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Chapter 29
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Mafia's Cruel Arrangement chapter 30
MOLLYI was such a moron.Throwing myself at him. Doing the whole hand-to-his-chest thing. Being seductive. And it failed! Crash and burn. He rejected me, but man oh man. I felt him. He wanted me. He was into it, but agh. I was so humiliated.Was it me?What was I thinking? Of course it was me.Me. Who else would it have been? Something was wrong with me. I wasn’t pretty enough, or tall enough, or I don’t know. It was just me. Who was I kidding? The universe did not like me, but dammit. No. I refused to go down this path. I’d done too much, endured too much, etched out a damn good life despite my parental seeds. Screw him.I mean, that’s what I’d been trying to do but aghhhh!His loss. Right. Totally his loss. He’d be regretting it, except, and this was hard for me to admit, I didn’t think he was regretting it at all. He was quiet when he got in the vehicle, and despite performing some first aid on his hand, he hadn’t done anything on the whole drive back to the city. Total silence. W
Mafia's Cruel Arrangement chapter 31
The driver was returning, so I ignored a very different feeling that came over the back of the car. I pointed at him. “He’s back.”He opened the door. Ashton got out first and stepped aside to let me lead the way.I did, ignoring the clerk and a couple other customers inside. The bathroom was empty, thank god, but the lock was pitiful. Holding my bladder, as if that worked, I hauled the giant garbage bin over to block the door. The thing was hella heavy, so it’d do. After that, heaven and relief and yes.That’s when my phone pinged in my pocket.I pulled it out, seeing that reception had come back at some point, and saw thirty text messages, sixteen voice messages, and a whole host of other alerts. Holy shit . . .Pialto: WHAT THE HAT, WOMAN?! WHERE ARE YOU?Pialto: Sorry. What the what. Auto-duck.Pialto: Your cousin won’t tell us anything!Sophie: Where are you? Are you alive? Did you have a one-night stand and it’s amazing and you’re taking a day? Please please please tell me that’
Mafia's Cruel Arrangement Chapter 32
MOLLYHe was cleaning my face.We were in a bathroom. I was on the counter, and Ashton stood between my legs. A first aid kit was next to us. He was dabbing a cotton ball at my forehead.I felt the sting and hissed.He pulled back. “Can you hear me?”His voice droned through an invisible barrier, but I nodded. I could.“Can you talk?”I closed my eyes and started to lower my head, but he touched under my chin. “I need to clean some scrapes you got. They can’t get infected.”Another nod. Fine. But I kept my eyes closed.It felt better this way, somehow. And I reached back for what I’d been holding on to, my fingers touching bare skin.I looked, seeing that I was holding on to Ashton’s side.I took all of him in.He was in his black pants that he’d worn earlier, but his shirt was unbuttoned. It hung open. The ends tucked over my hands as I was gripping onto him, as if I couldn’t let go, but it felt right to put my hand there again, so I did.Ashton moved even closer, his head angling ov
Mafia's Cruel Arrangement chapter 33
ASHTONI stayed until long after Molly fell asleep, and even then, I couldn’t bring myself to leave her.This—I didn’t know what the fuck this was, but needing to take care of her, the terror that went through me when that gun touched her head. It was nothing to how it felt when she looked at me.I felt struck by lightning.She was scared. She knew she would die, and she looked at me for help. It was in an instant. One look. Not even a second and we both knew what we were going to do.I hated her while growing up and now this? This? What the hell was happening with me? I untangled myself from her. It’d been my fourth attempt. The first two she’d fought back, waking up. The third, I hadn’t had the heart in it myself, but this fourth time—I needed to separate. At least for a bit. I needed to think clearly again, to even remember how that felt.Pulling a shirt on, I headed out and toward Trace’s basement. He had a whole TV lounge area, and in the last month since he’d bought this place f
Mafia's Cruel Arrangement chapter 34
MOLLYI was watching from the bed as Ashton moved around the room, sweats on, a T-shirt not hiding how very toned he was. Shock and trauma aside from being shot at and everything else, man, the man had muscles. He was the definition of muscle definition. And those sweats were dipping so nicely low on his hips.I wasn’t trying to work myself up, but it was just happening.Ashton had given me and Jess and Trace the info on what he thought was happening because my dad was scurrying around out there. And also that he’d sent in an order for Marcus to reach out, but that he hadn’t yet. That was either good or bad. I checked my phone, but he’d not messaged or called me there either.“Do you think he’ll be alarmed when he goes to your apartment, Molly?” Jess had asked earlier.I snorted before remembering she didn’t really know the dynamic between my father and me. I shook my head. “Number one rule surviving being Shorty Easter’s daughter? Never let him know where you live. He only knows to g
Mafia's Cruel Arrangement chapter 35
ASHTONWe’d slept through the rest of the morning.I was sitting on the edge of the bed. Molly was still conked out behind me. She’d fallen asleep after our last time, so I’d moved her, positioning her back under the sheets, but I couldn’t sleep. My body was a mix of satisfaction, exhaustion, and also readiness for whatever was to come.I liked this next stage. Not in a Mafia war, but in our businesses. I enjoyed where the next move was ours to make, where our adversary was wary, where we were the predators. But the stakes were different here.They’d hit us last night, and before we’d even retired to our separate bedrooms, Trace and I had already coordinated our attack. Each of us still handled what our families handled before, with Trace’s family covering transportation and distribution and mine handling the cops and higher-ups, but it was different now that he and I were the heads. We could coordinate better. There was no more needed time to call for a meeting or to decipher if that
Mafia's Cruel Arrangement chapter 36
ASHTONNicolai Worthing was a smug prick. That was my opinion when we’d first met, and it remained today. We went in. He was already outside his vehicle. His men were spread out. He’d picked a place where he would be vulnerable if we chose to take him out then and there. But I didn’t believe that. He’d never let himself be as open as he was. I had no doubt he had a sniper set up somewhere.Because of that, I had sent Avery a text to come.He was an hour out, so we stalled as long as we could. We couldn’t stall any longer.As we got out of our vehicle, our men spreading, I got a text.Avery: Ten minutes out.I almost whistled. He must’ve been speeding and beyond to make that time, but it was Avery.I tucked my phone back in and walked the distance toward Nicolai.He grew up in privilege, and he dressed like it. Three-piece suit. He probably got his shoes shipped direct from Italy, and he had a smarmy look with his hair combed to one side. I’m sure females thought he was attractive with
Mafia's Cruel Arrangement chapter 37
MOLLYI got my dad’s voice mail, again. “Dad, you need to call me. I’m actually worried. For once.” I hung up before I could say anything more, like how I wanted to murder him, because if he heard that, he’d never find Kelly’s murderer.“No luck?”I straightened, hearing Jess come into the kitchen.I’d left the bedroom around six because my stomach was doing its best rendition of a pterodactyl squawk, or how I was assuming they would’ve squawked. It would’ve been more like a roar.I’d realized this was not Ashton’s house or another one of Ashton’s places when I went down the stairs and saw a picture of Trace and Jess together. The next picture over was of her mother. Her brother. There were more people, but I didn’t know them, and then I meandered into the office and was captivated for the next hour because there was an entire wall of pictures of Trace during his high school and college years. A lot of those pictures had him and Ashton, and yeah, my stomach was doing all these little
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