Page 44 of Mafia Obsession

I reach for my phone and scroll to find a number I’ve never needed until now.

My call is picked up on the first ring.

“What doyouwant?” Rhys Quinlan’s thick Irish brogue grates on me.

“My office, next Tuesday, eleven a.m.”

“What’s this about?” he barks.

“You’ll find out when you get here,” I say and hang up.

David Sinclair is a clear and present liability. He has the mark of an assassin and connections to the Bratva. If Lourdes’s father was stealing from the Volkovs, then Sinclair might be looking to trade her for favors.

That man has to die.

But I didn’t just wake up as the head of a crime organization yesterday. That was a few years ago.

I know people like David Sinclair can’t be wiped off this planet, i.e., killed, without a plan. Not when his wife is tagged.

The same wife who has caught my attention. But it’s more than that. Way more.

A truth I feel in my bones that I cannot deny.

Lourdes is mine.

Chapter 15

Lourdes

One week has passed since that tense-filled morning in the penthouse. Since I saw Ares in the shower during an intimate moment, and then naked in his closet, holding a Japanese bondage rope, tempting me.

But Ares has acted like it never happened. Must come from years of contracting women to satisfy his sexual needs. Temporarily. And then he moves on.

Ares Zervas doesn’t do relationships.

I’m drowning in my horrible marriage as Ares continues to touch me unapologetically. His hand sits at the small of my back, his long fingers resting lightly at my waist. He gives me the briefest squeeze on my forearm when he wants my attention. It might be for show, it might be just for us. I don’t know.

We go to meetings like I haven’t seen him naked. Like he didn’t see me shudder when he ran that soft rope against my skin. Like he didn’t possibly smell my arousal.

I wonder where the boundary line between us actually lies.

Everywhere we go, I notice the way women look at him. Receptionists, his pool of assistants on the seventh floor, and even wives of clients. I smirk at their flirty postures and teasing smiles. I blanch at their blatant invitations for a drink at a discreet hotel. Whispered promises of a blow job in the bathroom.

The answer is always no.

Ares barely smiles back at anyone. Except me.

The days have gone by so fast before I realized I’ve not spoken to Sandrine. With Ares in his office talking on the phone with the door closed, I call her, and after all the usual hops, the front desk, her ward, she answers.

“Lourdes?” she says, getting on the phone, sounding unsure.

“It’s me, Jess. I’m so sorry. Things here have been…weird.” I don’t know what she remembers. I don’t know who she talks to there, so I always keep things vague. “I got a new job three weeks ago.”

“Where?”

“A nice company on Wall Street. That’s in Lower Manhattan.” I watch the shadows in Ares’s office. “I’m making great money and have access to a gym.”

I don’t tell her about the flowers or the jewelry. I don’t tell her I saw my boss naked and caught him jerking off and calling out my name. And how he looks at me sometimes as though he forgets I’m married.