A Vow of Lust and Fury: A dark mafia romance Read online

  A Vow of Lust and Fury

  Tainted Vows Book One

  LP Lovell

  Contents

  1. Gio

  2. Emilia

  3. Emilia

  4. Emilia

  5. Gio

  6. Emilia

  7. Gio

  8. Emilia

  9. Emilia

  10. Gio

  11. Emilia

  12. Gio

  13. Emilia

  14. Emilia

  15. Gio

  16. Emilia

  17. Gio

  18. Emilia

  19. Gio

  20. Emilia

  21. Gio

  22. Emilia

  23. Gio

  Acknowledgments

  Also by LP Lovell

  A Vow of Lust and Fury

  Copyright ©2021 by LP Lovell

  * * *

  Published in the United States of America.

  E-books are non-transferable. They cannot be sold, shared, or given away. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is a crime punishable by law. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded to or downloaded from file sharing sites, or distributed in any other way via the internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement including infringement without monetary gain is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of LP Lovell.

  * * *

  Cover Model: Sol

  Photographer: Wander Aguiar

  Cover Design: Yoly Cortex

  Editor: Stephie Walls

  Created with Vellum

  “She was an angel seeking chaos. He was a demon seeking peace.” – Author unknown.

  1

  Gio

  With an ominous creak of hinges, I opened the basement door and stepped into a torture scene. Literally.

  A single light bulb hummed overhead, casting shadows over the bleak cinder block walls and the unconscious man bound to a chair in the center of the room. Once-white bandages that covered a relatively minor gunshot wound in his gut were now red, and as the metallic scent of blood infiltrated my senses, I became high on the violence of it all.

  My enforcer, Jackson, paced before him in the small space, a demented smile on his face and his bare chest smeared crimson. Judging by the array of neat slices and copious amounts of blood covering our prisoner, Jackson had thoroughly indulged in the task of extracting the information I wanted.

  The guy was found beside the bodies of two of our men and an empty truck that should have been filled with cocaine. Our cocaine. Usually, I’d be far removed from such issues, but that was the third shipment this month. Whoever was brave enough to take from us was brazen. And fucking stupid. No one had dared challenge us in years, and for good reason. Retribution would be swift and brutal. But it was more complicated than I’d like because it had happened in Chicago. I didn’t like to shit on my own doorstep by bringing drugs directly into New York. I had a tight grip on the Windy City; however, my lack of absolute control had my skin itching.

  On a sigh, I pushed away from the door. “Did he tell you anything?”

  “No,” Jackson spat, still pacing like an agitated cat.

  I wasn’t surprised. If I were going to steal a shipment from us, I’d hire someone who couldn’t be associated with it, someone who knew very little, because the consequences for such a slight would be grave.

  My phone vibrated in my pocket, and I glanced at a message from one of my underbosses, Tommy. One word: Irish. Followed by a screenshot of a list of bank transactions to one Mr. Steven White. Also known as the sack of leaking blood in front of me. The money came from an account under McGinty holdings. A “legitimate” business of the Irish Mob in Chicago.

  We hadn’t had any issues with them recently, although we did have Patrick O’Hara’s cousin, Finnegan, killed a few years back. Irish and Italian relations were always tentative. Now I had to work out if it was an act of opportunity or war. As much as I wanted heads to roll for the sheer fucking audacity, war was bad for business, and if there was one thing I didn’t do, it was act rashly. There was one way to find out…

  “Kill him.”

  Within seconds, the captive’s throat was nothing more than a slash of red, blood pouring down his broken body. A kindness, really, given Jackson’s propensity for torture and his dark mood consuming every inch of air in the room.

  “Send his head to Patrick O’Hara’s bar,” I ordered before leaving the room and ascending the stairs into the main house.

  Paddy O’Hara knew better, or at least he should have. How he reacted would tell me what I needed to know. I made my way into the office and closed the door, inhaling the scent of old books and leather as I poured myself a bourbon. The smoky flavor burned down my throat, taking the edge off my temper. The last thing I needed right now was issues in Chicago. I was down several shipments, and product shortages had repercussions—loss of business, competitors moving in, violence, discord, power plays…

  I fell behind my desk and downed the drink. The entire situation felt off, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. War was coming. I could feel it, taste the coppery tang of blood on the wind, and part of me relished in it. I smiled at the thought of Paddy O’Hara opening a box to find a severed head inside. I did it to send a message, but more than that, I did it because I could.

  _____

  * * *

  My gaze drifted over the city lights far below, so far removed from up here in my penthouse. Classical music drifted through the surround sound, and I drew in a cleansing breath, trying to find a moment of clarity in the newfound chaos.

  The Irish sent us back the soldier who had delivered the head. In pieces. Then they took another shipment worth in excess of a quarter of a million. A shipment to a private airfield that no one should have known about. So that meant, not only were the Irish fucking me in the ass, but I had a rat.

