A Free Preview of the Broker
The Broker is my nemesis. Now I’m forced to rely on him to protect me.
Dante Colonna. Ferociously competent and distractingly sexy, the heir to the Venetian Mafia is my enemy.
My boss.
My abusive ex’s brother.
But when danger comes calling, he’s the only one who can protect me and my young daughter.
And in exchange, he wants just one thing…
Me .
The Broker is a standalone enemies-to-lovers mafia romance with a single mom hacker heroine and an ultra-competent hero who will do whatever it takes to get her. No cliffhanger. HEA guaranteed.
* * *
VALENTINA
When you’re a hacker working for the Venetian mafia, there aren’t many opportunities for field missions. It’s mostly desk work—shoring up our defenses against incursions, accessing people’s information, that kind of thing. Most of the time, I work out of my home office. I’ve been here for almost ten years, and I’ve never been out in the field, not even once.
Today’s the exception.
It’s a bright November day. The sun shines down on us, summer seemingly reluctant to relinquish its grip on northern Italy. I’m sitting in a car on the outskirts of Bergamo, palms sweating and nerves on edge, waiting to get the all-clear from our security chief before I embark on my first field mission.
I’m here to steal Salvatore Verratti’s computer.
Verratti is the head of the Bergamo Mafia. He seems to have formed an alliance with a Russia Mafia outfit to smuggle guns through Northern Italy into France and the UK. This makes no sense. A partnership with the Russians is the first step on a road that will end with the bratva taking over Verratti’s territory, and he knows it.
But something’s made him desperate. Either the Russians have something on him, or he’s broke.
After weeks of searching, I’ve tracked down the location of the Verratti server to a ramshackle farmhouse just outside Bergamo. The answers I seek are in there.
Now, I just have to go in and get them.
Andreas, an up-and-coming soldier in the Venice mafia, drums his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel and gives me a sideways glance. “You look nervous,” he says. “There’s nothing to worry about. Verratti isn’t there. The only person in the farmhouse is an old caretaker. My baby sister could take him, and she’s the same size as you.” He grins. “Maybe I should call Cecelia. She lives close by and can be here in less than ten minutes.”
“I’m not nervous,” I lie, tamping down my irritation. Andreas is concerned. His voice isn’t condescending, and he’s not hinting that I’m not strong enough for this. Not like Dante would. I tap my earpiece. “Leo, what’s the holdup? It’s almost twelve. Are we good to go?”
Leonardo Cesari, our security chief, answers immediately. “Not yet.”
Every noon, the caretaker leaves to eat lunch at the local pub, and he’s gone for an hour. That’s our window, and it’s tightening every minute we sit here. “Why not? We’re ten minutes away from the farmhouse, and I’m going to need all the time I can get.”
“I have orders to wait,” Leo replies calmly.
“Orders from who? The padrino?”
Leo hesitates for an instant too long before answering my question. I immediately have a bad feeling about this. If Leo doesn’t want to tell me why we’re stalled, it means that the order to wait didn’t come from the padrino.
It came from Dante Colonna.
The Broker.
Second-in-command of the Venetian Mafia, my daughter’s uncle (it’s complicated, okay?) and my personal nemesis.
Ugh.
I’m about to open my mouth and say something cutting and unwise when I glance in the rearview mirror. A vintage cherry-red Ferrari roars toward us and screeches to a stop in front of our Fiat. The driver’s door swings open, and Dante gets out.
He’s wearing a white linen shirt and expensive jeans that hug his muscular thighs. His dark hair is styled perfectly, and his smoky gray eyes are hidden behind sunglasses. He looks like he stepped out of a fashion magazine.
The devil has no business looking this good.
He strides toward us and opens Andreas’s door. “I’m taking over,” he says to the foot soldier, his voice a low rumble. “Head back to Venice.”
Andreas was hurt this summer, and he told me on the drive here that he’s been looking forward to getting back in the field. But when Dante gives him his marching orders, he doesn’t say a word in protest. Traitor. Instead, his eyes dart to the Ferrari. “Should I drive your car back?” he asks, a little too eagerly.
Dante gives him a long glance. “No. Find a different way back.” He finally deigns to look at me. “Hello, Valentina.”
