Hard Bastard: A Second Chance Mafia Romance Page 2

  “The promotion didn’t hurt, though.”

  I laughed. “No, it didn’t.”

  “Well, Sadie, we’re glad to have you. I’ve heard great things from your boss out in Seattle.”

  “Thanks. I’m looking forward to getting started.”

  He nodded and grabbed a file from his desk. “Well, if you’re so excited, why don’t we dive in?”

  I blinked, surprised. I assumed we’d walk around the office, maybe make some light chitchat, that sort of thing. The usual first day at the office. I didn’t even have a laptop or a computer yet and he was already handing me a case file.

  I took it, curious, and opened up the front. Smiling out at me was a few different mug shots of hard looking men, plus their rap sheets underneath. I whistled.

  “Tough guys,” I said.

  “That’s the Petrov case.” Rick leaned back in his chair. “It’s the reason you’re here, incidentally.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Is it?”

  “You’re the only candidate we saw with any organized crime experience.”

  I laughed. “I would hardly call what I did ‘experience,’ but thanks.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short. Not even young ADA manages to put a few wise guys behind bars.”

  I sighed and shook my head. Rick was talking about a case I prosecuted about a year back. It was a pretty straightforward case about some breaking and entering charges against some mob-affiliated guys. Nobody else wanted to touch it, and I was stupid enough to dive right in.

  One witness was scared off, but I managed to find a second at the last minute. I put those assholes behind bars, despite the threatening phone calls I got. I never felt safe in the city afterward, and so I eventually pushed for a promotion and a transfer.

  That was how I ended up in Ashertown again. I wanted to get as far away from the Seattle mob as I could.

  And of course, now I was getting assigned to another mob case.

  “I’m not sure about this, Rick,” I said. “Truth is, the last mob case didn’t go well.”

  “Sure it did. You got the conviction.”

  “I also got the threatening calls at three in the morning.”

  “Well, now,” he said, smiling. “We’ll keep you safe, I can promise that.”

  I sighed. That was what my old boss said.

  “Come on,” Rick said, standing up. “Let’s show you around the office. You can bring that file with you, look at it on your time, decide if you want the case. I won’t force you.”

  “That’s fair,” I said, standing. I took the file and tucked it into my case. “Thanks.”

  “Come on.” He led me out into the main office.

  The rest of the day was spent exactly how I figured it would. I was shown to my office, or really my corner cubicle, and spend the afternoon getting myself acquainted with the systems.

  As I went through the tedious process of setting up my computer and getting situated, I couldn’t help but look at the case file. Three men, all killers and thieves, were arrested for trespassing. They were caught with drugs as well, and the office wanted to pin a few other charges on them from some old cases as well.

  It was fascinating. For such a small town, Ashertown had some seriously hard criminals. By the end of the day, I was fully engrossed in the case.

  “Good night,” Rick said, stopping by my cubicle door.

  “Good night, Rick,” I said, standing up.

  “Hope you had a second to look at that case.”

  “I glanced at it,” I hedged.

  “Good. Tell me what you think tomorrow.”

  “Okay.”

  He nodded and walked away.

  I already knew what I thought about it, but I was having a hard time admitting it to myself. I gathered my things and quickly left the building, walking slowly out toward my rental car.

  I could head back to the hotel or I could go somewhere to kill a few hours. There wasn’t a good option, and as I sat behind the steering wheel, I suddenly felt a little nostalgic.

  I turned on the engine and began to drive. Familiar sights came back to me as memories flooded into my mind.

  I remembered getting in a fight with Gage at the movie theater I drove past. I remembered going to soccer games at the field on my right. I remembered Gage’s hand between my legs as he drove down the road I was driving down.

  Finally, I found what I was looking for, and laughed out loud as I stood in the parking lot.

  Ralph’s was an old dive bar that had been in Ashertown for as long as I could remember. Gage and I went there together a few times, since his cousin was the bouncer. He let us in and we’d drink cheap beers and laugh for hours together. I never felt so alive and so free.

  Ralph’s hadn’t changed one bit. I walked over and stepped inside.

  The whole place felt like home. It was dark and sticky, just like I remembered, with an old crappy bar on the left and tables scattered throughout the main room. A small stage was set up in the far corner, the only change they’d made in ten years.

  I walked over to the bar and sat down at one end. I placed the file on the bar top and ordered a glass of wine from the bartender.

  I shook my head, smiling to myself. It was almost as if the same people were still there, sitting in the same spots. The place was crowded, though not too crowded. Everyone was a regular, and I probably stood out like a sore thumb.

  I scanned the faces, trying to find one that I recognized.

  And then I froze. I couldn’t move. Too many memories were rushing back.

  Those eyes. That jaw. Ten years older, harder, more handsome, but it was him. He was sitting with a group of men at a table in the corner of the room and he hadn’t spotted me yet.

  I wanted to get up and run. I wanted to go over and slap him in the face.

  Gage laughed at something one of the guys said, and I could hear every note, even across the room. I clenched the file in front of me and tried to decide if I wanted to get the hell out of there or risk seeing someone I never thought I’d see again.

