Loving Jared: A Mafia Romance Novella Read online

  Loving Jared

  A Mafia Romance Novella

  Nikita Slater

  Copyright © 2020 Nikita Slater Writing Services Ltd.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Contents

  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

  Epilogue

  Nikita’s Newsletter!

  Excerpt: Loving Vincent

  Excerpt: Fear in Her Eyes

  Also by Nikita Slater

  Stay connected with Nikita!

  About the Author

  One

  “Can I borrow a cup of sugar?”

  The voice came from right behind Jared. A woman. Normally Jared would have heard anyone sneaking up on him, but he’d been so preoccupied with his bike that he hadn’t heard someone coming toward him where he was crouched on his driveway.

  Hands still in the engine, without turning around, Jared asked, “What’re you making?”

  “Apple pie.”

  He nodded his approval and turned to look at the woman whose voice was sweet as pie. His eyebrows went up in surprise as he got a good look at his next-door neighbor. Little Amy Funk, all grown up.

  He straightened from his crouch to get a better look at her. She was short, her head barely higher than his own, and he was still kneeling on the cement. Her shiny black hair was piled on top of her head in a messy bun and her eyes were hidden behind a pair of giant plastic framed sunglasses. Her curves were stuffed into a pair of jean shorts that were so small and tight they should’ve been illegal. Her T-shirt wasn’t much better, baring her middle and showing off a tiny tattoo of what he thought was Tweety Bird disappearing beneath her shorts.

  Jared pushed himself off the ground, standing to his full height and glaring down at her.

  “Your parents know you run around dressed like that?”

  It was almost a shame to see a frown of annoyance mar her perfect features, but he got over it when she pulled her sunglasses off, revealing a pair of perfect hazel eyes. He nearly groaned out loud. When the hell had Amy gotten hot? She was always the awkward pudgy kid next door who barely acknowledged his existence when their paths happened to cross. Which occurred so infrequently Jared hadn’t noticed Amy turning a corner in her teenage development.

  She still had a decent amount of flesh on her, but it had settled into some stunning curves that made his mouth water. He shook his head, trying to shoo away the lascivious thoughts. Amy was young – too young.

  “How old are you?” he demanded.

  Her frown deepened. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m twenty. As for my parents, you clearly weren’t around much during our epic summer fail of 2017, or you would’ve noticed they aren’t around anymore.”

  Her words were spoken with sarcasm, but Jared took them to heart, attempting to remember what happened in the summer two years ago. He and Vince had their hands full maintaining a legitimate construction business, setting up a decent side hustle in local organized crime circles, and systematically taking out the biker gang that’d double-crossed them.

  When he didn’t speak, she continued, “My dad killed my mom, then Dad went to prison.”

  “What the fuck?” Jared really had been busy to not notice any of that. “What…” he trailed off. It probably wasn’t nice to ask her what’d happened.

  She volunteered the information, no inflection to her voice as she spoke. “Dad thought mom cheated on him with a guy she worked with. Dad “found out” and drowned her in the tub.”

  “Were you home when it happened?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. I called the police when it sounded like the fight was getting physical. They didn’t get here in time.”

  “I’m sorry.” Jared didn’t know what else to say.

  She scuffed her shoe on the driveway. “Yeah, me too.”

  Jared couldn’t imagine living through the experience she described. It was the sort of thing a person would see on the news, but then move on, never giving a second thought to the people involved.

  “Don’t you have siblings?” He vaguely remembered children running around in the neighbor’s back yard on the rare occasions Jared decided to relax and have a beer on his patio.

  “Yeah, three.”

  “Where are they?” Jared asked, thinking they probably went to a relative or into foster care.

  She gave him a tight smile. “At school.” She glanced down at her phone. “They should be home any minute.”

  “They live with you?” Jared asked incredulously.

  She lifted her chin defiantly. “I was eighteen when everything went down, perfectly capable of taking care of my siblings.”

  Jared doubted that. A woman her age couldn’t possibly take care of the hooligans he saw tumbling around next door all by herself. She must be exhausted. Or negligent. Fuck, he was starting to realize that there was a damsel in distress with three distressed children living next to him. A situation he absolutely shouldn’t get involved in.

  “Never mind,” she said and turned to walk away, showing him exactly how inappropriately short her shorts were from the back.

  “Huh?” Never mind what?

  “I’ll get sugar from the other neighbor,” she said breezily, waving at him as she walked away.

  Jared leapt after her, wrapping his hand around her arm and stopping her. Her skin felt like warm silk and he had to stop himself from rubbing his thumb over her. She tipped her head up to look at him with mild curiosity. His heart pounded in his chest as the delicate scent of strawberry shampoo wrapped him in a lust-filled haze.

