Dance with the devil, p.1
Dance with the Devil, page 1
EVERNIGHT PUBLISHING ®
www.evernightpublishing.com
Copyright© 2023 Sam Crescent
ISBN: 978-0-3695-0866-9
Cover Artist: Jay Aheer
Editor: Lisa Petrocelli
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This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DANCE WITH THE DEVIL
Sam Crescent
Copyright © 2023
Prologue
Draven Esposito didn’t want to be here. He wasn’t interested in looking for a wife, or to help anyone out. When The Boss ordered him to make an appearance, he had no choice but to do what he’d been told. So here he was, sitting in a strip club, an exclusive one, for a one-time event.
He knew what tonight was all about. A young woman named Maria.
He picked up his glass of scotch and took a sip. Her family could no longer be called. She now had no last name, as anyone with that last name was banished, or put six feet under. The decisions that Maria’s father made had put her in a rather tough position, but from what The Boss had told him, Maria had stopped the deaths of several capos, as well as the big man himself. If it hadn’t been for Maria, her father’s plot to take over the mafia would have succeeded.
It was the only reason Maria was given this chance. She had to be taken and married tonight. There was no second chance. No other night. If none of the men in this room wanted her, she was going to have a bullet put through her head.
The choices were not great.
Draven was here as a potential bidder. He didn’t want a woman. The only women he was interested in were the ones that left when he finished with them. He had no interest in having a wife, especially one so young. She was only twenty-one years old.
When he asked why this Maria was so young and unmarried, The Boss had told him she was a curvy woman and not considered quite as beautiful as her older sister. Only, the older sister had been very keen on becoming her father’s puppet, so she was dead, along with Maria’s older brother.
There was no one left. Just Maria.
He’d not seen a picture of her. According to The Boss, he had seen her in person a few times, but Draven couldn’t recall at first who she was.
Glancing around the strip club, he saw thirty men waiting. Not all of them were capos. Some were soldiers, and there were associates as well. Did The Boss not believe someone was going to buy her?
He finished off his scotch, and just as he had, the lights went down and the stage lit up.
Draven turned his attention to the stage as an older woman, the one who ran the strip club, dragged the younger woman up the stage. The moment he saw her, Draven recognized her, but he knew instantly why she’d not been married off. Most men within the mafia didn’t appreciate a woman with thick curves, and this woman, even beneath the oversized t-shirt and pants, was fuller than most women within their circles.
He’d tried to forget the woman he’d seen, only from a short distance at parties, a few months ago. In their world, he knew there was no chance of him ever being able to have the woman he wanted. Now, he couldn’t look away.
She let out a scream as the older woman suddenly tore the clothes right off her body, leaving her standing there in nothing more than a pair of panties and a bra.
Her blonde hair covered her face, but that didn’t last for long as the older woman grabbed it in her fist and revealed Maria to him.
Draven did recognize her.
It was a party he’d gone to over six months ago at her parents’ house. Maria had been there, dressed all in black, looking like she wanted the walls to swallow her whole. Where most of the men in their world wanted a slim woman, Draven wanted the opposite. He liked his women curvy. There was nothing appealing about a woman whimpering because he was too big, too strong, and she couldn’t take all of him.
Staring at her now, he wanted her.
Even though Maria had come to The Boss to save him and the capos, in extracting and saving her, they hadn’t been kind. He saw the bruise lining the left side of her face. All the mottled bruises that covered that beautiful face. He wasn’t impressed. In fact, he was mightily pissed off.
She’d done what she could to save The Boss and the family, and yet here she was, after being abused and treated like dirt, being sold to anyone who would take her. There was no money being exchanged. Someone had to be willing to marry her, to give her a new name.
Her humiliation wasn’t over because as Draven watched, not a single man put his hand up. Not one.
Maria didn’t shed a single tear, but he watched, and he sensed this air of acceptance. She had known she wasn’t going to be taken. There had been no choice in the matter. Watching her now, he had a feeling she wanted death rather than this. He didn’t want to be intrigued by this woman, and yet as she stood there, staring out into the club, he saw this acceptance, almost like she was at peace with the decision of dying.
Seconds passed. And as the woman was about to drag her from the stage, Draven had enough.
“I’ll take her,” Draven said.
He didn’t expect anyone to fight him for the right to her, so he unbuttoned his suit jacket and made his way to the stage.
Draven wrapped his jacket around her, hiding what his future wife was going to be giving him as a gift.
The Boss had already told him Maria was a virgin. That would be the gift she gave to any husband. There were times he hated the world in which he lived.
Chapter One
Maria wasn’t going to die. She couldn’t quite believe it. It didn’t seem real to her.
