Maid for the Mafia

**ROMANY**

The moment the words are out of my mouth I regret them. Not because they aren't true, and not because they might push him into murdering Antony, but because the last thing I want him to do is go back to where we were. Back to the path of destruction he was on *after* the incident. When he was ignoring me...when he couldn't look at me. It was torture.

I cringe at myself, freezing with Alex at my back and my feet three tiny steps from the door. Taking a deep breath I scan the floor, looking for the one thing that might make the rest of this afternoon a little easier. I spy it to the left of me, in front of the coffee table and pick it up without another thought. There's only about a quarter of it left and as I turn back around I twist off the cap.

I don't know what I expected to see when I turned around, but it certainly wasn't Alex with his gun in his hand, tapping the damn thing on his thigh like he was counting down the seconds I had left alive. My eyes are glued to the motion as I stand there, the light tapping of the cold piece of steel in his hand against his leg. Without looking up into his eyes, I keep my gaze trained on his weapon while I pour a good deal of his whiskey down my throat.

The gun pauses, Alex's hand tensing over the grip and his thigh flexing beneath the barrel as I drink. Coming off the bottle, I lick my lips, dragging my eyes upward and over the brown sugar goodness of Alex's biceps, then across the magnificent ridges of his bare chest. Finally, I trek up the iron cords of his neck, then ride his jawline toward the blazing green fire of his eyes. The electric charge in them fairly vibrates with anger, causing me to wonder if he pulled that damn gun out to shoot me with.

"Alex," I begin, as my head suddenly swims with the amber liquid that I consumed.

"Bring me my bottle, angel. Now," he says quietly, his eyes lifting past me to carve out a hole in the wall behind my head. His gaze stays locked there, at some point over my shoulder. As if he can no longer look at me, or is afraid too. He appears ready to snap and for some reason that puts a stupid as fuck smile on my face. I step around the table carefully, the meager buzz I gained from that one shot of whiskey not nearly enough as I approach his seat on the couch once again. When I get there I stand in front of his knees and stare down at his thigh, where the gun remains in his grip. He's still gazing past me, his eyes so intensely focused on *nothing* that it gnaws at my bones.

So, I snort rudely, then bring the bottle back up to my mouth and down the rest of it greedily.

"Here you go," I chirp when I'm done, dropping the empty bottle into his lap directly over his cock.

The gun twitches, but Alex's jaw is set as he doesn't so much as groan, despite that the hit was right on target. Now though, he looks at me. "Do you know why I allowed it to happen? Do you have any idea?"

I snicker, my face flushing with blood as the memory of their little 'meeting' comes back to me. "Not that it matters, but yeah, I do. It's because you're a sick power hungry fuck that will use anything and *anyone* to place yourself at the top of the pyramid."

Alex smirks, the bastard, shaking his head at me. "That's true enough, but despite what the others may have told you, that is not why."

"The *others* didn't tell me *anything*, but don't worry. I figured it out. You don't care about me. You didn't then and you don't now. You only want me because *they* want me. Because *once again* you need your power. Alex DeMarco has to have everything anybody wants. At least he does, until it's gone. He has to control it and he has to benefit from it. Even if it's a girl like me that could disappear tomorrow and you wouldn't give any more than a fuck or two before you got over it then carried on with your life." The words spewed from my lips like venom until I physically bit down on my tongue to stop myself from giving away my plans for tonight. Midnight. I don't know where it all came from, but it felt right. However, the entire time I was talking, Alex kept his poker face which only served to piss me off more.

"I don't care about you? Is that what you think? You think that if they didn't want you, that I wouldn't crave you every single moment of every single day? The way I have since that very first time at the club, when Ruby called you in and I heard you say my name in that fucking...*siren's* voice of yours?" Alex growled, his eyes firing and his face losing his composure so swiftly that I flinched. He hisses, "I have been a goddamned *slave* to you and I am a slave to *no one!* Do you think I enjoyed that last night? Watching those bastards fuck your mouth and pussy, while I was inside of you?" He sneers, his gun flicking upward to stand on his leg.

My mind whirls, instantly going back to last night and remembering the darkness in him. The way he gripped my hips and his hands stretched over my body anytime anyone else had my attention. "Yes, I think you loved it."

His eyes flash, his jaw ticking angrily. "I'd rather have had you alone," he whispers, shaking his head. "You assume that just because I didn't kill Antony the other night, that I don't want him dead for what I *let* him do. But what you don't understand, angel, is that it doesn't end with Antony." Alex tosses his gun to the right of him and the bottle to the left, then with a lightning quickness, he grabs onto my hands and yanks me back down on his lap. This time he draws both of my legs over his, turning me so that I can see his face. I watch the plump heart of his lips and he watches mine when he says, "It ends with me. I am the one who allowed it to happen and I am the one who should pay for it in the end." His hands go into the bottom of my robe, one at the back and one in the front, each of them massaging and groping my flesh until I'm weeping at my core. "But make no mistake, his time will come. And then...so will mine."