Savage Beast: A Dark Mafia Enemies to Lovers Romance (Sinfully Savage) Read online

  Savage Beast

  Sinfully Savage: Book Three

  Kristen Luciani

  Contents

  Prologue

  1. Roman

  2. Marchella

  3. Roman

  4. Marchella

  5. Roman

  6. Marchella

  7. Roman

  8. Marchella

  9. Roman

  10. Marchella

  11. Roman

  12. Marchella

  13. Roman

  14. Marchella

  15. Roman

  16. Marchella

  17. Roman

  18. Marchella

  19. Roman

  20. Marchella

  Epilogue

  Sneak Peek of Savage Sinner

  Thanks For Reading!

  Meet Kristen

  Savage Beast © 2021 by Kristen Luciani

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Except for the original material written by the author, all songs, song titles, and lyrics mentioned in this novel are the property of the respective songwriters and copyright holders.

  All rights reserved. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced, scanned, distributed, or used in any manner whatsoever, via the Internet, electronic, or print, without the express written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For more information, or information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact Kristen Luciani at [email protected].

  Cover Design: Book Cover Kingdom

  Editing: Allusion Graphics

  Photo Credit: Rafa Catala

  Created with Vellum

  Prologue

  Marchella: Ten Years Earlier

  I peer at my reflection in the full-length mirror, doing a half-twirl in my new dress. I swipe the pink lip gloss wand across my lips and pucker them, puffing out my chest. Then I flip my long, dark curls so that they snake down one of my bare shoulders.

  The corners of my lips lift.

  Perfect.

  Tonight is the night that Roman Villani will see me as a woman, not as Frankie Amante’s little sister.

  I’ve caught him staring on more than one occasion. I know it. But he’s never made a move.

  And I’m about to give him a reason.

  My heart thumps in my chest as I pull open the door to the ladies’ lounge and walk back into the wedding reception. The music pulsates and the lights flash in the darkened space. Dinner has been served, and now all of the guests have migrated onto the dance floor to work off the scrumptious meal.

  I smile and nod at whomever I pass, not really paying much attention to anyone except my target.

  When I spot him standing casually against a wall a few feet away from the deejay, my breath hitches.

  Good Lord, he is a delicious specimen of a man. Short, dark hair, olive skin, piercing blue eyes. Just staring at him from across the room has my panties smoking under my dress.

  But I’m tired of staring and wondering and hoping.

  I want action.

  And since he’s not going to make a move, I’m prepared to do it myself.

  I don’t care that our fathers are business partners.

  I don’t care that he’s my brother’s best friend.

  And I definitely don’t care that he’s way too old for me.

  For once, I just want to see him look at me the way I always dreamed he would.

  I take a deep breath and smooth down the front of my dress, and just as I take a step toward him, he turns in my direction. His bitable lips lift into a knowing smile as his gaze sears my skin, making it tingle from the tips of my toes to the ends of my hair.

  Chills dance across my skin and I smile back, slowly walking toward him.

  My pulse throbs against my neck, my hands cold and clammy against my sides.

  What am I even going to say?

  We’ve barely exchanged ten words since he and Frankie have been friends.

  I’ve spent most of that time admiring and lusting from afar.

  But the way he’s staring at me now tells me I haven’t imagined anything.

  He wants something.

  And my God, I hope it’s me.

  I swallow hard as I cross the dance floor, perspiration pebbling on the back of my neck when a tall figure in a black tux steps in front of me, blocking my path. I look up with a scowl.

  “Frankie, what do you want?”

  His eyes narrow, his jaw twitching as he grabs my arm. “Something’s happened with Papa and the Villanis. It’s bad, Chella. The kind of bad where someone ends up dead.” He tosses a look over his shoulder in Roman’s direction. “And right now, I don’t know who it’s gonna be.”

  Chapter One

  Roman

  Present Day

  “I swear I didn’t touch her!”

  My fist tightens around the collar of the guy whose head I currently have held over an open flame. His name is Salvatore Giaconne, a guy my brother Matteo fired right before he took off for Vegas with his wife, Heaven, a few months ago. I don’t know how the hell Salvatore even got into our nightclub, Risk, tonight, but it looks like I need to have a chat with the door guys after I dispose of this piece of garbage.

  Without warning, I shove his face closer to the burning wick as he yelps like a little bitch. I grit my teeth and pull him away from the lit candle, throwing him against the wall. It shakes from the impact, the framed photos hanging next to him fall to the floor, glass shattering around his feet.

  “Don’t lie to me,” I creep toward him, my shoulders squared and my lips twisted into a sneer. “Do you understand the rules, fucko? Or do I need to translate them into another language for you?”

  The guy shudders against the wall, all six feet and two-hundred-and-fifty pounds of him.

  He could crush me with that mass.

  But he doesn’t, because he knows I don’t need mass in order to do the same…or worse…to him.

