Asa (Book 1): Banks Family Mafia, #1

By Nicole Fox

This is book 1 of the Banks Family Mafia romance series! Books 2 and 3 are available everywhere now!

The only thing worse than running away is being caught and dragged back by a monster.

I've spent five years escaping my past.

My mobster father wants his precious daughter back in the family fold, but I'm not coming back without a fight.

Asa is supposed to bring me back unharmed, but he can't keep his hands off me.

And as much as I'm falling hard for the hitman's savage touch, I can't let him drag me back to my father's dirty world.

Then I find out that Asa has some hidden plans of his own.

Plans not so different from my own.

If we can work together, I might actually have a shot at finding the freedom I've always craved.

It's a match made in heaven…

Until we get to my father's headquarters and find out things are worse than I ever could have imagined.

Now, I have only one choice:

Hold onto Asa with everything I've got, and pray that we make it out of this mess alive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: MBK Hanson Inc.
• Release date: Nov 26, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393996712

Nicole Fox

Nicole Fox writes smart, sexy mafia romance novels. She is a crazy cat lady in her late 30s with a coffee addiction, an overactive imagination, and a husband who somehow puts up with her impulsive need to keep buying new plants for their house. Sign up for her mailing list at http://bit.ly/NicoleFoxMailingList. 

Book preview

Asa: Banks Family Mafia (Book 1)

By Nicole Fox

THE ONLY THING WORSE than running away is being caught and dragged back by a monster.

I’ve spent five years escaping my past.

My mobster father wants his precious daughter back in the family fold, but I’m not coming back without a fight.

Asa is supposed to bring me back unharmed, but he can’t keep his hands off me.

And as much as I’m falling hard for the hitman’s savage touch, I can’t let him drag me back to my father’s dirty world.

Then I find out that Asa has some hidden plans of his own.

Plans not so different from my own.

If we can work together, I might actually have a shot at finding the freedom I’ve always craved.

It’s a match made in heaven...

Until we get to my father’s headquarters and find out things are worse than I ever could have imagined.

Now, I have only one choice:

Hold onto Asa with everything I’ve got, and pray that we make it out of this mess alive.

Chapter One

Lauren

Al’s Diner on Highway 65 was the type of shit-hole stop-over you could get a cup of coffee for 99¢, a bowl of chili for a couple bucks, and the toughest cut of meat you've ever had for just under ten. The gas station next door kept a steady stream of truckers and travelers, all going to some destination other than the nearest town, and most of them just looked like they were passing.

It was the perfect place for a woman like me. Drifting, trying to fly below the radar, just wanting to make it from day to day, and stay one step ahead of my past. Because that's all you had out here, really, on this lonely stretch of road. Your day-to-day, and your past. Futures were for rich folks and people who didn't have anything they were running from.

Today was slow. Achingly slow. Even the lunch rush had been as sparse as the desert land I was looking out over from where I sat on an overturned milk crate next to the fire exit door, trashy paperback folded up in my hands, the smell of old, stale cigarette butts filling the air.

My book was one of those old bodice rippers, the type my mom would get into back when she was alive. The clerks at the truck stop next door kept them rotated and well-stocked for the truckers that came in. The older drivers were insatiable in the way some of them read these. I guess I could be, too, on slow days like these.

Out of all the types I read this was one of my favorites. The bad boy, a good-for-nothing rugged type with the secret heart of gold. Didn't matter if he was the noble savage type, or the Scotsman, or just a trashy biker. I loved them all. Because, when you're stuck out in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of drunk rednecks and truckers as far as the eye could see, what else were you going to do?

Cora! Al called to the back of the house, his voice rebounding through the clatter of dishes and kitchen work before it reached me. You got a table, one top! Number five!

Number five, the corner booth.

Al didn't use my real name because, quite frankly, I'd never given it to him. He paid my tips under the table, kept my names off the forms, the works. I wasn't altogether sure if he knew I was working under an assumed name, but he knew something was up, I was sure of it. Why else would a pretty girl who could read be working in a place like this, especially when she wasn't knocked up with her third baby from her high school prom date? I had the feeling Al had seen his fair share of desperate cases like me, though.

I leaned my head back into the fire exit door as I closed my bent-up romance novel and stuffed it in my apron. On it, Al! I shouted back, then heaved myself up from the plastic crate to head back inside.

I'd had dozens of gigs like this one, all over the west and south, all in the kinds of places you don't see a new face very often. At least not one that sticks around. Places like these, you start to realize, are the kinds of places that people go when they want to disappear. If you weren't born around here, then you were probably trying to stay away from something else. Sometimes the law, sometimes bad decisions, sometimes just their past in general.

Me? I'm Lauren Saylor, and I was running from my pops, Dalton Saylor, one of the biggest movers and shakers in in the Tri-State area. Richer than sin, and twice as deadly to your health. I learned that the hard way when I watched him beat my mother to death in a paranoid rage because he thought she was working with outside forces to bring him down. I high-tailed it out of there and kept to the shadier side of life ever since that night. No social media, no emails. Hell, not even a phone.

It's amazing how