BOW DOWN: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance (Barone Crime Family) (10 page)

I
couldn’t believe
that asshole had me hiding in his bedroom like I was some teenager. I understood why I needed to, since we couldn’t be caught together if he wanted to continue watching my father, but still.

I didn’t get involved with men just to make sure I was never pushed aside like that. I hated being shoved into a closet while the men talked their business, and nothing was more frustrating to me than that.

I climbed the stoop of our safe house and opened the front door, my brain still reeling from what had happened. I headed into my room, got changed, and sat down at my computer.

Nothing made me feel better than scrolling through cyberspace, breaking into networks, and dominating everything I saw. I wasn’t a man or a woman online and could be whoever I wanted to be. Nobody questioned my authority or my power, because nobody could question me. The only thing that mattered was how good I was, and nothing more.

Wyatt represented everything that I thought I hated. He was a rich, powerful man moving up through politics and doing things that I could never do just because I was a woman. He was the sort of man I never imagined that I’d get involved with, not in a million years.

I’d met so many men just like him. They all hung around my father, hoping for his favor, practically kissing his ass to try and get a piece of his money.

They were all cocky and privileged and assholes. They were all absolutely alike.

But Wyatt wasn’t that guy, not really. He didn’t come from wealth and power like all of those men did. He didn’t have a trust fund that his daddy earned for him. Wyatt built everything he had from the ground up, just like I did.

That was what attracted me to him so intensely. He wasn’t a phony like all of those other men. Everything he said and did, all the power he wielded, everything was genuinely him.

As the hours slipped past and it became closer to morning than night, I began to calm down and realize that Wyatt hadn’t done anything wrong. I knew that deep down inside of me, but when he made me wait and hide in the bedroom, it made me remember everything that had happened with my father.

I remembered when I told him that I wanted to join the mafia. I was eighteen years old and already I knew I was smarter than the average guy in the mob. One night when I was deciding on which colleges to apply to, I walked down to my father’s study and knocked on the door.

I went inside. “Father,” I said.

“Daughter.”

I sat down in front of his desk.

“I want to ask you something.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s about your job.”

He frowned. “Don’t ask about my job.”

“I want to join. I want to be a part of your business.”

He looked at me then laughed. The bastard laughed at me.

I’d never forget that laughter. He refused to take me seriously back then, and he refused to take me seriously now.

That was his fatal mistake. He thought I was just some woman that he could steamroll and destroy, but he was so, so wrong.

Suddenly, there was a loud racket outside my door. It sounded like people grunting, doors slamming. I heard the elevator slide open.

I quickly got up and opened my bedroom door.

“Lou!”

Kasia was standing in the hall, one of our fighters on her arm. The elevator was open, and a few other girls were in there. All of them were bloodied.

Three girls were missing.

I frowned at Kasia. “What happened?”

“We should talk downstairs. Come on.”

We loaded onto the elevator, and I knew something awful had happened. I began to check the girl closest to me for any serious injuries. She was okay, so I moved onto the next girl.

The doors slid open. Kasia helped her fighter down the hall while the other girls followed. They didn’t seem too bad, though the girl Kasia had was leaving a trail of blood down the hallway.

“What happened?”

Girls were looking out of their rooms. Natasha came over to me.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “Come on. You can help.”

We moved quickly down into the room we used as the emergency room. Natasha and our doctor, Tanya, helped load the fighter onto a gurney, and the girls got to work.

Kasia met me outside of the room.

“It was an ambush,” she said.

“What?”

“They had far more men than we knew about. They were hiding downstairs just fucking waiting for us.”

“How did this happen?”

“It’s my fault. I didn’t know about those guys. My source didn’t tell me.”

“She was a plant.”

Kasia nodded slowly. “I think so.”

“Shit.”

“We’ll pick her up later.”

“Don’t bother. She’s not important.”

“We lost three girls.”

I sighed, leaning up against the wall. “Fuck.”

“I don’t think Leah in there is going to make it.”

“Did they take anyone?”

“Not alive.”

“Good.”

“But they’re getting better at countering us, Lou. We need more girls.”

“I know we do. I’m working on it.”

Kasia sighed and leaned up against the wall beside me. I saw her cringe.

“Are you okay?”

“Fine. Took some shrapnel. It’s nothing.”

I shook my head. Three girls dead, another seriously wounded. These were our best fighters, our most elite soldiers. If Kasia had taken more girls, I was willing to bet far more lives would have been lost.

Worse, the mob could have taken one of them. That was my biggest nightmare. If one of our soldiers gets interrogated and she breaks, which of course she will break, they could find all of our safe houses. Or at least they could find one or two; we kept most of them secret from anyone that doesn’t need to know about them.

This was our biggest loss since everything started. We’d lost a girl here or there, and even had one taken alive and interrogated. For the most part, though, we’d been lucky. Our losses were minimal because we took care to hit hard and move fast. We didn’t stick around to risk lives more than necessary.

