Bend: A Dark Mafia Romance Read online

  Bend

  A Dark Mafia Romance

  B. B. Hamel

  Contents

  Mailing List

  1. Jodie

  2. Dante

  3. Jodie

  4. Dante

  5. Jodie

  6. Dante

  7. Jodie

  8. Dante

  9. Jodie

  10. Dante

  11. Jodie

  12. Dante

  13. Jodie

  14. Dante

  15. Jodie

  16. Dante

  17. Jodie

  18. Dante

  19. Jodie

  20. Dante

  21. Jodie

  22. Dante

  23. Jodie

  24. Dante

  25. Jodie

  26. Dante

  27. Jodie

  Thank You

  Preview

  Preview

  Bastard’s Baby: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance

  1. Kaley

  2. Vince

  3. Kaley

  4. Vince

  5. Kaley

  6. Vince

  7. Kaley

  8. Vince

  9. Kaley

  10. Vince

  11. Kaley

  12. Vince

  13. Kaley

  14. Vince

  15. Kaley

  16. Vince

  17. Kaley

  18. Vince

  19. Kaley

  20. Vince

  21. Kaley

  22. Vince

  23. Kaley

  24. Vince

  25. Kaley

  26. Vince

  27. Kaley

  28. Vince

  29. Kaley

  30. Vince

  31. Kaley

  32. Vince

  33. Kaley

  34. Vince

  35. Kaley

  36. Vince

  37. Kaley

  Thank You

  Bastard SEAL: A Bad Boy Romance

  1. Tara

  2. Emory

  3. Tara

  4. Emory

  5. Tara

  6. Emory

  7. Tara

  8. Emory

  9. Tara

  10. Emory

  11. Tara

  12. Emory

  13. Tara

  14. Emory

  15. Tara

  16. Emory

  17. Tara

  18. Emory

  19. Tara

  20. Emory

  21. Tara

  22. Emory

  23. Tara

  24. Emory

  25. Tara

  26. Emory

  27. Tara

  28. Emory

  29. Tara

  30. Emory

  Epilogue: Tara

  Thank You

  Copyright © 2016 by B. B. Hamel

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Chapter 1

  Jodie

  Downstairs was strangely quiet and I didn’t know why.

  It was around noon on a Sunday, and my whole family should have been around the television yelling at football players. My family was a pretty traditional working class family, and my father, my brothers, and my uncles all liked to get together to enjoy the games. I typically hid upstairs in my room, not really interested in watching a bunch of big strange men beat the crap out of each other on the field.

  I didn’t really miss that ritual. I was visiting home from college for the weekend, and so I was thrust right back into that world. I went to Temple University, which made it really easy to visit my family in South Philadelphia on the weekends. They were always pushing me to move back home but the whole point of going to college was to get away from my family, even if we were still in the same city.

  I didn’t have a normal childhood, or at least I didn’t realize that it wasn’t normal until I got older and moved away. The Walsh Clan was a big deal in Philly, especially down south where the traditionally Irish and Italian families lived. My father was an important man and he was constantly having people over, sometimes even politicians. I didn’t know what he did for a living, and whenever I asked my mother would tell me to stop asking about things that didn’t matter, but I started to piece it together as I got older.

  There were clues, even back then. There were always gifts coming to the house, sometimes big palettes of expensive food or clothes that my parents would give away to neighbors. They never explained how we got so much stuff, and it didn’t occur to me to ask back when I was so young.

  Then there were my older brothers. Ever since I could remember, my brothers were treated differently. They had different expectations and could get away with things that I never could. They all joined my father’s business as they got older and started driving nice cars, wearing nice clothes, and generally having really nice things, though I never really understood what their business was. They all told me that they worked in the nightclub industry and that Dad owned a bunch of clubs, but I knew that wasn’t true.

  I didn’t realize that we were a mafia family until I went to college.

  It took an outsider to explain it to me. Maybe I’m stupid and naïve, but I just never thought my family could be those kind of people. My father was so nice and generous, one of the best men I knew, and he was constantly trying to help out the neighborhood. My brothers were all good guys, and my uncles, although a little rougher, were also the nicest people I could imagine. Everything was so good and so easy, I never guessed that it was because my father was an important boss in the Irish mob.

  After I realized that my family was very different from other families, I started to piece it all together. I started to notice the men that came around every weekend, pretending to be friendly with my father, but really were paying him off. I started to notice what my brothers did, all the nice things they had, all the money that was all over our family. I started to notice things, and I should have been afraid.

  But I wasn’t. The idea of danger never occurred to me. My father and my brothers were all the strongest people that I knew, and I never for a second thought that they had enemies that were as strong or stronger. I lived in a little bubble my whole life and never took a single step outside of that bubble. I was sheltered, and although I knew that I was, it didn’t matter to me. I was happy.

