I Saved the Mafia Boss—Now I'm His Obsession. novel Chapter 1

Adriano

⫘☠︎︎⫘

The air stank of gasoline and gunpowder. Concrete dust clung to my tongue. Somewhere in the distance, a car alarm howled like a dying animal.

I ducked behind the hood of a burned-out Cadillac, reloading with blood-slick fingers. My breath came ragged, fire scraping up my ribs.

“Arturo?” I barked, twisting to look over my shoulder.

Nothing but a dying wheeze and then silence.

Fuck.

A shadow moved to my left. I popped out, squeezed the trigger... click.

Empty, it was fucking empty.

“You’ve gotta be fuckin kidding me.”

The last mag was dry. My knuckles were bleeding, my ribs were cracked. One eye was already swelling shut.

Across the alley, some masked asshole with a knife stepped forward, and I gave him a smile that tasted like blood.

“Hold this, stronzo,” I muttered and whipped the empty piece of metal straight at his face.

It hit him right in the eye and he let out a howl. And I did what any mobster would do in this situation if he wanted to survive—I ran.

I didn’t limp, didn’t crawl. I ran, my legs were buckling with every step because my body was wrecked. My shirt was torn open, sticky with blood. My shoulder was hanging by the grace of God or maybe just rage.

But adrenaline was still pumping, whispering in my ear, more like yelling... Move, motherfucker. Move.

I wasn't even supposed to be out here tonight. I just came to get a quick recon but nooo, I had to walk into an ambush like a dumbass.

There’d been some noise in this part of town and I came to sniff around, not step in a pile of shit.

Vince told me to bring more men. Said I’d need backup. I laughed in his face because I always thought overkill was for amateurs.

Now look at me, two dead soldiers, a Glock jamming in my hand, and some bastard car alarm wailing like it's mourning the whole scene.

So yeah, maybe next time I'll listen to the guy who triple-majored in war, murder, and paranoia.

Judging by the accent and designer boots of the men ordering around, he was definitely Italian. Probably that third-gen Napolitano knockoff crew trying to play big dog.

My boots pounded the pavement. Behind me, bullets chewed through the air. One hit my shoulder and burned like someone had poured lava into my veins. I didn’t stop. Pain is just noise for me. I’ve heard worse screams coming out of my basement.

I rounded the corner of a loading dock and came face to face with three of them. Black masks. Kevlar. Military stance. Not fucking amateurs.

“You boys lost?” I cracked my knuckles. “Wrong side of Chicago.”

One charged. I sidestepped, grabbed his arm, twisted till it cracked like a wishbone, and shoved his body in front of mine just as the bullets flew to use him as a meat shield. The other two hesitated just long enough for me to draw the knife from my boot and sink it into the second guy’s thigh, I pushed it deep and upward.

That was my last weapon. Funny. I never thought I’d live long enough to actually run out.

But then the third came in, his mask falling off as he slammed me against the steel wall. I headbutted him. He blinked and looked dazed for a second then smiled at me through bloodied teeth like a fucking lunatic. So I did it again harder this time. I felt his nose explode, bone slicing skin as blood sprayed across my face. He snarled, reeled back and drove a fist into my gut. I felt something tear and muffled a groan.

“C’mon, sweetheart,” I grunted, “Hit me like you mean it.”

He did. A left hook opened my eyebrow. Blood poured down into my eye. I stumbled and barely caught myself on the edge of a crate.

Arturo's body was crumpled ten feet away, his neck bent wrong. Dario was sprawled near the alley exit, his gun by his fingertips and his fingers were no longer moving.

Fuck, I'm gonna fucking die.

The masked man lunged forward, I caught his arm, and twisted it before slamming his face into my knee. I kept doing it until his mask cracked.

He tackled me into the ground. My head bounced off the concrete. A flash of white. Then red. I saw stars and then I saw my mother’s face briefly and thought, it's too early for that reunion.

He got on top of me, punching, and I jammed my thumb into his eye socket. He screamed and I threw him off. I scrambled to my knees, blood dripping from my mouth. My shoulder burned where the bullet wound sting.

I got up, slowly, wobbling, half-dead, half-mad.

He was crawling for his gun. I stomped on his hand and his bones snapped.

“Wrong city,” I whispered, kicking the piece away. “Wrong fucking guy.”

Then I drove the heel of my boot into his temple.

Five more.

I didn’t hear them at first but I felt them. Their boots slapped against the wet pavement, and I bolted across the alley.

My ribs were screaming at me, my shoulder throbbed and my legs barely worked but adrenaline’s a hell of a drug.

I took a hard right and launched myself up the back stairwell of some beat-up residential buildings. My vision was going dark but I climbed like the devil was nipping at my heels because he was.

Bullets sparked against the brick just as I hauled myself over the first landing.

“Fucking finally,” one of them growled below.

I kicked the third-floor window and the glass shattered around me, but I didn’t go in, I did it to distract them. I kept climbing.

I reached the stairwell door on the fifth floor, shouldered it open and staggered inside. I pulled myself through a hallway, it reeked of mold and decades of cigarette smoke.

Then I saw a door cracked open, Apartment 3C.

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