  “N-no,” he whimpers. “Please, Mr. Villani. I didn’t mean to—"

  I roll my eyes. Fucking pussy. He got caught with his hands in the cookie jar and now he thinks he can cry and beg and walk out of here with his cock still intact?

  With a quirk of my brow, I fold my arms over my chest. “So now you’re admitting that you did something.”

  The whimpering stops. Idiot. If you’re gonna be a pussy, at least own it. Don’t play a game that you know is gonna get you maimed. That’s just fucking stupidity right there.

  Salvatore blinks fast, obviously realizing a little too late that he is a complete moron for contradicting himself like that. “It was an accident,” he says gruffly.

  “Oh, so you didn’t mean to tear off Zoe’s G-string with your teeth while you held her down with your knee? It just got caught in your mouth, and when you pulled away, you took it with you?”

  And that’s when I see it.

  The flicker of annoyance in his deep-set eyes. He grimaces, reverting to his tough-guy routine. “She had it coming,” he hisses.

  I narrow my eyes. “Oh yeah? And what exactly did she do to deserve your face between her thighs?”

  “I don’t answer to you anymore,” he says coldly.

  “When you’re in my club and you’ve just been caught harassing my employee, then yeah. You fuckin
g answer to me!”

  Adrenaline floods my veins as I launch myself at him, grabbing the sides of his jacket and slamming him against the wall as hard as I can. Christ, it’s so forceful, I think I scrambled my own brain for a second.

  He makes a loud woof! sound when his body collides with the sheetrock, and a loud crash next to us makes my back stiffen. The glass jar candle I’d almost plunged Salvatore’s face into tumbles onto the floor and cracks against the marble floor tiles. The flame shoots out, dangerously close to igniting the woven area rug in the center of the room. I stomp it out just as it catches the edge of the carpet, gritting my teeth at the damage I’ve almost certainly done to the soles of my Ferragamo loafers.

  Salvatore lets out a loud grunt as he lunges for me. I sidestep the still-lit candle as he charges, swinging one of his fists at my temple. I’m just about his height, but since I don’t weigh the same as a baby elephant, I dance around him, narrowly avoiding his next punch.

  A loud pounding at the door reminds me that one of my security guys, Ray, is waiting outside, ready to jump in if I need him.

  But that’s not how I operate. I put up with security, a necessary evil, but I prefer to handle things on my own.

  My way.

  That’s what happens when you’re the youngest in a family of gangsters driven by bloodlust. Everyone already has their own calling card, and they’ve established their own reputations. Nobody has anything left to prove to the rest of the underworld.

  Except me.

  Matteo left me in charge here in Manhattan to run shit while he’s in Vegas. He gave me his trusted security team as backup, but I can’t delegate this kind of thing to just anyone.

  Security, my ass.

  If I can’t handle scumbags like Salvatore on my own, nobody will take me seriously, including my own brothers. They won’t see me as a leader. And they sure as hell won’t give me my own territory when the time comes.

  People who delegate the hard shit don’t command respect. And if you’re trying to claw your way to the top of the food chain, delegating equates to weakness.

  Weakness will get you eaten alive.

  So I ignore Ray’s furious knocking and duck down and around Salvatore’s next punch. His fist pummels the sheetrock wall instead, leaving my nose and jaw still intact. He lets out a sharp groan, clutching his bloody fist. Spittle flies out of the corners of his mouth, his breaths morphing into angry pants.

  I could kill him.

  But I don’t.

  I know there’s only one reason why he’s here tonight.

  Revenge.

  He figured I’d be an easy target since Matteo is away.

  That I wouldn’t have enough backup to take him and his thug crew on.

  He didn’t count on the fact that I am my own muscle and that my sole priority right now is making sure the kingdom we’ve built is strong enough to withstand assholes like Sallyboy and his gang of fucknuts.

  I thought about putting a bullet between his eyes, but then I’d never find out why he’s really here.

  It’s not because of Zoe’s pussy, that’s for damn sure.

  Matteo has his fair share of enemies, and they’re always lurking, angling to find a crack in the foundation of our empire.

  They will search tirelessly, but they’ll never find one.

  And just to make sure Salvatore’s guys get the message, too, I think I need to show them that their searches will come up empty. That while this empire is in my hands, it won’t ever fucking crumble.

  Salvatore fists his hand, wincing as he clenches his scratched knuckles.

  “Looks like it hurts,” I say in a mocking voice. “Maybe you shoulda sent someone else in here, someone who can actually make contact with something other than the wall.”

  That pisses him off and he launches a fist out at me again.

  But when that big body of his loses balance, I yank the back of his collar, pulling him back toward me. I want to make sure he hears this next part before his ears go up in flames.

  Literally.

  I grab the jagged piece of the candle holder and fist his hair, singeing the bottom of his ear with the flickering wick. “You cross me again and I’ll make sure you’re incinerated, not just a little seared, do you understand me?”

