Step Bride: A Bad Boy Mob Roman(16)

And the image of his body, nearly naked, his cock slightly hard against his thin boxer briefs, stuck in my brain and made my skin tingle.





Chapter Eight: Lucas





“What happened earlier, boss?”

I looked at Vince as I toweled off.

“Bad news about that, Vince.”

He smirked. “It’s always bad news in this business.”

I laughed, nodding. I slipped my wet underwear off and tossed it aside. Vince turned away, looking out across the lawn as I pulled my clothes back on.

Damn Natalie. I wasn’t sure why I kept pushing the girl, why I couldn’t let her be, but she was still very much on my mind.

I loved the way she looked at me, the way she bit her lip. It was almost too much, the way she acted as if she hated me while her body screamed how badly she wanted me.

Dressed, I began walking back toward the house. Vince fell into step next to me.

“Roddy got pinched,” I said. “And our shipment was confiscated.”

“Fuck,” Vince said. “How did that happen?”

“I don’t know, but Arturo tasked us with finding out.”

“Shit luck.”

“Yeah. We’ll start on that tomorrow.”

“Any ideas?”

“I have a few.”

We stopped outside the back door. “Anything you feel like sharing?”

I grinned at him. “Not yet. Do some digging on your own tonight if you can.”

He nodded. “You got it.”

“See you later.”

He turned and walked off. I watched him disappear between some buildings and sighed.

Damn shit luck. Nobody knew why Roddy got pinched and why the shipment got confiscated. We’d been planning that deal for months, and now the Russians were pissed we weren’t delivering.

It had been one of the biggest deals with them in a long time. We didn’t usually work with the Russians since the crazy bastards were so unpredictable, not to mention they were on the decline, but Arturo thought it was time we started being friendly again. And so I had worked my ass off setting up a nice little exchange of goods for cash.

The whole thing was very, very secretive. I could only name a handful of people that even knew about it, and I couldn’t imagine any of them ratting to the cops. I’d suspected that someone was being tailed by the feds for a while, but I had no real proof of that.

I walked into the house, shaking my head. I didn’t have to deal with that problem just yet. Father demanded that the whole family show up for a special dinner he had planned for Natalie and her crazy mother, which meant a ton of important mob captains would be there.

I moved through the hallways, nodding here and there to the staff. My father treated some of the people that worked for him like garbage, but that never felt right to me. Really, they had the most power in our house. They knew it better than anyone else, and they were the ones that cooked our food and cleaned our rooms. It felt like madness to be an asshole to them. Besides, some of them were decent people.

I moved up to the third floor and followed the winding hallways to the very far corner of the southeast wing. I stood outside a blue, ornate door, grabbed the knocker, and banged it.

There was no answer. I knocked two more times, but nothing.

“Louisa,” I called out, “you either open up or I’m going to barge in.”

The door opened a crack. “What?” Louisa said.

“I need a little favor.”

“Not in the mood for this, Lucas.”

“You don’t even know what it is,” I protested.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “I know our new stepmother and stepsister are here, and I know you like to be a dick.”

“All of that is true,” I said.

“So go away.”

“Sorry, kid. I need a favor, whether you want to help or not.”

There was a short pause, and then she sighed. I knew she couldn’t say no to me. “Fine. Come in.”

The door opened and I smiled at my younger sister. “You’re looking spry today.”

She gave me a look and closed the door behind me as I entered her room.

Really, it was more like an apartment. Louisa was father’s little princess, but she was admittedly incredibly odd. A few years younger than me, Louisa had dropped out of high school early on and had decided that she wanted to help with the family business full time. When Arturo told her that wasn’t happening, she turned into something of a spinster, living in a remote corner of the property and not going out very often.

Her rooms were large and covered in electronics equipment. Louisa plopped down on a couch and grumbled at me.

“What’s the favor, Lucas? I’m busy.”

“You’re never actually busy, kid.”