Sweet Possession (Criminal Underground Book 1) Read online

  Sweet Possession

  A Criminal Underground Novel

  Lucy Smoke

  A.J. Macey

  Blurb:

  I had a chance, once, to play the good girl. I could’ve kept my mouth shut and stayed out of the line of fire. Had I done that, more people might have died. So, I came forward and subsequently, I lost everything I’d ever loved.

  I lost my family.

  I lost my home.

  I lost my identity.

  I lost … them.

  But now they’re back. At least, I think they are. I can feel their eyes watching my every movement, stalking me. They aren’t here to threaten me or to hurt me. They’re here to protect me. To watch over me. Because to them, I’m everything they desire.

  I am their love.

  I am their hate.

  I am their infatuation.

  Their sweet possession.

  How long can they stand to stay in the shadows when a new danger threatens to tear us apart again?

  Warning:

  The Criminal Underground is a collection of standalones following different crews of criminals meaning the stories can be read separately and in any order. Sweet Possession is a Why Choose/Reverse Harem standalone featuring MFMM meaning the female main character doesn’t have to choose between her love interests.

  This book contains references involving violence and other themes that some readers may find triggering.

  Copyright © 2020 by Lucy Smoke LLC and A.J. Macey

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Epilogue

  Scarlett Thief

  About Lucy Smoke

  Also by Lucy Smoke/Lucinda Dark

  About A.J. Macey

  Also By A.J. Macey/Macey Rose/Aria Rose

  Prologue

  America

  There was no one at the front door. That was the first thing that tipped me off that something was wrong. There was always someone at the front door in the Perelli household, or at least someone nearby. A butler. A maid. One of my father’s ‘security guards.’ As I strode into the foyer, though, the house was quiet.

  I’d only been gone for a few months. Had he changed routine? No. Jason Perelli liked his routine. He rarely deviated. Even when my mother had died, there hadn’t been much difference on the day of her funeral. The only allowance was that I’d been permitted to miss school to attend the service. I’d gone immediately back the next day—no time to mourn, no halt to my studies, and certainly no extra attention from the man I called my father.

  Now, though, there was an eerie feeling to the mansion I’d grown up in. I sucked in a breath and took a step further into the home. His home. Not mine. Because after today, I likely wouldn’t ever have contact with my father again. I’d just come by to drop off my old keys. When my college let out for break, I’d go stay with the guys—Ian, Jensen, and Archer. There was no point in coming back to a home where there’d been nothing but discomfort, distance, and a low-simmering level of fear.

  Why fear? Because my father, Jason Perelli, was a mobster. Not just a mobster, but the mobster. If there were criminal dealings in New York, there was no doubt my father had his greedy fingers in each and every single one. Oh, he lived the life of a wealthy businessman. Handsome. Charming. Calculating. Before my mother passed, he’d had the trophy wife and the trophy life. I hadn’t realized it then—what he was—but after the last several years, I began to see the signs. The late nights. The drivers and guards with the scars and tattoos who carried around guns under their suit coats. The packages delivered at all hours of the night.

  I’d kept my eyes down and my mouth shut since I’d figured it out, half terrified that there would be a time where I’d do something to truly draw my father’s notice and find myself disappearing like one of the maids who’d been accused of stealing from his home office several years before. I still didn’t know what had happened to Marguerite, and I didn’t want to find out. I just wanted to vanish, fade out of his life, and hope that he’d forget he ever had a daughter.

  Just keep your head down, drop the fucking keys on the kitchen counter, and go, I told myself. You don’t even have to see him.

  I hurried forward, making a beeline for the kitchen with my keys clutched in my grip. When I got there, I realized that the kitchen, like each room I’d passed to get there, was empty.

  Don’t think about it, I urged. Setting the keys on the counter, I turned to go. I was almost there— the open doorway that led back to the foyer and out onto the front lawn and circular driveway was within my sights, but a low moan of pain stopped me. I froze where I was, my head tilting to the side as I listened. Maybe it was just my imagination? I took another step towards the door, but then it came again, and this time it was accompanied by a heavy thud, and another, and another, until the moans turned into sharp cries of agony.

  My brows lowered, and the slow growing trickle of adrenaline started to wind its way through me as I stood there. The scraping sound of metal against stone made me jump. My feet padded away from the open doorway, as if drawn by another force towards a door on the other side of the kitchen. I’d been inside it a time or two—it was nothing more than a large garage my father usually used to house his favorites from his collection of sports cars.

