Indebted to the Mafia King

Dante

I shoulder open my front door long after everyone in the house other than Gianna will be asleep. My own silent halls greet me. I kick the door shut, nudge off my shoes, and head upstairs to shower before I get blood on anything important. It's been two long goddamn days, but Thano's people are finally starting to close in on a potential location for Luca. Tony pulled them in more after I told him to make his own call. Yet another good decision that night. I stride into the master bathroom attached to my bedroom, strip, and put my suit directly in the second laundry basket I keep in there for anything that needs serious stain removal. Then, I switch on the massive rain shower I splurged on a few years ago. Everything's been moving too fast for me to check in with Eleni, but after how vocal she was in my office, I get the sense she'd let me know if I'd done anything wrong or pissed her off. Once we have a location on Luca, I'll bring her in as an operative, but we've finally cracked enough skulls that I can carve fifteen minutes out of my day tomorrow to talk to her. Or whatever else she wants.

I step into the steaming spray and run my hands through my hair. The black tile on the floor and walls doesn't show the blood draining off my body, which makes it that much easier to let my mind drift to Eleni's fingers where mine are. I'm used to being in charge in the bedroom-and in most things-but I can't quite bring myself to mind the way she pulled me around. The little sparkles of pain were appealing in a way that made me understand submissives for the first time in my life.

Just the thought of her makes my cock start to harden, and I groan. I have been spending far too much time jerking off while daydreaming about a woman who seems to want me just as much as I want her. I don't want to push her into anything she's not ready for, but I'd be happy to spend another night between her spectacular legs.

When all the blood is gone, I step out of the shower, turn it off, and pull on a robe. Her mother left, according to Seb, so maybe she won't mind a wakeup call. I grin as I march down the hall to the spare bedroom she chose, leaving the door to my room open behind me.

I knock on her door. "El? Can I come in?"

No answer. She might be a heavy sleeper. I can picture her sprawled across the bed, drooling slightly on the pillow. I knock a little louder.

Still nothing. The hair on the back of my neck starts to rise. I push open the door, calling her name softly, and my stomach drops to my toes.

Empty bed. No Eleni.

I race through the rest of the house, checking room after room, to no avail. She's not here. Gianna isn't either, but that's normal. Suddenly, my normally empty house feels cavernous. I sprint back to my room and grab my phone to dial Tony. "Do you have Eleni?" I bark as soon as he picks up.

"Nope," he replies. "Why, is something up?"

"Later." I hang up. Seb was supposed to circle back to the house after making sure Maria got on the plane safely. I punch in his number.

The phone rings, and rings, and eventually goes to voicemail.

I straighten as certainty sends iron down my spine. Luca struck first. He has Eleni. I dress quickly and calmly, hiding guns and knives in all the inner pockets I had added to my suit, then call Tony and a couple other capos to meet me at the house. I'm halfway through dialing Thano to put the search for Luca on hyperdrive when my phone rings.

Sebastian.

I answer immediately.

"Hey, boss," he says a little sheepishly.

I blink. He doesn't sound pained. There's no rasp to his voice like he's been gagged or dehydrated. I hear thumping bass in the background.

"Do you know where Eleni is?" I ask.

"Yeah." He swallows audibly. "Big drama with her mom, Gianna asked if she wanted to go out, and Eleni said yes."

My stomach finally starts to rise from the pits of hell it descended to. "Piacere?"

"Where else?" I can hear Seb's grin. "But, uh...you should know Eleni's kind of a lightweight."

***

"Lightweight" is the understatement of the century. She's shitfaced.

I nurse a much-needed scotch at one of the high tables next to the dance floor and look at Eleni. She's in the middle of the crowd, moving like a thing possessed and wearing what is probably the most modest of Gianna's dresses. The sparkling pink fabric drapes to her knees, due to the difference in their heights, but it pulls taut over her breasts and ass. Sometimes, Eleni dances with the same sinuous grace she displayed on the couch in my office two nights ago. Other times, she loses the beat entirely and collapses onto Gianna. Somehow, both of these coax my forgotten erection back to life. I haven't really seen Eleni laugh yet, not with the full-throated abandon I can sense from here. I've barely seen her smile when she's not mocking me. Now, she looks carefree, like any other twenty-three-year-old on my dance floor.

My slow sips of scotch fail to calm my imagination. I indulge in a fantasy of joining her out there, of her weight against my chest as she grinds into me, of teasing her to the edge of orgasm in the middle of the crowd and then whisking her into a back room to see how loud I can make her scream with all her inhibitions lowered.

A douchebag with over-gelled hair appears out of the crowd and rolls his hips against Eleni. She turns to him a little muzzily and seems to try to push him away, but he holds on, rucking up the skirt of her dress.

My vision goes red, and I am striding through the crowd of dancers before I realize what I'm doing. A few of my men positioned around the room drift forward. They think I've spotted a threat. Good. I want this man, and every man like him, scared.

When I reach them, Gianna looks at me, goes pale, and opens her mouth to say something. I ignore her and turn right to the douchebag.novelbin

"Get your hands off of her," I say very calmly for the fury burning in my veins.

"Or what?" He laughs.

"Dante?" Eleni sways, and from this distance, I can see how blurry her gaze is. Only the barest remains of a dark pink lipstick clings to her mouth, the rest surely left on too many glasses.

"I wouldn't ask me questions like that if I were you." I give my voice a dangerous edge.

He rolls his eyes and yanks Eleni against him. "Fuck off, buzzkill."

I slam my fist into his throat. The douchebag stumbles back, coughing. The crowd begins muttering. Gianna grabs my arm and says something I can't hear as my world narrows to Eleni, now unsupported and confused. Without a second thought, I lift Eleni, toss her over my shoulder so she can't see the rage on my face, and stride into the back hall.