Sold: A Billionaire Bad Boy Mafia Romance by Natasha Tanner, Molly Thorne Read Free Book Online

mention it in the first few weeks, as I was just learning about Little Vegas and was introduced to the small circle of people he trusted with running the organization. The stocky man who kept his cool at the pub as Ace knocked out the cheater was Jack Starr, his right hand, the man he trusted above anyone else in the world. The younger man who had protested when he mentioned Little Vegas was Harlan Pike, and he seemed to be in charge of a big part of the business in the West Coast and Atlanta. There was a still much younger man who went by Pip Glover and who I could rarely see; it looked like Ace was putting more and more tasks in his hands, testing his abilities and maybe his loyalty in preparation for bigger things.
    I wondered if all those, including Ace’s, were codenames. It was a big coincidence that they were named Hart, Starr, Pike and Glover, in parallel with the hearts, stars, pikes and clovers in the playing cards. I might discover it eventually. It was a reasonable precaution that they were by fake names, of course; but for some reason I felt a pinch of intrigue about Ace, as if discovering his real name was the key to discovering
him
, getting to his true heart behind the layers of strong, unfazed bad guy.
    There were the girls too. All of them were gorgeous and I disliked them all instantly. The brunette who had asked me who I was in a cutting tone was Bibi and she seemed to be just a waitress; there was a redhead too, Arantxa, who kept players in check and helped verify their claims in the computer when they made their bets (and helped with the drinks too); and there was also a blonde who seemed to be above the other two, acting as Ace’s secretary of sorts. She was the big-breasted girl who I found with her arm around Ace’s neck the first time I saw him. She didn’t show up in the first weeks, and when she did, she gave me a nasty look, as if she wanted me dead. Her name was Veronica Redd and she was the youngest one.
    I heard about other people who worked for Ace, most of them located in different cities around the States. There was also a computer whiz nobody mentioned by name, who (according to what Ace had told me at the gym the other day) must be one of the most important people in the organization. There were bouncers at every location who had a limited knowledge of what Little Vegas even was, and thought they were just working for the pub’s or storehouse’s owner or something like that.
    There were no meetings to speak of. We talked to each other on the phone whenever we needed to discuss something, and then met at one of the locations, usually by night or late afternoon. Sometimes Pip would pick me up and take me to Ace’s house. I never saw any of the girls there, though the rumor was that they were
more than welcome
to stay.
I have no right to be jealous
, I reminded myself constantly, but the thought of them lying on his bed, maybe more than one at a time, made my skin crawl and burn.
    Ace didn’t give me the actual job at first. When I started working for him, we met once or twice so that he could hand me some documents or a pen drive with audio files in Russian. I was supposed to confirm that those documents looked like authentic Russian certificates of property and asset transfers, and listen to what people were saying in the recordings, usually specifying what they would bet. He didn’t need to see me to give me those materials, so it was all an excuse to
keep me around
, as he’d said. I was sure they’d had no problem translating papers and recordings before I entered that damn pub.
    At these times he spoke to me coldly, but I could feel a slight current of nervousness in his voice, and more than a bit of desire. His fingers grazed my hand when he gave me the papers, and he stood very close when holding the door for me. So close that I could smell his minty breath, and a tingling sensation in my body.
For fuck’s sake, Van, just jump on him and fuck him already.
The thought made