Maid for the Hitman: A Steamy Standalone Instalove Romance by Flora Ferrari (lightweight ebook reader txt) 📗

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Ryland

I move my finger around the glass of whisky, and I think about what it’d be like to grab the glass and smash it against Vito’s head.

Violent instincts pulse in me, primal and dangerous, every part of me alight with the need to fight or fuck.

It’s a dangerous cocktail, meeting the woman of my dreams and then having to talk to these mobbed-up lowlifes.

Just a couple of days ago my biggest concern was feeding big old Chopper.

“Well?” Vito says.

He asked why I packed a bag and drove them away from the apartment building before I took them out. It’s a stupid question, but his eyes are hazy with cocaine, his movements are twitchy. The goons at the rear of the bar are the same as if they’re all amped-up on the same stimulants.

Cocaine makes men think they’re tough.

It makes them forget respect.

“It’s not your place to question how I do things, Vito.”

His men stir at the back. Vito flinches, leaning back as if he’s just realized how close he’s sitting to me.

He knows I could dart my hand up quicker than a whip and latch onto his neck. He knows I could squeeze and crush his tendons and his bones and his life out of him.

He knows I’m Ryland fucking Radley, and my old man was Bucky Radley.

“I…” He clears his throat. “I think I have a right to ask.”

He’s whining because he knows the steroid sacs he calls muscles won’t stand up to one of my fingers. He knows I could dismantle him, grab my gun, and drop these men like we’re in a goddamned Western.

If you touch her, I roar at him silently. I am going to fucking end you. She is mine.

“That’s my business. Is there anything else, Vito?”

“Wait a sec,” he snaps. “We ain’t done here.”

I stare at him silently.

He stares back at me, but he sees certainty and I see fear.

His eyes widen and it’s like he’s crying at me to stop doing this, stop challenging him.

There’s nothing more dangerous than a sensitive mob guy.

Except maybe an angry hitman.

“If you’ve got something else to say, say it,” I snarl.

He grips the edge of the table and glares at me as though he’s going to say something, as though he’s going to act tough. But we both know there’s nothing he can say or do to me.

His father and I made a deal.

They can call me any damn thing they want.

But I’ll bring more good to this world than bad, and if that means demolishing their little social club, then so be it.

“Don’t push your luck, Ryland,” Vito snaps.

“Only a foolish man threatens me,” I growl.

“Who’s threatening?” Vito rushes to say, holding his hands up in a prey-like way, a though he’s scared of what I’d do if he even dreamed of disrespecting me. “It’s an honest question, that’s all. Got a guy who says he saw you pack them into your car and drive away, and the girl – that Rosie – she was smiling.”

A cord of hot tension moves through me when he uses her name, my chest pounding with the suggestion of an eruption. My mind floods with blood-red vignettes and my fingers start to twitch, getting ready for a killer’s work.

“What, nothing to say?” Vito growls. “How can you explain that? Why would she be smiling?”

I stand up, looming over him.

The men at the back – the identical-looking bastards in their blue suits with their gold watches – bristle and reach for their weapons. But I can see fear glinting in their eyes, the same look a deer gets when it sights a wolf in the dark.

They know who I am.

And even if they somehow killed me here, they know it’d be the end of them.

“You can’t behave this way toward us,” Vito snarls, bolting to his feet. He has a juvenile whine in his voice, like a kid who’s never been told no. “I won’t let you.”

I turn away from the table, my senses keen, heightened to an animalistic level, alert to any twitching alteration in the atmosphere of the room. I’ve been in too many fights not to sense them coming, like a stink in the air, the implication of all the things that could happen shiver beneath it all.

“Maybe I’ll come and have a look at your place sometime,” he says.

I turn my head slightly, sighting the men out of my peripheral vision.

Even with my back turned, the men flinch.

Vito’s hand trembles near his hip, as if he thinks he’d have enough time for gunplay when I start to dismantle him and his goons.

“My estate is off-limits,” I growl, telling him something he already knows. “You know what happens if you break that promise, Vito.”

“You think I’m scared of you?” he cries. “I’m Vito Franzese. I’m the prince.”

I grunt out a laugh.

“Sure, tough guy,” I say, striding for the door.

“I am a tough guy,” Vito yells at me as I pull it open, pacing out onto the street. “And maybe one day I’ll fucking show you.”

I curse myself as I walk across the street toward my sedan.

A smart man would’ve groveled back there. Would’ve stooped and begged and did whatever it took to calm Vito down, to placate him, so he wouldn’t lose his shit and invade my life.

Even if I have contingency plans if he ever breaks his word, that doesn’t mean I want to use them.

That will mean attention I don’t want, and right now the only person I want attention from is waiting for me back in my home.

I walk down the hallway, waving a hand at the hidden camera. I wonder if Rosie has stayed awake and is watching the tablet like I told her to.

I wouldn’t have worried about it before I left to visit that so-called prince, but now my protective need is even fiercer.

She meets me at the door, her finger to her lips.

My insides go tight and gnarled. She could so