Read Online Sold: A Billionaire Bad Boy Mafia Romance by Natasha Tanner, Molly Thorne - Free Book Online

business, just a bunch of lowlifes. He went down the rabbit hole pretty fast. I even visited him the first time they sent him to jail.”
    I arched my brow and let my hand rest on her leg, just as she had done minutes before. God, her eyes were so pretty I could have kissed her.
    “The first time? Then he went to jail more than once.”
    “He did,” she said with a sad gesture, “and he dragged Misha down with him. My brother had joined his little gang, and they were outside all day, roaming the streets, stealing whatever they could. I told Misha... I warned him...”
    She couldn’t go on. If she kept talking, she would cry. I knew the sensation: a knot in your throat that doesn’t let you speak. Anguish. Sorrow. Pain. I had forgotten that kind of feeling, but I knew it well.
    “I had a girlfriend a few years ago,” I said, so that she wouldn’t have to go on. I could have changed the subject to literally anything else, but I thought about that. I was mirroring her pain, remembering my own. “Her name was Rhonda, and I killed for her.”
    She looked at me with her big vulnerable eyes, and I could see how her sorrow receded to give way to fear.
    “They killed her first,” I added. “I hope that makes up for it.”
    She kept silent for a while, looking through the window at the boring landscape of rural Pennsylvania. Finally, she asked.
    “What happened?”
    “I had just become the head of Little Vegas. But it was too soon for me. The previous guy in charge had messed with the numbers and he died in the ensuing disagreement. I was expected to ‘fix’ things by killing even more people. I refused. I had been dating Rhonda for a while and we were deeply in love, so, naturally, I wanted out. I didn’t want such a risky life for her, and I was ready to renounce my position to just be with her and lead a normal life.”
    “But you couldn’t.”
    “Well, nobody just says goodbye and leaves,” I replied. “There are too many secrets. If you get out, you must make sure they can’t find you. I withdrew some millions and moved to a nice house in a Spanish coastal town. Someone sold me out, though, and we had to flee. If it weren’t for Jack Starr, who warned me that the location was no longer safe, they would have killed us both. After that, I decided that it was best that we moved to different places. This time they couldn’t find me. But they found her.”
    I stopped there. After all these years, I still didn’t like to talk about it. The next part was the worst. Vanina said nothing, but her big eyes encouraged me to go on.
    “I don’t know how they got to her. They... they shot her in the face. They didn’t even give her a warning. They broke into her little apartment in Paris and killed her before she realized what was happening.”
    “Did you ever found out who sold you out?”
    I shook my head.
    “I had my suspicions, but never confirmed them. I took care of the guys who killed Rhonda, though.”
    “Had you killed anyone before? Did you kill anyone after that?”
    I shook my head to both things.
    “It’s dangerous to be with me.”
    I didn’t say anything else for hours. My mouth had become a hard straight line and my eyes were fixated on the road. She caressed my cheek with the back of her hand, briefly.
    The trip was long and, luckily, uneventful. Pennsylvania, Indiana and Ohio went through one after the other, offering nothing interesting to a couple of fugitives. We took a light lunch and then another bite in the evening. As we approached our destination, the sun completed its circular arc in the sky, and Chicago welcomed us already completely soaked in artificial light.
     
    * * *
     
    The place was a basement, and this time there were more people. Three tables were laid down around the room, and the players were already sitting down in their respective places, except for me. Harlan winked at me from his post beside the computer, and Veronica waved her hand through the smoke that already