The Willing Captive: An Interracial, Mob Romance

PROLOGUE

Blood doesn’t betray blood ... or it shouldn’t.

Those are the rules. But life doesn’t always play by the rules, especially when you’re a mob boss.

CHARLIE

Tears and survival didn’t mix. I’d learned that the hard way when I got kicked out of my mother’s house at sixteen.

THERE’S SOMETHING YOU’RE not telling me Dante. Why did your brother want to know what I’d overheard? What is he so eager to hide that he’d kill to do it? Specifically that he’d kill me to keep it quiet.

Nothing that concerns you.

The hell it doesn’t! I’ve been beaten, choked and threatened with death. If my life is on the line for it, I should at least know what 'it' is. Level with me. Otherwise, I’ll take my chances on saving my own neck.

You’ll do no such thing. And if you think you have any say in this matter Charlie, you are sadly mistaken. You’ll do what I say, when I say, and how I say. Is that clear?

The only man I ever hated more than Dante Grimaldi at that moment was the one who’d tried to rape me at sixteen, and turned my mother against me in the process.

DANTE

The life – the mob life – it costs you in ways you couldn’t even measure. I could forget about it for a few hours, if I forced myself to. Until something happens.

I STARED DOWN AT THE young woman collapsed in my arms, her head lolling heavily against my shoulder. Her hair was all over the place and her dress was askew, revealing way too much of her long legs and the soft skin of her shoulders. If anyone saw us in this position, they’d naturally assume the worst. Little would they know the reality was actually far more horrifying.

MY BROTHER'S NOT A fucking ghost. Find him Matteo, or I’ll find someone who can, I directed, hanging up the phone.

I knew damned well that if my go-to henchmen, Matteo and Leonardo, couldn’t find my brother Stefan, chances were slim to none that anybody else could. And short of putting an actual  bounty on his head, there was little I could do but wait – and hope the Colombians didn't find him before I did.

And waiting it out with Charlie underfoot was becoming the more dangerous option.

ONE WOMAN.

Two brothers.

Hard choices.

And even harder consequences.

Somewhere in the mix, I had to make a choice in order to realize my forever.

Chapter 1

Charlie

I opened my eyes, threw back the covers and shouted at the ceiling, This is some bullshit!

My shoutout for the day at being dirt poor and dog-tired all the time done, I rolled out of bed and stretched. Sleep was reluctant to release its hold and I fought my way out of the fuzzy, dreamy state I was contentedly still ensnared in.

It wasn’t that my dreams were better than my reality. They were quite often a lot worse. But at least I didn’t know where I’d wind up in my dreams. I could be anything and go anywhere. In real life, I was always in San Diego in my dumpy little studio apartment on the too too wrong wrong side of town.

I moved around the partition screen that separated my ‘bedroom’ from the rest of the tiny space, and crossed the few feet to the kitchenette.

Kitchenette? Such a cute little word, right?

Cute my ass. It’s like an ad for a ‘cozy’ apartment. Stay away. It means small and probably shitty as hell.

Anyway, in my cozy kitchenette, I grabbed a slice of white bread and stuck it in the toaster. Breakfast underway, I made myself a cold cup of coffee and stuck it in the microwave. The lights dimmed when I pushed the power button and struggled to brighten again after the brief lapse. It was kind of funny when you thought about it, since the complex I lived in was named Perfection Estates. The wiring in the building was crap, like almost everything else. There was nothing perfect or estate-ish about it.

I leaned my hip against the counter and put my hand to my head as I waited for my coffee to heat and toast to pop up. The beginnings of a headache threatened. Dread? Stress? A lack of caffeine? Probably all three. When it rains, it pours. That’s what my mother used to say.

I stopped that train of thought before it could take root. Thinking of the past wasn’t going to get me anywhere. I had to keep looking to the future, and the nearest, most necessary, event on the horizon was work in an hour.

I grabbed my coffee and toast and headed to my ‘home office,’ which was also my living room and foyer. I sat down on the chair that took up a good third of the available floor space. I reached for my laptop and turned it on. Knowing that it would take more than a few minutes to boot up – since it was three years old and gray painter’s tape held the back to the front – I turned on the TV to listen to the news.

For most people, the news was background noise, something to fill the silence. Living in the ghetto, it was much more for me. It was a roadmap, letting you know which places to avoid altogether, which to pay more attention to, and which were ok – for now. 

