Worst Hostage Ever

 Lucia

I’m the exhausted, informal CFO of my incompetent father’s crumbling little mafia empire. When a terrifying Russian assassin kidnaps me, I don’t panic—it’s pretty much a staycation, right? Nikolai is ruthless and deadly, but it’s in his best interests to ensure I remain happy enough that I stay out of his way. And I have a few ideas on how he should do that…

Mikhail

After twenty years as the Ghost, I am ready to retire into the shadows. My last job almost going sideways due to creaking knees only reinforces this. I only abduct Lucia to get some final monies owed out of her father. But my hostage is a perky menace who is hijacking my plans to make things more about, well, her. I was supposed to ransom her. Now, I'm beginning to think that I need to change the terms of the deal...

 Lucia

It is 2:14 AM on a Tuesday, and I am staring at a glaring red discrepancy of five million dollars in one of my father’s Cayman Island offshore accounts.

Normally, an unaccounted-for two-point-five million dollars in a crime syndicate’s ledger would be cause for a midnight crisis meeting, a few broken kneecaps, or at the very least, an angry phone call to a Swiss banker. But this is the Romano family, which means the missing millions are almost certainly the result of staggering, mind-numbing incompetence.

I rub my temples, the dull ache of an impending migraine threatening to split my skull in two. The glow of the dual monitors in my father’s gaudy, mahogany-paneled home office is the only light in the room. I scroll down the spreadsheet, cross-referencing the shell company—a supposed waste management firm in New Jersey—with last month’s expenditures.

Ah. There it is.

The funds weren’t seized by the Feds. They weren’t stolen by a rival family. My father, Don Salvatore Romano, had simply routed the money meant for an independent contractor into a slush fund so my younger half-sister, Isabella, could buy another condo as yet another wedding gift. Because apparently, her previous three didn’t have the right vibes.

And then promptly forgot he’d done so. 

I drop my head onto the desk. The desk is cold against my forehead.

"I am going to die here," I whisper to the empty room. "I am going to die buried under a mountain of falsified tax returns and horrible real estate decisions."

My phone buzzes against the wood, a harsh, grating sound in the quiet of the compound. I turn my head sideways to look at the screen. It’s a text from my stepmother.

Giuseppa (2:16 AM): Isabella said you ate half a bagel at the fitting this afternoon. The bridesmaid dress does not forgive carbohydrates. Your face is puffy. Drink hot water with lemon and go to sleep.

I blink at the glowing text. A wave of exhaustion washes over me, so deep and heavy it feels like it’s settled into my bone marrow. I haven't slept more than four consecutive hours in… well… I can’t remember. Between balancing the syndicate’s books, laundering money through terrible local restaurants that don't know how to cook a proper veal parmigiana, and acting as the unpaid personal assistant to my family of narcissistic sociopaths, my life is a relentless cycle of spreadsheets and psychological warfare.

My phone buzzes again.

Isabella (2:17 AM): Pick up my dry cleaning at 7 AM sharp. And get me an iced matcha with real milk. If they put that plant crap in it again, I swear I will make Tony burn the place down.

I briefly consider throwing my phone into the Long Island Sound. I really, truly do.

Instead, I sit up, crack my neck, and reach for my cold, half-empty mug of espresso. I need to fix this before it raises any legal red flags, which means I will be awake until dawn, dragging funds from other accounts to cover my father’s blatant wage theft from whoever was supposed to be paid. 

I don't even know who the original contractor was. The invoice just said Project Viper. Given that a few of my cousins have been adding fancy-looking cars to their collections recently and a hitman who goes by the name Viper was taken out last week, it’s really a toss-up. It doesn't matter, though. What matters is that my father treats his vendors like garbage, and I am the one who has to clean his messes and cook the books so we don't all go to federal prison. 

Or die. 

Although both options sound like a cure for sleep deprivation… 

I take a sip of the bitter espresso. I am just about to type a new formula into a spreadsheet to see what money I can shift around when the monitors flicker.

A split second later, the screens die. The soft hum of the central air conditioning cuts out. The heavy, oppressive silence of a total blackout descends over the mansion.

I sit in the pitch black for a long moment, my hands still hovering over the keyboard.

"You have got to be kidding me," I mutter to the darkness.

I wait for the low, rumbling kick of the industrial backup generator. Ten seconds pass. Then thirty. Nothing happens.