The Boss had told her exactly what was going to happen, and she didn’t think she would be claimed. All her life, she’d been told how ugly she was, how fat and disgusting. Why would anyone want her? Her parents had always told her they were deeply ashamed of her, how they never wanted anything to do with her. She hated them.
When she learned what they were planning, at first she had panicked. She didn’t know what to do, or who to go to. They were planning to take over the mafia family, to kill The Boss, and they even had a list of capos they planned to eliminate.
Maria had seen all those details. She wasn’t meant to see any of it, but they fucked up. Thankfully, she had spent most of her life pretending to be dumb so they’d leave her alone. Fat, ugly, and dumb. No one had the time of day for her.
So, being ignored became a blessing. They only put up with her when there were social gatherings, and they could no longer pretend she wasn’t part of their family. Once she realized what she was doing, she snuck into her father’s office, found all the details, and that night, she had no choice but to go and find The Boss.
Doing so put her life at risk, but she couldn’t allow her father and mother to do what they wished. They were cruel, horrible people. Even though the mafia family was no better, she knew there was also mercy, there was order, and to kill The Boss and allow them to take over would have meant death to a lot of people. Her mother was the jealous type, and she’d order the kill of any woman she deemed a rival for her spot.
There was a lot of damage her family could do, which was why she went to The Boss and revealed their plans. She had no choice but to take proof, and she did so on the cell phone she’d been hiding from them for years.
At first, The Boss had laughed at her. Then when she showed him the proof, including the recording she had of their plot, his laughter had died.
Maria had expected to die. Anyone who plotted against The Boss or his family was killed. She didn’t know why The Boss spared her, but he had, and now she was due to marry.
Glancing up at the only man who’d stepped up to claim her, she couldn’t help but be terrified. Draven Esposito. He was considered the Devil. She heard the rumors about him, the death he caused.
People said he didn’t have a soul. There was no life in his eyes, and all he caused was death. He liked to bask in the blood, almost drown in it. He was addicted to causing blood to flow, and watching men and women bleed.
His name evoked nightmares. His name had terrified her father and mother. She had seen it, just as the one time she had seen him at one of her parents’ parties.
It was one of those occasions when her mother had thrown a black dress at her and told her she better hope she blended into the furniture. She wasn’t allowed to embarrass them. They wanted nothing to do with her, so she did exactly that.
Even her own family hadn’t realized she was there, watching, waiting.
“You could do so much better than her, Draven,” the older woman said.
As if her humiliation wasn’t already complete, she now had women who were perfectly happy to see her fall, to see her … hurt.
Draven had slid his jacket over her. The clothes she’d worn hadn’t been her own, and they had stunk like that of a sweaty man. It was a relief as well as a humiliation when they were pulled off her body. She had hated it.
Maria watched as she stepped toward Draven and then began to dance her fingers up his chest. They were perfectly painted a deep shade of red. She had felt those nails sink into her flesh. She gasped as Draven suddenly wrapped his fingers around the older woman’s ne ck, cutting off her air supply.
“Were you given orders to strip her on stage?”
Draven hadn’t given her enough oxygen to even answer. Maria couldn’t make out a single word she was saying.
He stepped back and the older woman, whose name Maria didn’t know, had no choice but to do as he wanted. She only stopped when her back hit the wall. Draven must have let her go long enough to gather some oxygen, but then he wrapped his fingers around her throat, cutting off her air supply once again.
Maria didn’t know what to do. This was going to be her husband.
“If you ever see my future wife again, you look the other way, or get down on your knees and you kiss her feet and beg for forgiveness, do you understand me?”
She tried to nod her head. Draven held onto her throat for a couple more seconds, and then let go. She fell to the floor.
He moved away and Maria looked up as he took her hand, and then they were out of the strip club. She held his jacket closed and didn’t make a single sound. She didn’t have on any kind of shoes, and didn’t get a chance to look down. It didn’t matter, because his car, along with his driver, waited for them.
Draven opened the door and ordered her to get inside. She did so. There was no arguing right now. This man had saved her, and not only that, he’d hurt the woman who’d been intent on humiliating her.
“No one is going to want your fat, useless ass, and when the room goes silent, and no one wants you, I get to kill you.”
All day, Maria had to deal with this woman pulling a gun on her, aiming it at her head. The threat had been real, but Maria was long past being terrified.
She’d been warned what her fate was going to be if no one claimed her. Maria had waited for it and knew when it came, she might know a sense of peace.
That hadn’t happened.
Draven had claimed her.
“Church,” Draven said.
It was the only word he had to say to his driver, and they were being driven away from the strip club.
Maria couldn’t believe this was happening. She couldn’t help but keep glancing at the man at her side. He had thick, black hair. She noticed the wisps of grey dotting each side. He was handsome. She’d heard many people talking about Draven. He’d never been married, but he had earned his place as a respectable capo and was considered one of the closest friends to The Boss.