  “I’ll get the sugar.” His voice came out harsher than he’d intended, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  He was forced to drop his hand so he could stride into the house and grab some sugar for her. He frowned at the inside of his cupboard as his entire focus was still on the woman standing in his driveway. She was like a punch to the gut. Unexpected, off-putting and painful in a way he couldn’t put his finger on.

  He grabbed the plastic container where he kept his sugar, peeled the lid off and sniffed. It smelled like plastic. Did sugar go bad? He wasn’t sure how long it’d been in his cupboard. Jared baked exactly never and had bought the package in case he ever had a guest that wanted sugar in their coffee. Since he never had guests, the sugar thing hadn’t come up.

  “Here,” Jared said, walking rapidly toward Amy and thrusting the sugar container at her.

  She looked startled at first, then amused. “Thanks, I’ll bring back the container when I’m finished.”

  When he didn’t say anything, she gave him a small wave and turned to leave, showing him the perfectly rounded globes of the bottom half of her plump rear end. She was nearly at her own front door when he finally managed to find his tongue.

  He called out, “Don’t worry about the sugar, just bring me a slice of pie and we’ll call it even.”

  Amy looked at him over her shoulder, her beautiful hazel eyes sparkling and a semi-smile curving her lips. She winked at him and disappeared through the door.

  Two

  Try as he might, Jared could no longer concentrate on his bike. He cleaned his tools and put them away, then moved his bike back to its spot inside the garage.

  He strode back into the house, grabbed a beer and his laptop and sat in his favourite reclining chair. He crossed his ankle over his knee and opened the laptop, entering his password.

  He opened a search engine and typed in the words "Funk family." He wasn't sure exactly what to search. Funk drowning? Funk dad goes to prison? Hell, he couldn't even remember the dad's name. He didn't remember anyone's names except for Amy. Which was weird to contemplate now. Why had he bothered to memorize the name of a teenage girl who’d barely made an impression on him?

  He didn't need to worry though, just the words “Funk family” brought up a plethora of links. He spent the next few hours poring through news articles, blogs, and Facebook posts. The tragedy was even worse than Amy had hinted at. It seemed, according to the news outlets, that Amy's mother hadn’t cheated. Her husband had spent most of their relationship in a jealous rage. She’d tried to leave him several times and had gone back every time. Until, eventually, he killed her.

  Thankfully, there was nothing about the children having had to endure abuse at the hands of their father. That didn't mean it hadn't happened, just that it hadn't been public. Jared wanted to find out. He didn't know why he was suddenly so invested in the Funk family, but something was driving him to discover what he cou
ld about Amy and her siblings.

  Jared was a sucker for women and children. Especially the damsels-in-distress. He couldn't rest until he knew for sure that his curvy little neighbour was well taken care of. He didn't know what exactly he was going to do if he found her in trouble, but he’d think of something. Nobody should live through what the Funk children lived through and spend the rest of their lives struggling.

  Jared sent Amy a Facebook friend request. He wasn’t expecting much, especially since his profile only had a few pictures of cars and bikes. It was probably creepy as hell for a 34-year-old man to send a friend request over social media to a 20-year-old woman, but he felt compelled. He needed to make sure that she was okay.

  He grinned when she immediately accepted. He started digging through Amy's Facebook posts.

  He wasn’t sure what he was looking for until he realized it was what was missing that was interesting. Amy had little to no social media interaction, which was strange for a girl her age. Her Facebook account hadn’t been touched in years, so far as he could tell. Her last interaction had been on her 18th birthday, which was two weeks before the death of her mother.

  He clicked on a picture of Amy, her mom and her siblings. They looked happy. Like a typical family. Not that he knew what a typical family looked like, but he’d seen pictures and spent plenty of time with Jenna, Vince and their kids.

  Jared also discovered a lack of extended family in Amy’s posts and pictures. The grandparents on both sides of the family had been long dead before the tragedy. Amy's mom, Alicia, had one sister. According to her social media, the sister lived in New Jersey, the exact opposite side of the country. He supposed she’d chosen not to take them in, an idea that infuriated him.

  The more he read, the more determined he became to find out exactly what was going on in the house next door.

  He closed the lid to the laptop and set it on the coffee table then picked up his beer, his second for the evening, and took a long swig. It was warm now; he should probably dump it.

  He was about to stand and go to his kitchen for food, a frozen lasagna TV dinner, when a quick knock on his front door drew his attention. Jared was a pretty jumpy guy. He and his boss skated the edge of the law. Sometimes working on legit projects, like their construction sites, and other times working in organized crime on other kinds of deals. Having been part of a motorcycle club, Jared and Vince had developed a code between them. A code that dictated their lives. They worked hard, they made money, and they watched each other's backs.

