The Mafia Devil in My Inbox Chapter 02
Standing in the break room, I watched my coworkers laughing and chatting near the vending machines and couldn’t help shivering.
They all looked perfectly normal.
But I knew their secrets.
Nick over there? A gambling addict buried in debt.
Ben, sipping instant coffee?
He’d recently pressured his girlfriend into getting an abortion and then refused to pay for it.
And Jack, the bespectacled nerd who looked harmless?
An underground fighter who’d abused his wife until she finally divorced him.
If Inferno turned out to be one of them, I might actually die on the spot.
Leaning against a locker, I scrolled through my chat history with Inferno, looking for clues.
And finally, I found one.
Last month, his lighter had broken, and he’d wanted a replacement.
Coincidentally, he’d been attending a business conference in Italy at the time. Near the conference venue was a famous luxury shopping center called One Meridian. He’d gone there shopping and asked me to help him pick out a new lighter.
He’d sent me several photos. I’d chosen a limited-edition gold lighter.
He’d bought it immediately.
Which meant all I had to do was figure out who around here was using it.
Simple.
Or so I’d thought.
I spent days wandering through the smoking area, the office, and even the alley behind the building.
Nothing. Not a single person was carrying that lighter.
Finally, I messaged Inferno: “Do you still use the lighter you bought?”
His reply came almost instantly, “Of course. Every day.”
That made no sense. Then why hadn’t I seen it?
I was still puzzling over it when Nikki walked past.
“Hannah, Mr. Riccardi wants to see you in his office.”
In public, everyone called him Don Riccardi or Mr. Riccardi. He was the rising Don of one of Boston’s five major mafia families.
Tall. Handsome. Super-hot. Dangerously low-profile.
To the outside world, he was simply the CEO of a multinational corporation.
I believed that too.
Until the day I walked into his office and found a bloodied man kneeling on the floor. That was when I learned exactly what kind of company I’d joined.
Don Riccardi had been wiping blood from his hands when he looked up at me and casually asked,
“Your father owes me a hundred thousand dollars, doesn’t he?”
From that moment on, I learned when to keep my mouth shut.
I pretended not to notice the endless parade of stunning models entering and leaving his office.
I kept quiet when I saw him place an engagement ring on the finger of a Russian Don’s daughter, only to let a stripper practically swallow him with her tongue later that same night.
Every time I looked at him, I thought of Chuck Bass from Gossip Girl.
When I entered his office, I was relieved not to find another corpse.
Don Riccardi was on the phone, “Babe, I miss you too.”
His voice was warm enough to give me whiplash.
“Come to my penthouse tomorrow. Oh, and Don DeLorenzo will be there too. You can hitch a ride with him.”
A pause.
“No, sweetheart, I’m just worried about you driving alone.”
Another pause.
“Okay, okay, whatever you want. Just drive carefully. I’ve got work to do now.”
Another pause.
“No, you hang up first.”
I nearly cringed myself inside out.
Hearing a man who ordered executions without blinking speak like a lovestruck teenager was deeply unsettling.
I turned my head and pretended I couldn’t hear a thing.
A moment later, Orlando ended the call and cleared his throat.
“Hannah,” he smiled, “In a few days, Don DeLorenzo will be visiting our company. You’re handling that international project, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You know who he is, right?”
I nodded.
Dante DeLorenzo. The new Don of one of Italy’s oldest mafia families.
The legendary Mafia King.
Every family in the underworld wanted a piece of him.
I had once seen him from a distance. He didn’t look like a Don at all. More like a prince surrounded by a crowd of admirers. And I was just a Cinderella no one noticed.
“Good. Don’t make any mistakes. Bring me the proposal today so I can review it.”
“Sure.”
I was about to leave when something on his desk caught my eye.
A lighter.
Sitting beside his crystal whiskey glass. A limited-edition gold lighter.
The exact same model I’d picked out for Inferno.
My breath caught.
The room seemed to freeze.
I stared at it as if lightning had just struck me.
“What?” Orlando’s voice snapped me back to reality, “Hannah? Did you need something else?”
I forced myself to breathe. Trying to sound casual, I pointed toward the lighter.
“Don Riccardi, that’s a nice lighter. Where did you buy it?”
Orlando glanced at it. Then slowly answered, “One Meridian.”
I nearly inhaled my own soul.
A faint smile tugged at his lips, “What? Do you like it?”
I quickly smoothed the panic from my face and waved a hand.
“Oh, no. I was just curious.”
Then I practically fled the office.
A completely insane thought exploded in my head.
Don Riccardi was Inferno. My online boyfriend was my mafia boss.
Good news: My online boyfriend wasn’t an eighty-year-old man.
Bad news: He was a mafia Don. My boss.
Wait.
If I was his online girlfriend…then who had he just called “babe”?
Did Orlando cheat on me?
Holy shit.
