Owning the Mafia Don

She swore as she stepped out of the Club. It was cold and dark, and the side street where the staff generally usually used to leave the buildings was all but deserted. This road took them along a shortcut to the main street on the other side of the building. She hated to go alone. There were always some creeps who came along and hung around, hoping to enter the heavily guarded boundaries of the Club. From journalists looking for a quick, sleazy story to men who thought that any woman working at the Club would be an easy lay.

Sophie scowled and pulled her hoodie down.

Damn! She thought, if Danielle had not made me stay back for another hour, I could have left with Tracey and Princess, the two young women she normally returned home with. They would drop her off before heading off to their apartment which was a few blocks ahead.

But Danielle had been insistent. They needed young women to serve the drinks and the popcorn and snacks in the Fight Room the following night, she had said, fixing Sophie with her cold blue eyes. And since Sophia was not really efficient in the Main Hall, drawled Danielle, she would be more useful in the basement. Sophie had glared at her, especially when she had seen the outfit she was supposed to wear. True, there were like another nineteen girls with her but her whole being rebelled at having to traipse around in a silly frock that reached up to the middle of her thighs, a frilled outfit with a disgustingly low bodice.

“I have to wear THAT thing?’ she had cried in horror, and the other women had tittered.

Sophie was regarded as an oddity with her perpetually stormy expression and rude set downs delivered to any gentleman who happened to dare to snake his hand up her thigh. She had promptly smacked the roving hands and their owners had been shamefaced, to say the least. But since St. Claire had a strict policy in place that none of his staff was to be harassed, she was safe. Yet her hot-tempered reactions stood out. While the others adapted quickly, Sophie continued to put up a fight when it came to behaving like a dressed-up doll.

Danielle had turned to her, puffing away on her cigar and drawling,

“Were you thinking of serving drinks in a nun’s habit, sweetheart?’

The girls giggled, but Sophie had held her tongue.

Possibly her rudeness had made Danielle insist that she should remain till the end, listening to instructions on how to walk and serve during the event.

***

It was as they were heading to the basement that she had seen Catalina.

Sophie had come to an abrupt halt. The woman’s face had also cropped up on one of the porn sites that Sondra had spoken about. Sophie had seen her on one such movie, aggressively participating in strange acts that had made her want to throw up!

What was she doing here, she thought, her head buzzing. All she could feel was a strong repugnance as she watched the woman.

Clad in an outfit that revealed her enormous breasts that looked, thought Sophie nastily, like balloons that were about to burst, she was hanging on to the man beside her.

When Danielle swore loudly in annoyance, Sophie glanced at her. So the Cold One also disliked her.

She then realised that the man beside the porn star was the man they called the Boss.

Lucien Delano.

A Silver Fox.

He of the cold silvery eyes and the silver head of hair.

His body was packed with muscle and he moved swiftly. Power and determination in every step he took. You wanted to hide when he glanced your way.

Sophie wondered how his enemies dared to exist!!! He had the look of a ruthless killer.

The woman, Catalina, Sophie recalled her name as she stared at her, was doing her best to engage his attention. But the expression on Delano’s face was one of tightly controlled anger.

The woman was hanging on his arm, touching him in a manner that made Sophie feel sorry for her.

How humiliating it must be to chase a man who was obviously not interested, she thought and remembered her own sister.

Danielle turned to her and barked,

‘Right, run along now. And be sure to be on time tomorrow.’

With that, she stormed off.

‘Bloody woman,’ thought Sophie furiously as she prepared to head home on her own.

Now the light snow falling on the ground made her even angrier.

She swore again and started marching down the path, her frizzy red hair falling in curls from under her hoodie.

‘If anyone tries to get smart and comes close to me, I shall slam them,’ she thought fiercely. It was late. Mom would still be awake, though, She always stayed at the window, peering down into the street, fearful, fretting about Sophie. Poor Mom, she thought, a lump forming in her throat as she walked.

Sondra had disappeared off the grid completely.

During that brief time when she had been there after arriving with Paddy, Sondra shared some of her experiences, albeit sketchily, with Sophie. Some of the movies, Sondra had told her, staring into the distance, some of the movies were so violent, they were only available on the Dark Net.

That was the first time Sophie, young as she was herself, had heard such a thing existed.

Sophie had forced herself to watch a movie with Sondra in it.Copyright Nôv/el/Dra/ma.Org.

Watching the movie made her aware of the life her sister had blithely entered into. The life that Paul Worthington had kept her enslaved to.

Sophie had stopped watching it after a few minutes. The brutal beatings and torture had made her gag. Holding her head in her hands, she had wept in the tiny bathroom, leaning against the wall. Her mother had been asleep, heavily medicated.

“I will not wake her,’ Sophie repeated to herself like a chant as she stuffed her fist in her mouth to hold back her sobs.

But the thought that went round and round in her head was the same: How could her beautiful sister have allowed herself to be treated in this way?

When Sondra discovered what her sister had been watching, she wrapped her arms around Sophie, holding her tight as she said,

‘Stay innocent, kiddo. Stay innocent,’ she had said, in a broken whisper. And she had broken down, sobbing loudly, scaring little Paddy who joined in a chorus with his loudly weeping mother.

Their mother had rushed in, alarmed. Finally, they had huddled together, weeping, helpless in their sorrow.

A few weeks later, Sophie had left the house to pop over to the grocery to buy some cigarettes. Sophie had returned home that day from the diner where she had been working to find her distraught mother and wailing nephew.

Sondra had disappeared.