  I could practically feel the testosterone and violence pumping around the room the second Jackson stepped inside the penthouse. He took the death of a soldier personally. We all did. It was a blood debt. More than that, though, it meant we had an enemy who did not fear us, and those were few and far between these days.

  Turning to face him, I unfastened my jacket and strode to the couch. Tommy filed in behind him, the flames from the fire flickering over the grim expression on his face.

  “I had an interesting phone call this evening,” I started as Jackson took a seat.

  “Was it the Irish groveling for their fucking lives?” he asked, a twisted smile pulling at his lips.

  “Grovelling implies remorse, and our dismembered soldier would suggest a distinct lack of that, Jackson.”

  He growled at me like a damn dog.

  “Well? Don’t keep us in suspense,” Tommy said, moving over to the bar to make a drink.

  “It was Sergio Donato.” The leader of the Chicago family contacting me…it was almost unexpected. Almost.

  We stayed out of Outfit business, and though the Chicago family had once enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship with the previous “management” of the old Famiglia here in New York, we had long since branded ourselves the black sheep of the Italian Mafia. However, their interest provided an opportunity. One where I kept my hands squeaky clean.

 
“Apparently, he’s also lost product to the Irish in the last few weeks.” I took a seat on the opposite couch and propped my ankle on my knee. “He proposes an alliance.”

  Tommy sat on the arm, swirling the amber liquor around the glass. “Why? The Outfit and the Irish Mob have fought for decades, and they’ll keep fighting—”

  “Unless the scale of power were weighted in one of their favor.” I lifted a brow. “Donato wants coke. We have the secure shipping routes. He doesn’t.”

  I’d already thought of all the ways we could take advantage of this and run them past Nero. He was technically the boss, but Nero was built for war, not peace. He would paint the streets of Chicago red with a smile on his face if I let him, and that was one thing I could not risk. I’d worked too hard. There was only so much the senators and district attorney I paid off could overlook before suspicion would fall on them.

  “For now, we lend him manpower, guns. They do the dirty work, handle the mob while we take very little risk. In exchange, we sell them coke at a ten percent profit.”

  “You know we make fifty everywhere else.” Tommy frowned.

  I cocked a brow. “That’s why we won’t actually be upholding that part.”

  “You’re going to fuck them over,” Tommy groaned.

  I was going to do more than fuck them over, but I kept that to myself. They just needed to focus on the next steps, not the next twenty. My long-term plans were often susceptible to change depending on how successful the short-term ones were.

  A twisted smile covered Jackson’s face. “I don’t care, as long as I get to kill someone. Two years of sitting around… Fucking peace,” he mumbled under his breath.

  Tommy snorted. “Since when do you just sit around? You tortured that guy and cut off his head two days ago.”

  Jackson sniffed, folding his arms over his chest until his holster looked like it was about to rupture beneath his bulk. “It’s not the same. No one fights back anymore.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose, praying for patience. “That’s kind of the point.”

  “So, we just form an alliance with The Outfit, and that’s it? It’ll all get handled.” Tommy pressed before tipping back his drink.

  Anger lanced through me at the thought of what that alliance would cost me, what Sergio Donato demanded. It was like lava moving through my veins, but this was not an opportunity I would pass up. If I were going to agree to his terms, I was getting a lot more out of it than I knew he was willing to give. That was the problem with trying to chain a lion while he seemed weak. A lion was never weak, and he would tear out your throat. I would bleed Donato dry when it suited me, and his precious alliance couldn’t save him.

  “I’m handling it.”

  * * *

  An hour later, I was alone, and the ping of my phone was loud in the silence of my apartment. I opened the message from one of my contacts. I’d asked him to get me everything he could find on one Miss Emilia Donato, niece of Sergio Donato. The information on her was barely more than a few sentences. Nineteen years old. Pulled out of some fancy school at age sixteen, then home-schooled. Two brothers, both Made. The details of her life were scarce.

  Which meant I knew absolutely nothing about my soon-to-be wife. The thought did not sit well, but this was Donato’s price and one I couldn’t negotiate my way out of for once. This was the old way of sealing alliances, a half-assed guarantee forged upon the notion that corrupt men would have a degree of honor and not turn on “family.” But family was not a ring and false vows or even blood. Family was those willing to die beside you.

  My loyalty could not be bought by Donato or anyone else. If there was one thing I was good at, though, it was the politics of it all. So, I would go through with his marriage. He’d sell his niece into the lion’s den, and with her virginity, he’d assume he was buying a seat at the table. All he would buy was a place bowing at my fucking feet. And the girl? She would serve a purpose, but I wouldn’t touch her. She’d be taken care of until I no longer needed her, a pretty pawn locked in a tower. And she’d accept it because she had been bred to submit, trained to serve. The thought both annoyed and excited me.