I wait until he puts the car in motion to reply. “Dante,” I reply shortly. “How’s Andreas going to get back? Walk? Would it kill you to let somebody drive your precious car?”
“No, but if he damages it, I might have to kill him.”
What? My eyes fly to his expressionless face. I have no idea if he’s joking, and I don’t want to find out. “What are you doing here, anyway?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I’m your security.”
I give him a derisive glance, irritation bubbling up inside me. “Don’t you have anything better to do? You should get a hobby. I hear knitting is good for the nerves.” I rest my gaze on his strong hands and neatly manicured nails. “Are you even capable of getting your hands dirty anymore?”
Ignoring my taunting, he calmly changes gear. “Let’s hope we don’t have to find out.”
Fifteen minutes later, we park the car out of sight and arrive at the farmhouse on foot. The place looks deserted. It rained last night, and only one set of car tracks is in the mud—the caretaker’s, leaving for lunch.
There is nobody here, but my heart still races. I am all too aware that I have a nine-year-old daughter, Angelica, and her only two blood relatives are about to walk into enemy territory. If something were to happen to us. . .
If you don’t want Dante to see you as a victim, don’t act like one.
I take a deep breath and then another. Dante pretends he doesn’t see my fear, a kindness I wasn’t expecting. “Shall we?” he asks, putting on his earpiece and opening his door.
“Yes.” I get out of the car, and the two of us walk to the entrance, Dante a half-step in front of me. The sturdy wooden door is locked, but he picks it in under a minute. I must look reluctantly impressed because he holds out his hands, his lips curling into a smug smile. “Looks like they’re good for some things.”
So self-satisfied. I ignore him and launch a drone in the air. It’s programed to fly in concentric circles around its launch spot and transmit live camera footage back to headquarters. “Leo, can you see the drone feed?”
It takes him a moment to respond. “Yes, I have eyes now.”
“Good.” I let myself relax a little. We still don’t have cameras inside the farmhouse, but at least we’ll know if anyone approaches the perimeter.
Dante turns the handle and pushes the door open. “Let’s go.”
We walk quickly through the farmhouse. The interior looks exactly like I’d expect from the outside. The curtains are faded; the couch is threadbare. The floor is bare, covered with a thin layer of dust. The kitchen sink houses dirty dishes, and the refrigerator looks like it’s even older than Dante’s precious Ferrari.
Everything looks exactly like it should until we come to the cellar door. The cellar door that’s shut and locked with a Yale lock that needs a ten-digit code to open.
Crap.
Dante looks at the lock and then at me. “Can you get in?”
“In seven hours,” I mutter. Brute-force hacking a ten-digit numeric code. . . We don’t have enough time for that. I plug my codebreaker into the port and pull my laptop out of my backpack.
Dante folds his arms across his chest, his bulging biceps straining his sleeves. “Valentina, I hate to point out the obvious, but we don’t have seven hours.”
With heroic effort, I resist the urge to strangle him. “Shockingly, I know that.” Salvatore Verratti is not computer savvy; he’s unlikely to pick ten random digits. I look up his birthday—January 12, 1979—and type 01121979 into the codebreaker. That’s eight of the ten digits. Most people pick easy-to-remember passwords. With any luck, the Bergamo head is one of them.
The birthday doesn’t work, but the next date I try, the date Verratti got married, is a hit. Who’d have thought he was a romantic? Three minutes after I started, the lock clicks open. I resist giving Dante a smug grin and get to my feet. “Shall we?”
A gun appears in Dante’s hand. “I’ll go first,” he says. “Wait here until I give the all-clear. If you hear me shout out, don’t follow me.” He holds my gaze in his. “Do you understand, Valentina? If I’m in trouble, get the hell out. That’s an order.”
I snap to attention. “Yes, sir,” I say, giving him a mocking salute. “Whatever you say, sir. Or,” I pull a small drone out, no bigger than the palm of my hand. “I could just send a camera in.”
He gives me a speaking look. “So that’s where the budget goes,” he murmurs, cracking the cellar door open.
I send the drone swooping in, my eyes on my phone screen. “Nobody in sight,” I say after a moment.
He steps in front of me, his solid body shielding me from imaginary harm. “Stay behind me.”
