’t bring back coffee for the whole damn office. The fact that she’d agreed to bring it for anyone was a kindness she only showed because it was expected of the entire staff. Today was just her day.

Behind her already, Tony made an exaggerated sound of disappointment.

She continued on her way, striding through the front space and into the elevator. She barely had time to reshoulder her laden-down purse before arriving on the third floor, where she stepped out again and made her way to the back offices. Most of the heads she passed spared her no glances, as the sparse top floor workers were generally more prone to tunnel vision.

Most of them also questioned Brandi’s placement among them. It wasn’t a secret, though it had been a good three weeks since any dissatisfaction had last been mentioned to her directly. She didn’t typically let it get to her, as her work spoke for itself.

Her new stalker was starting to rattle her, though. She could feel it.

“Ah, my Goddess of Caffeinated Salvation,” Norberto declared, drawing her attention. “Tell me they weren’t out of my caramel.”

Brandi lifted her lips in a smile, stopped, and pulled the front left cup from its spot. “One far too sweet, extra caramelly coffee concoction, per your specifications.” She handed it over with the label facing out so he could see that it was at least written up the way he’d wanted. If the barista had made it wrong, she couldn’t fix that.

Norberto, whom most of the staff called Berto, grinned and immediately popped the lid off in order to draw in a deep lungful. “Bless you, goddess.”

Brandi rolled her eyes. “You don’t even sound like you need the boost. I bet you could sell that for twice what it cost.”

“Never. I’m completely faking right now.” He winked at her, dropped the lid into the garbage pail beneath his desk, and promptly twisted back toward his elongated monitor. “Mm, so good,” he mumbled as he took his first sip.

Brandi shook her head and continued past his desk, over to the younger man who technically shared her office space. Granted, one could fit a living room in between their stations, so it wasn’t like they crowded each other. “Miguel,” she said as she neared. “I’ve got your mint mocha.” She pulled the next front drink free and held it out.

Twenty-one-year-old Miguel glanced up from his screen, gaze dropping straight to the cup. “Awesome. Fuck Mondays, I swear.” He took the cup and immediately tipped it back as if it were a shot.

Brandi couldn’t help the pinching of her brow. “You okay?”

“Oh yeah. Just putting out someone else’s fire.” He shrugged. “Nothin’ I haven’t gotten used to. Thanks for the coffee.”

Fair, I guess. She knew there was more going on at the office than she was officially privy to at any given time, and that meant it was better not to pry too deeply. So if Miguel wasn’t offering information—a rarity for him, the boy could run his mouth with the best of them—then she wasn’t going to push harder.

Instead, Brandi adjusted course and continued into the back office. The door was ajar, which meant no private meeting was in process, so she let herself in. “I brought coffee,” she said as soon as she was sure her boss wasn’t on the phone.

Michele De Salvo—who had fired two different people for using his formal name, as he preferred Mike or Mikey—pushed his office chair to the side enough that he could lean around his veritable wall of monitors to see her approach. His dark brows arched over his bright blue eyes. “You finish that checkup?”

Right, actual work. Brandi carefully pried his cup from the holder and set it on the coaster on his desk, then set about releasing her own drink. “Yes, sir. There was nothing actually wrong with the system. The manager at the establishment had tried clicking on something that wasn’t meant to be altered, and in his attempt to set it back, he made it worse.”

Mikey scoffed and sipped at his coffee. “I take it you got the system back in order?”

Brandi nodded. “Only took a couple minutes.” She allowed herself a moment to gently swirl her iced beverage. “The line at the café took longer.”

She watched him lean back in his chair, gaze roving over his triple-wide, double-stacked line of monitors. His eyes were an even brighter blue than usual thanks to the angle of light streaming in from the windows. Combined with his impeccably clean-shaven jaw and just slightly disheveled head of hair, there was no denying the man was gorgeous. If he were the kind who took egregious advantage of that she would never have been able to take this job—it was hard enough to focus sometimes as it was.

He set the cup onto the desk. “Was something wrong out there?”

Brandi blinked. “Excuse me?”

His gaze snapped back to her. “You are aware this property is surveilled from almost every angle, right? Was there a particular reason you came whipping into the parking lot?”

Her mouth dropped open. For a single second, she was tempted to tell him.

He was a damn De Salvo, after all. If she was right that he didn’t hate her, if she’d proven her worth at all as an employee, he might care enough to help her out with her stalker problem.

But she couldn’t. Because she was sure she knew who was behind the asshole, and she needed to handle that herself. I just need to woman up and deal with it. “Got too wrapped up in my music is all,” she lied. “I nearly missed the turn.” She hated lying, but that didn’t mean she was lousy at it.

The way Mikey’s brow furrowed still made her question her skill.

He took a slow sip of his coffee and she was pretty sure she blinked first as he swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. Not that they were having a staring contest. It was stupid to have something as juvenile as a staring contest with her boss and absolutely idiotic to have one with a De Salvo.

“If you say so,” he finally said. He rolled back into position behind his monitors. “Get back to work, Richardson.”

