Indebted to the Mafia King

Eleni

I flip a page in my textbook, but the words blur in front of my eyes. Dante's out raiding his only lead on the Russians right now, trying to get any kind of thread that'll lead us to their boss. I helped clean up at Piacere as long as I could, but eventually, after the week with Mama and the emotional stress, I had to call it a night. I was hoping I'd get in a little studying so I could actually be ready when classes started in a few weeks, instead of waiting until things got crazier and crossing my fingers, but reading is proving harder than I hoped.

Ben, the son of Thano's capo who saved me during exams, leans into the doorframe. "How's it going?"

"Like shit." I lean back in my chair. "Thanks for taking me home anyway. At least this way I'm not doing a shit job with broken glass."

He chuckles. "It's my job, somehow. Heard you're leaving school, though. Going all in on the life?"

"Going to the Tandon Institute, actually." I close my textbook and hold it up so he can see the very official-looking cover.

He whistles. "Man, I'm half-glad Dante took out Thano Coppola when he did. I wouldn't want to go up against the Saints with a computer engineer on their team."

I smile tiredly. "I'm sorry about all that, by the way. The probation was "

"Crappy," he supplies. "But I get it. You were put in an impossible position. I can't imagine going from no one to boss in a day."

I blow out a long breath. "It didn't feel that impossible at the time."

He snorts. "If you say so. I was going to make some popcorn. Want any?"

I nod. "I'll be down in a second anyway. I'm just wasting brain cells up here."

Ben flicks me a salute and ducks out of the door. I sit at my desk a moment longer and run my hand over the cover of the textbook. An impossible position. According to everyone, I shouldn't have been able to step into Dante's shoes as easily as I did. I've never asked, but I don't know whether they mean that I shouldn't have had the skills or the morals.

The Eleni that greeted the morning for those two weeks...she scares me. But I also know she lives tucked neatly under my skin, waiting for her next chance to shine. She's antsy tonight, in the wake of the attack on Piacere. Dante's the right person to lead a raid on a Russian warehouse. I—or she is the right person to start hunting for leads on the Russians other ways. Maybe I'll take a brief break with Ben, then come back up here and see what I can find online. Even in those two weeks, I found a few ways onto parts of the Internet normal people rarely see. I stand.

Someone knocks. Probably Gianna. I promised her she could sleep here tonight, and I wouldn't put it past Dante to change the locks without mentioning it to me or her after a day like today. The door creaks open, and I hear Ben say something.

Pop.

For a split second, I think someone burst a balloon. Then, I remember Dante sitting me down and teaching me what gunshots sound like muffled. My heart slams into my throat. I reach under my desk-

And remember I took my gun to the bedroom to clean it in case they needed me tomorrow. It's been so quiet that I haven't been servicing the damn thing as often as I need to. I don't hear anything downstairs, but it's a heavy silence. Dense with possibility. I slide my slippers off and pray the door to the bedroom is already open so I don't have to worry about creaks. At least the leggings Gianna has finally convinced me into are nearly perfectly silent.

I

I creep around my desk and peer out the open door. No obvious sign of intruders, except the front door swinging open in the wind. Another pop echoes through the house, and I swallow down a wave of nausea. That sounded farther away. I think. So I slip out of my office and start down the hall. I pass one door, two, three. Then, I reach the open area of the hall, where I can be seen from the first floor, the foyer on one side and a sitting room on the other. I freeze, take a long breath. It's quiet. So goddamn quiet. I peek my head out.

Three massive men wearing dark masks with guns already drawn whip their heads up to stare at me from where they stand over the bleeding body of Andrea in the sitting room. "Fuck." I sprint down the hall toward my gun.

Heavy footsteps pound after me. They shout back and forth to each other in a language I don't understand, Russian or some other Eastern European one. A few more gunshots go off, but the bullets don't hit anywhere around me. The door to the bedroom is within reach.

The floor under my feet jerks back, and I fall flat on my fucking face. It moves again, and I realize one of them made it to the top of the stairs and started pulling on the goddamn carpet. I snarl and scramble up. My gun is in my nightstand. Dante has one-fuck, I saw it earlier, where is it? Even a few inches closer might make the difference.

Pop. A bullet lodges in the drywall next to my head. My throat threatens a parched scream, but I don't indulge. Fuck Dante's gun. Mine is close enough.

One set of footsteps speeds up. Thud, thud-nothing. What?

Then, it hits me. Or should I say, he hits me. Three hundred pounds of Russian goon collides with my back in a flying leap, and I hit the ground so hard I feel something snap in my chest. Pain sparkles through my vision. He yells something triumphant.

The pain threatens to make me black out. The cold, sure Eleni of my two weeks without Dante slides out and snatches the reins from me.

I wriggle in his arms until I can face him, wrench one arm free with a smothered scream and claw at his face. My freshly painted nails catch on his eyelid, his cheek, and blood beads in my wake. He bellows and backhands me. More white stars of pain. Something knocks loose in my jaw. I spit a fountain of red into his face while fumbling around his belt with my other hand. A knife, a gun, anything to give me the edge.

Too little, too late. He snatches my hand and holds it out to the side. Another of them steps into my peripheral vision and shoots a hole clean through the center of my palm. Calm, confident Eleni slips away, and I howl.

The attacker on top of me climbs off just in time for me to watch, through tear-filled eyes, as the final man swings a baseball bat at my head.