A Bad Man: Joey by Jenika Snow Read Free Book Online

out. Joey shouldn’t find anything funny right now, but there was something about Marra that made him feel a little lighter.
    “Another.” She handed him the glass. “Please.”
    He lifted an eyebrow and smirked, but grabbed the bottle and topped off her glass. She threw that one back with the same disgusted finesse, and then shook her head.
    “I think that’s my limit, especially since I’ve already been drinking tonight.”
    “Are you hungry?”
    She clutched her stomach and shook her head.
    He stared at her until she finally looked up at him. “I have you here because I want you here.” He waited for her to respond, but when she didn’t he moved over to the fire he had started, and leaned against the mantle. She didn’t follow him, but it didn’t matter because she’d hear him well enough. “Not only did I save your life, but I took you out of an equation that could very well get you killed again.” He glanced at her over his shoulder.
    “What do you mean, took me out of the equation of getting killed again?”
    She looked honestly perplexed by it all, and it made Joey realize even further that she was so fucking innocent and blind to everything that he truly did. He turned so he could face her, and gestured for her to have a seat in the chair in front of him. She was slow in moving, probably because she was so unsure of this whole thing, but she did finally have a seat.
    “What exactly did you hear before that fucker grabbed you?” he asked with a deadly calm voice. He saw her throat work when she swallowed, watched the droplets of water land on her shirt from the tips of her hair, and noticed the way the white material became transparent. Joey shifted in his seat, knowing he shouldn’t be feeling any kind of arousal at a time like this, but also knowing that when it came to Marra he tended to go against the grain.
    “All I heard, and remember, was the man that was holding the gun said he wasn’t any use to Carlos any longer. The guy called him Mario, and that Carlos would have fun making Mario’s wife his whore.” She exhaled loudly and rubbed her hands down the length of her thighs. “He also said Kelly might have been innocent of ratting his crew out, but he’d dirty Kelly right up.”
    Joey let her words play through his mind. It was clear that there was something up with Mario and the fact everyone in Joey’s crew thought she had left him. Obviously that wasn’t the case. Was Carlos using Mario’s wife, Kelly, as leverage to get Mario to do what he wanted? That would make a hell of a lot of sense seeing as Carlos might be trying to get intel on Joey’s operations. The problem was that Carlos was a dumb motherfucker because if he had been smart, or knew anything about the Bacelli crew, he wouldn’t have tried to get a made man to turn and instead gone after someone low on the totem pole.
    “There wasn’t anyone else in that alleyway, or in that area besides the two men that are dead right now, and me.”
    Joey pulled his thoughts away from finding Carlos and beating his skull in with a baseball bat. He stared at Marra and shook his head at how naive she was. “Marra, your cluelessness to the situation would be endearing if you weren’t right in the middle of what will be a war.” He was going to find that pathetic excuse for a gang leader, and show him what it meant to get involved with Joey Bacelli. He was going to show him that if he fucked with anyone Joey considered in his protection, his death would be slow and agonizing.
    And Marra fell into that category.
    “A war?” She shifted in her seat, clearly uncomfortable.
    “I highly doubt the man that sent out the hit for Mario only had one guy for the job. Most likely there was a spotter, a man that was the lookout.” He moved away from the fire and sat on the couch across from her.
    “But I didn’t see anyone else,” she said with this tightness in her voice, and he could tell she was frightened at the reality of it