The newscaster droned on and on, mostly about the president and the state of the country. When they finally got around to the local stuff, I leaned closer and chewed quieter.

Serial rapist still on the loose. You’d probably be fine if you didn’t fit his preference of curvy and blonde.

Check.

Not especially curvy or blonde.

No worries there.

Home burglaries on the rise. Especially in the southeast portion of the city. Be sure to double check your window and door locks, and activate your alarm before going to bed.

Warning noted.

The three windows in my apartment stayed locked, and the deadbolt did had one its job so far when I was gone.

Gang shooting last night. One dead, one more transported to the hospital in serious but stable condition. If you have any information, call 1-800-KILL-STOP. Must be a new 800 number. Never heard that one before, and I definitely would have remembered it.

Gang activity was spilling over into wealthy areas, which I definitely didn’t have to worry about. That’s probably why they had the new 800 number though.

The media was getting this wrong though. I felt it in my gut. I knew gang shit and this felt way too organized. Most of the so-called gang bangers weren’t that sophisticated. It took years for that to happen – and most of them didn’t live long enough to outgrow the stupid, ‘I got some paper and a glock’ phase. Whatever was going on was much more organized. It seemed more like something a mob would do. Either way, it was far enough away from me that I didn’t have to worry about it.

Maybe I should be an investigative journalist, I thought as I switched off the TV and turned my attention to my laptop, which had finally decided to join the land of the living. I could show these so-called professionals a thing or two. I lived in the hood. I knew the hood. I was the hood! Most of these guys on TV didn’t know what the hell they were talking about when it came to my neighborhood.

You want a story. I could give you a story. I could give you encyclopedias of stories, starting with that rat-ass of a being my mother called a man.

You done lost your mind, I said to myself, firmly dismissing that line of thought. You have to have a fancy degree to even get in one of those big news buildings. You haven’t so much as touched the pavement on the sidewalk of a college, never mind get a degree from one. Another dream deferred, or dead on idea arrival.

Finally rejoining reality, I opened my work email. A couple of dozens emails filled my inbox. I groaned. I wasn’t even there yet and already, I had what looked like at least two full day’s worth of work.  

Time to get my ass in gear so I can pay some bills. I put the dirty dishes in the sink and went to get dressed. I chose a yellow dress, hoping that maybe the happiness of the color would cheer me up at some point during the day. I gathered up everything I needed for work and hit the road. Or more accurately, hit the alley.

The streets were thin and narrow, slithering uneasily back and forth between leaning buildings that were all crammed in together to make use of every inch of available space. The sky was gray, washed-out and polluted from the smoke of constant fires and drifting dirt. Tiny slices of yard sprouted here and there in front of buildings. The illusion of greenery was broken when you got closer and saw it was all just weeds poking through the cracks in the ruined sidewalk.

A girl had to watch her feet when walking, or else risk stepping on the glass of a broken window or smashed bottle. Amazingly, this wasn’t even the worst part of the ghetto. The worst I’d ever seen here were homeless sheltering in alcoves and under stoops. They’d pop out and ask for handouts, scaring the shit out of you if you didn’t know to expect it – and sometimes even when you did.

It was nearer the actual houses, on the border between the ghetto and the city proper, where things got dicey. I understood all too well why. People were crazy-protective over what they considered ‘theirs. Even if they were only renting a house, it was easier to think of as theirs than living in a building filled with other scared, poor, broke strangers. They were the ones who’d shoot you if you looked at them wrong. You had to watch your feet, your back, and be aware of your surroundings, all while pretending you didn’t give a shit either way. From your doorstep to the bus stop, your stress level could rise a hundred fold. This was the real cost of poverty that most of the investigative journalists who covered my slice of life didn’t know how to hone in on. To know it existed, you had to live it.

They hopped in their vans with their expensive camera crews and too-big microphones, interviewed a subject with their prepared questions, and hopped back in the van to go back to their shiny, million-dollar tv studios to ‘cut the story.’ A story that didn’t tell you shit!

To know poverty, you had to live it. Only then did you know the right questions – the important questions – to ask.

I shook my head to clear it, dismissing the anger I could fill building. And that’s another thing about being poor. It made you angry for no reason at all, especially when you saw such wealth just a few miles down the road.