We were small and nimble fighting an enormous giant. The chances were stacked against us but we still had to fight. We couldn’t slow down, not for a second. Even a loss like this couldn’t break us.

“Help the girls,” I said. I moved away, got back into the elevator, and headed upstairs.

I got into my bedroom and shut the door. Wyatt’s computer wasn’t on, but I could easily fix that. I broke into his network and sent a power signal to his laptop, booting it up.

When it was ready, I sent him a message.

I
woke
up around four in the morning to my computer beeping like fucking mad. I got out of bed, groggy and annoyed. It had somehow turned on, though I had no clue how.

I took it out into the living room and banged on Ethan’s door. Eventually he opened it.

“What the fuck?” he asked.

I held it up. “Why is my computer on?”

“Because you forgot to turn it off?” he grunted at me.

“No. It just turned on and started making this noise.”

“Throw it out the window.”

“Ethan.”

“Fine.” He took it from me and opened the lid. He looked up at me and grinned. “I think your girlfriend sent you a message.”

I looked at it and smiled. “I guess she’s all in.”

“Looks liked it.” Ethan handed me the computer and shut his door.

In big, bold letters, the screen said, “Arturo Barone must die.”

I carried the laptop into my bedroom and typed her a message. “Meet tomorrow.” I turned it off and shut the lid before going back to sleep, a smile on my face.

* * *

S
he showed
up at my hotel door around three in the afternoon that next day.

I didn’t plan on seeing her. I didn’t hear a peep at all, and I figured she was just busy. I had my own shit to deal with: an important case in the south of the state had just opened up that was taking up some of my time.

Chief Herbert called around noon to tell me that they were making some arrests of the Chicago dealers, which was exactly what I wanted. Most of those guys were in competition with the Barones, so I figured I could use this to help better the city while winning some favor with him.

I had no clue who to expect when she knocked. I just answered the door, figuring it was room service or something else Ethan had ordered.

Instead, there was Louisa Barone, looking gorgeous in a simple outfit of white sneakers, shorts, and a white t-shirt.

“Louisa,” I said, surprised.

“Wyatt.” She walked in and I shut the door behind her.

“This is a surprise.”

“I want to show you something.”

“Okay,” I said. “Want a drink?”

“No. We need to get going.”

“Going to show me another bombed-out building?”

“No. I’m going to show you where I live.”

That surprised me. “Your safe house?”

“Yes.”

“That’s some serious trust.”

“I’m in this, Wyatt,” she said, stepping toward me. “What do you want after we’re finished with my father?”

I crossed my arms. “I’m not sure.”

“How does Major of Chicago sound?”

I arched an eyebrow. “That sounds pretty good.”

“And after that, Governor of Illinois. And after that? Who knows?”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

“I can give you Chicago, at the very least.”

“That’s over a year away.”

“Which means we have plenty of time to take out my father and anyone else that stands in our way.”

I couldn’t help but grin and shake my head. The girl was so damn confident, I couldn’t resist her charm.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”

She nodded and headed out. I followed her, keeping up. We rode the elevator downstairs and got into a car driven by another attractive woman. As soon as the doors shut, Louisa turned to me. “Wyatt, this is Kasia.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said.

She nodded, but didn’t answer.

“Kasia is my second. She doesn’t like that we’re bringing you to our safe house.”

“I can understand that,” I said.

“No,” she said simply. “You can’t.”

Louisa gave her a look. “But Kasia trusts me, and is doing as I ask.”

Kasia didn’t answer.

I just smiled and said nothing, knowing better than to get in the middle of an argument.

We drove in strained silence. I could tell Louisa wasn’t happy with Kasia, and vice versa, but that didn’t matter to me. I was far too fascinated to say anything.

We headed into the heart of the city. I had expected them to take me into the suburbs, but clearly we weren’t headed that way. Instead, we were going right into the center of the Barone power structure.

They were hiding right under Arturo’s nose. I had to admit that I loved it, loved the audacity. Louisa probably knew how her father operated better than anyone, and if she thought this was safe, well then it probably was.

Still, I wouldn’t have put my safe house right where Barone was the strongest. We stopped on a boring block in a mediocre neighborhood. Louisa got out and Kasia went to park.

“Here we are,” Louisa said.

“You seriously live here?”

“I seriously live here.” She walked up the stood of a boring-looking row home. She unlocked the door and we stepped inside.

It was just like any other row home I’d ever seen. Living room, kitchen, second floor. There was nobody around, no girls laying, no guns or weapons or bombs. I had expected a bunch of grizzled veterans sitting around drinking beer and smoking, waiting for their time to die, but instead it looked like a regular home.

“This is nice,” I said.

She grinned at me. “Not what you expected?”

“No, not at all.”

“But wait. There’s more.”

We walked upstairs. It looked like any other row home to me, with one big exception: there was an elevator door at the end of the hall.

We walked over toward it. “This is interesting,” I said.

