Costa Family Series by Jessica Gadziala

Costa Family Series by Jessica Gadziala – Read Books Online Free Ebooks good best novels to read http://www.ilovenovels.com Wed, 07 Jan 2026 10:40:53 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 http://www.ilovenovels.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/favicon.png Costa Family Series by Jessica Gadziala – Read Books Online Free Ebooks good best novels to read http://www.ilovenovels.com 32 32 The Woman in the Snow (Costa Family #12) Read Online Jessica Gadziala http://www.ilovenovels.com/the-woman-in-the-snow-costa-family-12-read-online-jessica-gadziala Wed, 07 Jan 2026 10:40:53 +0000 http://www.ilovenovels.com/the-woman-in-the-snow-costa-family-12-read-online-jessica-gadziala Genre: Alpha Male, Contemporary, Erotic, Mafia, Suspense Authors: Jessica Gadziala Series: Costa Family Series by Jessica Gadziala
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Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 75107 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)

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Christmas in the city. Blood in the snow. And a love he can’t outrun.

Stephanie lives for Christmas. Her nonprofit’s annual toy drive means thousands of kids wake up to gifts under the tree—and this year, she’s determined to make it the best yet. What she doesn’t know is that the convoy of trucks carrying those toys has a second cargo hidden inside… one that belongs to the mafia.

Venezio has one keep the shipments safe. He never expected it could go so wrong.

Now they’re racing through streets glittering with lights, hunted by an assassin and tangled in secrets. She won’t let the mob ruin Christmas for the kids. He won’t let anyone lay a hand on her. Somewhere between chaos and carols, Venezio and Steph give in to the feelings growing between them.

But the holiday is coming. And if they don’t outwit their pursuers before the bells toll, Christmas morning may bring nothing but blood.

** this book can be read as a standalone **

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

CHAPTER ONE

Venezio

Snow drifted down in fat, lazy flakes, softening the hard edges of the city. Nearly every window glowed with strings of lights; each lamppost was draped in pine garland and bows.

People were everywhere, ducking in and out of storefronts, arms heavy with shopping bags, or families rushing to see Santa or the tree in Times Square.

The world around me was drunk on Christmas cheer, but for me, it always kind of felt like sticking my face against the glass of a party I’d never been invited to. Decorations, cookies, the carols spilling out of doorways—they belonged to other people. That had never been the life I’d known.

I ducked my head down against the snow and kept walking, my boots crunching on the powder that had already started to accumulate.

Up ahead, Lorenzo Costa’s brownstone was decked out for the season—wreaths adorned every window, garland framed the front door, and a life-sized colorful nutcracker stood guard on the step beside the actual human guard in his thick puffer coat, his breath puffing out smoke in the cool night air.

I’d never got my ass personally summoned to the capo dei capi’s house before.

Figured I was about to be promoted or murdered. Either way, there didn’t seem to be a reason to put it off, so I rushed up the stairs, nodded to the guard, then moved inside.

The warm air slapped me in the face as I tried to knock some of the snow off my boots before making my way into the dining room where the boss always held his private meetings.

Christmas threw up all over the inside of his place, too. Thick garland strung with twinkle lights and red and gold ornaments framed each doorway, matching décor draped the fireplaces, a Christmas village filled the seating area of the bow window, and a giant tree sat in the living room, a train lazily chugging around the skirt.

Somewhere in the house, Bing Crosby was crooning about toys being in all the stores. Something sweet was in the air, but I had no idea if it was cookies baking or a candle burning.

“What are you looking for?” Lorenzo asked when I stepped into the doorway and looked down at the floor instead of at the collection of nutcrackers down the center of the table or the dozens of Christmas cards displayed on the sideboard.

“Tarp,” I admitted, rocking back on my heels.

“You thought I’d off you in my house? With my kids upstairs?” Lorenzo asked, shaking his head. “Besides, don’t do much of the dirty work myself anymore,” he admitted. “You gonna take off your coat and sit down, or…”

I turned around to go back into the foyer, shrugged off my jacket, and hung it in the closet before heading back in.

Lorenzo Costa was what the ’80s movies said gangsters were: tall, fit, good-looking, and perpetually wearing a fucking suit. Even in his own house on a random Monday night.

Then again, pretty much every member of the Costa Family dressed that way. I was the odd man out in my black jeans, tees, and Timbs.

“Coffee?” he asked when I dropped down into a chair.

“Rather figure out what the fuck I did wrong and be on my way.”

Lorenzo’s brow raised, but he said nothing as he sat down. “What makes you think you did something wrong?”

“This feels like being summoned to the fucking principal’s office in school.”

“Spent a lot of time there, huh?”

“Not as much as I spent in detention.”

“You’re not in trouble,” Lorenzo said. “Unless you’ve done something I don’t know about yet, you’ve been keeping your head down, earning, and kicking up like you should.”

“Pretty sure I’m not here to get a pat on the back.”

“No,” Lorenzo said, exhaling. “I have a job for you.”

“Me?”

While we all technically worked for Lorenzo, I usually only got orders from one of his capos—Cosimo.

“Yeah.”

“Why me?”

“Can I level with you?”

“Don’t gotta dance around shit with me.”

“Alright. In that case, I need you because everyone else is busy with Christmas shit. Family shit. And you—”

“Don’t got nobody,” I filled in when he hesitated.

“I wasn’t going to put it that way, but, yeah, essentially. Between holiday parties, shopping, wrapping, Christmas concerts at school, all that shit, everyone is swamped from now until Christmas.”

“I got time. What do you need?”

“The Family have been long-time donors to a local charity that provides presents to shelter kids and their families.”

Honestly, the charitableness of the mob was probably the most surprising thing to me when I’d been brought on to work with them. The cynical part of me wanted to think it was a tax write-off thing, but it seemed like everyone had a cause they took up for: the homeless, women’s shelters, animals.