I let out a long, slow sigh. I know exactly why the generator hasn’t kicked in. Two weeks ago, my father hired his cousin Paulie to service the electrical grid instead of a licensed union contractor, because Paulie owed him a favor. Paulie, a man who once accidentally set his own eyebrows on fire lighting a cigar, is not an electrician. 

But no, I was a stupid bitch when I spoke up and protested who didn’t understand how things were done.

I grab my phone, turn on the flashlight app, and stand up. My bare feet pad softly against the imported Turkish rugs. If I want to finish this ledger before the sun comes up and Isabella demands her dry cleaning, I have to go down to the basement and manually reset the breaker.

I walk out of the office and into the sprawling, cavernous hallway of the Romano compound. The beam of my phone flashlight sweeps over tacky Roman columns, gold-leaf trim, and a horrific oil painting of my father looking like a mobster from a 1980s movie.

It’s too quiet.

Usually, the compound is buzzing with a low-level frequency of bullshit going on despite my best efforts. There should be guards stationed at the front doors, usually watching sports on a tablet and arguing loudly about point spreads. There should be men patrolling the perimeter.

But as I walk past the grand staircase toward the kitchen where the nearest basement staircase is, the silence is eerie. 

I pause at the entrance to the kitchen. My flashlight beam hits the marble island. A half-eaten sandwich sits on a plate. Beside it, a spilled glass of water is slowly dripping off the edge of the counter, pooling onto the hardwood floor. Drip. Drip. Drip.

Oh, wait. No. That’s blood. 

And yup, there’s a body right there, slumped against the cabinets. I recognize it. One of our men. A nasty, brutish one, if I’m being honest. (All of them are.) He’s probably on the escalator to hell right now. 

My heart rate doesn't spike, and I feel no panic. Instead, an entirely different sensation washes over me… extreme irritation.

If a rival family has breached the compound, I am going to be so annoyed. I do not have the time to deal with a turf war tonight. I have a wedding shower to plan and offshore accounts to balance. If some low-level enforcer from the Lupertazzi family is here to send a message, I am going to personally tell them to come back during standard business hours.

I step further into the kitchen, aiming my phone light toward the basement door.

"Hello?" I call out, my voice flat, echoing slightly in the large, dark room. "If you’re one of Tony’s guys, and you broke the breaker box after getting in a fight over sports bets again, I am docking your pay. I am not playing games tonight."

A voice answers me from the shadows by the pantry.

“Hello.”

The voice is deep. Resonant. It sounds like gravel grinding against ice, laced with a thick, heavy Russian accent that instantly sends a shiver down my spine—though whether it’s from the fact that he just killed someone or how unfairly hot his forceful tone is, I couldn't say.

I swing my flashlight toward the sound.

The beam hits the center of a chest clad in matte-black tactical gear. I tilt the phone up, hand shaking.

He is pure muscle. Not the bloated, steroid-heavy muscle of my father’s enforcers, but lean, coiled, and predatory. He wears a black tactical harness over a long-sleeved black shirt, heavily armed with matte-black weaponry that looks far more sophisticated than anything my family’s goons carry. He has a combat knife strapped to his thigh and one suppressed pistol holstered at his hip. The second one is aimed right at me. 

But it’s his face that makes me freeze.

He has sharp, aristocratic features, carved from marble and frost. Dark hair longer at the top, shaved on the sides. High cheekbones, a strong jaw lightly dusted with dark stubble, and eyes so pale they look like chips of ice reflecting the flashlight’s beam. He doesn't look like a mobster. He looks like a fallen angel. A harbinger of death.

He is looking at me with a cold, terrifying intensity, waiting for the inevitable reaction. Probably expecting me to drop the phone, to scream, panic, maybe even jump to the end of the script and desperate plead for my life.

I study him. The tactical gear. The weapons. The absolute, lethal competence radiating off him in waves.

""You're a professional," I say, as calmly as possible.

He blinks, just once. 

"You're a professional," I repeat. "You took out the guards silently. You cut the power grid without triggering the failsafe. You aren't from the rival family we have beef with. You're a contractor. And a damn good one. What’s your name?"

Without taking his eyes or gun from me, he pulls a folded photograph from his vest. He looks quickly at the photo, looks back at me, and his eyes narrow with irritation.

"You are not Isabella," he states. His voice is a low, gravelly rasp, thick with a Russian accent and with annoyance. 

The butterflies in my stomach temporarily stall, replaced by a familiar, exhausting ache right in the center of my chest. 