A short bus ride later, I stepped out onto the sidewalk in the business district. Everything was different. Cleaner, brighter, warmer. The streets were wider, lined with greenery. Noisier, too. People shouted and honked their car horns, blasted their music without a care as to whether they’d attract the attention of the police.

This was the city I’d fallen in love with when I arrived eight years ago. Being out in the open with the sights and scents and sounds all around, my chest swelled with hope and anticipation. I told myself that if I kept waking up each morning and working hard, things would turn around. I had to believe that or I’d never get out of bed every morning.

A tall, handsome stranger with a head full of curly black hair and gold, tiger-like eyes nodded at me as I walked the block from the bus stop to the gleaming office tower where I worked. I nodded back, a goofy smile on my face. He looked familiar; very familiar. My one-cup-of-caffeine brain couldn’t process where I knew that face from though. I looked back at him, but he was already gone. Story of my life.

Oh well, at least I’d been graced with a smile from him. There was no time left to think about the handsome stranger as I reached my workplace: Grimaldi Tech Security.

Dante. My boss. That’s who the handsome stranger looked like. They could be twins. They say we all have one. Did my boss? Had I seen ‘Tiger Eyes’ in the building before? I immediately dismissed the thought. There’s no way I wouldn’t remember him. Dante had green eyes. I would have remembered a Dante-with-gold-eyes lookalike.

I felt myself smiling again as I pushed the merry-go-round of glass doors to spin my way into Grimaldi Tech, as the company was referred to.

On the outside, it looked like any other non-descriptor, glass-and-steel office building. No one would suspect that some of the most innovative computer security systems were designed and sold from here. No one who hadn’t heard of the company before, that is. And in the tech world, that was a relatively small percentage of the population, mostly because of the head of the company – Dante Grimaldi.

He was one of the darlings of Silicon Valley, his company making a splash – and a fortune – and he was just thirty-four. It didn’t hurt that he had movie-star looks and a body builder’s physique. Rumors abounded that female tech reporters came up with some of the most ludicrous angles to finagle in-person interviews with him. He accepted them all, but one look into those earth-green eyes and you knew that he knew exactly what they were up to, but he lapped up the publicity for all it was worth.

The incessant coverage got Wall Street to calling, courting him to take Grimaldi Tech public, but he stubbornly kept it private, and small. There’d been rumors as to why; the kind no CEO wanted affiliated with his company. But Debonair Dante, as he was referred to in the press, was made of teflon. Nothing stuck to him it seemed, except a handy female of the moment.

I stepped through the automatic front doors and into the lobby. Cool, sweet air washed over me, ruffling my poly-cotton yellow dress around my figure. A few nearby businessmen paused in their conversation to look my way, their eyes racing up and down my body. My blood turned to lava. Why do men do that? I put my head down and headed to the elevator.

I rode up to the twenty-seventh floor of the thirty-story building, carefully avoiding looking out the big, wide windows. I marched to my cubicle at the back of the floor, which was about the size of the closet in my apartment. I hated the size, but was grateful for its location. Unlike practically everyone else, I had no desire for a cubicle with a view.

I hung my purse on one of the two pegs on my cubicle wall and proceeded to count to four in my head. I’d nailed down precisely the number of seconds I knew it’d take Mr. Clark, my boss, to get up from his desk, open the door from his office to my cubicle and start barking orders.

There you are, Ms. Everhart. It’s about time.

I glanced at the clock on the wall. I was five minutes early. No use arguing the point. I got your emails, sir. I—

I sent more while waiting for you, he broke in. Make sure you get to the ones I marked urgent before you leave today.

Fuck you, you greasy, slime ball of a slave driver.

Yes, Mr. Clark, I said out loud, glancing at the first few, all of which were marked urgent. My shoulders slumped. Ever aware of the first of the month, which meant rent and a host of other bills due, I got to work.

And if you find that you can’t keep up, let me know so I can find someone who can, he said, turning to disappear back into his office.

I can keep up, I assured to his back. Hadn’t I been doing it since I got here, I longed to point out.

Be sure of it, he replied, without turning around.

He had to get the last word. Instead of making me angrier, it kind of amused me. It was probably the only power he had, because lord knows, by the looks of him nobody outside of this office would put up with him on a human level.

Some people should not be in contact with others; especially not given power over them. Cranky Clark, as I referred to him in my head, was one of them. It’s like someone sliced him open and took out every human feeling and bone in his body. Since I started working