  My hand fell to the doorknob and I twisted it lightly, my heart racing in my chest. Something told me to stop. That what I needed to do was let it go and take a step back. All I had to do was turn and run the fuck away, but morbid curiosity and a desire to know what he was up to—if I was right—pulsed through me.

  Cracking the door open silently, I peeked in.

  A man, bloodied and bruised, collapsed on the ground in a heap, his back curled over his middle as he clutched an obviously broken hand. I covered my mouth with the back of my hand as my eyes widened. Each finger looked like it had been separately pulverized. Blood stained his skin, and his nails had been removed. My stomach revolted at the sight, threatening to spew everything I had eaten for breakfast that morning but I held back—somehow.

  The stranger rocked back and forth clutching his hand as he cried, tears streaming against his dirtied cheeks. Several slightly cleaner tracks betrayed how much of his anguish had escaped.

  Yanking my eyes away from him, I glanced around the room in a hurry. There were several men, all of them standing back and staring down at the man in the center of the room. Normally, there would be cars lined up in this space, but i
n their absence, the injured man cried and moaned. One of the men on the sidelines held a tire iron in his hand. That must have been what I’d heard before.

  “Where is the money, Marco?” My lips fused together in fear, and goosebumps rose along my arms as a cold sweat popped up at the nape of my neck. My head turned slightly as my father stepped into view. A cigar dangled from his fingertips, nearly finished as he sucked on the head and blew out a cloud of smoke right in the man’s face.

  The stranger coughed and then began to speak. “P-please, Mr. Perelli, I d-don’t—mi familia—we would never—” Marco’s words were cut off on a cry as my father leaned forward and put the end of his cigar out on the man’s face.

  A fresh wave of bile threatened to escape as it pushed up my throat, but I was caught by the scene unveiling itself before me with sickening clarity.

  “I’ve had enough of the lies, Marco.” My father dropped his now dead cigar on the ground and crushed it with his boot. “I want my money back, and since there’s obviously no way for you to pay, here’s what I’m going to do.” More tears raced down the broken man’s face, now marred by a fresh bloody burn on his right cheek.

  What do I do? What can I do? I started to hyperventilate when my father turned and nodded to the man with the tire iron. He wouldn’t … My stomach turned as two of the other security guards came forward and wrestled Marco to his feet—not that there was much wrestling involved. The bloody man hung from their grip, broken and defeated.

  My father’s employee with the tire iron brought it down on one of Marco’s outstretched arms. The sharp snap of bones breaking had me turning away and stumbling into the wall. Marco’s scream echoed through the house, forever staining every memory I’d ever have of this place. I needed to move, I needed to leave. Call for help, something … anything, but I couldn’t get my feet to move.

  Over Marco’s screams, I heard my father continue to speak. “I’m going to kill you, and then I’m going to pay a visit to your lovely wife, and I’m going to make her work off your debt. A few years as one of my whores and we should be good—of course, you know what all of my whores are required to do—maybe in a few years, she’ll forget all about the man she was married to, and all she’ll really know are the drugs I give her.”

  “Please! No!” Another scream shot through my ears, and despite the sickness churning within me, I had to know. I had to see it with my own eyes. I took a step towards the still-cracked door, just in time to watch my father withdraw a gun from a holster inside his coat and press the barrel of it against Marco’s face.”

  “You should have known better than to steal from a Perelli, Marco. I always get my money back.”

  I jerked when he pulled the trigger and the sound of the gun going off slammed into me. That movement sealed my fate—the door I’d been creeping at swung open, and one of the men who’d been waiting at the edge of the room, watching, stood in front of me.

  I didn’t even think. I turned and fled.

  Racing back through the house, my breath pumped in my lungs as I urged my legs to go faster. I slammed out of the front door and nearly fell as I leapt down the front steps and towards my car waiting in the driveway. A moment later, the front door swung open, and my father descended the steps, his eyes dark as they zeroed in on me.

  Flooded with gratitude that I’d left the keys in the ignition, I cranked the engine.

  “America!”

  The screech of tires reached my ears seconds after my car was already on the move. Although I was moving fast, it felt like the world had almost frozen around me, all my senses slightly numbed, the surrounding sights and sounds reaching me on a delay. I spun out of the driveway, my hands fumbling and shaking as I reached for my phone in the console.

  I jammed my fingers onto my screen as I careened wildly down the road. Several other cars honked at me, but I didn’t pay them any attention as the dispatcher’s voice came across the line.