  He roars as he leaps toward me, shoving me into an end table. It tips over with me on top of it, hitting the nearby wall. A lamp crashes against the floor along with a tube of lube, a pair of handcuffs, and a flogger.

  “Looks like you thought you were gonna have some fucking night before I showed up and blew up your plans, huh?” I smirk as I regain my footing, jumping off the table and inching toward him. I drop the candle, stepping on the wick with the heel of my shoe. “Haven’t had enough yet, have ya? You still want more, Sallyboy? Come and fucking get it!”

  Another guttural yell pierces the air, and this time when he swings his fist out, I grab it, twisting it backward. Now he’s really crying like the bitch I always knew he was. “You feel that?” I hiss at him. “That’s how your wrist feels when it’s about to break.” I twist harder, my grip tight on his hand. “So unless you want me to take the next step and snap the goddamn thing off, why don’t you tell me why you’re here and who you’re working with?”

  “Fuck you!” he yells.

  “Oh, yeah?” I scream back.

  Good God, I want to crack it so badly. I want to prove to him that he can’t screw me over, that I’m just as strong, if not stronger, as the rest of my family, and if he doesn’t give me what I want, that I’ll cut out his tongue, too.

  “You owe me!” he screams. “And you’re gonna pay!”

  “You didn’t deliver,” I seethe against his ear. “So, no, I’m not paying you a fucking cent!” I press his wrist farther back against his forearm so that the top of his fingers are practically kissing it.

  “Then Zoe ain’t the only one who’s gonna be violated tonight,” he growls.

  My eyes widen, my teeth clenched tight as I snap his wrist, shoving him face-first into the cold floor tiles before I open the door to the room.

  The screaming isn’t a big deal.

  There are plenty of other, way more disturbing sounds floating into the hallway from other closed doors in the vicinity. I’m sure nobody gave Salvatore’s screeches a second thought. Risk is an exclusive sex den, so nothing really raises eyebrows, especially sounds of pain.

  Ray comes into the room and glares at Salvatore writhing on the floor. He then looks up at me, his forehead pinched. He lets out a deep breath, shaking his head. “You should have let me in sooner.”

  “I had to handle things with Salvatore,” I say, sweeping a hand through my hair.

  “That’s the thing. Salvatore isn’t the problem. He’s the distraction.”

  “What the hell are you talking about, Ray?”

  “You know the shipment of blow that was delivered this afternoon and locked up in the storage room below the club?” Ray’s lips press together into a tight line. “I just got confirmation from Johnny. The lock was sliced off. The blow is gone.” His eyes narrow as they fall upon Salvatore. “And so is Zoe.”

  Chapter Two

  Marchella

  “Why are you so fidgety?” I ask my older brother Frankie as I smooth my hair back into a ponytail. “You’re going to wear out the rug from all of your pacing. And since I just vacuumed, it would have been nice for you to take off your damn shoes first!”

  “Sorry,” he grumbles, raking a hand through his wavy, dark hair. With a nod toward the rug, he shrugs his shoulders. “Not like the vacuuming helps anyway.”

  I purse my lips. “That’s hardly my fault. And just so we’re clear, I’m working endless hours at the restaurant to make sure there’s still carpet under our feet.” With a raised eyebrow, I glower at Frankie. “What about you, hmm? Did you collect any money this week?”

  Frankie’s nostrils flare. “You know, Chella, I’m doing the best I can!”

  “Really?” I fold my arms ove
r my chest. “Because I haven’t seen a freaking penny from you in the past two weeks! You do know that rent is due at the end of the month, right? Or are you just counting on me to save us? Again!” Anger bubbles deep in my chest, threatening to boil over for about the tenth time today.

  “Stop being such a fucking nag!” he thunders. “Do you realize how much stress I’m under right now? No! You don’t! And you want to know why? Because you’re too busy being a goddamn martyr!”

  I gasp, my eyes widening. “Did you seriously just…call me…holy shit, Frankie,” I mutter, shaking my head. “Do you realize if it wasn’t for me that we’d be on the street? Hungry? Homeless? Possibly dead?” I clench my fists, my voice rising. “I had plans, too! Did you know that? Did you even care? Do you think I wanted to give up my dreams to move into this shit-ass apartment in one of the worst areas in the city? Do you think I have any desire to live in this fucking hell?” I stomp toward him, stopping directly in front of him. “No!” I scream at the top of my lungs. “I didn’t! But here I am!”

  He flashes me a sheepish look, then averts his gaze. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry for what, exactly?”

  “Being an insensitive ass.”

  “And?” I say in a sharp voice.

  “And for taking advantage of your good nature,” he mumbles, sneaking a look at me. His lips curl into a grin.

  “And?”

  “And for wearing my shoes on the shitty rug.”

  I flop onto the worn sofa that we were lucky enough to score from a nearby Salvation Army store. Although, it’s more apropos to say we were probably luckier that it wasn’t infested with anything that could eat us alive or spread a communicable disease. “What the hell are we going to do?” I murmur, dropping my head into my hands.