  I took my headphones off and frowned, looking at my bedroom door. I couldn’t hear any noise from downstairs, which was really weird. I stood up and looked out the front window, wondering if my uncles were over yet, and spotted two large black vans parked in the middle of the street out in front of our house.

  That was really weird. Normally I could hear my uncles arguing even over the sound in my headphones, but today the house was deadly silent. I walked over to my bedroom door, wondering what was going on.

  I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. I knew something bad was happening, but I just figured that some relative had passed, some distant cousin that I had never heard of. Nothing bad had ever happened to our family, and I couldn’t imagine it would ever really happen.

  I opened my door and stepped out. There was nothing strange going on upstairs, but downstairs I heard some very soft voices plus the sound of people moving around. As I got closer to the steps, I heard something that sent a wave of fear like a knife through my body.


  It sounded like my mother softly sobbing.

  I stepped onto the staircase and winced as it creaked. I walked slowly down, terrified of what I was going to find.

  Nothing could prepare me for what I was about to see. Nothing in my life could ever suggest the sort of horror I was going to walk right into, and the horror that was coming for me.

  I looked out over the first floor and screamed.

  My uncles, brothers, and father were scattered all over the living room, some of them still sitting, some of them lying face down on the ground.

  And they were all dead. There was no mistaking it: they were all dead. Blood was everywhere, pooling on the ground, splattered against the walls. Horror lanced through me and I had no clue how this could have happened. I was just upstairs, I would have heard this happen. The door was kicked open and things were broken like there was a short struggle, but nothing to suggest the horror that was sitting right in front of me.

  I couldn’t move. I kept staring at my dead family, massacred in their own house. I heard my mother whimper again and then a man’s voice.

  “Where’s the money?” he asked.

  “He didn’t keep it here,” my mother’s voice came. “Please. He didn’t keep it here.”

  “Kill her,” another man said. “We have to be thorough.”

  “No!” I yelled, coming down the steps.

  “Jodie,” my mom groaned. “Run!”

  I went toward the kitchen, ignoring the blood I had to step through to get there. Two men stepped out toward me and one grabbed me. He was big and thick with full black hair and narrow eyes. He was holding a silenced gun that looks like a little machine gun or something like that. He grabbed me and pinned me against the wall.

  I struggled as hard as I could. “Let her go!” I said. “You bastards. You killed them, you bastards.”

  “Look at this,” the man holding me said. “She’s a pretty one.”

  “She is,” the other man agreed. He was older and also holding a gun with a long silencer attached to it.

  Two more men came in from the back rooms, shaking their heads. “Nothing,” the taller of the two said. “We tore the place apart.”

  “Check upstairs,” the older man said. “And hurry.”

  They walked past without sparing me a glance. The man that was holding me pressed the barrel of his gun to my head. “Should I finish her off, boss?” he asked.

  “Wait,” the older man said. He looked at my mother. “This is your chance. Your daughter is pretty enough that we might find some use for her. If you want to spare her life, tell us where the money is.”

  Mom groaned, dropping her head. “There’s a false wall in our bedroom closet. Break it open. You’ll find what you want.”

  The older man grinned. “Perfect,” he said, and then shot my mother in the skull.

  She dropped to the ground, unmoving.

  I screamed. The horror of what I was seeing overwhelmed me, and I screamed and I screamed.

  “Shut her up,” the older man said.

  “Gladly.”

  That last thing I remembered was the butt of the gun getting smashed into my skull, and then my screaming stopped.

  Chapter 2

  Dante

  The van tore away from the Walsh clan’s house and I leaned back in my seat, watching the city flash past. The bloodbath back there was completely gone from my mind, and I was already wondering what the fuck I was going to do to celebrate our win. I didn’t give a shit about those dead assholes back in that house, not one bit. They were every bit as violent and fucked up as anything we did to them, and they deserved what they got.

  There was only one thing nagging at me, and she was tied up in the seat next to me with a bag shoved over her head. Her chest was rising and falling softly, her perfect fucking chest, so I knew she wasn’t dead.

  Drago gave her one fucking sick whack on the skull. I heard it from the other room while I was tearing through some extra bedroom’s closet. I thought he killed her, but no, sure enough she was just knocked out.

  We weren’t supposed to take any prisoners. It wasn’t that I wanted the girl dead, but it wasn’t part of the plan to take her. I was glad we didn’t kill her, though. She was fucking gorgeous, sexy as all fuck, and it was easy to see even despite the insanity that was happening around her.

  I didn’t know what the plan was for her and I was trying not to think about it. I didn’t like hurting women, never got the taste for it. Some guys, like Drago, got off beating the shit out of their women. I never enjoyed hurting something that was weaker than me, and so I never touched women. There was nothing manly or masculine about smacking around some woman that weighs ninety pounds soaking wet.

