Page 3 of My Mafia Beast

When I got home to my mansion, it seemed bigger than usual. It felt like I was walking through Grand Central station, something I had done a million times, given the fact that I operated out of New York. I lived on Staten Island. And even that borough felt like an empty hell hole.

I poured myself a drink even though I did have a glass of wine at the restaurant. I just wanted to let loose. I wanted to clear my head of the bit of fog that was circling around me. I had this little moment where I did feel bad about what happened with the girl on the date. No matter where I went in my life, I had this negative connotation right next to me. Either. I would still be a mafia man, the boss, or just the empty stud women liked to gawk over. The only one that actually treated me like a human being who could have an actual conversation with me was Angelina. And because of this, it took me only a few sips of my drink to call her.

I had some ass-backwards, decision-making skills because I thought about calling her before I even had a reason to call her. I had her name on my phone with no reason for why it should be there.

Before I knew it, I was already dialing the phone. With each noise style that popped into my ear, my heart rate raced a little faster. It was the adrenaline rush that I needed for that night.

I heard the click on the third ring as her voice said, "Hello?"

Her voice was soft yet affirmative. Of course, I sexualized it because that's where my mind was at the moment. There was just something sultry about her voice, something that was utterly alluring.

But now that she had put a word into the universe, I had to come up with something in terms of a reason for calling her. " I just wanted to make sure I told you the right day to come in. I told you Monday, right?"

Just hearing myself say those words, I knew that I must have sounded sketchy. I wanted to blame it on the alcohol, but I had only two drinks. This was my foolish mistake.

"Um, yes, you told me Monday." There was a finality in her voice, not a lot of give. Once again, it reinforced the notion that I probably should not have called her.

So I hung up. I didn't say goodbye. I didn't say thanks. I just hung up. It wasn't the most professional way to go about things, for sure. It was going to leave a sour taste in her mouth and make her wonder. Those were not things that I wanted to do, but they were going to happen regardless now.

I threw my phone across the room and walked to my living room, where I lay on the couch. I brought a hand to my forehead and, for once in my life, felt a tinge of embarrassment. It was almost like everything I had bottled up from the restaurant was spilling out. I had to remind myself that I was only human. I was prone to embarrassment just like anyone else. Even if I had seen some of the worst things happen in humanity when it came to my off-the-record job, I still felt things at the end of the day as much as I didn't want to.

I picked up my phone just to see if she would call back. I wished I could tell her it was a mistake to call. But she didn't call back. It was just me left with my own feelings. Which was always the worst. The last thing I wanted to do that night was go beyond my couch and feel things. But I guess I didn't have much choice. With no girls to call, the new assistant who probably thought I was weird, and a slow business day in terms of my mafia life, sometimes you just had to be on the couch and face your demons.

But my peace would be interrupted. If you could call it peace. Because the doorbell rang. This made my heart race because I wasn't expecting guests. And with someone who had my background, unexpected guests were never a good thing.

I got off my couch and started to walk toward my liquor cabinet. I was doing this because my gun was inside a breakaway door on the cabinet. I walked over to the thing and pulled the false store out. Just like that door, there was something else that was false. And that was my sense of security with that gun. If I were to open that door and someone were to shoot me in the head, I wouldn't have time to react. I'd be dead. The only thing that gun did was make me believe I had a chance.

I walked to the door and kept the gun behind me. I did everything in my power to keep my breathing steady because you cannot shoot someone if you are nervous. The question was whether or not I was going to need to shoot one person or multiple. And when the doorbell rang again, my nerves were in a frenzy.

But I opened the door without a second's hesitation. It wasn't an enemy. It wasn't anyone that was going to kill me.

It was my father.

Chapter 3

Angelina

Theonlythingthatwas on my mind was that phone call. It was strange. It definitely wasn't something that I had expected after that interview. Then again, the entire interview itself was unorthodox. Nothing was normal about that little sit-down meeting that I had with Tomasso. But even though it was a weird occurrence and everything around it had been odd, I wasn't weirded out if that made any sense. I was more intrigued by the situation. It gave my life a little bit of excitement. I just wanted to be a successful businesswoman no matter what it took. And on that road, things weren't always exciting. It was a lot of routines. It was a lot of hoping and wishing for things to pay off. And finally, I got into a big business that's the leader in supplying brick ovens to restaurants. I'm working for a CEO, but things were weird.

The one thing that sucked about the entire situation is that I had three days to ruminate over why he called me like that. It could have just been to double-check whether or not he gave me the right day. A CEO was too busy for things like that. Was I looking into it? Was I making things up in my head? Why did he call me at night? Why didn't he shoot me an email?

The thing that kept replaying in my mind was the way that he looked at me and the interview. I didn't want to have delusions of grandeur or anything like that, but there was a twinkle in his eye. There was this look like he actually enjoyed interviewing me. And I'd hate to say it. But as convoluted as the interview was, I enjoyed being on the other side of that table. I was also looking forward to my first day at work. But for all the wrong reasons. I was interested in seeing Tomaso. I wanted to see what our dynamic was going to be. Dare I say I was looking to see whether or not there was going to be sexual chemistry. Maybe I needed more hobbies.

" He's a mafia boss, you know." Chelsea was the friend I was out at the bar with. And she was the one who told me this information as if I hadn't heard these rumors prior.

" I had heard that about him. I did Google him and all that. But I don't know that the mafia even exists nowadays?" I sipped my sangria while looking at the table. It wasn't like she was an authority on mafia lore, but I wanted to gauge her perception. Because it was so easy to feel like I was alone in the whole thing. I craved an opinion on the matter.

" The mafia totally exists. It just exists in a different way. And you really want to be working with someone who's tied up and all that?”

I raised an eyebrow at her because what did she expect? I was just going to turn down a once in lifetime gig because of some rumors that my boss may or may not be in the mafia? That was absurd to me. “Chelsea, this company is one of those places with a stronghold on an entire industry.” I could hear myself put my foot in my mouth. The second I said, I chose to keep going to make my point. “It's one of those opportunities that I can’t pass up. Plus, it’s a corporate building. It’s not like I will be working in some hole-in-the-wall joint where it would be Tomaso and me alone without supervision.”

She gave me an inquisitive look. “On a first-name basis, huh?”

I smiled out of reflex. “What do you want me to call him? Mr. Vitelli? Come on now. We’re not in grade school.”

Chelsea laughed and took a sip of her drink. “I’m just teasing. I’m saying that you should probably be careful with this guy. From the way it sounds, you already got the job in an unorthodox way. Something just seems fishy about it all. It doesn’t help your case that he’s probably killed someone on top of everything else.”

For whatever reason, that sentence stuck out to me above everything else. I hadn’t necessarily thought about the prospect of this man killing someone. And that didn’t sit well with me. In an instant, the idea of Tomaso changed from this charismatic boss to this man who had blood on his hands. I snapped myself out of it and said to Chelsea, “If the entire point of this conversation was to spook me a bit and not find this guy sexy, then you’ve accomplished that.”