I glance at the men in the elevator with me, Dario Ricci and Marco Mancini—my business partners but, more importantly, my brothers, even though we come from different families.
Together, the three of us make a formidable team, slated from the start to take over from the Don, our mentor and the man who had more influence on our upbringing than our own parents.
That’s what it means to belong to the Sovrani: the family of untouchable mafia sovereigns. Except for one small, gray-haired woman with eyes still as sharp as a razor at eighty-six years old,who pulls our strings—and whom we allow to do so. Even the Don is afraid of her.
She won’t rest until she sees us married. And since the Sovrani will be ruled by a trio for the first time ever, we’ll be sharing a bride among the three of us.
“Plus, you know how crafty she is. If you suddenly bring in a bride out of nowhere, she’ll know it’s last minute. In that case, you’re just going to have to convince her that the girl is into you three or she’s going with her choice which she believes is essentially the same thing.
“Either way, I’ve seen the candidates she has lined up for you three. Beautiful women. Stunning. Smart. From good families. She’s set the bar very high, and those ladies meet the criteria. I say you let her choose your bride and be done with it. We have important matters to take care of. Come New Year’s, if you’re not sitting on the Sovrani throne, you know what’s going to happen.”
There’s that. The Don is powerful, but at sixty-nine years old, he developed a weakness for the fifty-nine-year-old sister of the head of the Bratva, and he admitted this to us himself.
If he’s still in power when we meet the Russians in the New Year, and she bats her eyes at him, he’ll sign over his soul to her—and everything else with it, he assured us. Yeah, that’s the type of problem we’re facing right now.
We don’t mind him having a romance with the woman; we mind if she makes him sign over territory that will put a dent in our armor.
“All right.” I sigh—whatever the fuck that means—then disconnect the call and run my hands through my hair.
“I can’t believe she’s blackmailing us in broad daylight,” Dario says, though there’s a light tone to his voice. We’ve always understood our duties to the family. Marrying and producing heirs are foremost on our list of obligations.
“She’s Rosa Visconti; she can do anything she wants, including dragging us to the altar by our ears,” Marco adds. “We just don’t have a choice anymore.”
Marco is right. If we can’t produce a bride of our choosing with such short notice, the matriarch wins.
The elevator doors slide open, and we step into the apartment, each of us needing a drink—or ten. Looks like we’re getting married, bride unseen.
Except… there’s someone in our apartment. We all stop dead in our tracks, our hands seconds away from drawing our guns and blowing the intruder to smithereens. We have enemies, of course, and their hired assassins have been known to pop up at the most unexpected times and places.
Obviously, they’ve never gotten the better of us, but there’s something different about this little assassin. Mainly because she’s sitting next to the giant white Christmas tree our staff put up, as if she’s a gift all wrapped up for us.
With a red blindfold across her eyes, we can only see the feminine slant of her jaw, her high cheekbones, and the lusciousness of her lips.
She’s sitting with her legs tightly crossed, her hands resting on the armrests of the chair, equally clenched. Her body seems stiff, tense, nervous, as if she’s holding her breath. Yet there’s something infinitely more dangerous about her than any threat we’ve encountered before.
Wearing an extremely sexy Santa suit, her breasts spill over her tight top, and the white fur ruffles on the hem of her skirt reveal a large expanse of her naked, glossy thighs.
My gaze—along with Dario’s and Marco’s—slides down to her red high-heeled shoes. Are those Santas holding their candy cane striped dicks in their hands?
Are her shoes her secret weapon since there’s nowhere else on her person to hide any other equipment?
Interesting.
One thing we agree on silently but instantly—without knowing who she is—we’re intrigued, and that means we’ll be keeping her until we decide otherwise.
She releases a breath. Her pretty lips quiver. She clenches her hands even tighter, then opens her mouth to speak.
“Don’t say anything, just kiss me.”
And fuck, her voice… It goes straight to our dicks. Soft and breathless, there’s no mistaking the sweetness in her tone, the uncertainty. The innocence?
We exchange looks once more, the same questions running through our minds simultaneously. Who the fuck is she? And why does she want us to kiss her?
But how can we refuse a request like that? Whatever game she’s playing with us, we can play it better. And what better way to strip search her for any hidden weapons than while we kiss her?
But then the thought comes out of nowhere and rocks us off our axis. How can we make this girl fall for us, enough to convince anyone looking?
Chapter Five