“It gets better.” She hit the call button. “I live down there,” she said, gesturing down at the bedrooms. “Kasia lives there.” She pointed at the closet room. “And the other girls...“

The elevator doors dinged open. We stepped inside. They shut and we descended. I noticed that there were four floors’ worth of buttons.

We stopped at the second floor. It felt like we had gone down, but I was thoroughly confused. The doors slowly slid open.

We stepped out into what I could only describe as a military barracks. There were cots all over the place, with stuff lining the walls. Guns and ammunition were placed carefully in rows, and there were other doors leading to other rooms. Girls were lying around, chatting in small groups. At least one was cleaning a rifle with a mean look on her face.

“This is it,” she said.

“Where are we?”

“We’re down below the basement.”

I gave her a look. “You’re kidding me?”

“I’m not. There are two more floors below us, actually.”

“How the hell did you dig this deep without anyone noticing?”

“Money.” She grinned bigger. “Lots and lots of money.”

For a second, the scale of the thing left me breathless.

We were in the middle of Chicago in a crowded city block. Digging extra floors at the bottom of a house was a serious job, one that took serious equipment. For Louisa to manage to do it without anyone noticing was absolute madness. This should be all over the news, or at least Arturo should have caught her doing it already. Instead, she had managed to pull it off somehow.

I was totally flabbergasted. They had to have moved tons of rock and dirt, and that alone was a huge deal. Forget about actually building the structure, setting in air vents, making sure it’s water tight, all that stuff.

“This is incredible,” I said, shaking my head.

“I know. Come on.”

I followed her between the cots. She introduced me to a few girls. By and large they were pretty and eastern European, some of them Russian, some of them ex-Soviet states, but all of them were young. I was actually shocked at how young they were. The oldest girl was probably twenty-five at best.

“Are these girls all ex-sex workers?” I asked Louisa quietly.

“Sex slaves,” she corrected. “And yes. All of them.”

“Jesus. I thought you’d have other soldiers working for you. I didn’t think they’d all be girls.”

“That’s why we’re successful. These girls believe in what we’re doing.”

I followed her down a short hall. She showed me the medical room, which was currently occupied by a girl in a cot with an IV hooked up to her arm, and the kitchen. I was introduced to every girl by name, and I was impressed that Louisa knew every single one.

We moved back to the elevator and went down another floor. It was similar downstairs, though there were fewer girls. There was more storage, a workout room, a leisure room, and a small library all the way in the back.

“How do you feed all these people?” I asked Louisa.

“Tunnels leading out into the city,” she said. “We can’t come and go up top, that would be too obvious.”

“Of course.”

“Me and Kasia do. I mean, someone has to live in that house. But mostly we move shipments in and out that way.”

“I can barely believe this.”

“We have to have something like this. We’re fighting against a giant. We need every edge we can get.”

“These girls, they really believe in the struggle.”

“They do. I do too, Wyatt. It’s not bullshit.”

“I know you believe. But I always assumed it was a vehicle to more power.”

She shook her head. “Maybe at first, maybe it was. But not anymore. Not after what I’ve gone through, what I’ve seen. Not after the first time I heard stories from these girls describing the horrors my father and his men put them through, all because they were born poor and the wrong gender.”

I nodded and said nothing. It was so incredibly admirable that I found myself growing even more respect for her. I felt guilty that I had assumed it was all a front for more power, but I could see that it wasn’t.

Nobody did all of this for just a power grab. This place and all these girls, it cost Louisa everything. There was no way she could keep this place running, and however many other places just like it, without serious work and dedication. If she just wanted some power, she could have hired a bunch of goons and taken it.

Instead, she was saving lives, and then she was keeping those girls around. She was clothing and feeding them, giving them purpose, making their lives matter.

She was more than just a power hungry mobster. I knew she was, but this place proved it. This place represented everything that I really wanted.

I didn’t want people to live the sort of hellish existence that I used to live. The rich and the powerful in this city were always working to keep people down, and I knew that only more power could beat them. Sometimes I felt like I was fighting a losing battle, but standing underground in that place made me feel something.

“Come on,” Louisa said. “Let’s head back upstairs.”

“Right behind you.”

We got back into the elevator and rode it back up to the main floor. I kept staring at her, growing more and more impressed. She smiled back at me, and I felt something click inside of me, deep and powerful.

I took her by the hips and pressed her against the elevator wall. I kissed her softly on the lips. She kissed me back, a smile on her face.

“Does this sort of thing excite you?” she asked me softly.

“A powerful woman gets me hard,” I admitted.

“Good.” She kissed me softly. “But I want to talk to you.”

“Okay,” I said. “Except I don’t feel like talking.”

“I know what you feel like.”

“Do you?” I smirked at her. “I don’t think you’ve even begun to know.”

The elevator doors dinged open. We looked out. Kasia looked back in at us.

She cleared her throat.

“Going down?” she asked.

We stepped off the elevator. I smirked at her and she ignored me. We watched as the doors shut.

Louisa sighed. “Come on,” she said.

I followed her toward her bedroom, my heart pounding in my chest, desire and need flooding my veins.