"Sorry to disappoint," I say, crossing my arms over my oversized cashmere sweater, leaning back against the counter to hide the fact that my legs are now shaking, too. "The golden child is on the third floor. First door on the right, which you already know, given you’re planning to go up the back staircase. Though I should warn you, she sleeps on her stomach, so chloroforming her might be tricky at first."

Unless he plans to kill her? If so, I should probably alert some guards that haven’t been killed. As much as I hate her, I don’t actually want her dead. She’s my sister, after all. 

“I am Mikhail Volkov. I do not need such warnings.”

Mikhail Volkov. The name rattles around in my sleep-deprived brain until it clicks. 

"Volkov," I say, realization dawning on me. Oh, boy. Hs codename is Ghost. And clearly I’m learning why in a way I’d rather not. "Oh, you’re that hitman. You’re the five million dollars!"

This terrifying apex predator looks momentarily derailed. "Explain yourself."

"The five million dollars," I repeat, gesturing vaguely with my phone. He’s even scarier in the shadows, so I bring the beam right back to his too-gorgeous-to-be-safe face. "Project Viper. You took out the Viper, didn’t you? Let me guess. My dad didn’t pay you the second half upon job completion."

Mikhail stares at me. For a long moment, neither of us moves. The silence stretches between us, thick and bizarre. He is holding a suppressed firearm; I am holding an iPhone with a flashlight app and wearing an oversized cashmere sweater and fuzzy socks.

"Your father," Mikhail says, his voice a low, dangerous rumble that seems to vibrate in my chest, "stole half of the five million dollars from me. He thought he could outsmart me."

"He didn't try to outsmart you," I correct him, sighing deeply. "He’s just an idiot. I’ve been telling him for three years that we need a dedicated Accounts Payable department, but he insists on doing vendor payouts through his cousin’s garbage disposal LLC. Or the restaurants. Sometimes the car wash and laundromat chain in Jersey if we need cash. He just doesn’t want to spend the money to replace me with competent, compensated human beings. Honestly, his business ethics are garbage, too. I was literally on the second floor trying to find out what happened to your money when you cut the power."

Mikhail takes a slow, deliberate step toward me. He moves like a panther—completely silent, an economy of motion that is mesmerizing to watch. "It does not matter. The debt is owed. Isabella is the leverage. If he wants his daughter back, he will pay what I am owed. No matter how long it takes for him to get his affairs in order."

“You don’t want Isabella,” I tell him with full honesty. “She’s awful to be around, first of all. Secondly, she’s getting married soon and you’ll just piss off her fiancé’s family, although I feel like you probably already factored that in and don’t care. Also, my dad doesn’t have two and a half million liquid right now, so yeah, he’ll freak out, but…”

I bite my lip. Actually, this isn’t good. “Any chance I can convince you to sneak back out the way you came, and I promise to figure out how to get you your final payment by the end of next month?”

“Nyet.”

Well, it was worth a try. 

“What if…” I hesitate. “Can I transfer properties to you?”

“Cash or gold only. I came for Romano’s daughter or the payment, so if you cannot give me the latter, I will take the daughter.” But he doesn’t move towards the stairs. 

“Good luck,” I say, unsure if this will give me a blissful week of no wedding drama or if I’ll just have to twist myself into a pretzel anyway trying to get the money in order without getting everyone sent to jail. “But you have a better chance of getting paid if you fix the electricity and leave me to finish my work.”

He doesn’t move towards the stairs. “I will not be leaving empty-handed, but perhaps you are right that Isabella is not the path to getting my money.”

“Oh…” I should feel better about having talked him out of his flawed plan, but now I’ll have to listen to her melt down over this entire kidnapping attempt later. Maybe I can talk her into moving somewhere else more secure before the wedding. With her mother. “That’s actually great. So, uh, I’ll just head back to my…”

I start to step back towards the doorway I came from, and he steps forward like it’s a weird dance. He’s smiling now, and I wish he wouldn’t, because he’s even scarier with something amusing him. Cold and beautiful with so much darkness underneath. 

“Cash, gold, or the Romano daughter, remember?”

Wait.

My brain, sluggish from sleep deprivation and calorie restriction, suddenly catches up to his words.

If he wants his daughter back… Romano daughter… 

"You've now decided to kidnap me instead?” I ask in disbelief, stating the fact out loud to make sure I heard him correctly. 

"Yes," Mikhail says coldly. The gun is still aimed right at my chest, but I strongly suspect he won’t pull the trigger. At least, I hope not. I’m of no use to him dead. 