  Chapter 2

  Gage

  Another hot, sweaty night at Ralph’s. The boys were being fucking obnoxious, as always, and I was on my third whisky. Not much was going on and I felt like I was going stir-crazy. Frankly, I was fucking bored.

  I wanted to get out there and break some fucking skulls. I was a “debt collector” for the Petrov Family, which meant that it was my job to make sure all the fucking pathetic losers that borrow money from my boss eventually paid up.

  Usually, they paid in money. But my favorite jobs were the ones where I had to get creative. I’d break a knee, take some teeth, clip some fucking fingers, that sort of thing. Sometimes, I’d take a daughter or two, if they were hot enough. The daughters rarely complained.

  Once in a while, only life could pay back a debt. I was a killer, ad that was fine by me. These men entered into a contract with my employers knowing full well that they could get their ass killed if the sum they took was too high and they couldn’t pay it back. Nobody forced these pathetic losers to take outrageous loans with insane terms, but they kept coming back.

  The idiots made sure that I had a job.

  Lately though, there hadn’t been much work. For whatever reason, Ashertown’s finest scum collectively decided that it was better to actually pay up than it was to wait for me to come calling. Plus, there was extra scrutiny on the family from the DA’s office for some fucking reason, probably because of some federal mandate to crack down on organized crime. That shit was above my pay grade and I frankly didn’t care, but it was keeping me from doing what I did best.

  Which was how I found myself in Ralph’s doing fucking nothing as usual, just watching the ground.

  Boris leaned across the table, smirking at me. “You look fucking lost in though there, Gage.”

  I glanced at him. Boris was my partner in crime. He was fat, slovenly, ugly, and cruel, which was exactly what I needed from him. We played Good Cop/Bad Cop very well, and Boris was always the Bad Cop.

  “Sick of sitting around waiting for work,” I said.

  “You eager to get in some trouble?” Alex asked. He was thin with a hawk nose and intense eyes. He was technically above us in the ranks, but barely. He was something of a local boss and scheduler for the debt collectors.

  “Something like that. Just sick of sitting around in this damn bar doing nothing.”

  “Well, now,” Boris said suddenly. “Look what we have here.”

  I followed his gaze toward the door and watched a woman walk in. She glanced around then ended up sitting at the bar.

  I felt like I was watching a ghost.

  “Boris, your fat ass can’t pull a girl like that even if you had some fucking roofies,” Alex said.

  I laughed, but my heart wasn’t really into it.

  I was watching her from the corner of my eyes. My heart started beating faster and I couldn’t fucking believe what I was seeing.

  It was my past, sitting there at the bar.

  Memory came and swallowed me up. I could practically feel her lips against mine again, the way she moaned as my fingers pressed inside of her. We used to steal booze from her parents and fuck out in the woods, getting drunk and laughing together. I was so fucking innocent and stupid back then, I almost thought she actually loved me.

  But then she moved away and it nearly broke me. I was just a stupid teenager back then, and part of me wanted to make it work.

  I stopped calling her when my uncle asked me if I wanted to do a job for him. That was how I got involved with the Petrov Family, and it turned out that I was pretty fucking good at what I did.

  Sadie didn’t want to be involved with a man like me. She made that shit clear before she left, when we were still toge
ther. She wanted me to stay far away from my uncles and their work, and I couldn’t really blame her.

  When she was gone, there was nothing holding me back. I released all my pent-up aggression and anger on the pathetic losers that I was hired to collect from. I realized that I actually enjoyed it when a man begged for my forgiveness.

  Sadie was my life ten years ago, when I was a fucking kid, but seeing her again brought back a rush of memories and emotions. I’d been with plenty of women since her, even dated one for a couple weeks until I figured out that I hated being tied down. But I always thought about Sadie as the one that got away late at night when I was drifting off to sleep.

  “Did you hear what I said, Gage?” Alex asked.

  I blinked. “No. I was ignoring your shrill voice.”

  He laughed. “I said, the big boss was asking about you the other day.”

  That got my attention. “Vadik?”

  “The one and only.”

  Vadik was the leader of the Petrov Family and the most dangerous man in the entire state. I was a little surprised that I was on his radar at all.

  “What did he have to say?”

  “Heard that you were doing a good job from me. He heard about you from some other people too. Apparently you might be getting some more responsibility.”

  I nodded, not sure how I felt about that. I liked where I was. The money was fucking good, the women were fucking good, and I wasn’t the type that enjoyed change. I wanted to keep on cracking skulls and getting cash, and I had no interest in being some fucking scumbag boss like Alex.

  “Good,” I grunted.

  “Good?” Boris asked, amazed. “Fucking Vadik talks about you, and all you say is fucking ‘good’?”

  I shrugged. “The fuck you want me to say?”

  Boris just shook his head and laughed.

  “Maybe you won’t be so bored soon,” Alex said.

  “Maybe. I like where I’m at, though.”

  “Don’t say that shit.” Alex frowned at me. “Plus, you don’t have much choice. If the big boss wants to promote you, you’re getting promoted.”

  “Sure, sure. Whatever Vadik wants. I work for the family.”

