Maid for the Mafia

**ROMANY**

"I'm sorry... what?" Did I hear him correctly? Did he just say **Because I am in love with her'? Is that what he just said???

Santos' eyes twinkle as he studies me, the sad half turn of his lips telling me that he knows that I heard him properly. Stretching out a hand, he retrieves his phone then gazes wistfully at the picture of my cousin on the screen. His jaw tics and I can see the tension in his forearms when he flexes his hands. Wearing a quarter sleeve jacket over his pristine white dress shirt, the ink that covers his flesh from the backs of his fingers to the fabric that covers his elbows seems at war with his designer digs. Yet, even the artfully clipped mohawk and tattoos that swirl about the shaved portion of his head pay compliment to him. Make him seem powerful and deadly. He *looks* for all intents and purposes like somebody you should never ever fuck with. Like a man who tortures his victims while enjoying something as mundane as his breakfast.noveldrama

A true killer.

And he *loves* me cousin? Is he fucking for real?

Then again. Ruby ain't no *'Disney Princess.'* If I know anything about her at all, it's that she was never going to be the kind of girl that falls for the doctor, or the lawyer, or the cop. No. She's at home with this madness. She lives for it. Thrives in it. It's where she belongs. Always has been.

Even when we were tiny little girls she would do things to my uncle that no one else would ever even dare imagine. He was cruel to her. Violent. Shit, he was even violent with my mother and she was his brother's wife. When my dad died, my uncle took us in and Ruby and I were forced to share her room. Then again - he didn't really *take us in* so much as he accepted our presence so that my mother could work herself to death paying *his* bills.

Ruby's mom had been gone a long time by then. That bitch up and left when Ruby was only two years old, but that fact never bothered Ruby. She didn't care. She could hardly remember Aunt Flora and my mother was the only one who would ever speak her name. According to my mom, Flora had her reasons for leaving, reasons which were glaringly obvious within the first week of our staying there. But what I *didn't* understand... what I refused to accept... was the fact that Aunt Flora left Ruby alone. There. With him. My uncle that to this day lives a happy little life in the land of Delusia in which he tries and fails every damn day to drown in his cups.

If *anyone* deserves to finally have some love, it's her. Ruby. But *him?* This monster of a man that delights in the taunt and torment of men like Alex DeMarco? Who the hell does this guy think he is?

"You love her, do you?" I snicker, unable to help myself. "That's love? A woman left to rot in the hospital after being *chained* up for nearly two fucking months? Are you fucken kidding me, dude?"

Okay pot calling the kettle black - but bear with me.

Almost as if he can read my insecurities, which he very likely may be able to do, he hikes up a brow and leans back in his seat with a dark chuckle. "It wasn't two months. You're forgetting the few days she was camped beneath my house readying to murder me."

"Few days? Are you joking?"

To my surprise he doesn't throw Alex in my face the way I expect him to. He simply smiles, gazing down at Ruby's picture once again. "She was there to kill me, you know? To assassinate me. I am not the one who put her there. So I do not know why the fact that she ended up chained surprises you. It certainly didn't surprise her."

"Oh yeah?" I snap. "At the risk of you tossing me into the sky at thirty thousand feet, let me just say - you are not good enough for my cousin. She deserves better."

If I wasn't so pissed I'd probably be scared with the way he's looking at me. Of all the things that I have said so far, that last statement seems to have been the one that throws him off. That cracks his demeanor. He's not looking happy right now and I have to grit my teeth to keep from backing down.

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"I know!" He shouts, and god help me I flinch. "You don't think I know that? Of course I know that. But I want her just the same. It no longer matters whether I'm worthy or she's worthy or she's on my side or not. All that matters to me now is that I get to tell her what I didn't before. All that matters is that I get her in to a place where she is *forced* to listen to me."

"Oh?" I poke the beast, because apparently I am clinically insane, I say sarcastically, "And that didn't matter when you had her *chained* to a bed? You couldn't-" air quote "-make her listen to you *then?* Maybe if you'd allowed her some coffee instead of opiates, or switched the chains out for rope. Maybe if she had been alert enough to understand your fucking english instead of slowing being turned into a fucking junkie - maybe then she may have heard you."

His eyes are bulging, a vein pulsing in his neck when he spits, "Orrr! Maybe I should have dosed her with 'Burn' - that new drug they're passing out at the clubs and then set her up to be raped in front of twenty men! Then she might have listened! I mean, hell-" he shrugs "-it worked on you, didn't it?"

*No. No he didn't.*

*This motherfucker!*