“Something tells me that you ain’t just doing it out of the goodness of your heart.”

“Well, we were for years. Until someone got an idea that helped us move some product into the city without suspicion.”

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The Woman at the Funeral (Costa Family #11) Read Online Jessica Gadziala http://www.ilovenovels.com/the-woman-at-the-funeral-costa-family-11-read-online-jessica-gadziala Sat, 16 Aug 2025 22:26:04 +0000 http://www.ilovenovels.com/the-woman-at-the-funeral-costa-family-11-read-online-jessica-gadziala Genre: Alpha Male, Contemporary, Mafia Authors: Jessica Gadziala Series: Costa Family Series by Jessica Gadziala
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Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 75748 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)

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He swore he’d never touch her. Then her husband died.

Nico Costa has spent years burying the way he felt about his friend’s wife. He was there the day they married. He watched her build a life with a man who didn’t deserve her. And now that man is dead—gunned down in a hit no one is willing to talk about, let alone look into.

When Nico steps in to help Blair with a few loose ends, he doesn’t expect to keep getting pulled back in. Back into her life. Back into the feelings he thought he'd buried. Back into a mystery darker than either of them knew.

And as secrets about her late husband start to unravel, so do their carefully kept boundaries.

She’s grieving the man she thought she knew. 
He’s uncovering the plot that got him killed. 
And neither of them are ready for how far they’ll go to finally have each other.

* this book can be read as a standalone *

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

CHAPTER ONE

Nico

The dead don’t care about punctuality.

It was those left to miss him that had me running through the crowds of umbrellas on the street to race toward the church. Rain splattered my black suit and dripped down my unshaven face.

It had been a long three days since I’d gotten the news—straight from the five o’clock news. These days, news cycles work faster than common decency.

No one should find out that the friend they’ve had since they were five years old had been gunned down on the street from a slick-haired man with mock sympathy in his eyes and judgment held tight in the corners of his lips.

What was he doing out on the street at four in the morning?

What was he into that had people wanting him dead?

They were questions everyone was likely thinking, to be fair. Including the people sitting inside the church that frowned down on the city, ancient and judgmental of everything it had seen since the first massive sandstone brick was laid several hundred years before.

I glanced up, taking a deep breath, then forcing my legs to take me up the steps.

I’d been to plenty of funerals in my day. It came with the territory when you spend your life in a profession that all but guaranteed bloodshed.

That said, this was the first funeral I’d attended since my grandparents passed that belonged to someone I’d known almost all my life, someone who I cared for on more than just a surface level.

The heavy doors groaned open, like they, too, were heavy with grief.

The welcome sign had my step stuttering.

Celebrating the life of Matthew Ferraro.

I recognized the picture that had been used. It had been taken the day before his wedding, snapped by his younger brother just after announcing they were all heading to a strip club, despite Matt promising his fiancée that we were just going out for steak and drinks.

He was smiling big.

I remember I’d been the only one frowning about the whole situation.

I knew instantly that the photo had been chosen by Matt’s family, not his wife. She would have picked something more polished. Maybe one of their wedding snaps. Or, at least, a picture of him with his face shaved and his hair combed.

Though, I had to admit, it was probably the picture that represented the man best. Carefree, unguarded, maybe a bit mischievous.

I forced my gaze away, dipping my finger into the holy water at the entrance and made the sign of the cross like muscle memory before stepping toward the side.

Mary sat watch over the flickering votives in their red glass holders.

I lit one flame for Matthew.

And one for everyone left behind to miss him.

Turning back, I wiped lingering water from my face and looked down the center aisle, the old wooden pews pouring out toward each side.

This wasn’t a Family funeral—packed to the rafters with family, friends, and associates.

This was a small, intimate affair.

And I couldn’t help but notice that Matthew’s family—mother, father, brother, and two aunts—sat to the right.

Leaving Matt’s wife to sit alone on the left, where she’d likely arrived first and sat.

The rift between Matthew’s family and his wife had been there since the beginning—fostered and encouraged by Matt’s mom.

But it felt especially cruel, in their shared grief, to sit apart.

My gaze slid to the left, finding Matt’s widow sitting alone in the front pew.

Her head was ducked.

And I hated that I noticed how the light inside the church bounced off the colorful stained glass and danced on her dark strands—pulled tight into a low bun.

That was the kind of thing I had to work not to pay attention to when Matt was alive. And it was something I really needed not to notice now that he was dead.

Pining for your dead friend’s widow was fucking unhinged.

The ceremony still hadn’t started, so I made my way down the aisle toward Matt’s mom.

As soon as Ronny spotted me, her hands reached for mine, clutching a damp handkerchief between our skin.

Crouching down, I gave her hands a squeeze.

“I’m so sorry, Ronny,” I said, noting her swollen lids and red-stained cheeks. “He loved you so much.”

“He loved you too, Nico. His one true friend.”

“You know I’m here for you if you need anything.”

Her hands squeezed mine again before releasing me to cry quietly into her hands as I moved down the aisle, speaking to Matt’s father, brother, and aunts before making my way toward the side.

I meant to simply slip into a pew behind them.

I was closer to the Ferraro family than I was to Blair.

But I found myself making a big circle around the church, coming down the other side toward the front row.

Silently, I slid in next to Matt’s widow, being careful to leave several inches of space between us, knowing it was dangerous to touch her.