  Occasionally, they made enemies. Jared reached under the table by his front entrance, pulled his gun from the holster screwed into the wood and checked that it was ready to go. He held it slightly behind his back and glanced through the peephole. He didn't see anything. This was no comfort, though. Someone could’ve dropped a bomb off on his doorstep. He'd seen enough shady shit in his life to believe it possible.

  He jerked the door open quickly and glanced down for a package, intending to slam the door shut again if he saw anything suspicious. What he saw was a pair of brightly painted red toenails and cheap flip-flops. His gaze travelled up a pair of curvy, tanned legs to shorts that were still way too short and landed on the tiny Tweety Bird tattoo still visible between the edge of her shorts and her shirt.

  Amy thrust a package toward him, a tinfoil covered pie plate with his sugar container on top. "I brought your sugar back, and there's pie in the tin."

  At first, Jared stood frozen, unsure what to do. Gradually, her expression melted from confident to uncertainty. He realized it must've taken courage to come over to her big scary biker neighbour’s house to drop off food. And here he was, being silent and taciturn.

  "Thank you, Amy."

  He shoved the gun into the back of his jeans and tugged his shirt over it so she wouldn’t see it. He reached out and took hold of her arms, pulling her slowly and gently into the house. The storm door slammed behind her. She jumped, startled, and looked over her shoulder at the door. She was definitely not as calm as she was trying to project. Somehow, this made him feel better. He shouldn't be so disconcerted by a woman barely out of her teens.

  "Come inside while I eat." He meant to ask it like a question, but it came across as a command.

  Her brow wrinkled and she took a step back. "I… I can't. I need to get back to my sisters.” She gave him a wry look. "If I'm gone too long, they're likely to burn the house down."

  It was an offhand comment, one that shouldn't have meant anything, but it annoyed him. Were her siblings trouble? Did they not listen to her? Then he realized he needed to find out more about her. What if one of her siblings had special needs? What if they had mental health problems, which wouldn’t be too surprising given their history. He didn't know why he was suddenly so invested in this family, but he was.

  "Right, of course." He let her go, retaining his grip on the containers. Before she could leave, he asked, "Your aunt Judy, the one that lives in New Jersey, why didn't she take you guys… after your parents were gone?"

  A shuttered expression fell over her face and she reached for the door, pushing it open and stepping outside. He thought she was going to leave without another word, without answering his question. And to be honest, he deserved it. They barely knew each other before her family tragedy, and he didn't know a damn thing about her now. Except that her body was so smoking hot that it was rocking his world and fucking with his head. It wasn't just her body though. It was her soft, pretty eyes, her sexy voice, her attitude and that stupid little tattoo.

  "You Googled me."

  Rather than accusing, her voice took on a resigned quality. Obviously, she'd been asked questions like this before. Probably by social services workers, maybe the media.

  "Sorry." He tried to sound sorry, though he wasn't. If he had to, he would do it again.

  She shrugged. "Don't be sorry. Everyone Googles me when they find out. Aunt Judith has her own life. She wasn't about to give it up and move here and we didn't want to move there."

  Jared desperately wanted to ask more, but she walked swiftly away, allowing the door to shut behind her. As soon as her flip-flops touched the edge of his lawn she took off running, racing home as though a demon was chasing her. He didn't want to be her demon though, he wanted to be her knight.

  He set the containers down on his kitchen counter and peeled the tinfoil off the pie. A delicious smell wafted up, making his mouth water and his hand automatically reach for the nearest fork. She’d sent over half a pie. A woman who was indifferent wouldn't send over this much pie to the neighbour who let her borrow sugar. At least, he hoped that was true.

  Three

  Amy slammed her front door shut and leaned against it. Her heart was hammering. Not from the exertion of running a dozen steps to her front door, but from spending time with Jared. Her super hot, kind of scary, next-door neighbour.

  She sighed and closed her eyes as she pictured him, the way he was standing looking down at her from his much greater height. His piercing dark eyes as they looked right through her. His overly long messy curly hair. His scruffy beard.

  She’d had a crush on him basically from the day he moved in next door nine years ago. She'd been a budding adolescent girl, crushing on her first older man. She'd fallen hard for the biker, but he never gave her a second glance. Over the years, her crush had fallen away, and she'd engaged in normal teenage activities. Dating guys her own age, hanging out with friends and raising her family.

  Okay, so that last one wasn't exactly normal, but it had become her version of normal.

  Amy wasn't sure what drove her next door for sugar. She legitimately did need sugar for her recipe but could have easily gone down to the convenience store or hit up her other neighbour, a kind older woman who would definitely have had sugar available.