Damian: A Dark Mafia Romance (Dark Mafia Kingpins) Read online

  Damian

  A Dark Mafia Romance (Santiago Mafia)

  Naomi West

  Contents

  Mailing List

  Books by Naomi West

  Damian: A Dark Mafia Romance

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Epilogue

  Mailing List

  Books by Naomi West

  Copyright © 2020 by Naomi West

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Books by Naomi West

  Dark Mafia Kingpins

  *Read in any order!

  Andrei

  Leon

  Dirty Dons Club

  *Read in any order!

  Sergei

  Luca

  Vito

  Nikolai

  Adrik

  Bad Boy Biker’s Club

  *Read in any order!

  Dakota

  Stryker

  Kaeden

  Ranger

  Blade

  Colt

  Tank

  Outlaw Biker Brotherhood

  *Read in any order!

  Devil's Revenge

  Devil’s Ink

  Devil’s Heart

  Devil’s Vow

  Devil’s Sins

  Devil’s Scar

  Box Sets

  Devil’s Outlaws: An MC Romance Box Set

  Bad Boy Bikers Club: An MC Romance Box Set

  The Dirty Dons Club: A Dark Mafia Romance Box Set

  Other MC Standalones

  *Read in any order!

  Maddox

  Stripped

  Jace

  Grinder

  Damian: A Dark Mafia Romance

  Our marriage is fake. But our baby is real.

  My ex-fiancé handed me over to one of his buddies.

  I’m a prop. A plaything. A fake wife.

  I can tell when Damian Oakman looks at me what he wants:

  Me, on my knees, begging him for faster, harder, more.

  With washboard abs and an icy, piercing stare, part of me wants to give it to them.

  And if I want to survive this cruise, I have to do exactly that.

  I have to play the part:

  Perfect wife. Perfect life.

  I wanted to hate it. I wanted to hate him.

  But as Damian’s hardened defenses peel away one by one, so do my clothes…

  And so does my resistance.

  Before long, I’m the one moaning for just one more touch.

  It’s all a web of lies.

  I don’t know what’s real or what’s fake.

  All I know is this:

  I belong to the hitman now.

  And nothing will ever be the same.

  1

  Piper sighed, resting her forehead on her hand and trying to think of the right words to say. She could try and go soft, but then, she had been trying to use a soft approach on Todd for weeks now, and he hadn’t gotten it yet. There was no sign he was going to figure it out in the future either.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, finally. “I just don’t think this is going to work out for us.”

  She expected Todd to be upset, but the chill that descended over the room surprised her. She looked up and saw that Todd’s face had gone absolutely still. That sense of cold started to roll through her as well.

  Oh shit. She had thought this break up wouldn’t be that big of a deal, and that she was totally fine to do it at his place. Now, she found herself wishing they were in public, with her trying to figure out how to get a clear shot at an exit if she had to.

  “What?” Todd said, his voice cold.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again, trying to make her voice as soft and girlish and conciliatory as she could.

  God. She hated doing this—going all weak, limp, and harmless to try and get out of a situation, but at the same time, if it got her out, what was she really going to say?

  Todd was quiet for another long moment, and then he shook his head slowly. “Tell me why.”

  It wasn’t a question, and Piper found herself even more nervous about where this might be going.

  “Todd, there isn’t a single thing—”

  “Bullshit,” he snapped, and she couldn’t contain the flinch.

  Her father had yelled like that when she was small, and she’d never stopped hating the sound. The fear ran through her whipcord fast and just as strong. She’d spent years in therapy trying to shake the power that sound had over her, and she had done it so well. Almost.

  “Don’t yell at me,” she said, but her voice sounded painfully weak.

  She hated it. Hated when everything fell apart inside her head. She wanted to be brave and strong—like the Piper she had worked to be all these years—not a weak, sad, lonely little girl who didn’t know what to do when her father yelled.

  “Don’t tell me what to do,” Todd replied, but his voice was less vicious. “I’m sorry. This is just coming out of nowhere for me.” He was clearly trying to make amends for the way he’d spoken.

  “Todd...” She sighed, then took a deep breath. “I’m not sure how it can really come out of nowhere. I’ve been saying and saying that I needed more. That the way things are weren’t enough. That I was lonely. You work so many hours, and it seems like we hardly see each other.”

  “Don’t you think I would change that if I could?”

  “Would you?” This time it was Piper who had snapped. “Because it seems like there are lots of opportunities for you to work a little less, but you just... never make that choice. You’ve broken our last four dates. I don’t even remember the last time we had sex...”

