She's a Spitfire (Tough Love Book 2) Read online

  She’s a Spitfire

  Chloe Liese

  Cover Art by

  Jennie Rose Denton of Lamplight Creative

  She’s a Spitfire

  Chloe Liese

  The Tough Love Series – Book Two

  Copyright © 2019 Chloe Liese

  Published by Chloe Liese

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance or similarity to characters in this story is pure coincidence.

  Contents

  1. Zed

  2. Nairne

  3. Zed

  4. Nairne

  5. Zed

  6. Nairne

  7. Zed

  8. Zed

  9. Nairne

  10. Zed

  11. Zed

  12. Nairne

  13. Zed

  14. Nairne

  15. Nairne

  16. Nairne

  17. Zed

  18. Zed

  19. Nairne

  20. Nairne

  21. Zed

  22. Nairne

  23. Zed

  24. Zed

  25. Nairne

  26. Nairne

  27. Nairne

  28. Nairne

  29. Nairne

  30. Zed

  31. Zed

  32. Nairne

  33. Zed

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Chloe Liese

  “Pain. I seem to have an affection, a kind of sweet tooth for it. Bolts of lightning, little rivulets of thunder. And I the eye of the storm.”

  Toni Morrison

  One

  Zed

  Boston Massachusetts, 2005

  I was ten when I realized I could paint. Another genetic inheritance from my dad, who painted to decompress after a stressful day of surgeries. He’d come home after being hands-deep in someone’s spinal column or corpus callosum, kiss each one of us—Mom hard on the lips, and me and Teo on the heads—then beeline it to their bedroom.

  I’d sit at the foot of his bed, legs swinging, while the steam from his shower thickened the air. Water vapor infused with the aroma of the spicy soap he used. He still used that soap, and sometimes when I gave him the rare hug now as a grown man, I caught the scent and remembered what it felt like to be an innocent boy whose whole world was soccer and playing with Teo, and Mom reading to me while we waited for Dad to get home.

  I’d wait patiently until he came out, towel on his hips, and shook his head to the side to knock water out of his ear—always the right one. He’d traipse around the room, banging drawers, whipping open the closet, and I’d watch the muscles in his back and shoulders flex as he did. I’d smile and wonder if I could talk him into lifting Teo and me by our ankles again and doing bicep curls.

  Dad was jacked. Had to be. And he raised his sons to be just as strong. Having a weak arm when your life was in the epicenter of mafia activity was asking for it. So, we were decent shots and scrappy fighters before we got to middle school.

  One time, after he’d changed clothes and rumpled my hair, he had yanked me to him and hugged me extra hard. Then I followed him to his tiny studio like always, but instead of letting me sit on the stool next to him, he’d pulled me onto his lap. His lips had met the back of my hair and he’d breathed in deeply as he kissed my waves.

  “Paint whatever you want, mimmo. I’m too tired today, but I need to see something beautiful.”

  He had a few tubes of oils sitting out. I’d learned enough about color theory from watching him and thumbing through his books. I kept my palette minimal, a tight family of earth tones. When I was done, I realized he’d fallen asleep, head against the wall as I sat in his lap.

  “Papa.”

  I called him that before I got too old and cool and started naming him Dad. His eyes had blinked open, then widened.

  “Madonna,” he’d muttered while his big hands squeezed my shoulders. I’d painted the view out of the studio, the bank along the river and the cool shades of last light on its surface. He hadn’t said anything else, just kissed my hair again. But when I woke up the next morning, and he was gone for another day at the hospital, I found my own set of brushes sitting on my dresser.

  As a man now, when shit got bad, when our boss, Antonio wanted something particularly south of my moral compass meted out, I’d deal with it as least horribly as possible, run until I was dead, and paint until I all but passed out into my canvas. Painting exorcised the toxic contradictions that consumed more of my life each year.

  But I realized I hadn’t painted in months. That’s what I needed to do, paint and check out of this shit-show that was my existence. Problem was, that would require leaving Nairne, who was reclined on my couch, propped on an elbow and studying some biochemical gibberish.

  My artist’s eye caught the shadow where her wrap dress revealed her cleavage, and I remembered what she tasted like along that warm swell of her breasts. If my paints were down here and oils didn’t stink to high heaven, I’d be all over it, capturing that faint shadow on her skin, the contrast of her ochre dress against my viridian couch, streaks of burnt sienna in her hair.

  I glanced down to her long legs stretched out over my lap that I couldn’t stop touching, committing to memory. Ivory. Marble. Cool and smooth and heavy, even in their lithe form. They made me wish I knew how to sculpt, like a Bernini. A colossal, dramatic ode to her powerful beauty. Then I’d have her with me forever, frozen in time, the most I could have with her, a memory carved in marble.

  Jesus, I sounded pathetic.

  Nairne and I had begun as a straightforward, finite agreement, and I’d had plenty of those in the past. Stupidly, I’d assumed I could contain my enjoyment of Nairne with self-control and practicality, as I had in previous “relationships.” What I’d overlooked was just how corrosive a chemistry that, admittedly, I’d never come close to feeling with another woman, would be to my willpower. We’d sparked and grated, met and shocked, and formed a dynamic I now couldn’t imagine losing.