“As you wish,” I mutter with another roll of my eyes. Dante is technically my boss, but the master-of-the-universe act gets pretty old. I lift my chin in the air, step around him, and take the stairs down into the cellar.
The cellar is empty except for a desk in the middle of the room. On it is the server. I take one look at it and swear out loud.
“Problem?”
“It’s ancient.”
That’s not the only problem. Leo’s voice isn’t in my ear either—the cellar is a dead zone. I try not to feel spooked as I boot up the computer. It takes forever before I can navigate the settings, and I swear again. “There’s no built-in Wi-Fi.” I look at the back. “No USB port either.”
Dante, to his credit, immediately identifies the problem. “You won’t be able to save data off it.” He nods decisively. “We’ll just take the computer.”
“No need.” I rummage through my backpack and triumphantly pull out a compact disk. “I came prepared.” I slide the disk into the CD-ROM drive. “Give me a few minutes.”
He taps his earpiece, a frown on his face. “Hurry up.”
I start copying data files. The process is glacially slow. It takes seventeen minutes to transfer everything I need, and my nerves are on edge the entire time. Finally, I hit eject and grab my disk. “Done.”
Dante lifts his hand, a tense look on his face. Then I hear it. Footsteps above us.
Shit, shit, shit.
His grip tightens on the hilt of a gleaming knife, his eyes focused and determined. He holds up three fingers. Three men, then. “I need to use you as a diversion, Valentina,” he whispers into my ear. “Can you scream? The shriller, the better.”
I nod, my heart hammering in my chest. We’re in enemy territory, and I have no illusions about my nonexistent combat skills. It’s three against one, and if something were to happen to Dante, I’d be defenseless.
Angelica is nine.
The room plunges into darkness. I instinctively turn to Dante, but he’s gone, melted into the shadows. For a moment, panic fills me, and then my brain starts to work again. He’s not going to leave me here. The Broker is like superglue, sticky, and impossible to get rid of.
I open my mouth and emit a scream, loud and shrill.
The men upstairs respond immediately, throwing open the cellar door and running down the stairs. I have only a brief glimpse of bulging muscles and guns, and then. . .
And then Dante attacks.
He moves with lightning speed, his movements fluid and precise. My eyes are still adjusting to the dimness, but I see enough. Dante steps between the two guys in the rear, smashes his fist into the jaw of the man on the right, shifts to the left and drives his knife into the other man’s shoulder. The guy in front barely has time to pivot before the Broker throat punches him and, for good measure, stabs him in the thigh.
When he’s done, all three men are unconscious.
Dante pats them down, taking their guns and knives. Then he holds his hand out to me, his knuckles covered in blood. “It’s good that they didn’t see our faces,” he says. “And to answer your earlier question, Valentina, I am capable of getting my hands dirty. Shall we go?”
My mouth has fallen open. Three against one, and the fight was over in seconds. Reluctant admiration stirs in me. That was. . .
Impressive .
Terrifying.
Hot as hell.
Remembering to close my mouth, ignoring Dante’s outstretched hand, I step over the bodies on the floor. “Sure.”
* * *
DANTE
I was forced to use Valentina as bait .
She could have been hurt.
Shot.
Killed.
As we sprint back to our getaway vehicle, I’m so angry I’m shaking. “Drive,” I growl. If I take the wheel right now, I might wreck the car.
What the hell is Valentina doing, barreling headfirst into enemy territory? She should have told me if she had a lead, and I would have sent somebody into that farmhouse to get the damn computer she needed.
No. She didn’t do that. Instead, she put herself in danger.
I seethe in silence as we drive back to where I parked my Ferrari. “Will those men live?” Valentina asks as she drives.
“Probably,” I say tersely. “Pity.”
She gives me a sidelong glance, taking in the rage in my eyes and my tightly clenched fists. “I’m not fragile, you know.”
She’s looking for a fight, and I’m in no condition to give her one. I’m too on edge. I take a deep breath and make myself calm down. “You’ve never shot anyone. You’ve never killed anyone.”
“That’s your problem? Give me a gun, then.”
I count to ten in my head. “Guns require training, Valentina. And it needs a certain ruthlessness to hold a weapon up and shoot a man between the eyes. That’s not who you are.”
“You’re saying I’m weak.”