  His pale face was getting darker, and Piper felt the curl of fear in her stomach starting to spiral into something bigger. At least she’d stopped at home and changed into her jeans before she’d come over here; her phone was in her back pocket. If things got dicey, she could lock herself in the bathroom and call the police to come and rescue her. She should have done this in public. Or at her place, with Marissa waiting in the bedroom to back her up. One of the two. Coming to his place like this had been stupid, but it had never once occurred to her that Todd might look at her like this. Like he wanted to tear her to pieces.

  Marissa knows where I am, Piper reminded herself. I’m going to be okay. He might yell, but he’s not going to try and kill me or anything.

  Just thinking it made her feel a little sick. A thick, smoky smell hit her nose all of a sudden, and she glanced at the stovetop.

  “The garlic is burning,” she said.

  It was a dumb thing to say, but part of her thought that it might possib
ly distract him.

  “I don’t give a fuck about the garlic,” he said, his tone higher again. “I don’t care if the whole damn building burns down. I want to know what the hell is happening here. It’s not about my work, and it’s not about sex, and I know that, so I want you to tell me what the fuck is happening.”

  Another long, deep sigh, and then Piper made herself tell the truth. It sounded like the most stereotypical, stupid thing she’d ever had to say in her life, but it was the truth.

  “It’s about your mother,” she said.

  “My—” Todd burst out into laughter that had a cruel edge to it. "What the hell are you talking about?”

  “The only time we see each other now is when we have dinner with your mother on Sunday night,” Piper made herself say. “And then she does absolutely nothing but insinuates that she wants to see us get married before she dies and that she can’t wait to meet her grandchildren.”

  “She’s an older woman.”

  Piper sighed. Again. This was not the first time they had talked about his mother, but she was determined that it would be the last.

  “I don’t care if she’s old or young. Look, I get it. You’re older than me, and your mother is older too. But I’m not older. I’m 25. I don’t know what I want in my life yet, not long term. I don’t know if I even want to get married, if I even want kids.”

  “I want both,” Todd said as if stating that fact was somehow relevant to her decisions.

  She tried not to roll her eyes. “And I’m glad that you’re sure of things for yourself. But I’m not. And I deserve the time to figure out what I want on my own, without you or your mother telling me what I want or trying to make my decisions for me.”

  Todd shook his head. “Look, I know it’s confusing. I know the gig economy is messing with a lot of millennials—”

  “Oh, you did not just do that.”

  “But if you just took a regular job, you’d settle down soon enough.”

  “Settle down? Really?”

  “I can find you something at the firm, no problem. I think Ryan’s looking for a new assistant, and if not, there’s a spot for a transcriptionist down in medical billing—”

  “Stop, Todd.”

  Todd did not stop; he listed off three more jobs, stopping just short of mentioning a secretary pool, and Piper was fairly sure that was only because there wasn’t a secretary pool. If one had existed, it would have come up.

  But she knew this mood. This was the Todd who didn’t stop until he’d had his say. The Todd that she had thought was passionate and involved until she realized that he would use this passion to steamroll anything she said she wanted. Until she noticed how many of his rants seemed to be based on how the things she was passionate about were actually a waste of time. Just like her “little business.”

  “My business isn’t little,” she said.

  Todd looked surprised. Honestly, she could give him that one; he hadn’t said it this fight, just all the other ones.

  “You are constantly acting like I have this stupid little hobby,” she went on, “but I have a thriving business that is making a significant amount of money. I don’t even have to look for clients now—people come to me to make sure their crowdfunding projects succeed. Maybe it’s a little pond, but in it, I’m a pretty decent fish, and I’m happy. That’s the part you don’t understand, Todd, I’m happy. I like my life.”

  “But you don’t like me.”

  “I like you fine. It’s stupid and stereotypical to say that I hope we’ll be friends. I know we won’t. But it’s not about me not liking you.”

  Todd laughed. “It’s about my fucking mother.”

  Piper shook her head. “No, it’s about us not fitting together, Todd. Not for the long term. And I don’t want to lead you on. You deserve the chance to find that girl—that girl who wants to marry you and have kids, and who knows that from day one.”

  “But I want you.” He sounded so sad and lost that she felt sorry for him for a long moment.

