Claimed by the Crime Boss

By Winter Sloane

Lila: Marco Severin is the devil in disguise. This entire city lives in fear of him and so do I. I’ve attracted his attention but I can’t cut and run. I desperately need his help. When the ice between us begins to melt, I find myself falling hard and fast for a man I hate, a monster responsible for my father’s death. I’ve done my best to stay away from his world but now I’m knee deep in it and I don’t want to leave.

Marco: Lila’s mine. Her old man should’ve known better than to entrust a saint like her to a man like me. One kiss, one touch and I’m obsessed. She’s fallen right into my trap and I have every intention of keeping her. Love and hate are the same. Lila is soon about to find out I always get what I want.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Evernight Publishing
• Release date: Apr 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9780369501615

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Published by EVERNIGHT PUBLISHING ® at Smashwords

www.evernightpublishing.com

Copyright© 2020 Winter Sloane

ISBN: 978-0-3695-0161-5

Cover Artist: Jay Aheer

Editor: Audrey Bobak

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

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.

DEDICATION

To my readers, I hope you enjoy Marco and Lila’s story as much as I loved writing it.

CLAIMED BY THE CRIME BOSS

Severin Family, 4

Winter Sloane

Copyright © 2020

Prologue

Five years ago

Lila Rossi couldn’t remember the last time she set foot in a church. She stared out the windows of her beat-up, second-hand blue Toyota. The small but charming church of St. Mary looked back at her. Lila ran her fingers over and over the ceases of her black dress. She couldn’t even remember if she ironed her dress.

Damn it. She decided she needed a cigarette before going inside. With trembling fingers, she grabbed a stick from the box and lit it.

Lila drew out a smoke slowly. She promised her father she’d quit. Then again, her father was dead.

Killed by those bastards. The vehemence in her voice surprised her.

Lila wasn’t the kind of person who raised her voice or cursed. Good girl. That was what her father and his pals called her. Lila was a bookworm. She got good grades, stayed away from bad boys, and kept her head down. Right now, she had plenty of internal ammo to unload.

She finished her smoke and let out a frustrated scream that could’ve gone on forever. Fortunately, no one heard her. She debated leaving then she remembered the reason why she was here in the first place.

She’d driven thousands of miles back here, back to this wretched city she used to call home for the funeral. The last conversation Lila had with her father on the phone had been a disaster and ended with the two of them screaming at each other. Nothing new, except it was all she could think about during her silent drive here. The last words the two of them had exchanged had been harsh ones.

Lila could never take them back. She should’ve known better. Men like her father could never change or turn away from old habits. This was the only life he’d known.

No use backing out now, she told herself.

Dread coiled in the pit of her stomach but another emotion suppressed it. Rage. When she left her apartment, quiet, deadly anger grew inside her like a fetus. Now, it felt like it was about to burst out of her skin like some monstrous force.

Lila breathed in and out. She’d go in, face her father, and then quietly leave the church without any commotion or fuss. That was what good Catholic girls did. That label started to get on her nerves.

She opened the car door and stepped out, her heels crunching on gravel. Other cars had arrived in the parking lot during her little dilemma. People she didn’t recognize were there in the parking lot. Men wearing expensive Italian suits and fancy leather shoes that probably cost more than her car, than everything she owned. The women who wore fur even in the hot summer with their tiny designer bags and dogs. Women who had steel in their spines.

Lila used to admire them from afar when she was growing up. She wanted to be just like them. She only had to look at her own mother. Look how well that ended.

They talked amongst themselves, in groups. Lila knew they packed guns under their coats, just like her dad. They’d walk past cops like that, with no fear of being patted down because the cops here were crooked. Always had been.

When she walked past them, one of the women spoke about her.

That’s her, Stefano’s daughter. She turned nineteen this year.

Twenty-one actually, but Lila didn’t bother correcting her. She didn’t care about the gossip. They’d probably be talking about her all day. Come next week, new funeral, new topic of conversation. The thought sickened her.

She walked past the parking lot and found herself in front of the doors of the church. Churches always felt oppressive to her. Touching the heavy wooden paneling on the door gave her chills, made her mind wander to the vaults of memories she thought she’d buried.

Her mother used to drag her to Sunday service all the time when she’d been younger. What she prayed for, Lila never knew. What did it matter? Her mother was gone.

Now both of them are dead. Lila sounded bitter to her ears.

It seemed wrong her parents should pass away before she did. Lila had no family left now. She always told her dad to stop calling her, kept insisting she had her own life now, but privately, she’d looked forward to his calls. Lila had no one waiting for her back at the single apartment she called home. No dog, cat, or man to console her when she got the dreadful call.

She went inside and didn’t recognize anyone sitting in the pews. Strangers. Like the incident in the parking lot, the people there grew quiet as she walked past them to reach the raised coffin. One craggy face gave her a tight smile. Gino, her father’s best friend and the only member of this little gathering she could stomach. Lila nodded to him and continued forward.

She didn’t know why, but she began to shake again. Lila suddenly didn’t want to look at the corpse inside that fancy mahogany box. Gino hadn’t wanted to share the exact details of her father’s death but she persisted and asked until he gave her all the answers she wanted.

Lila touched the glass over the coffin. The morticians must’ve fixed the hole where the bullet punctured her father’s left cheek, did a good job at it, too. The dead man looking back at her wasn’t her father anymore. Too much makeup. Her dad looked like one of those figures in a wax museum. Not real.

She shivered, unsure how long she stood there. Lila vaguely heard voices in the background. Someone asked who she was, but she recognized Gino’s voice, telling whoever it was to give her space, all the time in the world.

He looks at peace, doesn’t he? a new