His name alone brought fear. There were even rumors that to say his name aloud would bring your death. Maria had never tested that. Even now, she didn’t speak. If she did, would he kill her?
Some believed he was the Devil himself. That he had come down to kill, to hunt, to torture. That he looked for his victims in the flesh. Again, it was all whispered rumors and gossip. None of it was true. There was no Devil. Just a man, willing to do whatever it took to protect The Boss, and the land which they had claimed as their own. Their territories.
Maria didn’t know if she was allowed to talk. The rules of her life had now changed. Nothing was certain anymore. She had to learn how to survive.
Maria didn’t know if this was even fair anymore, when she had come to accept that she was going to die. Death would have been so much easier.
Staring out the window, she watched as they passed the city. In the light of day, it always looked beautiful, but it hid the flaws of the life she knew. The death. The greed. The true evil she had come to see that lived all around her.
She couldn’t help but think about Draven, choking that woman. Did it make her a bad person for not caring what he did?
She didn’t know what it made her. All she knew was that she didn’t mind the older woman being choked, and a part of her wanted to see her dead. Locking her fingers together, she gripped them tightly and tried not to think about what kind of person she was for wishing the death of another human being.
****
Draven and Maria were married.
The Boss had told him the location of the church, if he decided to take her as his wife. Maria hadn’t been shaking. He’d walked with her at his side, hands joined together, while the priest said all the necessary jargon to make their union absolute. There was no white wedding dress. Just Maria in his jacket, hiding her naked body.
There were a couple of capos waiting as witnesses, and they were both clearly shocked, but none of them said a word. He waited for them to speak, to piss him off, but they remained silent, which was a good fucking thing. Otherwise, he’d have fucking killed them, and it wouldn’t have been hard to do.
Once the priest announced they were man and wife, he pulled her close and kissed her.
It wasn’t a passionate kiss, just two lips meeting to satisfy the union, and then he was about to leave when Lee, one of the capos who was happily married with three kids, approached.
“The Boss wants the sheets hand-delivered to him tomorrow. He also expects to see Maria there as well.”
A folded piece of paper was handed to him. He didn’t say a word but grabbed his wife and walked her back out to the car. Before he closed the door, he opened the paper to see the address. It was for a restaurant.
Draven didn’t believe the tradition of the bloody sheets would happen. He had a horrible feeling that if Maria wasn’t a virgin, this union would be null and void.
Sitting back, he told the driver to take him to his home. He didn’t go to his city apartment, but instead made his way through the country, to his home.
He didn’t understand what The Boss’s game was. If he wanted to kill Maria, then he should have done so and not created this elaborate game. Draven believed in cruelty, but there were limits to what he was willing to accept, and this level of cruelty was a whole new kind of ball game to him. Running a hand down his face, he tightened the piece of paper into a ball and shoved it in his pocket. He’d get rid of it once they returned home.
Every now and then, he kept checking on his wife.
Wife.
He never planned to have a wife, let alone someone with a whole load of baggage. He knew this would create a sweep of new gossip for each capo to talk about. He didn’t give a shit about the rumors that often spread about him. Most of them were fucked-up lies and didn’t mean anything to him. But staring at Maria, he had to wonder what the end game was.
The journey to his home took a good hour. He didn’t wait for the driver to open the door. He climbed out, holding out his hand for his wife to take. She shook a little, but he didn’t have time to baby her. He helped her out of the car, then realized they were on fucking stones. Most of his driveway was covered in tiny pebbles.
Maria let out a cry as he lifted her into his arms and carried her across his driveway, toward the front door. He didn’t let her go until they were over the threshold. The moment they were and the door closed, he put her on her feet.
Draven had limited staff. Calvin, one of his men, who only had one arm, came rushing toward him.
“I am so sorry, sir,” he said.
“Don’t be. Meet Maria, she’s going to be living here from now on. She’s my wife.” Even though he had yet to find a ring to slide on her finger. The priest had been pretty pissed off that there hadn’t been any rings.
The two capos who’d been there had shown their guns, and all annoyance had vanished from the priest and he carried on with the service.
Calvin held out his hand to Maria and she shook it. She looked pale.
“Take her to my room. Get her ready,” Draven said.
He needed to go to his office. Without another word, he left his wife and his man at the foot of the stairs. Draven went straight to his office and grabbed his phone, calling The Boss’s number. He waited. It took six rings for The Boss to pick up.
“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” Draven asked.
“I don’t answer to you.”
“Do I need to remind you of why you’re in the place you’re at?” Draven tapped his fingers on the desk.
There was silence.
They both knew who was supposed to be sitting at the head of the table. The only reason The Boss was where he was, was because Draven had put him there. If the whole truth came out, then The Boss would be removed. He knew it, as did The Boss.