  She stepped towards him, and then he snarled, raising his hand back, his palm open, the back of his hand facing her. She hadn’t been struck since she was about three years old, but she still cowered. Girls in movies stood strong, daring someone to hit them; that wasn’t Piper. She was terrified, and she didn’t care if he saw it.

  Seeing it might even have been what stopped him. She didn’t know. She saw the look in his eyes shift, and he clenched that open hand into a fist, and then brought it down to his side. His chest was puffed out, and he looked like he was having trouble standing.

  Time to go, Piper. Get out while the getting’s still, well, semi-good.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again.

  Her purse was on the other side of him. She thought hard about just leaving it behind and then asking him to bring it to some neutral location later. Marissa had a spare set of keys, she had cash at home, and he wasn’t the type to try and do damage with her debit card to screw her over.

  But then he hadn’t been the type to make like he would hit her either, not until about sixty seconds ago.

  She kept her head all the way down, carefully making sure that she made no eye contact, and snagged the strap of her purse. She tugged it towards her, grabbed it so that it didn’t swing out and hit his leg, and took a step back as she pulled it up over her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” she said one more time as she headed for the door.

  All the way across the living room, she waited to feel his hand on her shoulder, the pressure of spinning her around and turning her face directly into his fist. It would start like that, and it would end like every horror movie she’d ever seen in her life: she would be a bloody smear across his well-waxed hardwood floor.

  But it didn’t happen. She got to the door, threw back the deadbolt, stepped outside, and closed the door behind her. She realized that she still had his key on her keyring. She could have stood there for a minute, taking it off, and then put it back inside or even in the mailbox, but for all she knew, he was realizing at this exact minute that he’d made a mistake by letting her go. He could be running for her, ready to grab her and pull her back inside, no matter what she wanted.

  Screw it. I’ll mail him the goddamn key.

  She walked away from the house and decided to call an Uber once she was at the corner. She pulled out her phone and went into her messages. She had to update Marissa. The two of them had been friends for years, and when Piper had told Marissa her plans, Marissa had been very clear that she was the emergency exit of choice. Piper had been so sure that everything was going to be fine, but Marissa had never been “Team Todd”.

  “This could go really bad, Piper,” she’d said. “You have to be careful.”

  “It’ll be fine, I said,” Piper muttered to herself. “What could possibly go wrong, I said.”

  Every step she took away from Todd’s townhouse was another step towards freedom. The adrenaline in her head cycled down, and she started to breathe properly again. It was something. No, it was a lot.

  When she got to the coffee shop on the corner, she tapped out: Everything’s fine. Call you?

  Piper didn’t actually wait for Marissa to say yes. As soon as the message said read, she hit dial. The phone didn’t even get through the first ring before Marissa was there.

  “Piper.”

  “Yeah. It’s done.”

  “How did it go? Is everything okay? Are you okay?”

  Piper rubbed her forehead. She didn’t want to go inside the cafe and have this conversation; she would feel obliged to get a latte or something and then she’d be up all night. She felt exhausted, out of nowhere, and the only thing she wanted in the world was to get some sleep.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  If she explained that one terrifying moment, Marissa would completely lose it.

  But somehow, her friend knew anyway. “Piper, what did he do? Tell me, it’s okay, I’m not going to yell at him or something. I just want you safe.”

/>   All of a sudden, there were tears in Pipers’ eyes. “Marissa? Can I come stay at your place for a couple of days? Maybe it sounds stupid, but I just—I don’t want to go home.”

  There wasn’t even a pause. “Of course, babe. Can you Uber over, or do you want me to come get you?”

  Piper wiped her eyes. “I’ll Uber; it’s no big deal. Do you want me to grab anything on my way over?”

  “I got wine and chocolate this afternoon. Also, an ice cream cake, just in case. I think we’re good.”

  “Actual food? I didn’t get to eat after work, and I didn’t want to break up with him after a meal, you know?”

  “Got it,” Marissa said. “Indian or Ethiopian?”

  “Indian, please. Hot.”

  “Make it seem like you’re not crying because you’re sad. Got it.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Shut up,” Marissa said, her tone loving. “Get an Uber and get over here.”

  2

  Damian couldn’t remember the last time he had woken up normally. His heart rate was steady, he had the luxury of knowing where he was, that he was safe and calm and that he didn’t need to immediately access the world around him for any potential threats. Most people would say that they’d slept like that as children. But Damian couldn’t say that.

  He gave a sharp inhale and held perfectly still for one long moment, assessing whether there was a particular stimulus—a noise out of place, a single footfall—that might have woken him.