Tempted by the Sinner: A Possessive Mafia Romance Read online

  That Mona didn’t get anywhere.

  But I didn’t know if I could be that other Mona, the one that reached out and took risks and tried to do something bold and brave.

  I looked at Vince and he smiled at me, head tilted. He was so handsome, and it was almost distracting enough to forget that he was also dangerous, that he was the son of a famous mobster, a very famous and very deadly mobster.

  I could almost forget that I might end up dead or worse with him.

  “I’ll do it,” I said.

  He smiled. “I knew you would,” he said.

  “But no secrets,” I said. “No bullshit. If I’m going to go through with this, I don’t want you to just… hide things from me. I want the real Vincent Leone, I want the real story.”

  “That’s why you’re coming to live with me,” he said.

  “Good.” I nodded once and took a deep breath. “All right. Let’s do this. I can do this.”

  “Good.” He stood up suddenly and reached out his hand.

  I hesitated, stared at it, then let my eyes move up to his chest, his muscular chest in its tight white shirt and the jacket that fit him like an old, perfect blanket. He tilted his head, smiled at me, and it was so disarming, so charming.

  I took his hand and stood.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’ll all be okay.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s what people say when it really, really won’t.”

  He laughed and turned, still holding my hand. He led me back to the staircase and climbed up. I followed him, heart beating, barely aware of the cold stone steps beneath my feet. We reached the top, right next to the waterworks, and stood there for a long moment as we surveyed the park. Parents with their children, young men with their girlfriends, a group of girls in workout clothes jogging past.

  I felt like I was in an entirely different world now.

  “Come on,” he said. “I’ll take you home so you can pack. You’ll move in tonight.”

  “Yeah,” I said, my voice a distant sound.

  He led me away and I followed.

  6

  Mona

  We drove to my apartment and I went up alone. He said he would help me pack, but I didn’t want him in my space.

  I couldn’t say why. Maybe I didn’t want him to infect everything I owned. One day, this would be over and he’d go back to New York, and I’d be left with my old life.

  I flipped on the light to my tiny studio apartment. Piles of clothes near the bed, my dresser a mess of jeans and underwear, framed posters of famous photographs on the walls, dishes piled in the sink. I pulled the small carry-on-sized suitcase from my closet and began to stuff as much clothing into it as I could fit. I put my laptop in a backpack, a couple books I was reading, my Kindle, and some chargers. I grabbed my toiletries, makeup, hair products, anything I’d need that he probably wouldn’t have.

  When I was finished, I grabbed my backpack and the suitcase. I cleaned a few of the dishes as fast as I could so they didn’t rot in the sink while I was gone and I threw out anything perishable from the refrigerator. When that was done, I took the trash to the curb, and caught Vince looking at his phone. He flashed me a smile as I hurried inside, grabbed my backpack and suitcase, and came back out.

  He helped me put them into the back then opened the passenger side door.

  “Should I expect this level of service during my stay?” I asked.

  “Of course,” he said. “And interesting word you just chose.”

  “What, service?”

  He nodded. “Do you know what goes into the blood oath every member of the family takes?”

  “No,” I said. “I mean, nothing more than what I’ve seen on TV.”

  “The TV version is more or less accurate,” he said as he drove back toward Old City, away from West Philly where I lived. “In the ritual, the Don pricks your finger with a needle, and a drop of blood falls onto a card depicting Saint Francis. The card’s then set on fire and passed around a circle of your future brothers. As it burns, the Don makes you take an oath.”

  “Dramatic,” I said.

  “Very,” he said. “But effective. There’s something about a ritual like that, it stays with you, even if it’s just a bunch of superstitious bullshit.”

  “But what does service have to do with it?”

  “Service is a key part of the oath,” he said. “You pledge your life to serve the family, to serve the Don and your new brothers. You pledge to embrace omerta, to never speak, no matter the consequences. Every made man in the family is pledged to serve, for his entire life, until the day he dies.”

  “Dramatic,” I said again.

  He laughed and gestured with his hands. “What can you do? It’s an old-world thing, but it’s effective.”

  “You really think so?”

  “Definitely,” he said. “Think about all the secret societies around the world. They all have initiation rituals, and they’re all closely guarded secrets. There’s something about having a ritual, having a secret, and taking an oath.”

  “But you just told me the ritual,” I said.

  He laughed. “It’s on Wikipedia,” he said. “So it’s not really a secret anymore. Even still, we talk about it in hushed tones, like the world doesn’t already know. Symbols, ideas, rituals, they all have power.”

  I looked at the shape of his jaw, at his hands gripping the steering wheel. He looked like a thug, a handsome thug, but still. He was a mobster, but there he was talking about ritual and service and meaning like a college professor. It made me shake my head in disbelief.

  I didn’t know this man, didn’t know him at all. But I could be sure of one thing, he wasn’t stupid.

  If he was doing this, if he was bringing me into his life, he was going to be careful.

  I was a journalist, and he had secrets to protect, secrets with power. He was more or less telling me that straight out. Maybe he wasn’t saying it in so many words, but I could read the unspoken truth.

