Owned by the Mob Boss Read Online Free

read my business alone, that he didn’t wait to be dismissed but dismissed himself raised a red flag in my mind. Who sent the note?
     
    I reached down, inside my boot, and removed my concealed dagger. With a flick of my wrist, I unsealed the envelope and read the short note, my peace shattering into a billion pieces that could never be brought together again.
     
    V. G. back in town. Thought you would want to know.
     
    It was unsigned, unmarked. No way to tell who had sent it, and my man’s disappearance made me think that the person who had dropped off the note was either a possible associate of V.G. or else the note had been discovered without anyone seeing the drop off. I certainly hoped it came from a friend and not an associate of V.G.’s. The thought that someone, friend or foe, could drop off a letter unseen and unnoticed by any of my men was enough to start a rage inside of me, but that was nothing compared to what the contents of the letter inspired.
     
    The hairs on the back of my neck rose, and despite the warm nighttime air, goose bumps appeared on my exposed arms. I’d rolled up the sleeves of my blue dress shirt earlier. My fingers curled together around the hilt of the dagger still in my hand, to the point that my hand started to cramp up, but still I held on, relishing in the pain.
     
    Vanya Golovkin. The bastard had returned to town, to my town. How dare he show his ugly face around these parts! He had no right to return. No right to step foot on my soil. How long had he been sneaking around in the shadows? It better not have been for long. If my men had grown so lax that they had missed him for weeks…I would not abide by such a lack of dedication.
     
    My other hand had tightened into a fist, and I forced myself to relax, to uncurl my fingers, to return the dagger inside my boot, and to smooth out the letter. I tried to read the words again, but the letters swam on the page. My mind had already been transported back to the worst time of my life.
     
    I had only been eight years old when my life had been forever changed by the likes of one Vanya Golovkin. Memories of my parents’ death reared their ugly head. Golovkin and his men had killed my family, every last one of them, and they had managed to get away before they had been caught. The bastards. I would never forgive them. Death might be too kind for them.
     
    It had taken me years to get over it—the survivor’s guilt. I had been a coward. As soon as I heard Mother’s screams, I hid away in the safe room my mother had showed me when I had turned two. I knew that was what she would have wanted, what my father would have wanted as well, but even then, as I hid away, I hated myself for it. I had curled up in a ball and waited, trying not to sob but failing. I cried as I heard them shriek and scream and attack, and then they made no more sounds.
     
    Of course, the safe room had been soundproof, so as soon as I had closed the door, I hadn’t actually heard the screaming or the fighting back, but I knew my father would not have accepted death easily. My mother either for that matter. That I did not actually hear the sounds did not make what I heard in my mind any less real. Therapy might have been good for me, but I had pushed through the guilt and the grief and reforged my role, taking on my father’s place as leader of the Kovalsky mob. Now I was thirty-two, and I would never allow what happened to my parents to happen to me. I would not be the next to fall.
     
    There had been a clock and food and clothes and other provisions in that safe room with me. Once a single day had passed, I couldn’t wait any longer. I had to go and check and see what had happened. Certainly it had to all be over by now. I thought that since my mother hadn’t come for me yet, I was prepared for what I would see.
     
    Or so I had mistakenly and foolishly thought.
     
    The carnage, though, the stench…my parents’ bodies lay in a puddle of their own blood.