I remember the first time I saw Valentina ten years ago. My brother Roberto was using her as a punching bag, hitting her hard enough that she ended up in the hospital. She was lying on the bed, her face and body covered with bruises, two broken ribs, and her arm in a cast, waiting stoically to find out if she’d lost her baby. Valentina Linari is the strongest person I know. “You’re not weak. You’re human.”
“And what are you?”
“I’m a killer,” I say bluntly. “The difference between you and me, Valentina, is that you’ll wait until somebody threatens you to open fire. And I will shoot first.”
Thankfully, Verratti’s goons didn’t see either of us in the darkness. If they’d caught sight of my face, they would have definitely recognized me, and it would have started a war. And if they managed to identify Valentina, figure out who she is. . .
It didn’t happen, I remind myself. Crisis averted. Valentina is safe. I take another calming breath and change the topic for good measure. “Does Angelica like her new school?”
At the mention of her daughter, Valentina’s face softens. “Yes,” she says. “She’s already made a friend.”
“Mabel.”
“If you already knew that, why did you ask me?”
“Angelica knows I worry about her. She tells me what I want to hear. As does her mother. ” My face hardens as I remember how close to danger we were today. “I never would’ve okayed this excursion, and you know it. You took advantage of the fact that I was away from Venice to convince Leo to go along with this ridiculous scheme.”
“I did no such thing,” she snaps. “We’re getting nowhere with Verratti. We needed the information on that computer, so I did what was necessary to get it.”
“You didn’t need to go in yourself,” I retort. “Any one of the guys could have retrieved that computer for you.”
“Really? And could any of the guys have cracked the cellar door code?” She gives me a smug glance. “Yeah, I didn’t think so.”
“Don’t tell me you can’t train someone to use your precious hacker gadget, Valentina, because I know that’s not true.” Stubborn woman. She drives me crazy. “I didn’t think I had to explicitly forbid you from doing stupid things, but here we are. No more field missions. No more farmhouse visits in hostile territory. No more idiotic, unnecessary risks. Do I make myself clear?”
Her smug look vanishes. “Why not?” she demands. “Why can’t I go into the field?”
“You have a child.”
“So?” She gives me a truly murderous glare. “That’s sexist. I don’t see you worry about the men with families under your command.”
I open my mouth to respond and think better of it. For fuck’s sake. I’m not being sexist; I’m being protective. Ten years ago, my brother beat Valentina so hard she almost died. It wasn’t the first time he hit her, either. He’d been beating her for a year and a half.
Nobody in Venice intervened. Nobody stepped up to defend her.
I didn’t know he was abusing her, but I should have. I knew Roberto was a bully, quick to anger. When we were children, I was his favorite target. And there were whispers. Roberto is out of control. He’s drinking too much, flying into rages at the slightest provocation. He’s a favorite of the padrino, and it’s gone to his head. His poor girlfriend. . .
I should have paid attention to the rumors, but I didn’t. My brother wasn’t my problem, and I was in Rome, busy with my own career. There was a power vacuum in the capital, and I was determined to take advantage. I worked for various organizations, increasing my skills and making my reputation.
And the entire time I was ruthlessly maneuvering for power, Roberto was beating Valentina.
When I saw her in that hospital bed, bruised and battered, I looked in the mirror and didn’t like what I saw. Sure, I didn’t hit her myself, but I put my career ahead of her safety. I was culpable.
That day, I made a promise. I could never atone for my past failures. But I could make sure it never happened again.
And I intend to keep my vow.
“None of my men barge into danger with such a reckless disregard for their own safety,” I snap. “And all of my men are trained. They know how to defend themselves.”
“Perfect,” she bites out, screeching to a halt inches away from my Ferrari. “I’ll sign up for shooting lessons. I’m sure Leo will train me in no time.”
Leo chooses that moment to speak up. “Leave me out of it,” he says in our earpieces. “I want no part of your lover’s quarrel.”
Valentina snorts out loud. “Not even if he was the last man on Earth, Leo.”
I roll my eyes. “Because men are lining up to date stubborn women who refuse to see good sense. Trust me, sparrow. I feel the same way.”
Keep reading The Broker, an enemies-to-lovers+forbidden love+stuck together mafia romance!