It was bad enough that I could smell that subtle chocolate scent that I knew came from her skin. “She rubs that chocolate lotion all over her. You can smell it best on her neck, behind her knees…”

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The Woman with the Wallet (Costa Family #10) Read Online Jessica Gadziala http://www.ilovenovels.com/the-woman-with-the-wallet-costa-family-10-read-online-jessica-gadziala Sun, 02 Feb 2025 19:14:30 +0000 http://www.ilovenovels.com/the-woman-with-the-wallet-costa-family-10-read-online-jessica-gadziala Genre: Alpha Male, Contemporary, Crime, Mafia, Suspense Authors: Jessica Gadziala Series: Costa Family Series by Jessica Gadziala
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Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 77344 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)

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Determined to rise up in the ranks of the Costa Family, Miko decided to pull of the heist of a lifetime. When he secures a fortune in stolen diamonds, he’s closer than ever to proving his worth in the organization. But those plans hit a snag when a quick-fingered thief lifts his wallet—and the diamonds within—right out of his pocket.

Max has spent most of her life surviving on the streets with her quick wits and even faster hands. When she swipes a wallet whose coin compartment is stuffed with enough diamonds to change her life, she thinks things have finally turned around.
Until she’s ambushed.

With the diamonds gone and a dangerous enemy closing in, Miko and Max have no choice but to team up to bring them back. But as the collateral damage starts piling up, the heat between Miko and Max is about to reach the breaking point, leaving them to wonder if they will survive this job with their lives—and hearts—intact.

* all books in this series can be read as standalones *

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

CHAPTER ONE

Max

I walked into the apartment, throwing my keys in the bowl, then tossing the wallet onto the kitchen table—a cheap folding card table with a torn padded top I’d found at the curb one day then had never thought to replace—where it landed with a thud, sending some markers flying and making my roommate let out a grumble.

“What’s this?” she asked, reaching for the wallet with her marker-stained hands, red, blue, and green streaks across her sun-kissed—despite the winter gloom—skin. “I didn’t think you were going to the financial district today.”

“I was in Manhattan,” I admitted, going for the coffee pot, knowing it was probably burnt since it had likely been sitting on the burner since I’d left the apartment hours before, but not caring.

“Then I don’t get it,” Megs said as she stroked the fine leather wallet.

We were a long way from my scrappy teen pickpocketing days, back when a stolen wallet would literally be the difference between eating that day or not.

Even then, I’d had my code of ethics. Mostly that I would take the cash if it was there. If there were only cards, I would just charge enough for a hot meal or essentials that we didn’t have—socks, warm gloves, feminine care products—then wipe the wallet down and toss it into a post box.

Sure, there’d even been some guilt then. But I’d been fifteen, living on the streets, and desperate.

It wasn’t until I came across this epic asshole of a rich dude on the street who’d literally kicked a sleeping homeless man because he was slightly in the way of a door he was trying to enter, that I got an interesting idea.

Stealing from the rich. Exclusively.

It was hard to feel bad about stealing a few hundred, or grand, from the wallet of some man wearing a ten-thousand-dollar watch.

“It’s like making them pay some of the taxes the government doesn’t,” Megs had said when I’d come back to her with the designer wallet a few hours later.

It had been a good score. Almost a thousand dollars. Enough to pay for a week or two of a cheap hotel room—plus the bribe to get someone to rent it for us, since we weren’t of age yet—so we could be out of the shelter for a bit. Some decent meals. Maybe even a decent fake ID, so I could get a better job than the part-time gigs I strung together for cash since I was technically too young to work anywhere full-time.

From then on, when I wasn’t working, I was down in the financial district, finding the most obnoxious finance bros and helping myself to the cash in their wallets.

Even when it was no longer strictly necessary for us to survive, I had to admit that I was a bit addicted to the high of it. Like adrenaline junkies who liked to drive too fast on empty roads. Or dive out of planes. Or lay money they didn’t need to lose on black five times in a row in a casino.

I sighed as I sipped my burnt coffee.

“Have you ever seen a guy so fucking hot that you just want to ruin his day?” I asked.

“What? No,” Megs said, letting out an airy laugh. “But I guess it is a bit like cute aggression. You know, when something is so cute you have this weird urge to squeeze it really hard?”

“Yeah, maybe it’s like that,” I agreed.

“I mean, this city is packed full of attractive guys, though. How hot was he?”

“Hot,” I grumbled.

“Like surfer hot? Cologne ad hot? What kind of hot are we talking about?”

“Like… straight out of some classic mob movie hot. Slicked-back dark hair. Gooey dark eyes. Chiseled jaw. Broody brow. Nice suit. Great cufflinks. That mysterious air about him.” I flipped open the wallet to show her the man’s license picture.

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The Woman in the Warehouse (Costa Family #9) Read Online Jessica Gadziala http://www.ilovenovels.com/the-woman-in-the-warehouse-costa-family-9-read-online-jessica-gadziala Mon, 23 Sep 2024 09:22:00 +0000 http://www.booksnovels.com/the-woman-in-the-warehouse-costa-family-9-read-online-jessica-gadziala Genre: Alpha Male, Contemporary, Mafia, Suspense Authors: Jessica Gadziala Series: Costa Family Series by Jessica Gadziala
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Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 77124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)

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Anthony Costa is no stranger to trouble. Known for his clumsy nature and knack for attracting disaster, Anthony finally gets his chance to prove himself when he is handed his first solo tailing a mysterious Czech crew suspected of potentially stirring up trouble for his Family. It’s a simple assignment—until it isn’t.

Saylor’s world just went up in flames. As a no-nonsense arms dealer, she’s furious when her latest cache of weapons is stolen right from her warehouse. She tracks down the culprits, only to find a mafia henchman parked outside their hideout. Desperate and out of time, she does the she carjacks him at gunpoint.

Their alliance is probably an accident waiting to happen. Forced to work together to reach a common goal, Anthony and Saylor soon realize the job is far more complicated—and dangerous—than either of them first imagined. In a world trust is a deadly gamble, they’ll have to navigate a maze of deception and betrayal, all while trying to keep each other alive.