  If I wanted truth, I was going to have to keep looking for something unspoken.

  We drove through the city, through quiet, shady neighborhoods, past row home after row home with brick facades and gray concrete stoops, until he pulled down a particularly nice Old City street. He pulled the black SUV over to the curb and parked in front of a house with a black door, black shutters, and little other ornamentation.

  “Here we are,” he said and got out.

  I followed as he pulled out my bags. I went to take them but he waved me away. He walked to the stoop, carried them up, then unlocked the door and pushed it open.

  I followed him inside and sucked in a breath.

  The walls were painted a pale olive green. The couch was low and mottled gray and white in a Midcentury Modern style with thin tapered legs. A flat screen hung on the wall across from it, and beyond that was an open kitchen and dining room area. A large midcentury table dominated the space with seating for eight. The kitchen had all granite countertops, and the refrigerator looked like it was straight out of the 1950s, big and oblong and teal, with a long handle and a gleaming silver GE badge in the front.

  “Okay,” I said as he put down my bags. “I didn’t expect this.”

  He tilted his head. “Didn’t expect what?”

  I gestured around me. “This. It’s really…”

  “Nice?” he asked.

  “Nice,” I said and laughed. “Sorry. Maybe that’s mean.”

  “I get it,” he said. “I’m a mobster. You expected ratty leather couches, crosses on the wall, maybe a dead body or two and some cocaine on the coffee table.”

  “Glass coffee table,” I said. “And pretty much.”

  “Well, welcome to my Philly house.”

  “Wait, you don’t even live here,” I said. “Who stays here when you’re in New York?”

  “Nobody,” he said. “When I’m in town, this is all mine. But mostly it’s just empty.”

  “You have an entire empty house all for yourself,
” I said.

  “Pretty much.”

  “And I live in a tiny studio apartment in a bad neighborhood.”

  “You went into the wrong line of work, journalist.” He grinned and walked to the kitchen. “Want something to drink?”

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  As he rummaged around for a glass and a bottle, I looked at the pictures on the wall. Most of them were fine art prints of famous landscapes, pretty generic and simple stuff. But a few of them were guys I didn’t recognize, young men with lean faces and hungry looks. I spotted a young Vince in one of them, smiling and surrounded by a few other guys, all of them in suits, most of them with guns tucked in their waistband.

  “What’s this?” I asked, pointing at the picture.

  He poured himself a glass of whiskey and walked over. He squinted at it then let out a breath.

  “That’s the day Steven was made,” he said and pointed at a handsome, lanky guy at the far left. “We were just kids back then.”

  “You look so young.”

  “We thought we owned the fucking city,” he said and pointed at another guy right next to Steven. “That’s Dante, one of my father’s best Capos. That’s Sergio, the old guy at the end, and that’s Mikhail and that’s Gennaro. Mikhail and Gennaro are dead now, God rest their souls.”

  I chewed on my lip and looked at their young eyes, their short haircuts, their baby fat cheeks.

  “How old were they?” I asked.

  “Gennaro died a year after this picture,” he said. “There was a war with the Chinese. Then Mikhail a couple years after that in a little skirmish with the Russians. I wasn’t in the city at the time, so I don’t really know how it went down.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Price of the game.” He sipped his whiskey and turned away from the picture. “Come on. Let’s go see your room.”

  I lingered for another minute, trying to imagine what they were thinking back then. Those guns, those suits, they probably felt rich and immortal. And now two of them were gone, dead before they were really adults.

  Just the price.

  I turned away and followed him up the steps. The landing led down a short hall with a door at the far end, two doors on the right, and another staircase leading up.

  “Your room’s here,” he said, taking me to the last door at the end of the hall. I caught a glimpse of a little office in the first room on the right, a full bathroom in the second room, and stopped on the threshold of the last room.

  He pushed the door wide and flipped on the light. I expected a bare mattress on the floor, maybe some ammunition and some drugs lying in the corner. At least, that was the cliché idea I had in my head about what I’d find.

  Instead, it looked like a nice suburban extra bedroom. There were generic flower prints in black frames on the walls and the bed was queen sized with a big frilly flower print bedspread with some nice decorative pillows thrown on top. The nightstands each had fake flowers on then, and the right one had a clock with red glowing letters. There was a bureau against one wall, a rocking chair in the corner on the right, and a closet door on the right.

  “Here you go,” he said and walked in. A window let in nice, bright light and cast long shadows on the floor. He walked to the closet door and pulled it open, revealing nothing but empty hangers and a suitcase stuck in a corner.

  “This is really…” I trailed off, not sure how to put it.

  “It’s girly as all fuck,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s really, really girly. I mean, where did you get all those pillows from?”

  “Marshal’s,” he said. “I think.”

  “I can’t picture you pillow shopping,” I said “Seriously, Vince, you didn’t actually go pillow shopping, did you?”

  He laughed, picked one up, and threw it at me. I managed to catch it before it smashed into my face.

  “An ex did this,” he said. “Not my style, but I haven’t bothered to change it.”

  “An ex, huh?” I tilted my head. That made a lot more sense.