"And you’re willing to keep me captive for a whole week.” Hmm. Perhaps… 

“Da.” He now sounds impatient.

I have a crazy thought. 

A wild thought. 

A full week of absolutely zero responsibilities. A week of no passive-aggressive text messages from my stepmother about my carbohydrate intake. A week where Isabella cannot legally compel me to pick up her dry cleaning or her stupid coffees because I am actively being held hostage by a Russian hitman.

An overwhelming sense of elation blooms in my chest. It feels like Christmas morning, but better, because Christmas morning usually involves my stepmother criticizing my posture or my outfit after weeks of everyone using me to buy each other gifts while no one bothers to buy me anything.

“I consent.” I nod decisively. “Let’s do this.”

Mikhail’s icy eyes narrow. He evaluates me, clearly trying to figure out if I am in shock, clinically insane, or both, but decides he doesn't care. He steps further into my personal space, closing the distance between us with predatory speed.

"Wait," I say, holding up my hand and taking a quick step backward.

Mikhail freezes instantly. His eyes flash with irritation, and his weight shifts, his muscles cording as he prepares to tackle me to the floor if I bolt.

Instead, I slowly back up to the kitchen island. I put my phone down but grab my e-reader, which I had left next to the fruit bowl earlier this evening, and shove it deep into the pockets of my oversized sweater. I turn back towards Volkov. With the phone’s flashlight now pointing at the ceiling, the kitchen is thrown into eerie shadows again. 

“Okay," I say, tilting my chin up slightly and bracing myself. “No phone, no way to track me. The e-reader is totally safe, but I am not leaving without it. I’m ready. Are you going to use chloroform?"

"Nyet," Mikhail says after a moment, his deep voice wrapping around the word. "Chloroform induces violent nausea, severe headaches, and respiratory distress. It takes far too long to take effect. It is sloppy."

"Oh, good," I say, sagging with genuine relief. "I have a notoriously sensitive stomach. I can’t even have dairy anymore. Thank you for not using that method."

Mikhail stares at me like I am speaking a language he doesn't understand but finally holsters the gun. I thought this would be less threatening, but him having both hands free sends a thrill through me. Of fear, of course. 

"So, how are we doing this, then?” I ask, hearing my voice going high with nerves but unable to stop the words from spilling out of my mouth. "Because I should probably warn you, I am absolutely terrified of needles. Like, completely phobic. If you pull out a syringe to drug me, I am going to scream even if I promise not to, and you are going to have to tackle me into that blood puddle after all.”

Mikhail doesn't smile again, but I swear one corner of his mouth briefly hitches up so fast that if I’d blinked, I would have missed it. 

"There will be no needles, then," he says softly.

He steps in. The movement is so smooth and impossibly fast that my brain doesn't even have time to register the threat.

In a fraction of a second, he grips my shoulders and spins me around before yanking me against his tall, muscular body. My back hits the unyielding wall of his chest. Before I can even gasp, his arm wraps securely around my neck from behind. He doesn't crush my windpipe; the crook of his elbow aligns perfectly with the front of my throat, while the heavy, corded muscles of his bicep and forearm press firmly against the carotid arteries on either side of my neck. 

His other hand comes up to cup the back of my head, locking the hold in place. It is a flawless rear naked choke. It is painless, inescapable, and terrifyingly intimate. My hands instinctively grasp at his arms. They feel like iron underneath my fingers.

Who knew dealing with assassins could be so… sexy?

I need therapy. 

“Don’t panic, moya ptichka," Mikhail murmurs, his lips brushing ever so lightly against the shell of my ear as he gently begins to apply pressure to the sides of my neck. Was that deliberate? How touch starved am I? "It will be over in seconds. Have a good sleep."

His arm suddenly tightens around my neck, hard. My vision blurs. Panic flares for a brief, wild second and someone lets out a strange gasping sound, and then… 

Nothing. 

Q: What tropes and characters will readers find here?

A: Mafia romance, kidnapping, grumpy/sunshine

Q: What is the heat / spice level?

A: Spicy.

Q: Standalone or part of a series?

A: Currently just planned as a standalone. 

Q: Does it end on a cliffhanger, and is there a Happily Ever After (HEA)?

A: Yes, it features a guaranteed Happily Ever After (HEA) and no cliffhangers.

Q: Are there content warnings or sensitive themes?

A: Oh, yeah. While it's meant to be a fun read, it still as a lot of the elements you'd find in a dark (mafia) romance: torture, murder, family abuse, body shaming. More to be updated as the manuscript develops.