In the end, clumsy or not, Anthony might be the only one Saylor can rely on—and the only man capable of stealing her heart.

** All the books in this series can be read as stand alone *

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

CHAPTER ONE

Anthony

“For fuck’s sake,” I growled. I’d whacked my toe against the leg of my bed as I stumbled out just a few hours after I’d crashed as the sun was streaking across the sky. “Damnit,” I hissed when I looked down and saw blood dripping across the wood floors. “What else?” I grumbled as I walked into the bathroom, trailing blood drops behind me.

I glanced at myself in the mirror, squinting at the butterfly strips that were holding the skin on my forehead together, wondering if I could rip them off, or if Salvatore would give me endless shit about it if it was too soon.

Sighing, I turned away and left them alone, turning on the shower, and sticking my foot under the spray until the water went from red to pink to, finally, clear.

I’d not only managed to slice the edge of the toe on the corner of my bed, I’d pushed the toenail up off the bed too.

I climbed in for a quick shower before hopping out and doing a hasty job of patching it up before making my way to the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee, and check my phone.

Four missed calls from Emilio.

“Where have you been?” my brother answered on the first ring.

“Sleeping,” I admitted. “I was out till dawn,” I told him as I poured some brownie batter coffee creamer into my coffee that, if anyone asked, I claimed I kept in the fridge for my sisters. It wasn’t even partially true. But it was better than dealing with the endless ragging the guys in the Family would give me if they found out I just liked it.

“Doing what?”

“Working,” I told him.

“Working for who?” he asked.

“Miko needed a hand,” I admitted, trying not to let bitterness slip into my words.

Miko worked for Cosimo. Who gave Miko a fuckton of responsibility. While my brother still insisted that I basically act as a doorman for the rest of the capos in the Family. Despite officially working for the Family since I was fucking eighteen-years-old.

“Did you clear it with Lorenzo?” Emilio asked.

“Why the fuck would I need to clear it with Lorenzo?” I asked. “The job was already cleared with him through Miko and Cosimo.”

“You’re in a good mood,” Emilio said as I heard Avery in the background, telling him to be nice.

“You’re the one giving me the third-degree first thing in the morning,” I reminded him.

As a whole, Emilio was a pretty laid-back guy.

Except when it came to me.

We rarely managed to talk about anything involving the Family without it devolving into some sort of argument.

On his part, he wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to reflect badly on him.

On mine, I wanted him to accept that I was a capable member of this organization who deserved more responsibility.

“Why were you calling?” I asked, walking back to the fridge to pull open the freezer, curious if I had any of the breakfast sandwiches my mother had made and left for me while I was working one day, ignoring the way my damn toe was throbbing with each step I took.

“Lorenzo wants to see you,” he said.

“I thought he had Nero sitting on his door ever since all that shit went down,” I said, thinking of how epic of a fuck-up that was, and how his punishment was to be forced to take over my usual job for a few weeks or months.

This so-called punishment was the reason Miko had reached out to me. I was sure he would prefer taking Nero, his younger brother, with him. In lieu of him, I was probably the only other member of the Family who was free on short notice.

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The Woman in the Woods (Costa Family #8) Read Online Jessica Gadziala http://www.ilovenovels.com/the-woman-in-the-woods-costa-family-8-read-online-jessica-gadziala Sat, 30 Mar 2024 18:33:57 +0000 http://www.booksnovels.com/the-woman-in-the-woods-costa-family-8-read-online-jessica-gadziala Genre: Alpha Male, Crime, Mafia, Suspense Authors: Jessica Gadziala Series: Costa Family Series by Jessica Gadziala
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Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 77205 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)

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There’s more than secrets hiding in the woods…

Silvano got the call in the middle of the night.
Another set of bodies he needed to pick up and get rid of.
As the mafia’s one-man crime scene clean-up crew, he was used to the long hours in the woods, digging graves for bodies that would never be found.
What he wasn’t used to was being caught doing it.
But this woman in the woods, she had her own demons she was running from, hiding away in a hunting cabin to stay safe.
Only, she wasn’t safe enough.
When Silvano comes back to investigate the mysterious woman, he finds her brutally beaten at the edge of the woods.
Instincts he didn’t know he possessed kicked in, telling him to pick her up, to take her back to the city with him, to protect her, and to figure out what kind of trouble she’d gotten herself into…

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

CHAPTER ONE

Silvano

Someone was dead.

That was the only explanation for a call on my burner in the middle of the night.

On a sigh, I rolled up to a seated position, reaching for it, and bringing it up to my ear.

“Yeah?”

“Always the fucking charmer, eh?” a voice said as I rubbed my dry, tired eyes.

“You’re the one waking me up. Who is this?” I asked, not recognizing his voice with my brain not fully working yet.

“Miko,” he said, making me straighten.

Miko was my step-brother’s right-hand man.

“Cosimo in some shit?” I asked.

“What? No. Home with his woman, last I heard. This is… on me,” he said.

Something in his words rang false, but I honestly didn’t give a fuck. It didn’t matter. The only thing that I needed to know was where the body was, and how bad of a crime scene I needed to clean up.

“Where am I heading?” I asked, waiting for Miko to rattle off an address, then climbing out of bed. “Be there in half an hour. Don’t fucking touch anything. Anything,” I emphasized.

You’d think lifelong criminals like fucks in the mafia would know to keep their mitts off of things. But I couldn’t tell you how many times I found out that while waiting for me to show up, they’d taken a leak. In the process, touching the lid, seat, handle, faucet, and doorknob in the process, thinking nothing of it.

I was hoping Miko would be smarter than the usual, since my brother had pretty exacting tastes on who worked for him.

But you never fucking knew.

I threw on some clothes, and made sure to leave both my phones right on my nightstand where they belonged before grabbing my keys, and making my way out of the apartment.