  But at the end of the semester, she’d graduate and move back to the UK, and I’d still be a two-timing consigliere, steering our syndicate so subtly toward shipwreck that by the time we capsized, no one would know what had been coming. Except for me.

  And that was going to take time. Ideally not too much longer, since it had already taken time. Close to a decade, to be precise. Slowly weakening networks, ending deals, narrowing traffic to fewer albeit still profitable veins. Disclosing names, dates, and meetings. If I planned to follow Nairne when she left, let her know just serious I was about us, I needed to be ready to get out by June.

  It seemed laughable. If it worked out, it would be a miracle.

  I knew I could lose her to shitty timing and the inability to effectively extricate myself from this bullshit. That possibility had anger and sadness pulsing through my body.

  “You’re staring at me.” Nairne didn’t glance up as she flipped the page of her textbook, but she did smile.

  My hand slid up the back of her thigh and cupped her ass. “Not all of us have molecular design and the bioprocess of immunotherapies to distract us.”

  She smiled again and jotted something in her notebook. “Fair.”

  I slipped two fingers inside her panties and stroked softly.

  Her eyes fluttered closed beneath those sexy black-framed nerd glasses, then blinked open and directed themselves at me. “I have to study. Not all of us have millions in the bank and a pretty face to secure our livelihood.”

  I frowned. “My face is not pretty.”

  She snorted as she wrote something else. “My apologies. Handsome. Striking. Paul Newman’s Italian counterpart.”
>
  I grinned at that. “Hey, that dude’s a hunk.”

  “Indeed he is.” Nairne sighed as I swirled my fingers around her clit. “Now, get your hands out of my knickers and find something to do, Paul Newman.”

  I tried one more stroke along her silky skin and earned a glare.

  “I’m done,” I said. I lifted my hands in surrender and stood up. I’d settle for drawing. That would scratch the itch of my anxious unease. For now.

  I watched her profile, and noted her resemblance to her father. The length of her nose was similar to his, and their brow lines were identical. It was beyond bizarre that my surrogate uncle—my godfather I’d known all of my life—was recently discovered to be Nairne’s dad. And that wasn’t circumspection. A paternity test had confirmed it—99.99 percent. As positive as it got.

  When he’d left late Christmas Day, Zio Gianno had been beaming, until he turned and glared at me like he knew exactly how much I’d been defiling his daughter. I’d wanted to punch him in the face for the look of possession he wore, which was much too close to mine.

  “Bunch of tree-pissing dogs, you men are,” Nairne had said. She wasn’t wrong. She was mine. For the time being. For longer, if I could swing it.

  “How are things with Gianno?” I asked.

  She sighed and shut her book. “It’s difficult, and slow-going, but I like him. He’s kind, engaging. Intelligent. He showed me the renovation work they’re doing on his villa when we video chatted. The view, too, from the property. Genoa’s lovely.”

  I rummaged in my sideboard for a spare sketchpad and my charcoals. “Yeah, it’s pretty. Being on top of the Ligurian Sea doesn’t hurt.” I shut the drawer with my hip and dropped back on the sofa. Set my tin on the coffee table, and laid out my pencils and sticks, blending stump, and kneaded eraser.

  Her eyes were on me. I always knew when they were, felt them like a crisp breeze off the river that slid over my skin. Nairne shifted on the sofa, and used the limited coordination she had with her leg to nudge me.

  “Draw me like one of your French girls, Jack.”

  A laugh left me that only came out around her. I set my sketchpad over my lap. “Jack Dawson’s got nothing on me, fragolina.”

  My laugh died off when I glanced up to see she’d loosened her wrap dress. She pulled it away and her nipples puckered in the cold. Those tits. They were unparalleled.

  “I dunno, Zed. That steamy car scene is pretty unbeatable.”

  I tossed my shit on the coffee table and crawled over her. “Child’s play.”

  She smiled as I leaned down and kissed her. When I cupped her breast, she sighed against my lips. “Maybe you should remind me of your prowess,” she whispered.

  I was about to when my phone went off, and the ringtone was one I always dreaded hearing. Antonio.

  “Shit, Nairne. I have to take this.” I sprang up, grabbed the phone, and strode into the kitchen.

  “Antonio,” I answered. I never called him boss. Veiling my contempt for him was second nature by now, yet I still couldn’t manage that final gesture of deference.

  “Ciao, consigliere.” He cleared his throat and continued in Italian. “Your other family is making my life difficult.”

  My mother’s family. The Irish mob side. I answered in Italian so Nairne wouldn’t know what I was talking about. “What’d they do now?”

  “They’re in my fucking territory again, bringing in shit that we don’t deal with. Filthy business.”

  Drugs. My mom’s side of the family had much fewer scruples about both drug-trafficking and using my Italian family’s stretch of the waterfront for their transactions.

  “I’ll talk with Bill. Tell him he’s—”

  “No, consigliere. No more words. It’s time for action.”

