Sunrise Malice: An Arranged Marriage Mafia Romance

Each step fucking hurts.

Not like it felt good before my bastard grandson shot me in the goddamn knee. I’m old, damn it, much too old. My hands shake as I haul myself from the living room, walking down the old, creaky halls toward my bedroom in the back of the house. The smell of the sea wafts in through the open windows. I hear my guards laughing down in the courtyard. They’ll be smoking and drinking by now. The lazy assholes. I need to find better men, but things aren’t good right now. Maybe next month.

I lower myself down into my easy chair. My bed’s unmade and messy. Pictures of my father, my mother, and all my brothers and uncles line the dresser. I talk to them sometimes. The habits of an old man. The sound of the ocean lapping at the cliffs filters in with the breeze. The moon’s full and it’s dark. I should sleep, but I don’t sleep much these days.

Everything aches.

I’m twenty pounds too light, but I can’t gain weight anymore. My voice is raspy and quiet thanks to the way that Serbian fuck treated me. My second-in-command paid my ransom, which was a ludicrous sum, and now it’s like I must work twice as hard to earn the price on my head, as if I didn’t already work ten times harder than any man in France.

But I do what I must to put my organization back on solid footing after that mess in America.

I stare down at my gnarled, old body.

I remember running through the streets of Marseille, seabirds singing in the sky, full of life and promise. I remember building an empire. Men bowed at my feet. Women gave themselves over willingly.

And now I sit here in this chair, and I’m so damn old. The days come and they go, slipping away before I even realize they’re gone.

There are nights, sad nights, pathetic nights, where I wish I had done things differently. Where I wish I had taken better care of Julien and brought him into the fold. Where I wonder what he would have become had I not gone and made the choices I made. But those are weak thoughts, and I am not a weak man.

When I’m better, I’m going to hire the best killer in France, and I’m going to make sure Julien suffers.

But for now, I pull my tablet onto my lap, perch my glasses on my nose, and begin to sift through the day’s news. I make notes on people to call, politicians to shake down, moves to make. Losing the American branch was a blow, but it’s not the end of me. I’ve come back from worse.

There’s a noise. This house is old, far older than me. It creaks more than my own joints. And I know every loose floorboard, every crack of joists.

“Antoine,” I call out, assuming it’s my evening guard. “Bring me some wine.”

A figure appears in the door. He steps forward, pulling it shut behind him. I stare, uncomprehending.

I’m hallucinating. I’m having a stroke. There’s no other explanation. But he steps forward, and the floor makes the correct sounds, and when he raises the gun to aim at my chest, I’m sure it’s him.

“Julien,” I rasp, still refusing to believe. “How?”

“I grew up in this house, remember?” He stares at me, his eyes hard. A strong boy. A clever boy. I was so proud of him once, and I pushed him hard because I wanted him to succeed. I wanted him to be even better.

But he let me down so many times.

The fucking failure.

“All I have to do is yell and my guards will be here.” I lean forward, getting a good look at him, while also reaching for the gun I keep tucked into the cushions of this chair.

Paranoia has kept me alive for a long time. It’ll hold me a while yet.

“You got soft, old man. Your soldiers are lazy and drunk. I used to sneak in and out of here when I was a teenager, and it was much better guarded back then.”

“Where’s Antoine?”

“Downstairs. He’s unconscious. Maybe dead.” Julien shrugs as if he doesn’t care.

“You never should have come here.” The arrogance of this boy. It’s obscene, and it must be punished.

“That’s where you’re wrong. You hurt my wife. You threatened everything I built. Did you really think I was going to let you live? I used you as a bargaining chip, and now I’m going to give you what you deserve.”

“Foolish boy.” I can’t help but grin at him as excitement pumps into my veins. Yes, this is what I live for. Now the bastard boy will die.

There’s a loud noise.

The explosion of a gun going off.

I move my arm.

But my arm doesn’t respond.

There’s another loud noise, and another, and I look down at myself. Three neat red holes in my chest.

And my head goes light.

And my limbs won’t move.

Rage hits me. Julien should die. Julien has to die.

My arm won’t work.

I can’t raise the gun.

He lowers his weapon and turns away as my heart beats, beats, slows.

Julien

I watch Pascal bleed out. His body goes limp, and even in the end, he looks defiant. Like he really thought he’d be able to raise that fucking gun and kill me before I finished him off.

I thought I’d feel something. This is the end of an important time in my life. Pascal was a monster, but he did save me once. I did look up to him and love him.

Now he’s a dead old man, and his threat is neutralized.

I step to his window and shuffle my way out. There’s a drainpipe bolted in the wall on the left. I swing toward it and grab on with both hands, slowly lowering myself down. It groans, and I curse quietly to myself—the last time I did this, I was seventeen and weighed thirty pounds less.

But the pipe holds. I reach the alley below as the sound of Pascal’s guards entering his room bellows out from the open window. I hurry to the street and keep going, hands shoved into my pocket. I turn at the corner, make another turn, and keep on walking, losing myself in the narrow streets and blind curves of the city I grew up in, the city I know better than any other.

I doubt Pascal’s men will look for me.

I suspect they’ll be relieved. The old asshole was past his prime and dragging them down. But now there will be a fight over who succeeds him, and I’ll be completely forgotten in the resulting chaos.

Most of all, Brianne will be safe, and Pascal got what he deserved.

I keep walking. I breathe the smell of the sea. I think about the old days, of my life before Pascal took me in. The struggle and the fight. I was a skinny little rat back then; who would’ve guessed I’d end up like this? Married to a beautiful woman and building my own empire. Sometimes, life really is strange.

The sun begins to rise as I make my way back to the hotel on the other side of town. It’s a small boutique place, but we’ll move on to somewhere fancier now that the job’s over. I ditched the gun a few hours ago down a sewer grate.

She’s awake when I come into the room. Room service must’ve brought up coffee already. She’s sitting on the small balcony looking out at the ocean, and I pause for a moment to stare at her. Brianne’s so lovely it fucking kills me.

“How’d it go?” she asks when I join her. “Did you take care of it?”

I smile at how easily she talks about murder these days. My fucking queen.

“It’s done.” I lean across the table to give her a kiss. “How’s the coffee here?”

“Surprisingly good.” She pours me a cup. “What should we do today?”

“I was thinking we’d stay in and cross some items off your list.”

She shakes her head, grinning. The breeze blows through her hair and makes her loose shirt ripple. “Pretty sure we already took care of that a while back.”

“Then we’ll make a new list.”

“Not a bad idea, but I have a better one.” She crosses her legs and leans toward me. “How about we start that family?”

I stare at her for a long moment before standing. She grins up at me and laughs as I grab her and lift her from her chair, knocking her coffee over as I carry her back to the bed. She struggles and hits, but nothing’s going to stop me now.

“I didn’t mean this second,” she complains as I bury my mouth on her breasts. “God, Julien, can I at least finish my coffee?”

“We’ll get more later. I have a wife to impregnate.”

“Fuck, you idiot,” she moans as I yank down her panties. “You have to agree to give our kids Irish names first.”

“Irish names?” I cover her pussy with my mouth. “Absolutely not. French names.”

“First one’s Irish. Second one’s French.”

“Third and fourth are also French?”

Her back arches. “We’ll see about three and four.”

“I’ll convince you.”

“You’re doing a very good job so far.”