It was annoying as fuck to have a car in the city, but given the nature of my job, I always had one at the ready. One I could easily get cleaned, scrapped, and rid of after each job.

This meant it was an ancient black sedan with over a hundred and fifty k on the odometer, a radio that only got shitty AM stations, and wheel alignment that made me have to constantly remember to overcorrect on turns just to keep the fucking thing straight.

But this would be the last time I would need to use it, so I was choosing not to harp on it as I drove a few blocks down, dropping into the cube storage facility where I rented a unit under one of the aliases the Family had drafted up for me, and opening the bright green garage-style door.

Inside was an immaculate space from the shining cement to the ribbed metal walls. It stayed that way because in between every single job, I was in there with a bottle of bleach, scrubbing down every fucking inch of it.

Overkill?

Probably.

But the fact of the matter was, if I wasn’t careful, my DNA could be traced back to dozens of bodies. Not because I’d killed any of ‘em, but because I’d hidden them in some way or another.

When you were the most powerful crime family in the country’s quicker-picker-upper, you made sure you did everything right.

Inside the unit, there were three gray plastic tubs. The kind you found stacked to the fucking ceiling after the holidays when everyone was looking for ways to store the yards and yards of Christmas decor they’d picked up while browsing around the stores, despite already having stacks of identical gray tubs in their attics and basements already.

Inside the first tub were the cleaning agents. Shit I would need to clean up blood and other bodily fluids.

The second one, smaller and lighter, held several suits. Hazmat-style, for me. Actual suits for others, since I made everyone involved in a crime strip down to nothing at the scene, changing into the often too big replacement suits, and leaving me their clothes to dispose of.

No mistakes.

No traces.

Attention to detail was the name of the game.

Then there was the third gray tub.

Longer.

Bigger.

But the lightest of them all.

Because there was nothing inside.

Not yet.

Eventually, there would be a body, stuffed inside of a cadaver bag, then shoved into the tub.

You see, people thought nothing of you moving a plastic tub around. Shit like a body bag or rolled up rugs, though, yeah, they got you some sideways looks.

And in this modern age of every fucking person on the planet having security cameras, you had to not look suspicious.

Plus, experience told me that dragging a smooth plastic container stuffed with a body was a fuckuva lot easier than trying to keep your grip on a slippery body bag.

Once all that was loaded in the backseat and trunk, I was making my way toward the scene, sure to keep a baseball cap pulled low enough to obscure my features, even though it was the middle of the night.

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The Woman on the Jury (Costa Family #7) Read Online Jessica Gadziala http://www.ilovenovels.com/the-woman-on-the-jury-costa-family-7-read-online-jessica-gadziala Thu, 07 Dec 2023 05:55:22 +0000 http://www.booksnovels.com/the-woman-on-the-jury-costa-family-7-read-online-jessica-gadziala Genre: Alpha Male, Contemporary, Dark, Mafia Authors: Jessica Gadziala Series: Costa Family Series by Jessica Gadziala
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Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 77579 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)

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The last thing in the world she needed was to be stuck on a murder trial for some mafia capo. All she wanted to do was hear the facts and get this all over with, so she could get back to rebuilding her family’s crumbling antique business.

Until she puts some pieces together that has her not only thinking that Cosimo Costa had done something for the greater good, but that she couldn’t let him go to jail for it.

She had no regrets about deadlocking the jury until someone involved with the trial started to come after her.

And the only person she had to turn to for help was the man she’d saved from life behind bars…* Each book in this series can be read as a standalone *

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

CHAPTER ONE

Halle

I didn’t have time for this.

Though, as I sat in a seat in the jury box with eleven other people with equally disgruntled faces, I guess we all felt that way.

We didn’t have time for this.

We all had work and families and pets and lives to get back to. No one sitting here could afford to be forced into this box, day in and day out, for weeks, possibly months, all to get paid, what, pennies a day?

Get freaking real.

Besides, after having to sit through the damn questioning process with all these people, I had decided that the general populace was entirely too stupid to be trusted to make judgments on crimes that would result in people going to prison for years, or the rest of their life.

When one of the attorneys asked an unexpectedly unusual question during voir dire—Who, living or dead, would you like to have dinner with?—the guy who was currently sitting several seats down from me had answered—with a straight face—John McClane. And he was accepted. Despite the fact that John McClane was neither living nor dead since he was a fictional character who did not exist at all.

This was a job meant for law students.

Or people who had common sense at least.

I remember reading once that lawyers and prosecutors alike didn’t like jurors who are too educated. They almost always preferred those without college degrees. And especially those who didn’t have advanced degrees.

I guess they figured that lesser-educated people were easier to sway toward their side.

They didn’t count on people like me.

Chronic students.

Forever changing their major, never actually graduating, instead ferreting away deep knowledge about a dozen or more subjects.

When they asked what I did for a living, I had to give them the technical truth.

I worked at an antique store owned by my grandfather.

They didn’t care that I’d majored in fine arts, English, history, and, finally, business.

I’d settled on business and likely would have finished that degree with the sole purpose of keeping my family business in the family. A job that was supposed to go to my ne’er-do-well older brother. Who, last time I’d checked in, was buried under some rich lady’s skirt in Colorado, enjoying that she was a partial owner of a ski lodge, so he got to spend his long, responsibility-free days on the slopes. For free.

I refused to let the family’s legacy, as crumbling as it might be, fall away. We had three generations in the antiques business. But my grandparents only had one child. And my mother only had two.

So this fell on me.

I couldn’t afford to be away from the store for a day, let alone the length of a murder trial.

But here I was.

Here we all were.

Just thanking our lucky stars that we hadn’t been sequestered.