Brandi nodded pointlessly. “Of course, sir.” She did not feel disappointed that he was dropping it when she was almost positive he’d seen through her lie. Which therefore meant she was not annoyed with herself, because she would have to have something to be annoyed over. And she didn’t. She dropped the empty drink carrier into the guest garbage in Mikey’s office before slipping out again.

If she was annoyed at anything, she was annoyed that after some three months of employment, her boss still insisted on addressing her by her surname. She was the only one in the office he made that distinction with. It always felt like a stabbing wound when he bit out her name, because they both knew she was no longer the one he was thinking of when he said it.

“You were right,” she said to Miguel as she passed his desk enroute to her own. “Fuck Mondays.”

She dropped into her seat, removed her tablet and phone from her purse, then shoved the purse itself beneath the desk as she woke up her side-by-side monitors. With a couple of clicks she had re-opened the program she was supposed to be focusing on, and with a little boost from her drink, she set herself to work. The best thing to do when she could do nothing about the more pressing problems weighing her down was to simply lose herself in work, and that was what she loved about her job. There was always something on-hand that allowed her to do just that.

Brandi disregarded the grumbling of her stomach while she worked to unscramble a particular set of numbers on her screen. The project she’d been assigned had expected parameters, but she had every intention of delivering an end result product that surpassed those baseline goals. It might even shut up the naysayers for a while. First, though, she had to make sure her product wasn’t bogged down with superfluous code or, worse, bugs.

She pulled her hands off the keyboard, stretching her fingers while her mind worked out the next steps, and suddenly her chair was yanked backward. Brandi let out a sharp yelp as she found herself rolled from her desk and spun around, being just as suddenly—jarringly—stopped once she was facing away from her desk.

Mikey didn’t even flinch at the impact of the chair against his leg. He reached down and caught the armrest, keeping it still and bringing himself well within her personal space. “Did you happen to get up, grab food, and cram an entire thirty-minute break into the fifteen minutes I was away?”

Brandi steadied her breathing, but had less success over her heartrate. Before she could open her mouth to acknowledge his strange question, her stomach growled loudly.

Mikey’s brow furrowed. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“Um, it’s—” She shot a glance toward the windows, belatedly realizing the electric shades were half lowered and the light filtering in was significantly warmer than it should have been. “Crap.” She winced as her inner voice escaped for not the first time. “It’s later than I realized,” she finally said, dragging her gaze forward in spite of the danger.

“It’s after four. You haven’t gotten up from your desk since your coffee run, Richardson.” Mikey straightened but did not step away. “I appreciate your enthusiasm for the work, but it puts the company in a bad position if you don’t take your breaks.”

She wanted to say something snappy, but she bit her tongue. He was her boss, and she recognized he wasn’t wrong. “I’m sorry, Mr. De Salvo. I lost track of time.”

Mikey indicated the station he’d pulled her from. “Save your progress and close up. You’re done for today.” He didn’t wait for her response before turning and striding back toward his office.

Brandi’s jaw dropped and she stared at his retreating back for a full five seconds. Yes, she should have paid attention to the time instead of relying on presumably inevitable interruptions to drag her focus away from the project. But was he really so pissed over a couple of missed breaks that he was sending her home early? What sort of punishment even is that?

She hurried through the motions of saving her work and closing everything down the way they were supposed to, then double-checked her phone to make sure she hadn’t missed a message from any superiors. Her frustration tripled. Not only had she not missed any demands for work, which was odd but not impossible, she had two texts from her father.

Opting to ignore them for the time being, she shoved the device into her purse and shouldered the bag as she turned toward Mikey’s office. If she was off the clock, she wasn’t blowing anything off by speaking up.

“What the hell was the that?” Brandi demanded as she came to stand off to the side of her boss’s desk, to make sure he could see her balling her fists on her hips.

Mikey faced her and arched a brow. “I beg your pardon?”

She gestured out toward the office behind them absently. “You practically manhandled me back there. Over a whopping forty minutes of missed breaks, which I do not have a habit of skipping. It’s not like I was slacking on the job or being a nuisance. If I could get like two more—”

Mikey was on his feet and in her space again before she realized he’d moved, standing close enough that his breath tickled her skin though he wasn’t technically touching her. “Be careful about the accusations you throw, Richardson,” he said, voice low. “I haven’t come close to manhandling you.” He reached up, slowly, and with achingly deliberate movements curled two fingers around the strap of her purse. His knuckle rested just above her collar bone, the heat of his touch warm even through her shirt.

She wasn’t sure if he tugged her closer or if he leaned in, but she was absolutely sure she should not have liked suddenly finding herself nearly nose to nose with Mikey De Salvo.

“You’ll get those two hours tomorrow, not a minute sooner.” Had he lowered his voice again? Was it her imagination? “I need you focused, not hyper- focused. Tomorrow is still ahead of the deadline.” He released her purse and took a single step back, putting a small amount of distance between them. “Now go eat something, and no more of this fucking tunnel vision.”

She licked her lips as soon as he turned to resettle in his chair, far too flustered to retain her agitation.

