Patrick: A Mafia Love Story by Kit Tunstall, R.E. Saxton

to deliver, and you keep your word. You sure as fuck don’t skim profits off the top.” He punctuated his words with more fists flying to the man’s solar plexus.
    “I’ll pay you back, boss. Double.” After Patrick nailed him with a right hook to the jaw, his voice sounded different, likely from a broken jaw. “Triple,” he said with obvious desperation.
    Patrick hit him a few more times without responding. When the man could no longer stand at all on his own, with just Jake and Isaac holding him up completely, Patrick gestured for them to let him go. The other man fell to the floor, and Patrick knelt down, grasping a handful of his hair to lift the man’s head up to look into his eyes. “Four times the amount. You have it to me in three days, and then you get the fuck out of my city and never come back. You renege, you come back, or you don’t leave, and I will shoot you myself. Do you understand?”
    The other man, though obviously in incredible pain, nodded emphatically. “I got it, boss. Thank you.” He darted a look at Lauren, who stood in the corner with her arms crossed over her chest, struggling to filter any reaction from her expression.
    This side of Patrick was brutal, and it scared her. She’d known in an abstract way what he did, but seeing it—and she suspected he was showing her the worst sides possible, because she couldn’t imagine it getting much worse short of killing someone—brought it home. The reality was being with Patrick meant being with a mob boss. It meant accepting what he did for a living, and what he did to other people. She was still resolved to be with him, but her confidence in accepting his illegal activities was a bit shakier than it had been.
    Patrick and his bodyguards walked away from the other man, and she startled visibly when she realized they were moving onward. She walked past the other man lying on the floor, shooting him a look of pity as she stepped over him and hurried to catch up with Patrick and the other two men.
    “So, princess, do you like what you’ve seen? Are you still okay with my line of work now?” he asked with a sharp edge of sarcasm.
    “You haven’t shocked me, if that’s what you mean. I figured you were going to do your worst today, and it wasn’t as bad as I expected.”
    His mouth tightened, and he seemed to take her words as a personal challenge. “Just wait, honey. Just wait.”
    His words were ominous, and her heart felt heavy as she followed him to the SUV, hoping and praying they were headed home to his house. Instead, they turned the opposite direction, and she knew the day wasn’t over yet.
    They drew to a halt outside a seedy-looking warehouse, and her eyes widened with surprise when all three men pulled out their guns to check their ammunition levels before closing them with a click. Patrick handed out silencers, and they screwed them on the barrel of their guns before they all set out. Her mouth was dry as she slid nearer Patrick, who stood with the door open, clearly waiting for her to his exit. “Is it safe for me to go in there without a gun?”
    He shrugged. “You’ll be fine. We’re all armed.”
    “I do know how to use a gun, you know?” She said it as she slid across the seat and dropped down by his side, deliberately pressing close against him as she did so, so that each inch of her body rubbed against his while she slid slowly from the leather, until her sneakered feet were on the rough asphalt. It had seen better days, just like the building it surrounded.
    “Where’d you learn how to shoot?” He took her hand casually in his, as though they were going for ice cream or about to see a movie rather than handle whatever violent business was next on his agenda.
    “My dad taught me. It was just one of our things we did together.” Except for the last few months before he’d been shot, when he had slowly and almost shyly introduced her to his girlfriend, and she had joined them occasionally at the shooting