  When I closed my eyes, I pictured a faceless girl spread out for me, submissive, ready to take whatever I gave her. My dick hardened, and I forced the image away, a trace of disgust rising through the layer of indifference I lived in. That girl wouldn’t be much better than a whore, stripped of choice, sold to whoever her father deemed fit. And the fact that I was what The Outfit deemed fit, with my reputation…it didn’t say a lot for how much Sergio Donato valued his niece. But that was my line—thick, black, and unpassable. Choice. I wanted willing submission, for a woman to beg for my dick, not a terrified virgin. Still, the primal part of me roared at the thought of her blood on my cock.

  2

  Emilia

  Water pressed in around me, the silence in the darkness absolute. Cold. Peaceful. My skin numbed, and my mind emptied as my lungs screamed for air. I had been right here so many times and wondered what would happen if I just opened my mouth and inhaled the cool waters. It was a dark whisper in the back of my mind, a curiosity I would never indulge. When my heart pattered beneath the rush of adrenaline, I kicked my legs and broke the surface. Brilliant sunshine assaulted my vision just in time for me to take in the wooden jetty and the figure now hurtling along it. My brother, Renzo, spotted me, and a wicked grin crossed his lips as he launched into the air. I screamed when he cannon-balled into the lake only a few feet away from me.

  “Asshole.”

  He laughed as he surfaced, and I splashed him before swimming to the jetty and hauling myself out of the water. Sunlight glittered over the lake that seemed to stretch endlessly to the horizon—the jewel of Chicago, and for me, the only decent thing about my home. Not that I’d ever really been allowed to explore the city. My parents’ lakeside mansion was my own personal prison.

  Renzo splashed me as he lazily backstroked past in his ridiculous flamingo swim shorts. I couldn’t help but laugh a little. My youngest brother was pretty much the only person who could bring a smile to my face these days.

  “Is there a reason you’re annoying me?”

  “Yep. Dad wants to see you in his office. Dun-dun-dun,” he hummed dramatically.

  With a roll of my eyes, I lay down on the jetty, and he laughed. Renzo had given up trying to get me to obey my father years ago. “How long do you think it will be until Luca shows up?”

  My father would absolutely send my oldest and most-loyal brother to retrieve me when Renzo didn’t return.

  “I decided to forgo waiting for you to fail, Renzo.”

  I jerked upright and glanced over my shoulder at the sound of Luca’s voice. Dammit, not even any time to give him the runaround.

  His great hulking form was planted on the jetty, blocking my path. I’d have to swim the width of Lake Michigan to escape him. I narrowed my eyes at him, trying to—

  “Emilia,” he growled like a damn bear. “Don’t even think about it.” He tried to seem menacing, but I didn’t miss the way his hands had subtly moved to cover his crotch. He might have been big, but I was fast, and he knew it. “Father wants to see you. If you fight me, you know I’ll catch you in the end, and you’ll just make it worse on yourself.”

  On a sigh, I glanced at Renzo, and he smirked as though he could read my mind. Sometimes I liked to fight on pure principle, but Luca was right; there was no getting out of it in the end. And just when I was having a nice day.

  “See, I did relay the request,” Renzo said, swimming up to the jetty and hoisting himself out of the water.

  If I’d asked him to run off into the woods and hide from Luca and Father with me, he would have, though, and that was why Ren was my favorite. He might have been Made and indoctrinated into my family’s crime cult, but he was fun and loyal.

  Snatching my sundress from the ground, I pushed to my feet and approached Luca. His black suit was firmly in place as always, devoid of any personalit
y. Just how my father wanted him. It was ninety degrees, for Christ’s sake. I could literally see the sweat rolling down his temple. His near-black eyes were fixed anywhere but on my bikini-clad body as I tugged my dress over my head.

  Luca fell into step beside me, towering over me as we made our way toward the house. The strip of sand at the shore crept up to perfectly manicured lawns that were a thick carpet beneath my bare feet. Sprinklers swayed and danced, catching in the sun and painting the air in rainbows like this was some kind of Disney movie. And it sure as hell wasn’t that.

  “You know, I have a phone. You don’t have to come and personally escort me to some stupid meeting,” I said as I stepped through the back door.

  Luca let out a snort. “Emilia, I would never give you warning.”

  “So untrusting.”

  We passed through the hallway lined with abstract artwork and marble floors. So pretentious. So…my mother. We were only a few meters from my father’s office door when Luca pulled me to a halt. I glanced up at the frown marring his face.

  “Emilia, Uncle Sergio is in there.”

  I felt the color drain from my face along with any bravado I might have been feeling.

  “Just… behave, okay? I know you hate this family, but don’t get on his bad side.” And with those reassuring words about my psycho, mafia boss uncle, my traitorous brother dragged me to the door, knocked, and shoved me inside.