I’d actually been surprised by that decision. I didn’t know a lot about the mafia, but I knew that during other high-profile mafia cases, there had been bribes and threats to the jury, prompting them to do a fully anonymous and sequestered jury.

That said, that was in the past. Back when the mafia was big news, big business. While I was sure the mafia was still alive and well, I didn’t believe that they were as powerful as they used to be.

Clearly, the judge agreed.

Or he simply knew that by locking all of us in a hotel together, unable to talk to anyone but each other, and eating from the same five restaurants in an infinite rotation, we were going to get antsy and angry, and rush through a verdict just to get back to our lives.

I mean, I wasn’t exactly planning on dragging out my decision even without being sequestered, but at least I could go home each day. I could check on my grandfather. I could visit the store to make sure things weren’t falling apart.

It would just be a couple months, I reminded myself.

The store had been failing for years. A few weeks wouldn’t be what brought it down. I’d already been working on fixing things. Those patches would hold it over. Then I could fully commit to it, never having to think about jury duty for a long while.

So I sat back in the ridiculously uncomfortable jury box chairs and watched the prosecution and defense team flounce around the courtroom voices raised, over-enunciating each word.

Unfortunately, for both sides, the news had hit and circulated too quickly for them to get a jury that hadn’t heard about what had happened before the trial. And because I was who I was, and because I’d been desperate for a break from the relentless cataloging of what was inside of the cramped, dusty, stuffy antique store, I’d been quick to hop on news and socials, looking into the case.

Murders were common in the city, regardless of how much the crime rate had dropped in the past few decades.

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >80

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The Woman with the Secret (Costa Family #6) Read Online Jessica Gadziala http://www.ilovenovels.com/the-woman-with-the-secret-costa-family-6-read-online-jessica-gadziala Thu, 20 Jul 2023 19:20:06 +0000 http://www.booksnovels.com/the-woman-with-the-secret-costa-family-6-read-online-jessica-gadziala Genre: Alpha Male, Contemporary, Mafia, Suspense Authors: Jessica Gadziala Series: Costa Family Series by Jessica Gadziala
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Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 73732 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 369(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >77

Emilio needed a house manager. Or so his mother thought, setting up appointments with women she’d vetted for the task. All of whom were polished and professional.
Except for the woman who came literally tripping into his life, spilling her coffee over her paperwork, and cussing like a sailor.
Avery was everything a house manager shouldn’t be. Inexperienced, clumsy, and way, way too tempting.
But she was a flicker of light in his increasingly dark world, a spark he couldn’t help but be drawn to.
The problem was, Avery was harboring a dangerous secret. One that threatened to tear them apart just as they started to get close…

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

CHAPTER ONE

Emilio

“Are you opening up a brothel?” a voice asked, making me look up from my phone to see my cousin, Silvano, standing there, his dark blue eyes scanning the place.

“What?” I asked, half distracted by the text I’d just gotten, wondering if it was something I needed to worry about or not.

“Living room,” he said, gesturing out toward the front of the Brownstone. “Full of women. All of ‘em pretty.”

“Seriously?” I asked, attention finally fully on him.

Silvano was the Family’s, well, let’s call him a ‘crime scene cleaner,’ since he was skilled in making bodies and all their trace evidence disappear.

He was tall and on the thin side with olive skin, dark blue eyes, black hair, and rugged bone structure. He had a voice that was so rough I’d once heard someone claim that listening to him made them feel like they’d been run over with a cheese grater.

Silvano was a cousin through marriage, but had been raised almost his whole life in the Family.

“Yeah. What? You didn’t invite them here?” he asked, brows lifting.

“No. But I’m assuming my mother did,” I said, exhaling hard. “She mentioned thinking I need a housekeeper now that I bought the Brownstone. I didn’t think she’d set up a meeting without my permission.”

“No? ‘Cause that sounds exactly like your ma,” Silvano said. And he wasn’t wrong.

“Your mother still trying to set you up?” I asked, wondering if I was the only one. My sisters had found their people. Which only left me and my kid brother who was, probably, a little too young for my mother to insist he settle down yet.

“Still?” he asked, shaking his head. “My ma always knew that it wasn’t worth the effort. Marriage? Me? Never gonna fuckin’ happen.”

I went ahead and didn’t mention that I’d heard that same thing from several of our cousins who were currently shacked up and popping out babies like crazy.

“I have to get to Lorenzo’s,” I said, meaning our Capo dei Capi, the boss of all bosses. “I don’t have time for this shit today.” Not after that weird as fuck text I’d gotten from another member of our Family. “You’re here for…” I said, trying to remember setting up the meeting with Silvano, but I was drawing a blank.

“The Baker job,” he said, jogging my memory. The envelope of cash the Family owed him for cleaning up another of our messes.

“Right,” I agreed, turning to dig in the desk for it.

The house was a disaster. But I at least knew where the cash was.

“Alright. This is it,” I said, passing it to him. “Hopefully you get a break for a while.”

“In this Family?” he asked, shaking his head as he slipped the envelope into his pocket. “Anything else going on I need to know about?”

“No, well, actually… do you know what’s going on with your brother?” I asked, thinking of the text I’d gotten.

“Step-brother,” Silvano clarified, and I barely managed to stifle a sigh.

Silvano’s mom had married into the Family when Silvano was maybe five or six. His step-brother, Cosimo, had been all of two years older. But I don’t remember a single time I’d been around them growing up that they weren’t fighting like cats and dogs. And, being already sensitive to the lack of blood relation, Silvano had always assumed that had something to do with it. Clearly, some of that bitterness was still there.

“Whatever,” I said. “Do you know what’s up with him? Got a weird text today.”

“Haven’t talked to him in weeks,” Silvano said, shrugging.

I wasn’t entirely sure how that was possible. I could barely go a day without talking to my brother. It was part of being in the Family, sure, but also just a family.

