Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76065 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 380(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76065 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 380(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Kick just wanted a fresh start, a simple job far from the shadows of her past. But the night of the robbery changes everything. Because she couldn’t tell Rico every detail. Like when she realized the tattoo on the arm of one of the robbers connects him to her own troubled past, pulling her into a dark web of secrets and danger.
The more she uncovers, the more she’s forced to make an impossible choice: turn on Rico to protect herself or stay loyal to the man she’s coming to love, even if it means risking everything.
In a world where betrayal is survival and love is weakness, giving her heart could cost her everything…
* each book in this series can be read as a standalone *
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
CHAPTER ONE
Rico
When the fuck did meat get so goddamn expensive?
Here I was, trying to give the neighborhood a break since life had been beating ‘em all down for decades now, and the fucking suppliers raised their prices by twenty-seven percent over the past year.
And, shit, I got it. The cost of feed had gone up for them. These weren’t massive factory farms making millions a year. I got my meat from smaller farms that gave a shit about their animals and fed ‘em good food, so the end product was higher quality.
It just sucked that a small portion of that increase had to be meted out to the consumer when I’d been trying to keep costs down since I took over the meat shop.
The thing was, we didn’t even need the money. The shop was, obviously, a front. A way to wash our money. Keep the IRS man off our backs. That kinda shit. But we had to seem like we were making a profit on paper, so I had to increase prices.
And the increase just so happened to coincide with some renovations that were about to go into effect, so customers were naturally going to assume the increase was to pay for them.
I sighed, pushing the keyboard away from me then leaning back in my chair, staring up at some stain on the ceiling that had been there since I’d started running this place.
Another thing to bring up to the contractors who should be showing up at any moment.
“That bad, huh?” a voice said, making me turn toward the doorway to find one of my employees standing there.
She was the newest addition, hired by the guy I had in charge of that kind of thing. No one working at the meat shop was in the family because we were trying as hard as possible to make the place seem legitimate.
I wondered on more than one occasion if this chick had been hired because of all the pretty she had to throw around.
The meat shop was, well, a sausage fest most of the time. Apparently, there was some antiquated, sexist rule that men only wanted to buy meat from other men or some shit like that.
Working for a mafia family that had female mafia capos that were every bit as capable—if not more—than many of their male counterparts, that shit was whacked to me.
But we had to keep business coming in, so I let it slide that this girl was the only woman working in the entire building. And that, in general, they mostly had her stocking the cases or making sandwiches.
The irony wasn’t lost on me.
But, yeah, she was a fucking knockout.
I won’t lie, it was nice to see some pretty walking around the shop. And she had that in spades.
She was short, even for a chick, with a little soft around the hip, ass, and tits, but pretty compact otherwise. It was the face that really got your attention, though. Sleepy-looking hazel eyes, long hair dyed a deep burgundy color, pouty lips, and if you were up close enough, you could see a smattering of freckles over her nose and cheeks.
And, I shit you not, the woman always smelled like blueberry jam. Fucking blueberry jam. Even after a long shift.
I could smell her even then, clear across the room.
She had her long hair pulled back into a ponytail and her eye makeup had smudged a bit under her eyes.
She’d been here since opening but had stayed behind to do some of the deep cleaning I’d demanded be done before the construction started.
“Think people would object to turning the place into a beans and rice shop?” I asked, getting a bemused smile and a head tilt out of her. “Would be cheaper,” I added.
“Pretty sure a black bean parm wouldn’t be a popular sandwich,” she said.
“Prolly right. You heading out?”
“Yeah. Everything is done. Well, no. I have to take the trash to the dumpster.”
“No. Leave it. I’ll do it.”
“Is this a ‘little women shouldn’t be going into dark alleys at night’ thing?” she asked, brows raising.
Sometimes, she would say some shit that reminded me of the female capos I worked with. I once heard her threaten to put a man’s hand through a meat grinder, then make him a sandwich with it, and make him eat it. He’d grabbed her ass with that hand, so he had it coming.
But I liked the sass.
More than I probably should, given that I was her boss.
“Fuck yeah, it is,” I said, nodding, just wanting to get a rise out of her.
If anyone was hanging out in my alley, they’d get their asses handed to ‘em and they knew it. It was safe enough for her to be out there.
“I worked at an all-night bodega in the Bronx before this,” she told me, chin lifting defiantly. “Nothing in that alley could scare me.”