Phantom's Baby: A Mafia Secret Baby Romance (Mob City Book 3) Read Free Page A

tight, thin-lipped smile whose warmth barely reached my cheeks, let alone my eyes. “It is okay, Dimitri; you can say his name. Here, I’ll say it for you. Sergei.”
    Dimitri stumbled, but continued manfully. I nodded as I listened to him; hearing his words, but also seeing beyond them; measuring the strength it took to speak at all. Dimitri Petrov, it seemed, would make a fine right hand.
    “I’m sorry, boss. Sergei – he didn’t do the dirty work himself,” he said, his voice barely flecked with the lightest of Russian accents. “Said it was bad for business. Said he needed plausible –“
    I cut him off again. “Deniability?”
    He nodded.
    “You’ll find, Dimitri that I intend to be very different than the late Sergei Popov .” The last words came out in a hiss as I remembered the indignities that the man had heaped on me, the beatings, the abuse, the mockery .
    I blinked once, and the feelings were gone, mastered. My face was as implacably still as a Russian doll. “And it didn’t do him much good in the end, did it?”
    Dimitri shook his head. Around us, the men looked on in rapt silence. They knew what they were witnessing – if not a struggle for power, then a demonstration of it. I loved the game, revelled in the thrill of asserting my dominance over those whose lives I held in the palm of my hand. An office job wasn’t for me. The nine to five grind, those soulless hollow-eyed men who have no idea what else the world has to offer – the money, the power, the women .
    “Do you know why we’re here, Dimitri?”
    “To kill –”
    “No, not to kill,” I said. “Not just to kill. We’re here to make a statement: to let my father know that betrayal has consequences; to tell him that his so-called safe houses aren’t safe anymore.”
    Dimitri’s already pale face whitened still further. A flicker of movement flashed across it, and I suspected I knew what had caused it: the memory of how I’d taken control of Sergei Popov’s once feared criminal organization. The reason why I now bore a title, whispered in hushed tones, even at home. The title they thought I didn’t know.
    I did.
    It was Phantom .
    “Yes boss,” Dimitri nodded. “We’re with you, aren’t we boys?”
    Around us, five heads nodded in unison. A thrilling burst of adrenaline surged through me. I felt like a young lion, entering my prime, the new King of my pride. And around me, every head was bowed in submission. A fire began to consume me, vibrating through my entire body, every atom quivering with a fierce, unfulfilled desire. It had been too long, for far too long, unsafe.
    It had been far too long, subjugated by my desire for revenge. It needed a release – I needed a release. My skin was hot to the touch. I ached for a woman.
    Down, cowboy , I thought. What the hell’s gotten into you?
    “Good,” I whispered, drawing an eight inch blade from where I’d strapped it by my left boot. The deadly weapon glittered in what faint light penetrated through filthy windows into the slum hallway.
    The air was musty, smelling half-fermented from decaying construction material and grinding poverty. It smelled familiar, reminding me of memories I’d locked away long ago, from a time before I was a killer. I’d been here, in this very building.
    I blinked back the memories that were threatening to overwhelm me, without ever betraying their true secrets, and choked an order to my men, damming the flood of unwanted remembrance. “Let’s move.”
    We had assembled in the tenement’s stairwell. It stank of urine, and piles of litter stood knee-high in every corner. Every crack and crevice teemed with insect-life, and the ceilings were strewn with cobwebs.
    I picked my way around small piles of rodent droppings. At least, I hoped they were from rodents. Dimitri led the way, on point, his weapon cradled between both his enormous hands. I nodded with unseen approval. Whoever trained him had done a good job.
    Behind him, the five men