Belonging to the Italian Mafia Boss: A Dark Mafia Arranged Marriage Romance (Possessive Mafia Kings Book 7)

I sat across the bed from Karsen, and for the first hour, I wondered if she’d ask about the missing pregnancy test, but she didn’t mention it once. Then, the longer we sat there, everything that had happened over the past month weighed heavily on me. Sleeping with Bruce. Being confronted by Tucker. Finding out I was pregnant.

There were too many things that I needed to figure out, and there was too little time to do it.

“Spill the beans,” Karsen said, taking a bite of her taco and chewing for a long moment as I stared at her. “Don’t look at me like that. I know that something is on your mind. When we have lunch together, you’re the best listener. Today, you seem like you haven’t heard a thing I’ve said.”

I pressed my lips together tightly. “Sorry,” I muttered.

“I don’t need you to apologize. I just need you to tell me what’s bothering you.”

Which of the things should I tell her? That I slept with Bruce and enjoyed it? That I’d been thinking about him every night since, wondering why I was so interested in the man who took me from my home and killed the only family I’d ever had. That was a situation that I had no idea how to handle or talk openly about, so I decided against telling her that.

Then there was the pregnancy… I couldn’t tell anyone about that until I knew what to do about it.

That left the situation with Tucker, and he’d made it clear that if I spoke up, I would be killed. I knew he wasn’t bluffing, especially when he’d been ready to do it himself at one point. He thought I was best off dead, but he hadn’t said anything about telling Karsen.

“Tucker,” I finally admitted.

Her lips pursed, and her back straightened as I spoke the name. “What did he do to you?”

That reaction hadn’t been expected, and I tilted my head as I looked at her. “What did he do to you?” I countered.

She narrowed her eyes and stayed silent, waiting for me to continue.

I sighed and gave in. “He came into my room. He told me that I should be dead and that it would be better for everyone. He gave some threats and said that if I told Bruce, he’d kill me.”

I felt myself jittering as I thought about how he’d pinned me against the wall and showed me precisely how easy it would be to kill me. I knew he’d considered doing it and damning the consequences, and knowing that he lived here—that he could come and do it at any time he pleased—had kept me up most nights since then.

“Did he touch you?” she asked. “Hurt you?”

“Not really…”

“Sabrina,” she said with a serious tone. “Did he?”

I bit my bottom lip and folded my arms over myself. “He pinned me to a wall and had his hand around my throat, but he didn’t really hurt me. He just threatened me, but he didn’t leave any marks.”

“Leaving marks doesn’t mean that he didn’t hurt you.”

As she spoke those words, I wondered what horrible things he’d done to Karsen. I looked over her expression and saw a sense of anger and sadness there. I’d seen that same expression when she’d told me snippets of her past, and I knew that something had gone down between them. Karsen and I seemed to have much more in common than I’d initially thought, but from everything I’d heard about her, she had clearly suffered far more.

She’d overcome far more.

“The first week Jamison brought me here, before I swore to work for Bruce, he snuck into my room and gave me similar threats. But with me, his threats weren’t of death.”

I gasped. “Did he—”

Something in her expression lightened a bit as she shook her head. “Not even close. He said that if I ever left Jamison, he’d be there to make me feel better, and when he tried to touch me, I made a threat in return.”

“You know I have to hear what you did, right?” I pushed, wishing I’d had the balls to threaten Tucker when he’d come into my room.

She shrugged. “I always kept a knife on me when I lived back home. Too many sketchy people came through, and too many of the other people who lived there had bad experiences. I still had my knife.” She took a deep breath and took a slow bite of her taco before setting it back down. “I told him that if he ever touched me or stepped foot in my room again, I’d cut off his dick. And then I slid my knife across it. I think I scratched one of his balls pretty badly, but he hasn’t threatened me since.”

The story made me feel better about my own experience, though it didn’t do anything to change it. “There’s nothing I can do. I can’t take him if he comes back.”

“You have a gun. Jamison told me. We’re the only ones who know, so it will be more effective when you use it on the ass.”

But if I was in the same position as I had been last time, it wouldn’t work. If I was asleep and he snuck into the room, I’d die. I knew that he was a threat, and I knew that if something wasn’t done, I’d be his victim. But the thought of shooting and hurting someone tore through me. It should have been easier to envision hurting someone who had no problem hurting me—who had tried to hurt my friend—but I had never been in the position to hurt another person before.

But I also had never been afraid of anything in my life, and I’d faced things much worse than Tucker. What about this was so different?

“You need to tell Bruce,” Karsen said. “I had Jamison to tell, and I slept in his room for months because I was afraid. Then we decided to share a room permanently because he didn’t trust Tucker. It’s not bad to get help sometimes, and Bruce will keep you safe. You can trust him.”

You can trust him.

I didn’t want to admit those words were true, but I knew I could. He wouldn’t let anything happen to me, even though Tucker made a threat that I had no doubt he would attempt to follow through on.

“I just don’t know if Bruce will be enough to stop him.”

Karsen tipped her head back and released a long laugh. “He would not be happy to hear you say that. He is the most powerful man in the city—likely one of the most powerful in the country and the world. There’s nobody better equipped to keep you safe than him.”

I believed that, but I had a feeling his brother was the exception. He clearly didn’t see all the things his brother did, and that was dangerous.

“I’ll tell Jamison, too. I know you don’t know him well, but he’ll keep you safe as if you were one of his own. He knows how much you mean to me, and he won’t let anything happen. You have my word,” she swore, reaching forward and gathering my hands in hers. “He’s not going to hurt you if I have anything to do with it.”

Her logic made sense, but I could go about my life without risking it. I didn’t have to tell Bruce, and maybe Tucker would leave me alone…

The thought fled my mind as logic took over. “I’m scared,” I admitted to her. “I don’t get scared… I can’t remember the last time I was, but…”

“It’s okay to be scared, but we’re going to fix this.”

We tried making small talk for a while later, but my mind had veered off onto this situation, and Karsen left, promising that Jamison would be on the situation as soon as I gave her the go-ahead.

I knew that I could keep the information to myself, but I also knew that Tucker was more dangerous than anyone seemed to realize. If he got the opportunity to end me and make it look like an accident, he would. I knew he would. I couldn’t let that happen, and the only protection I had against him was a gun and Bruce, and I didn’t think I could bring myself to use the gun.

I hoped that I wouldn’t be forced to make that choice.