Hard Bastard(22)

Gage was in the courtroom. Gage was a gangster.

I sat there staring, and I didn’t know if I’d ever move again.





Chapter 8





Gage





I downed the second shot and motioned for another. Ralph’s was busier than normal, and a lot of my mafia brothers were sitting in the booths quietly talking to each other. I knew what they were saying and had no interest in getting involved.

Everyone wanted to discuss the new pretty Assistant District Attorney. They couldn’t believe some young girl was willing to stand up to the mafia, and for the most part, the men were impressed.

But then there was the group that wasn’t so impressed. They were the ones that wanted to do horrible things to the new ADA to send a message to the whole fucking county: we are not to be messed with. They wanted to rape her, cut off her hands, cut out her tongue, and otherwise maim her until she ran away from Ashertown and never came back.

I couldn’t listen to it. I couldn’t listen to any of it. I was too busy staring at the bottom of my glass, the same thought running through my head over and over.

Sadie was the new ADA. Sadie, the girl I had slept with the night before, my ex-girlfriend, the woman that I fucking wanted to possess more than anything I’d ever felt before. Sophia was my enemy.

My people wanted to hurt her, and badly. They wanted to end her life, rip her to shreds, destroy her for going so hard after Evgeni. It wasn’t really about Evgeni at all, but more about what his conviction would mean for the rest of us. We couldn’t let them think they could get away with it. If they thought that prosecuting one of our own was easy then they’d start coming after everyone else.

We just couldn’t have it. We paid the cops a lot of fucking money over the years to look away, and we couldn’t have them cracking down all of a sudden. It didn’t matter if there was pressure coming in from the feds, we just couldn’t allow it to happen.

Fucking Sadie. I shot back my whisky and motioned for another. What the fuck was she doing working on this case? She had to know that it was fucking dangerous to try and convict a mafia man, especially one here in Ashertown. This was practically the wild fucking west, and she was trying to stick her nose where it didn’t belong.

I knew she worked in law, but I figured she was a clerk or something to a judge. I had no clue that she was an ADA. She was just so damn young, it never occurred to me that she had gotten so far so fast. I would be impressed if I weren’t trying to figure out what the fuck I was going to do about her.

My people wanted to hurt her, maybe even kill her, but I knew I couldn’t let it happen. They might even ask me to do it myself, whatever Vadik decided to do to her. When it came to cracking skulls and sending messages, I was one of the best.

Not in this case, though. The memory of her body came back to me, her wet pussy wrapped around my cock as I fucked her against my car. I felt so good that night, like nothing else in the world mattered. I forgot all about the mob shit, all about my stupid fucking problems. I was just a kid again fucking my gorgeous woman and that was all that mattered. The night was right and so was she, but now that all seemed ruined, tainted somehow.

Because someone in the mob was going to have to fucking kill her, and I didn’t know what I was going to do about it.

“What are you looking so fucking sad about?”

I half turned and looked at Boris. “Nothing,” I grunted at him.

“Tell that to your sad face.”

“The fuck you want, Boris?”

He shrugged and sat down next to me. He ordered a drink. “The guys are all talking about that pretty little lawyer. You know, that girl from the other night.”

“She’s the ADA.”

“What?”

“Assistant District Attorney.”

“Sure, whatever.” He slammed back his drink. “She’s fucking hot, though. Thought so when we first saw her, but fuck, she looks good in that sexy little suit.”

I clenched my jaw. “Is that all you wanted to say?”

“The fuck is the matter with you, man?” He shook his head. “You’re more of a dick than normal.”

I grunted. “Just don’t like this situation.”

“Ain’t no situation,” he said, laughing. “We’ll just break the bitch’s knees. You know?”

“Sure,” I said, clutching my glass.

“Might be kinda fun,” he went on. “Get her down on her knees, shove my cock down her throat. Then pinch her nose shut until she struggles.” He laughed.

I slammed my drink back, barely keeping myself under control. Boris was one sick fuck and he was always talking like that, but it wasn’t normally about a woman I wanted. Boris knew that I knew her, and Alex did too, but they didn’t know how well I knew her.