Kidnapped By The Italian Mafia

"We have a problem," I walked into the living room with my phone in my hands, screen still on and thumb hovering above the play button of a voice message sent to me by Marco previously. "And I don't know what to do about it."

Moira, Connor and most importantly my s.e.xy French butler Henri were standing suspiciously in the dining room, and I say suspiciously because they looked like I'd caught them in the middle of talking about me. I would have asked, but I didn't really care because my emergency was bigger than whatever conspiracy they had going on.

"What's happenin'?" Connor asked, coming to my side immediately to take a look at the screen of my phone. "What's that?"

"Okay so, for context, when we had that fight because you wanted to take me back to France and I left, I called Francesca." Moira's eyes widened at me, from anger, I could tell. "Don't say anything, I know what you're thinking. We can trust her."

"She's yer auntie, Kat." Connor blinked down at me like he was very disappointed. "Yer fathers sister."

"We can trust her," I insisted. "She got me information on Marco and his family that I could've never gotten myself."

"Way to go, Katarina, you basically spelled it out for her." Moira threw her hands in the air with an exaggerated grimace. If my friends stopped doubting me so much, they would learn to shut up and listen.

"Just let me finish, oh my god!" I rolled my eyes heavily. If they continued like this, I wouldn't tell them anything at all. "Desperate times call for desperate measures, so I called her and devised a plan to rescue Lina." The three of them looked at each other, puzzled. "Lina is an essential part of my role, without her in Sicily to assist me, my plan goes down the tank. Anyway, after I spoke to Francesca I had a missed call but I was in traffic at the time so I didn't pick up. I just heard the voicemail and look."

I pressed the play button on the screen and watched the audio cursor begin to navigate the content bar as Marco's voice filled the emptiness of our silence.

"Hello, this is Marco DiBiancci. I have received your number from an employee of your club and would like to speak with you further concerning a deal that I think you will find as beneficial to your job as I do. Please do get back to me, Ms. VanBurren."

Once the message was over, I turned off the phone and looked up into the faces of my friends, who were currently looking at me blankly. We all had the same sneaking suspicion, and I could tell by the looks on our faces.

"He knows." Moira was the first to crack.

"How would he know?" I asked, mentally revising all my ends. "I've been super careful."

"Not careful enough, it seems." Connor grumbled under his breath. I sighed in defeat and prepared to slump down on the couch just so I could wallow in my misery forever and say goodbye to my genius plan forever.

"I agree with my mistress here." The wallowing could wait. "There is no way he would know anything unless someone said something."

Pigs were flying, Henri agreed with me.

"Who?" Connor asked again. "Nobody other than us knows."

"Us and Francesca." Moira grumbled, causing me to glare at her discreetly. "What? I'm just saying."

"Francesca hasn't given me away." I was sure of it. "I think this is about something else."

"Something else like what?" Moira blinked up at me while she stuck a cube of cheese in her mouth. "It's not like you two have a lot to talk about."

"We don't." Suddenly I got hit with a wave of anxiety. Time was moving fast and we were moving slow. I didn't even have a complete pre-signup list of members for my gentlemen's club because I hadn't even sent out invitations. "Should I respond?"

"Yes." Henri agreed immediately, much to my surprise. He was the first one who I would've thought would disagree. "Respond and say that you will meet with him to discuss his offer."

"Are ye mad?" Connor bellowed, standing beside me all pprotective-like. "This man wants to kill her! Absolutely not."

"Connor," I placed a hand on his arm to stop him from swinging because he was one breath away from knocking my butler out. "He has more experience here than we do, let's just hear him out."

"I refuse." Connor shook his head, accent thickening considerably. "If ye want ta be stupid and risk yer life then that's on ye."

"I'm not risking my life. Now is my chance, more than ever, to get the plan into action! He can't hurt me here, he doesn't even know who I am. And he's vulnerable. Now is the time."

I tried to reason with him, but he wasn't having it. Connor was a stubborn bull when he got into his head and nobody could pull him out. He would come around eventually but it would take some time.

"Connor, before you make a judgement, hear my opinion." Henri tried with that calm and gentle reassuring voice of his. "He said it was a business proposal, or something like that. This could be beneficial to us."

"That's right." I said, even though I didn't know where he was going with this.

"Right now we have no power. You two have connections, but Kat—Isabella, has not been introduced to them. As far as he knows, and as far as we are concerned, there is no power play here, we are simply managing a club in Katarina's name. As a mob princess, obviously he's going to assume that the club is a front for money laundering."

Now I could see where he was going with this.

"You think he's going to offer—"

"To be our supplier?" Moira finished for me. "Why would he do that, though? Doesn't he think Salvador would give us everything we need?"

"Salvador isn't supposed to meddle in the club." I corrected her, increasingly becoming giddier with each word that was said between us. "Oh my God, when I was in the house, I let it slip that my club was supposed to be a coming of age present from me to myself. He didn't know what I was talking about at the time."

"But now he knows that you want to be independent." Henri concluded. "And seeing that Katarina is his rival, and you are impartial to the rivalry, he is going to try and convince you to cave."

Okay. Everything made sense so far. Marco was as predictable as I had originally thought he would be.

"But what use does he have sticking his business into our business?" Moira ran a hand through her recently dyed blonde hair. "It seems counterproductive to liberally walk into the enemy zone just because, what, he wants to sell us drugs?"

"He's trying to lure her out of hiding." Connor concluded intelligently, almost like he'd read my mind.

"He knows what he's doing. Risking his life with this business transaction, because if Salvador catches wind of this, he won't hesitate to barge in and kill him." But Marco must have known that it wouldn't happen somehow. "He's taking a huge gamble."

"If he succeeds in luring you out, then he'd have leverage over Salvador again. Katarina's life would be on the line, but this time Marco would have a huge foot in the door with the deal of him supplying the club with what it needs." Moira and I looked at each other.

"This is exactly why you need to take the offer. Meet with him and twist it to your advantage."