Ruthless: Mob Boss Book One Read Online Free PDF

couple drunken frat parties when she’d first come to college. Then she’d just been happy to be free of the constraints of her catholic boarding school, and for awhile, she lived it up with the best of them.
    By her second year of college it had gotten old. Watered down beer didn’t flip her switch the way it used to, and she’d started to feel sad and pathetic fending off the advances of her fellow students until she could reasonably make a break for the dorms. She hadn’t had a boyfriend since junior year, and while there was a time when she’d been frequently asked out, eventually everyone stopped asking. It was a small town. Word had probably gotten around that she was frigid.
    Or maybe they just thought she was bitch.
    She didn’t really care. Things were easier when she only had to take care of herself, and sometimes that felt like more than a full time job. Her weakened sexual appetite didn’t worry her. She always assumed it would reawaken when the right guy came along. Except now she suspected that her libido was on drugs, because the right guy was definitely not Nico Vitale. She knew this both because he was the man responsible for her current predicament and because she’d finally realized why the name sounded so familiar.
    Nico Vitale was head of the Vitale crime family, one of the most notorious underground criminal organizations on the eastern seaboard.
    She didn’t know much about the mob, but she’d heard the Vitale family mentioned on the news. According to reports, Nico Vitale headed up a ring of organized crime that made money on everything from bookmaking to human trafficking, all of it shielded by a massive—and legitimate—international company called MediaComm. But the Feds never had enough to charge anyone, and people in the city had gotten blasé about the occasional arrest—and about the fact that they never seemed to lead to a conviction.
    You have my word, my ass , she thought.
    She wondered how much honor a mobster could have, and if she could really take him at his word that he wouldn’t hurt David. Nico had certainly felt dangerous when he’d been standing in front of her, although if she was honest with herself, that hadn’t all been on him. Her physical response to him was enough to get her in trouble all by itself.
    But at least now she knew for sure this was a ransom kidnapping. Obviously the Vitale family augmented their other illegal activities by kidnapping the brats of wealthy parents.
    Herself included. How cliche.
    She heard the key turn in the lock but didn’t bother getting up off the floor. She’d stopped standing on ceremony with Luca some days ago. They had their routine down. His assertion that she should eat. Her refusal. The shake of his head when he told her Nico wouldn’t be happy. The tightening of his jaw when she told him she couldn’t care less if Nico was ever happy again.
    It was a good routine. Solid. She could do it in her sleep.
    The door swung open and Luca stepped into the room, this time empty-handed.
    “No more offerings to the goddess?” she asked.
    He sighed. “It’s too late for that.”
    She stuffed down a thrum of alarm. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    He removed the gun from his belt. “It means you’re coming with me.”
    She got to her feet, her earlier bravado gone. “What’s going on?”
    He sighed. “I can’t tell you anything. You know that.”
    “Are you...” She swallowed hard and steadied her voice. “Are you going to kill me?”
    His expression softened. “No one’s going to kill you.”
    She tried not to hear the unspoken words; Not right now, at least.
    She crossed her arms. “I want to know where you’re taking me.”
    He stepped farther into the room, and she realized that he was taller than she’d originally thought. At least as tall as Nico, although Luca had the kind of compact muscle that was more distance runner than heavyweight boxer.
    “I”m trying to be nice here,” he said, “but I can