Page 22 of A Bride for the Mafia King

A smile breaks out on both men’s faces. As though they had just found a goldmine.

“Other ventures?” Giovanni interrupts, “What ventures are you alluding to that are so risky, as you see it?”

The conversation turns specifically to the human trafficking operations, quickly turning from polite to downright unpleasant. Giovanni interjects, irritation seething in his tone.

“The Don’s position remains unchanged,” he says firmly, stabbing his knife into the steak on his plate. “We are not interested in interfering with a profitable business. What consenting adults do behind closed doors is no one's concern.”

I nearly choke on my food. Beside me, Tolya sets his glass down, slowly. The move is deliberate, pulling everyone’s attention.

“And what of the children?” he asks, voice calm.

“Children?” Giovanni asks, slightly confused. “What children?”

“The ones trafficked from Eastern Europe, to start with.” Tolya replies, still calm but more demanding now, eyes ablaze. “Or the ones born to the working girls as a result of your johns’ unprotected admiration? Hmmm? The ones born into a life they never asked for? Born to mothers who never wanted them. What of them?”

Giovanni shrugs, waving a dismissive hand. “No one’s forcing them to stay. They could surrender them to a shelter for all I care.”

Nico bristles. “That’s not –”

“You,” Giovanni stabs his knife at him, “need to remember you sit as Don in temporary occupancy.”

Nico opens his mouth to respond but Tolya raises a hand, silencing the table before he can finish. The absolute authority that he possesses is unflappable. His tone holds no heat, no anger. Just cold certainty, the kind that scares people more than fury would.

“Discussions such as these are best saved for after dinner,” he says smoothly. “No need to sour a good meal with the ugliness of the world beyond these walls.”

Everyone around the table agrees slowly in hushed murmurs. Even Giovanni leans back in his chair, quietly resigning himself to the sense of his words.

I’m so busy watching the shift in everyone seated around me that I’m not paying attention to Tolya’s movements beside me. Then I feel it.

His hand, warm and deliberately settling on my leg beneath the table. His fingers search for the edge of my skirt, moving the fabric aside to touch my skin.

I freeze, glass halfway to my mouth.

His thumb brushes a slow circle over my knee, then slides further upward. Taunting, possessive.

Swallowing hard, careful to keep my face blank as his fingers tease higher yet. Bringing my glass nearer to my mouth to hide any reaction that might escape my will.

“Eva,” an older Russian woman seated across the table from me suddenly calls, “do you and Tolya plan to have children soon?”

It takes everything in me not to jerk. Placing my glass back down on the table rapidly, the crystal making an unintended scuffing noise as it meets the surface.

I force a smile, answering quickly. “We haven’t made any such plans yet.”

“She’s a fiery one,” Dimitri says, nodding at me like I’m as good as livestock. “You are going to have your hands full, Pakhan. These Italians are a fierce lot, emotional, unruly, this one still needs taming.”

Across the table, a man I vaguely recognize from an earlier introduction lifts his glass with a grin at Tolya.

Tolya doesn’t say a word at first but I feel his hand pause. Then slowly, excruciatingly, retreat. Relief wars with disappointment within me.

The smile that graces Tolya’s face at my response to the earlier question slowly slides from his face like ice melting in the sun. He straightens, leaning forward slightly in his chair, folding his hands atop the table and stares at Dimitri with deadly intent.

“This is something you would say of a dog, da?”

Dimitri chuckles, hesitating slightly. “Well, yes, I suppose it is.”

“Does my wife look like a dog to you then?” Tolya growls.

All around us the room falls into dead silence. And for the first time I see it, the terrifying, deadly gaze of the killer within my husband, without remorse, without mercy. This isn’t just the power that he holds as the Pakhan, this is the man behind the mask, the man whose lines you don’t cross.