Page 7 of Ruthless Sinner
Pictures from my briefing hadn’t done him justice. He was tall, but he was alsobuilt. Marco was a soldier, surprisingly lower on the work ladder for his status, but reports of some reckless behavior in his youth had meant dear old Daddy didn’t trust him with the truly important decisions. Those went to his oldest brother, Vincent.
Soldiers had to be lethal weapons, every inch of them able to kill. Marco looked it. Broad muscles everywhere, thick, long fingers, and I’d known just from the massive bulge in his pants when I danced up on stage, his cock would match.
He’s an Italian stallion,the other strippers told me,in every way.
They hadn’t lied, and I’d found it far too easy to dance for him. Far too easy to slide into his lap tonight and let him take me to one of the private rooms in back.
Part of me had hoped he would be good in bed so that I could at least enjoy this operation. There was nothing worse than having to sleep with someone you found slimy or ugly. But the other part of me had hoped to be unimpressed by the sex so that it would be easier to focus on my work and getting Marco to trust me.
No such luck. His sexy voice, his talented fingers, his hugecock…now, they were all a serious distraction.
I pressed my legs together and set my phone aside. I know it was awful to admit, but I was disappointed that he’d had to leave before he could actually fuck me, but if things went according to plan, I’d get more chances. And more opportunities to find out information. What I’d overheard from his side of the phone conversation hadn’t been much, certainly not enough to set up a sting. I needed more.
Moreinformation, of course, not more ofhim.
This was about the work. About justice. About getting a well-deserved promotion, and along with that an increase in salary. This wasnotabout fucking a hot guy, even if the last time I’d been with someone it had been well over a year with Jared, and he’d proven to be a disappointment and a half.
I got a text back.Good job, Kennedy. Keep it up.
I sent a confirmation and crawled into bed. This was going to be difficult. Marco had never had a serious relationship, never kept a girl for more than a few weeks after he’d first started sleeping with her. Somehow, I had to convince him to let me stick around long enough to get the right kind of intel out of him that would allow us to strike. To take down the Russo crime syndicate once and for all.
That’swhat I had to focus on.
I rolled over onto my side, staring into the darkness of my room. Not really my room, of course. It was the apartment I’d stay in for the duration of my undercover assignment. My last name was different, my address, all the personal affects in the apartment carefully planned to showcase a life that didn’t belong to me. If Marco, any of my coworkers at Cozy Bunny, or anyone else stopped by to see me, they’d see no evidence that I was with the FBI. My entire life right now was a fabrication, with no paper trail leading to my real identity.
That was how it had to be, but it made me feel empty inside, lying here. I wasn’t reallyhome. There was no sense of safety or comfort here, just the same bone-deep loneliness I’d felt for years, since those days of being shuffled from foster home to foster home as a kid.
Get used to it,I told myself, but I’d already been here a month. How much longer would it take for me to ‘get used to it’? I missed being able to be my true self, I missed my own apartment. I supposed I should miss my friends, but part of why I’d been chosen for this assignment was that I didn’t really have any family. My father had died in a workplace accident when I was a kid and my mother had passed away from cancer shortly thereafter, so I had no one to really miss me when I switched identities.
Being undercover had really made me see how alone I was. Especially with how kind all the strippers were. Hell, every employee at Cozy Bunny was kind and welcoming. “We look out for each other here,” the owner, Jade, had said to me on my first day.
Jade wasn’t her real name, that much was obvious. Nobody at the club went by their real names. Partially because it was a strip club. Partially because it was a club that serviced the mafia and high-end businessmen who could make your life hell if they felt like it.
But Jade had been kind, told me that if I needed anything to not hesitate to ask, and the other girls had assured me this was true. Jade was always helpful.
About two weeks after my first day there, a stripper had been murdered, and that had shocked everyone. We’d never found out by whom—rumor had it the same guy who murdered Dmitri Preston had been responsible for this stripper’s demise, as well, but whatever the case was, Vincent Russo had hushed it up real quick. Maybe he’d thought his middle brother, with his history of fuck ups, had done it, but I’d literally been dancing for Marco at the time it happened so it couldn’t have been him.
The point was, the other strippers had rallied around one another. The club had gone into lockdown so fast my head had spun. Jade had us all escorted to and from our cars for days, and it hadn’t been until Vincent had returned to assure her all was well and safe that she’d finally relaxed security.
It had been reassuring, honestly. To see that this was a place that cared about their employees.
Not that they would keep caring if they found out who I was and what I was doing.
I knew it was stupid of me to feel bad that I would be potentially betraying these women but… well, they were good women. Just trying to make a living. They were stripping to support kids, to get through school, to take care of sick relatives or earn a graduate degree. They trusted me as one of their own and to betray that…
Hey, if all goes well they won’t even know it was you.
If everything went smoothly, there would be no link between Cozy Bunny and the Russo sting, because if the mafia found out that I was the one who’d betrayed them, I’d have to go into witness protection and that would be the worst. My entire life would go away, along with all that I’d worked so hard to earn at the Bureau.
I was never going to let that happen. I was going to succeed in this assignment and I was going to be known as the woman who took down the infamous Russo family once and for all.
No matter how handsome, or good with his body, Marco Russo might be.
CHAPTER3
Marco
“What do youmeanI need to bring a plus one?”