  Action was code for violence. Violence meant killing. He was pushing me, but he knew I’d push him back, and we’d settle somewhere in the middle that didn’t end in the disposing of bodies. That’s what consigliere meant—advisor, counselor. In an “ideal” mafia world, the boss and his consigliere were tight. Antonio and I never had been and never would be. We were a truce, a consolation package that satisfied enough of each side of our faction years ago, but we were never going to be a team. The consigliere was one of the few who could argue with the boss without worrying about having his brains blown out. And on that front, I’d always delivered. Generously.

  “This is exactly the kind of attention we don’t need to draw,” I snapped. “Let me talk to them before you do something incendiary. They’re my family. They listen to me. I’ll throw down a threat, then send a lead to the cops if they don’t clean it up and get out.”

  Antonio sighed. “What’s done is done. You’ll warn them that these are the consequences. Make sure you deliver this when you do.”

  I caught a shadow outside the window. My eyes flicked to the door. “What?”

  Antonio hung up and the doorbell rang. I knew rationally Nairne wasn’t going to spring up off the couch and answer it. But the possibility that she could share the same air as our soldatos had me at the door before she could turn her head. The closest she’d ever come to contact with my world was Bruno watching her from afar to make sure she was safe, that she made it from one place to another okay when I couldn’t be there. That was it. Never direct contact.

  I peered into the peephole, then leaned left and threw open the coat closet. Groped around for my gun and shoved it in the back of my jeans.

  “Zed,” Nairne hissed. Her eyes were wide, and she was staring at the black metal that sat cool against my back.

  I pointed a stern finger at her. “Now listen. You’re an independent woman. Outside of the bedroom I know I don’t tell you shit, but right now I am telling you shit, and you will listen. Stay. Here. Come anywhere near that door or the windows and I will redden your ass so far past the point of pleasure, you’ll want to kill me. You understand?”

  She swallowed and paled. “All right.”

  “Thank you.”

  I whipped open the door. Francesco. One of Antonio’s few trusted men. He nodded at me as he handed me a manila envelope. “Consigliere. For you.”

  “Frankie.” I ripped it out of his grasp, glanced around the street. Nobody else. No backup or prying eyes. I peered down at the envelope and drew out its contents halfway. A photo.

  “Jesus.” I shoved it back in there and glared at Frankie.

  Frankie raked a hand through his black hair. His fidelity was to Antonio, but he liked and respected me. And he knew I didn’t approve, at all. “Boss said you tell them this is what happens. Don’t try it again.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Eloquent. That’s always how I lead. Drop photographic evidence of murder and further threats on their doorstep.”

  Frankie’s mouth twitched. “Well, something like that.” He nodded once more and strolled back to his car.

  I glanced down again at the manila envelope that held the grotesque picture. My distant cousin, Billy, with a bullet in his head. He was an absolute creep, and there was no love lost between us. The world was probably a safer, less corrupt place without him. But the point was this hit was unprecedented, and it meant something was up.

  Antonio was soulless. I knew this. But in the past, I’d been able to talk him down from most abject violence. For the first time since we’d been begrudgingly paired, he’d taken radical action without my input, and I had no idea why or what to do about it. If I went before the capos and called him out, there was a chance they’d want to stage a coup and unseat him. Which would leave me exposed for the promotion I never wanted.

  I could pay Nella a visit and try to figure out whether or not she’d known and supported a hit on one of the Irish mob’s top guys. That seemed unlikely. I had things set up nicely for her, and there was nothing in it for Nella to upset the system—I’d seen to it. I stayed second to Antonio, slowly tipping the plane of our syndicate into a nose dive. Antonio got his delusions of grandeur, and Nella got enough money and influence to
satisfy her.

  The takeaway was, I had to discreetly chat up some capos and soldatos, figure out why exactly Antonio had decided to take such drastic unilateral action. The kind of violence that was sure to stir up trouble, and was dumb, frankly. What had compelled Antonio to do something that could disrupt our delicate criminal ecosystem, and put him in the direct line of culpability? This kind of recklessness didn’t make sense. It wasn’t like him. So who was it like?

  I shoved the envelope under my shirt and shouldered the front door open. When I stepped in, Nairne was sitting there, face ashen, white-knuckling her textbook. This was what I couldn’t stomach. Endangering her. Exposing her to this shit that I was mired in.

  She sat taller and cleared her throat nervously. “Everything all right?”

  I shoved the door closed, bolted it, and pulled out both my gun and the envelope. I could lie to her, spare her worry. But for once, the honest answer came out before I could stop it. “No.”

  Two

  Nairne

  If you’d told me that at the age of twenty-one I’d have fallen for a brute of a foul-mouthed, footie-playing, reluctant mafioso, I’d have laughed in your face. Throw in contemplating fraternizing with criminals in order to extricate said mafioso, and I would have told you that you were off your bloody trolley.

  But you would have been right, on all counts. Because there I sat, watching Zed suit himself up for his other job, determination brimming inside me to see him spared at any cost. Plenty of women might find a man with the body of Adonis and a polished handgun in his grasp sexy, desirable even. I only felt dread as I lay on his bed and observed him tightening his tie while he exhaled wearily.