“Was there something else, Richardson?” Mikey asked as his gaze darted across the various displays before him.

A familiar spike shot through her and she remembered what had set her off earlier. Brandi drew a breath, briefly debating her options. It wasn’t worth the effort of the debate. She’d never been good at biting her tongue. “Why am I the only one up here you address by surname?”

“Why does it matter?”

She frowned. “I don’t even know Miguel’s last name. But half the building thinks my name is Richardson.”

“Isn’t it?”

Brandi ground her teeth. “I’ll be frank, then. It feels like a punishment, and one I don’t deserve.”

Mikey finally looked at her again, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands in his lap. “Oh, so you want to have that conversation today.”

It really pissed her off that he could rile her up and then turn around be a complete jackass in the span of two minutes. And what did that say about her? Was she just desperate? That has to be it. She hadn’t had a boyfriend since she’d graduated college. Living at home tended to kill a guy’s interest, and she’d been so busy since she’d finally moved into her own place she hadn’t even looked. This weekend, that has to be a priority. She could not afford to keep lusting after her jackass boss.

Out loud, fortunately, Brandi only said, “If that’s what it takes.”

Mikey made a thoughtful sound and abruptly turned back to his monitors. “I’m busy. Get your project complete and we can work out a time.”

“Are you serious?”

“Go home, eat, do whatever it is you do on your own time.” He swept his mouse in an arc, clicking on something as two of the monitors switched displays. “Goodnight, Richardson .”

Brandi huffed, not caring that he could hear her, and twisted in place. “For the record, at least I tried to talk this stupid thing out. Sir.” She would have loved to slam the door behind her, but of course he had a self-closing door that gently swished shut no matter how forcefully it was flung open. So unsatisfying.

She didn’t know why she’d even applied for this job. Except she did know, and that memory only upset her more.

She waited until she was back in her car to pull her phone from her purse and open her father’s texts. Though she would rather have deleted them unread, or even changed her number and neglected to share it with him altogether. She could do neither, not at her current junction in life, so she forced herself to read the words instead.

Wesley: Come home for dinner tonight.

The second text was just a specification of the time he wanted her to show up. There was no question, no request, no inquiry as to how her day was going or if she might have plans.

Brandi dropped the phone back into her purse and made her way into traffic. Her father wanted her to show up at her childhood home no later than six-fifteen, so she had a little less than two hours. Too bad she really was starving. A woman had an obligation to herself to eat at least one tolerable meal a day, right? She swung into her drive-thru of choice a few minutes later. Given that she did still need to actually eat, get home, shower, and change before heading to her father’s, going to a sit-down restaurant might have been pushing it.

Her stalker was parked across the street from her condo, about half a block from her driveway.

Brandi drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, so tempted to stop and go up to the SUV. But she’d seen that movie, more than once, and she wasn’t na?ve enough to not realize how stupid that could be. I am not handing myself over to a kidnapper. So, again, she kept driving. She continued to pretend to be oblivious. She carefully pulled her purse into her lap as she parked, released her seatbelt as soon as the car was stationary, and hurried to snatch the bag of steaming food off the passenger seat. She fast-walked to her front door, keys in hand, and pivoted in place to shut and lock the door again immediately behind her. Only then did she quiet her alarm before finally blowing out a breath of relief.

Once more she’d made it home without being assaulted.

Once more she’d had the fear of a pending attack of some kind hanging heavily over her.

If that asshole really was working for her father, she was going to kill them both .

Mikey called up the CCTV footage from the elevator, watching as Brandi Richardson stabbed the ground floor button and put her back to the wall. She folded her arms across her chest, her anger still visible, and his lips twitched. The woman had been so much more than he’d expected when he’d reluctantly agreed to hire her.

His eldest brother, Dante, had expressed concern that she was being sent as a spy. It was a reasonable concern, one that Mikey had shared initially. However, she was overqualified for the position she was applying for, regardless of who her father was. So, with his brother’s blessing, he’d made the decision to interview her as normal and simply keep a close watch on the new girl. Most of his staff was family, it was easy enough to make sure someone was always around who could make sure she didn’t get up to no good.

The daughter of Wesley Richardson had quickly proven her worth, objectively. She had skill and a sharp mind that made her a valuable asset.

Worse, it hadn’t taken Mikey long at all to develop something of an infatuation. It wasn’t often he met a woman who spoke his language and didn’t shrink from his prickly attitude. He arguably shouldn’t have moved her up to the third floor, but her work was top-tier. The problem was her willingness to barge into his office uninvited.

And the way she’d lied to him that morning. She hadn’t done that before. That, and the fact that she hadn’t left her desk even once after, had him concerned.

Mikey watched her walk quickly from the elevator, across the parking lot, to her vehicle. She’d extracted her keys before leaving the elevator, but she didn’t beep the car unlocked until she was practically at the door. She didn’t linger beside it, instead ducking inside as soon as she had the door open. The lights blinked again, indicating she’d locked it immediately after. Did she always do that?

He frowned. He didn’t always watch her coming and going. He didn’t know. I’ll have to pay more attention.