Owning the Mafia Don

Sophie

She stared at the phone, her hands shaking. She had just informed Worthington that she was no longer part of Lucien Delano’s household. The Boss had unceremoniously dumped her in a small apartment close to the Club. Patrick as well, much to the little boy’s disappointment.

The rent on the apartment was to be paid by the Boss, she had been informed, and she suspected that it had been on Proserpina’s insistence. But Sophie seethed.

She hated Proserpina.

Yes, she had discovered that the matter of her mother being discharged had been a mistake; she had only been shifted to the wing where a lot of physiotherapy could be administered easily. Not, thought Sophie glumly, that it would help at all. Her mother was like a vegetable. Her small shrunken body was connected to a myriad of tubes, oblivious to the world around her.

When Sophie visited her, she sat, holding the thin, limp and lifeless wrist, speaking to the figure who lay on the large bed, in a coma.

She knew the treatment was expensive but it only made her feel more resentful of Delano and his wife and family…

Worthington had been furious at that.

‘You were supposed to help. , ‘he snapped icily.

“Your sister will face the brunt of your foolishness,’ he warned and Sophie squeezed her eyes shut as she thought she could hear a woman whimpering in pain in the background.

‘Please, ‘she cried urgently, ‘Please, don’t hurt Sondra. I…I am still working at the Club. I can help…’

Worthington was silent for so long that she thought he had gone away. Then his sinister voice came over the phone;

‘In that case…’Upstodatee from Novel(D)ra/m/a.O(r)g

***

Schwartz

It was late evening when the door flew open and Lucien Delano strode into his room. Schwartz looked up, surprised. Lucien never came to him, it was always the other way around.

Now, dressed in his usual impeccable style, understatedly elegant, the older man with the ice grey eyes and the head of silver hair came towards him and he rose.

Lucien threw his arms around Schwartz’s shoulders and enveloped him in a bear hug.

Grinning to himself, Schwartz held the man he regarded as his friend, his mentor and his brother.

“When it comes to my woman,’ growled Lucien thickly, the nearest he would ever come to apologizing, ‘I lose my head.’

They both knew he was talking about Proserpina, the curvaceous woman who loved Lucien with all her heart and who was fiercely loved. in return by her man. And who was also loved in a deep, hopeless way, by Schwartz.

‘It’s okay, mate,” said Schwartz, his green eyes shining with relief.

They exited the room, chatting amicably. Lucien was leaving for South America that night to discuss matters with another of their business associates and there was a lot to be done.

***

Aiyana

She looked at herself in the mirror and sighed. The olive-skinned, high-cheek-boned woman in the mirror stared back at her, her full mouth and slightly aquiline eyes unreadable as ever. She was still in Hollowford, although she had been planning to leave earlier that evening. But

the Senator had invited her to a do, a prestigious charity dinner and she did not want to turn her old friend down. She needed his support.

But here she sighed again, her problem was simple; she did not have anyone to accompany her to the dinner. She would have to get a dress, of course, but a man to accompany her…

Aiyana sighed. The last time she had gone for a dress-up dinner had been with her husband, Howard. She smiled; they had gotten drunk and spent a night in outrageous sexual activity. The tears rose up in her eyes, and she bowed her head and sniffed.

She missed him so badly. A couple of one-night flings were all she had been able to manage after his death. No one interested her. Sex was empty and unfeeling.

She sighed.

Studying her phone, she smiled bitterly. It had been a conscious decision she had made to relocate, to shift to the middle of the Texan desert, as her erstwhile partner in the FBI, Ben Church, had said incredulously when she had put in her papers.

But her heart had been so empty. She owed it to Howard, to his memory. To stay in the place that he had loved, where he had been so brutally left to die.

Because of her.

It had taken her a couple of weeks to understand that the ranch was so well-oiled in its functioning that it did not require her presence. The old hands, the manager who had been there since god knows when, had been with Howard for years.. She was merely getting in the way when she asked questions in her crisp, unsmiling way, she realized.

Soon, she began to spend all her time inside the house. Cooking was not her forte and she had begun to brood, prowling around the large ranch house, blaming herself for Howards’s death.

That was when the Senator had reached out and told her to come to Hollowford.

Dmitri Rudenko was attempting to get back at one of his old enemies, a dreaded mob boss named Lucien Delano.

Aiyana wrinkled her nose. She had heard of him and also seen the man. A gangster who carried himself like a bull and was notorious for his temper. Word was, he was also a fighter who had grown up on the streets and had clawed his way to the top.

She knew he was a serial womanizer, too. On the one meeting she had had with him, he had given her a once-over and dismissed her as being of no interest to him. She had felt the same.

There had been two women with him and the cold, unfeeling way he touched them and played with their bodies in public had left her feeling disgusted. One had been on his lap, trying to kiss him, touch him and paw him in a vulgar way and he had pushed her away coldly, humiliating the woman before the entire table of guests when he sharply asked her to leave before he threw her out.

Howard had raised the bar for her; no man she met could ever come close to him, she thought dully.

And then she remembered handsome James Schwartz.

She smiled. He was a different kind of person, a man with a heart. On that dark evening when she had been to the clinic of the psychologist, she had accidentally wandered into the waiting room where the patients sat on arrival. The only occupant had been a tall, dishevelled-looking man with his green eyes brimming with grief. He had been sitting, his head sunk in his hands.

She had noticed his fingers were long, like a musician’s

The bitterness and defeat in his expression when he raised his head and looked at her had broken her heart. It was so genuine-the raw pain.

Impulsively, she had chosen to sit near him and had forced him to participate in a conversation with her. Gently, she had coerced him to get talking. The open wound in his heart, the death, no, the murder of his wife, had made her feel a strange sense of anguish.

He had been so bereft.

Later she had got to know more about him; had found out that he was Lucien Delano’s Number Two man, the Number One being an obnoxious character named Shark.

How did such a fine, well-mannered man become a gangster, she found herself wondering.

They had kept in touch at first, the odd phone call. But after a while, it petered out. Howard’s death had turned her world upside down.

Now she thought for a while, biting her lip.

Why not see if James Schwartz was free? He had been at the Senator’s the other day and had been as friendly and warm as ever. He was definitely a good choice and was probably also one of the people who had been invited to the charity dinner.

Picking up the phone in her hotel room, she dialled the number without further ado.