“Don’t you see him at dinner and shit?”

“We just happen to miss each other at those,” he said, likely meaning he skipped the ones Cosimo was going to attend. Or that he showed up after his brother had departed. “Gotta talk to him about it yourself. I’m no help,” he said, then gave me a small wave, turned, and walked out of the office.

Alone, I reached for my phone, dialing up my mother, figuring it was better to get it over with now, than wait until after I walked out there and saw all of my marriage prospects.

Because, Lord knew, she wasn’t setting up meetings with a bunch of pretty housekeepers to help me put my life in order.

“Hey, sweetie,” she greeted, all high-pitched faux innocence.

“Mom, I didn’t have time for this today,” I told her.

“Well, sweetheart, to be fair, you never have time for anything any day,” she said.

That was fair.

Since my cousin, and best friend, became the Capo dei Capi, I’d been bumped up to a higher position in the Family too. Lorenzo’s right-hand kind of shit, despite both of us knowing being a workaholic didn’t exactly suit my personality. Or… it hadn’t. Back in the day. Before all that shit went down that changed everything. Now I was glad for the distraction from my own thoughts and moods.

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >77

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The Woman with the Flowers (Costa Family #5) Read Online Jessica Gadziala http://www.ilovenovels.com/the-woman-with-the-flowers-costa-family-5-read-online-jessica-gadziala Fri, 24 Mar 2023 15:26:28 +0000 http://www.booksnovels.com/the-woman-with-the-flowers-costa-family-5-read-online-jessica-gadziala Genre: Alpha Male, Contemporary, Mafia, Romance, Suspense Authors: Jessica Gadziala Series: Costa Family Series by Jessica Gadziala
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Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76456 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >79

Cesare Costa never thought he’d have to drag himself back up to Maine, but when there seems to be an issue with the money coming in from the ports there, he has no choice but to drive up and see what is going on. Only to find himself face-to-face with a sweet florist who has no idea the mafia is moving illegal items through her shop.
Mere was happy with her life. With her roommate, her home, and even more so… her job. Until she finds out something that puts not only herself, but her loved ones in danger. The last thing she needed was to find herself drawn to the attractive, tattooed stranger who threatened to disrupt that perfect life she’d curated for herself…

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

CHAPTER ONE

Cesare

It didn’t matter how long I’d been back in the city, I still couldn’t seem to get used to the casual informality of walking into the capo-dei-capi’s brownstone without knocking.

“Hey Ant,” I greeted, nodding my head to one of my younger cousins who was standing on the front stoop, a white bandage wrapped around his hand. “The fuck happened now?” I asked, nodding toward it.

I’d never met someone as prone to getting injured as Anthony Costa. It was almost a running fucking joke in the Family at this point.

Except it wasn’t funny when the man had nearly been disemboweled, shot, and in a serious car accident.

To that, Ant raised his hand, snorting at his palm and shaking his head. “Nothing exciting this time. Burned my hand on my coffee.”

“Gotta be more careful or Lorenzo is gonna have you rolled up in fucking bubble wrap,” I told him. “He in?” I asked, nodding toward the door.

“Yep. He’s waiting for you.”

I suspected as much since my old man told me he was looking for me. Then gave me a lecture about not having my phone charged at all times.

He’d chosen retirement a while back, before, even, the shift when Lorenzo took his father’s place as boss of all bosses. That didn’t mean, however, that he wasn’t full of advice. Both asked for and otherwise.

“You coming in?” I asked, reaching for the door.

“Nah. I’m waiting for Brio. He’s the bagman this week. But…” he said, waving a hand out.

“Lorenzo wants him to have a babysitter so he doesn’t end up doing snow angels in someone’s blood,” I finished for him.

Every Family had to have their resident psychopath.

Brio was ours.

“Yep,” Ant agreed, giving a nod goodbye as I moved inside.

I wouldn’t mind a brownstone eventually. Someplace with some room to spread out, maybe a little yard out back for some kids to play in, a nice kitchen to have home-cooked meals in.

I felt like I was playing catch-up trying to get back into the Family business since coming back from Maine where I’d been handling shit for years. So, yeah, I was a ways off from having the kind of money I’d need to drop on something that could easily cost anywhere from two to twenty million.

“There you are. Your old man called to say you were on your way,” Emilio said as I walked into the dining room, finding him shuffling through some paperwork for, I imagined, one of the legitimate businesses.

Emilio wasn’t the same man he’d been back before I needed to hide my ass out in Maine after fucking the wife of a Lombardi Family capo.

Stupid?

Yeah.

Reckless?

Absolutely.

But, hey, it was a story to tell to the young bloods in twenty or thirty years when I was one of the old-timers.

Back before I’d left, Emilio had been a kind of light, carefree guy. Content to be the second-in-command to Lorenzo because he simply didn’t want that kind of serious responsibility in his life.

Now, though, there was some kind of darkness in him, some void that he didn’t seem to even try to fill anymore.

The only real thing that reminded me of the old Emilio was the bold belt buckle he had on—a silver cassette tape with Sinatra’s Greatest Hits written on it.

“Yeah, I got myself a lecture about having my phone charged,” I said, waving it with its power bank attached and plugged in.

“They wouldn’t be old-timers if they didn’t give us shit and tell us what they think we should be doing, right?” he asked, shuffling his papers into a stack.

“Right,” I agreed. “Hey, Enz,” I said as Lorenzo Costa himself came walking in.

It was a strange thing to go away and come back to the kid you used to sneak liquor and cigars suddenly running New York City’s biggest crime organization.

“Cesare,” he said, clamping me on the shoulder as he passed. “Your old man lecture you?” he asked, shooting me a knowing smile.