  “Don’t get started on that,” he said.

  “If an ex changed up this room, I’m guessing you two lived together,” I said.

  “Don’t get started.” He frowned at me, arms crossed. “You know what? Fuck it, I’ll tell you about her so you’re not bugging me later.”

  “I’m all ears,” I say and toss him the pillow.

  He put it back on the bed. “Her name was Lynn, we dated for three months, and she was fucking intense. She never lived here, but I’m pretty sure she planned on moving in eventually.”

  “What happened to her?” I asked.

  “She got clingy, started talking about marriage. And then I moved to New York. Sorted itself out.”

  I sighed and shook my head. “So you’re an asshole.”

  “Darling, what did you expect? A Boy Scout?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Come on, get yourself settled, and don’t worry about Lynn.”

  “What’s she doing now?”

  He shrugged and moved toward the door, coming close to me.

  “Married, two kids, looks happy. At least as far as I can tell from her shitty Facebook posts.”

  “You go on Facebook?” I asked.

  “Of course I go on Facebook,” he said. “I couldn’t do my fucking job if I didn’t.”

  “What does Facebook have to do with being in the mob?”

  He grimaced. “I’m not in the mob, first of all. And second, Facebook is one of the best tools for researching people. Do you have any clue how stupid the average gangster is?”

  “So you are a gangster then,” I said.

  He stepped closer to me and I took an involuntary step back. I ran up against the doorframe and he loomed over me, his eyes hard, a smile on his lips.

  “No,” he said. “But I know a lot of them.”

  “So you like to research gangsters then?”

  “Got to make sure I’m dealing with the right people,” he said. “More often than not, the wrong people make it pretty obvious. The average person is pretty fucking dumb, and half the world’s stupider than that.”

  “Right, true.” I smiled and took a deep breath. “So Facebook’s just one of many tools you gangsters use.”

  “Something like that.” He lingered close to me for a few heartbeats, his head cocked like he was staring right through me, except his eyes roamed down my body. I felt a chill run down my spine and I wondered if I was making a huge mistake.

  Probably. No, definitely.

  “But you’re not a gangster,” I said.

  “Right.” He slipped past me and moved out into the hall. “I’ll bring up your bags. Feel free to unpack and get yourself set. Bathroom’s right here, first door on the left, that’s all you. My room’s upstairs, and it’s off limits.” He looked at me over his shoulder. “If I catch you anywhere near my bedroom without my permission, you’re out of here and the deal’s off. Understood?”

  “Understood,” I said.

  “Good.” He looked away. “Feel free to use the roof deck, though. Damn nice up there.” He headed down the hall and back downstairs.

  I stood in the doorway and stared after him.

  A gangster with a Facebook and a roof deck.

  And a girly as hell room.

  What a strange man. I felt a shiver again as I turned to look at the room. The walls were painted a very pale teal color and the hardwood gleamed in the natural light from the large window. I walked over to the bed and sat down on it, surprised at how comfortable the mattress was.

  I was in the lion’s den. But the lion’s den had fake flowers and mid-century modern furniture.

  I wanted there to be bullet holes in the floor and syringes lying on the kitchen counter. I wanted there to be some proof that I was dealing with a real killer, a real gangster, a real criminal.

  Instead, I couldn’t read Vince at all.

  I had to keep telling myself I had the right guy. If I was
wrong, and Vince really wasn’t in the mafia, then I was going to waste a lot of time following him around.

  But if I was right, and this girly room was just another way to throw me off…

  Well, it was a risk I had to take.

  7

  Vince

  I sat downstairs and made a few calls while Mona spent the next few hours in her room. I wasn’t sure what she was doing up there, but I never once heard her move around. The hardwood up there in the halls made a damn racket anytime someone tried to walk on them, so there was no sneaking around my house.

  Still, it was strange to have someone else in my place. Even if this house was barely mine at all, and only a glorified hotel for when I was in town, it still had some memories. It still felt like my own space.

  I’d never had a woman live with me before. That psycho Lynn would’ve moved in and gotten pregnant in a heartbeat, but I kept her at arm’s length. She managed to give that guest room a little makeover, but beyond that, she didn’t succeed in breaking into my life any more than the countless other women I’d been with over the years.

  So having Mona upstairs was a pretty confusing fucking proposition. I mean, she was a journalist, she was supposed to be the enemy,

  But she was also hot as hell and made my blood boil just thinking about her.

  Around seven, I headed up the steps. I told her to be ready by eight, and I wanted to make sure she was on track. I reached the top and saw her bedroom door open at the same moment. She came out with a towel wrapped around her middle, already undressed, a little toiletries bag in one hand, her black bra and matching panties in the other.

  She froze in the doorway, her mouth hanging open.

  I stared at her and tilted my head. Her dark hair was up, showing off her long, lean neck and tiny, cute ears. I took a step closer, the floorboards creaking under my weight. I felt my body go tense as desire washed over me. I couldn’t remember the last time I had a naked woman in my house and didn’t take at least a taste of her.

  “Vince,” she said like she was trying to ward off a demon.