  Alex nodded, his eyes still narrowed. I needed to keep in mind that he was my boss and that I couldn’t say whatever I fucking wanted in front of him. Alex was a shithead, but he was also dangerous in his own way.

  I stood up, moving out of the booth. “I’m changing this fucking music,” I said. “It sounds like a fucking teenage girl’s bedroom in here.”

  The guys laughed as I walked across the bar, toward the jukebox. I stood there, glancing sideways at Sadie.

  She looked right back at me. Our eyes locked for a second, and I felt that familiar thrill run through me.

  I hadn’t felt that in a very long time. It was a mix of need, want, and lust. She looked away, but there was no mistaking it. She saw me, and she recognized me. I saw the slight surprise in her eyes.

  I chose a new song, something a little less Britney Spears. As I turned back toward the crowd, I saw Sadie standing up to leave.

  I had a moment of pure insanity. I couldn’t describe it any other way. I knew that I should have walked away back toward my table and forgotten all bout her, but I started walking. We were different people, completely different people. She was dressed like a serious business person and was holding a fat file in her hand, while I was covered in tattoos. We couldn’t have ended up in more different places.

  And yet we were both in Ralph’s. I couldn’t stop myself as I went toward her, purposefully striding across the room. As she got to the door, she looked back at me, and I saw it.

  Pure desire.

  I grinned at her and nodded. I stopped closed to her. “Long time no see.”

  She blinked at me. “Wow. Hi, Gage.”

  “Hi, Sadie.” I looked closely at her. She filled out in all the right places in the last ten years. She was a grown ass woman, not a teenage girl anymore, and she looked fucking gorgeous, even more beautiful than I remembered. I could feel my blood getting hot just standing close to her.

  “How have you been?” she asked. She glanced back toward the table I had been sitting at and back at me. Her eyes roamed along my skin and I knew she was taking in my tattoos, my tight-fitting shirt, my dirty jeans.

  “Been good. Almost as good as you look.”

  “Thanks,” she said, blushing a little bit. She did that when she was nervous.

  “Come have a drink with me.”

  I shouldn’t have said that. Instantly I knew it was a mistake. I shouldn’t be seen with her, shouldn’t get her dragged into my life.

  But I couldn’t fucking help myself.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I just got into town and I’m pretty exhausted.”

  “One drink. Catch up with the lost love of your life.”

  Her mouthed opened then shut. “You’re not the lost love of my life,” she said.

  I laughed. “You sure? Seems like you came home just to find me.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Sure it is. Why else come back to a shitty town like this? You came in here knowing I might be here. You wanted to find me.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s just the only place I know anymore.”

  “One drink.” I stepped toward her. “We’re grownups now. At least you’ve certainly grown up.”

  She sighed. “You have too. What, did you grow six inches?”

  “Maybe.” I laughed. “Come on.”

  I walked over to the bar and she followed, sitting down beside me.

  I knew I should walk away. This was Sadie, my old girlfriend, and she looked better than I could have imagined. She was a good girl and shouldn’t get mixed up with a man like me.

  But I wanted her, and when I wanted something, I fucking took it. That was all that mattered to me as she smiled and took the drink that I ordered for her.

  Chapter 3

  Sadie

  Gage looked different. Of course he looked different, it had been ten years since I last saw him of course. Still, I couldn’t stop staring at him.

  He was taller and more muscular, if that was even possible. He had added a bunch of tattoos to his arms, and he had a look in his eye that I didn’t remember. He seemed harder somehow, more dangerous, but he was still clearly the old Gage that I knew. Or at least that Gage was buried under there somewhere.

  “So, what have you been doing these past ten years?” I asked him.

  He shrugged, sipping his whisky. “I’m in collections.”

  “Oh, that’s cool.”

  “No, it’s not cool. What about you?”

  I shrugged. “I went into law. You know, trying to make the family proud.”

  He laughed. “I’m sure your mom was excited.”

  I frowned and looked away. “She passed.”

  He paused. “Shit, Sadie. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. It happened a long time ago.”

  “How’s the dad? He still fucking hate me?”

  I laughed, looking back at him. “I’m sure he would if he saw you.”

  “What’s there to hate about this?” He gave me a devilish smile, and we both knew what it meant.

  “Nothing, of course.”

  “Of course.” He finished his drink and motioned for another. “Remember that time he screamed at me when he caught me in your room?”

  “I remember. You climbed up the drainpipe and snuck in my window.”

  “One of my more daring escapades.”

  “I thought he was going to have a heart attack.”

  “If he had come in maybe ten minutes sooner, he might have.”

  I blushed again, remembering that night. I remembered Gage’s body against mine, his cock buried deep between my legs. I remembered him turning me over and pushing my face into a pillow because I was moaning too loudly.

  I crossed my legs, suddenly extremely aware of how wet I was getting.

  “Yeah, well, fortunately for us he missed that part.”

  “I almost feel bad for him.”

  “Don’t. He’s doing just fine.”

  “Good.” Gage laughed. “What are you doing back in town, anyway?”

  “I moved back here, actually.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “No shit?”

  “No shit. I got a promotion at work, but that promotion came with a transfer.”