  “You did good back there,” Gennaro said, looking back at me.

  I nodded at him. “Thanks,” I grunted.

  He smiled at me then glanced at the girl. “What do you think of her?” he asked.

  “I don’t think anything about her.”

  He laughed. “That’s a fucking lawyer answer. Give me a real one.”

  I looked at him seriously, sizing him up. Gennaro was my direct boss, and he ran a small crew of guys out of the west part of the city. I was a hired gun for the mob, a killer with a reputation, and I was floating around between crews for a few years before landing with Gennaro. He took me in and gave me more steady work, but I never really got a sense of the guy. He was older, maybe in his forties, and he seemed pretty steady and mild-mannered. Except every once in a while, he did some shit that was out of nowhere, such as kidnapping this fucking Irish mob girl.

  “I think she’s a liability,” I said carefully.

  “Maybe,” he agreed. “But she’s the daughter of an important boss. The Irish will want her back.”

  “Suppose they come looking for her?”

  “I hope they do.” He gave me a wicked grin. “You afraid of that?”

  “You know I’m not.”

  He nodded slowly, still grinning. “Drago tells me you don’t like it when he beats on the whores on Fifth Street.”

  “Drago should watch his fucking mouth.”

  Gennaro laughed. “Probably.” He turned around and went back to looking out the front windshield.

  I clenched my jaw and glanced at the girl again. She was already a pain in my ass, and I barely had anything to do with her.

  We drove for about fifteen minutes before we ended up back in our home neighborhood. We hit the Walsh Clan in the middle of the day, right when they wouldn’t expect it, and that meant we had to get in and get out fast. Now we had to disperse and lay low for a few days while the heat died down.

  The van began to move down my block toward the deli we used as a hideout when Gennaro told the driver to pull over. I raised an eyebrow at him as the van stopped in front of my apartment building.

  “Get out,” Gennaro said to me.

  “This isn’t part of the plan. We’re supposed to meet at the deli then go from there.”

  “Out,” he said again. “And take her with you.”

  “What?”

  “You’re responsible for the girl for now.”

  “You’re fucking kidding me.”

  Gennaro leaned back toward me. “That going to be a fucking problem?”

  He knew it damn well was. I lived in a normal apartment, even if it was in a mob neighborhood where nobody said shit about anything to the cops. I wasn’t ready to take some fucking high-level Irish princess back to my place and keep her captive for however long they wanted me to.

  But I couldn’t refuse orders. Gennaro was giving me that pissed-off look that meant I better do as he says or else some bad shit would happen. I was ready for it, could probably beat his fucking ass down, but not with the driver giving me the evil eye.

  I didn’t have time to consider. I got out of the van, walked around to the other side, opened the door, and grabbed the girl. I threw her over my shoulder, shut the door, and carried her up my stoop.

  “Keep her safe,�
� Gennaro called out.

  I grunted in return.

  The van sped off, leaving me standing on my stoop with some strange unconscious girl slung over my shoulder.

  I sighed, opening the door and stepping inside. I went upstairs to my apartment and got the girl inside before putting her down on the couch. She was still unconscious, which was a little worrying, but there wasn’t much I could do about it given the circumstances.

  “What the fuck am I going to do with you?” I said to myself, looking at her and shaking my head.

  I went into the kitchen, grabbed a beer, and then sat down across from her. I had to figure out what the fuck I was going to do with her before she woke up, but I had no fucking clue.

  I had an extra bedroom. It wasn’t exactly prisoner-proof, though. There was a window that opened up to the front of the building plus all of the usual comfortable shit a person would expect from a bedroom.

  I really didn’t want this girl. I didn’t want anything to do with holding onto a kidnapped girl, especially one with serious Irish mob ties. This was going to make me a fucking target, which was exactly what I wanted to avoid. I was happy with my position, killing other bastards for a living and fucking strange pussy whenever I felt like it.

  This girl, though, was a fucking problem. She was a serious change to my lifestyle and I didn’t want that. I had no interest in babysitting some fucking Irish princess, let alone keeping her captive in my apartment.

  Still, she was fucking sexy. I couldn’t ignore that fact. I glanced at her slowly rising chest, then stood up and walked over to her. I slowly took the bag from her face and tossed it aside.

  She was gorgeous. Thick dark hair, pale skin, full lips, and a body I couldn’t stop looking at. I shook my head, taking a step away from her, still staring at her body.

  Just then, a knock at my door made my jump.

  I paused for a second, not sure who it was. Another knock came, followed by Drago’s voice. “Open up, asshole.”

  I walked over and pulled the door open. Drago grinned at me. He was holding some planks of wood and a toolbox.

  “What the fuck is all this?” I asked him.