Sweet Release (A Bad Boy Mafia Romance) Read Online Free Page B

six ecstasy pills stashed in my clothes. The man had some sort of obsession with my whole family—he’d been on Tony for years, but Tony was too slick to get caught doing anything so he’d moved on to me when he saw the chance. He just knew that if he could get one of us, we’d give him the big break he needed to start digging up dirt on Don Luchese, the local Mob boss. He was crazy.
     
    Thing was, he wasn’t entirely off the mark. The Frazettas and the Lucheses went back, all the way back, to Italy. Our familys had come over together and, yeah, they were part of the Mafia network back in the day. Luchese was technically associated with the Mafia but he wasn’t what you normally think of as a mob boss, and I certainly never worked for him.
     
    But my brother Tony did, and my father and uncles had. That was enough for Pembry to get me put away.
     
    All that, though, like Annemarie said, was in the past. Behind me, where it belonged. If I kept dwelling on it, it would haunt my future and all I wanted now was to start over. If I could do that, maybe I could be worth a girl like Ella.
     
    I wondered if she had an open spot tomorrow. Would that be okay? She’d asked me out to lunch, basically. Which could have just been lunch, I guessed, but seemed more like a date. Or something like it.
     
    But I hadn’t gone, so, we weren’t dating. So surely a massage was fine. Plus, I really was sore. Jarome was a monster; a brilliant, talented, effective monster, but a monster all the same. I was in knots. Plus, prison wasn’t exactly a spa. I had some left over tension from four years on a hard mattress to get rid of. And that’s what massage was for, right? So, it was a perfectly legitimate reason to see her again. For a massage, that is. I wasn’t a creeper like Rex.
     
    My phone rang as I got on the bus back toward my part of town. Courtesy of Jarome. How Tony had gotten my number, I had no idea and didn’t want to know, but within a few hours of getting the thing turned on—just a cheap, prepaid flip-phone, no bells or whistles—he’d started calling. Man had resources, I guessed.
     
    If I ignored it again, he’d just call later. That was the thing about Tony—the man had an endless, implacable patience. He was known for it, and for the way he could calmly break a man’s arm in just the right place that it would hurt like hell but heal up perfectly. Or, never work right again, depending on why he was breaking and arm in the first place.
     
    Yeah, Tony was a stone cold killer. I knew it, he knew it, the Don knew it… but he was still my brother.
     
    I grit my teeth, and answered the phone.
     
    “Hey! Mike! You don’t call, you don’t text… you got out three days ago, brother. Why I haven’t heard from you?”
     
    “Hey, Tony,” I said, quiet to keep from bothering the people around me. “Yeah I been… busy. You know, getting out, getting a job, place to stay… a phone.”
     
    “So I see,” Tony said, impressed. “Well, now you got all that, you gotta come to dinner, catch up with me. When are you coming?”
     
    Shit. “I’m real busy, Tony… I don’t know when. Maybe a couple weeks.”
     
    “What, they working you twenty four hours or something? the gym closes at ten; you know I eat late anyway.”
     
    Of course he knew I was at the gym. Tony knew everything, if he wanted to. “Yeah, well… I’m working hard. Plus I can’t eat pasta that late at night; you know, gotta keep trim.”
     
    “I make a mean caprisi,” Tony countered. “Come on; come see your older brother. We’re family, Mikey—I miss you.”
     
    If he did, I was probably the only person he had feelings of any kind for.
     
    “Plus,” Tony went on, “I gotta talk to you about some stuff.”
     
    “Is it about the Business?” I asked.
     
    Tony scoffed on the other end of the line. “Mikey, come on. I knew you just got out, what am I, stupid?”
     
    “If it’s got anything to do with it, Tony, I don’t