  “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”

  I breathed out through my mouth and inhaled through my nose. Say it, I thought. Just fucking say it.

  “Nine-one-one, are you there? What is your emergency?”

  “I-I need to report a crime,” I said shakily.

  “What is the nature of the crime?”

  Swallowing, I pressed down harder on the gas as I blew through a stop sign, turning the wheel and cutting across several lanes of traffic. I turned and looked back, half expecting someone to be following behind, only slowing when I realized no one was.

  “Ma’am. I need to know the nature of the crime you wish to report? What is your location? Is someone hurt?”

  “Yes,” I breathed.

  “Is that person conscious?”

  Shaking my head, I clutched the wheel as if it was my only chance at staying above the sea of fear threatening to drown me. It was when the dispatcher didn’t respond I realized she couldn’t see me.

  “No, he’s not,” I said, realizing that I was crying—tears were pouring down my face. I opened my mouth again and I knew that as soon as I said it, there would be no going back. “He’s not conscious because he’s dead,” I continued, “and my father was the one who killed him. Jason Perelli. He killed someone, and I saw it.”

  1

  Mare

  Five years later…

  “Damn, it’s coming down hard out there, isn’t it?”

  I huffed and shoved my short blonde hair back from my face, my fingers tapping on the front door glass. If this Uber could hurry the hell up, that’d be great, I thought in irritation, my eyes scanning through the windows of the classy Italian restaurant I worked at.

  “You got a ride, Mary?” Donald Brutello—the owner’s son—asked from behind me. My lips thinned at hearing my new name. Mary Peterson, a woman who lived alone, kept her head down, and tried to work enough so she could pay rent.

  Bored, lonely, surviving despite everything.

  “Yeah,” I answered finally, mentally shaking the string of negative thoughts from my mind. Unfortunately, though, I could feel him move closer, his hand hovering just over the small of my back. I sidled away before he could touch me, my head tilting as if I was trying to make out shapes through the downpour outside. The move helped me control the retort that wanted to escape. The slightly overweight perv really irritated me, but I needed this job so I bit my tongue.

  “There’s my ride,” I said only a moment later when a set of headlights flashed over the front of the building, my cell buzzing in my hand. “See ya tomorrow, Donny.”

  Before he could stop me, I yanked open the door and darted into the rain. I’d rather drown like a wet rat than stand another second in that skeevy dick’s presence. Goddammit, I wish Charlotte hadn’t ditched her shift as second closer tonight. With Donny closing down the restaurant, I’d had to endure a good thirty minutes of his eye-fucking and lip-licking before I had finished everything I needed to in order to get out. As it was, I was leaving a good ten minutes early. Guess luck was on my side for once. Either that or the thought of spending more time with Donald Brutello kicked my ass into gear. It was safe to say it was probably the latter.

  I ran to the small but newer sedan waiting for me, holding my thin coat over my aged and worn backpack as I slid into the backseat, slamming the car door behind me with a sigh. Ubers were cheaper than taxis, but I really wished this thunderstorm had chosen a better time to hit. Brutello’s was only about two miles from my apartment and walking was always cheaper.

  A year of financial help from the government hadn’t done much, not in the long run anyway. It was a good starting point, and in the beginning, I thought I could truly start over. Went to community college, had a place to live, got a part time job … all was good for a time. Living expenses added up, though. Tuition. Rent. Utilities. It hadn’t mattered that I’d been given a new start, even debt built up after a while if one couldn’t keep up. Credit cards maxed out. School loans in deferral. I’d done what I could and survived. That was all it was no
w, a fight for survival.

  Even with the financial assistance from the program, I was, for lack of a better term, abandoned to my own devices. They’d dropped me off in St. Louis five years ago and never looked back. I’d served my purpose. Every so often, I’d get a call—something short and untraceable—from my handler. They kept up the pretense of wanting me alive, but according to them, I wasn’t in any danger. To everyone else, my father had moved on and so should I. I hoped like hell that was true.

  I shook myself mentally, dislodging the thoughts and memories plaguing me. Watching the rain trail over the windows of Brutello’s, I waited impatiently to get back to my studio so I could relax for the night. Because that was what my life had become. Wake up. Work. Go home. Try to relax and forget. Go to bed. Do it all over again the next day. Even on birthdays, everything remained the same.

  “Thanks,” I muttered, handing a tip over as I clambered out of the car a few minutes later while it idled in front of the crumbling Victorian.

  “Jack, you dumb bastard! What the hell—”