“He would never miss the chance to do something like that,” I said, but my tone was light. My old man might be a pain in the ass sometimes, but he was a good man who only had my best interest at heart. Even if the fucker clearly needed to pick up a hobby so he could mind his own business for a change. Sculpture. Coin collecting. Fucking bird watching. Something. “Is everything alright?” I asked, not accustomed to being tracked down and called in.

To that, Lorenzo sighed a bit as he sat down, rolling his neck.

“Maybe? Maybe not. Hard to say.”

“Okay. What’s up?”

“Maine,” he said, giving me a nod and a look I immediately understood.

It was a look that said he was shipping my ass back north.

“What’s wrong with Maine?” I asked, realizing it had been months since I’d really even given the place a second thought. I’d been too focused on my future to reminisce about my past. Besides, the Maine operation was small-time. It didn’t really even require much oversight.

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >79

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The Woman on the Exam Table (Costa Family #4) Read Online Jessica Gadziala http://www.ilovenovels.com/the-woman-on-the-exam-table-costa-family-4-read-online-jessica-gadziala Sat, 01 Oct 2022 08:38:50 +0000 http://www.booksnovels.com/the-woman-on-the-exam-table-costa-family-4-read-online-jessica-gadziala Genre: Alpha Male, Crime, Mafia, Romance Authors: Jessica Gadziala Series: Costa Family Series by Jessica Gadziala
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Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 75337 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >78

He was not the kind of man meant to fall in love.
He was the proud enforcer of the Costa Family who perhaps enjoyed the violent, bloody parts of his job a bit too much.

All that changed, though, when he was put on a job that had him crossing paths with a woman who changed everything.

She was not the kind of woman to have hope.
The life she found herself trapped in had very little to look forward to.
Until a dark figure turned up and showed her a way out.

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

"This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental."

CHAPTER ONE

Whitney

“Move your ass, new girl,” my boss snapped at me as he moved between me and the back counter, grinding his whole front situation against my whole… back situation.

Biting my tongue was an art I was, luckily, practiced in, thanks to decades in the workforce, dealing with various superiors who took their title to heart and believed themselves very much above everyone in their employ.

I hated this job.

Every single minuscule aspect of it.

From the obnoxious “retro” dress in a bright blue color with a white collar, buttons, and matching apron to the way the scent of grease almost seemed permanently embedded in my pores, to the often impatient and rude customers, and the crummy pay.

But there was nothing I hated quite as much as I hated my boss.

Tommy Dolin was all of five years my senior, but his years hadn’t treated him quite as kindly. On my more bitter days—which were happening more and more frequently lately—I would claim that his outside had just slowly but surely caught up with the ugliness inside.

Tommy was five-four with an extremely round head and face, wacky brows that shot off in all directions, small dark brown eyes, and a head that was eighty-percent bald. He refused to accept the latter fact and shave it off completely or invest in some hair regrowth solution, choosing instead to actually comb over little strands from one side of his head to the other like it would hide the baldness beneath.

I mean, who actually had a comb-over these days?

Tommy, that’s who.

He had a love of camp shirts that didn’t fit, making the buttons pull across his belly, and slacks that he wore way too low down. Meaning you never wanted to look in his direction if he just so happened to bend over.

In my experience, a lot of the world’s ugliest souls had some of its most beautiful faces. It was sort of refreshing to have a case like Tommy. Where it was all-around bad.

I would never have stayed working for him if it wasn’t necessary. But it was. And I didn’t have time to waste trying to find another job.

It was only temporary anyway.

Or, at least, I hoped it was.

Who knew.

Life was just a bit… overwhelming lately.

Especially financially.

So there was a good chance I might be dealing with Tommy for a while. Which was why I bit my tongue and slid away to grab the pot of coffee I’d just brewed for an extremely particular regular of mine who insisted he get a new pot each time he came in, so I’d gotten it going when I saw him walking in the door.

The other girls claimed that since he didn’t tip well, I should just tell him to eff off, that I didn’t need any extra work. But, I don’t know, he sort of reminded me of my grumpy old Great Uncle Robert, so I had a strange fondness for his curmudgeonly self.

“New girl, eh?” Danny, my regular, said with a quirked brow as I made my way to his table. “That’s stretching that word, don’t you think?”

“Hey, look who’s talking, old man,” I said, getting a chuckle out of him as I poured him a cup of coffee.

“Gonna miss that smart mouth when you go back to teaching,” he said, genuinely looking upset about the prospect.

“Well, Danny, you might be in luck. The way things are looking, I might be pulling two jobs for a while,” I told him.

“It’s a shame you don’t got yourself a man to ease that burden,” he said, as he often did. A retired widower who worked his fingers to the bone so his wife could live a nice, comfortable life, he was forever going on about my singleness. “Don’t get why you don’t. You’re sure pretty enough.”

I couldn’t help it. My gaze slid up the large picture window, looking at my obscured reflection.

It was the same one that greeted me in the mirror every day as I slipped into the ugly blue dress and apron. Except, maybe, my hair had gotten a bit messy from the hours on my feet, running around.

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >78

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The Woman with the Scar (Costa Family #4) Read Online Jessica Gadziala http://www.ilovenovels.com/the-woman-with-the-scar-costa-family-4-read-online-jessica-gadziala Tue, 05 Apr 2022 18:42:15 +0000 http://www.booksnovels.com/the-woman-with-the-scar-costa-family-4-read-online-jessica-gadziala Genre: Alpha Male, Contemporary, Insta-Love, Mafia, Romance Authors: Jessica Gadziala Series: Costa Family Series by Jessica Gadziala
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Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 78491 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >81

Read Online Books/Novels:	The Woman with the Scar (Costa Family #4)
Author/Writer of Book/Novel:	Jessica Gadziala
Language:	English
Book Information:
He was not the kind of man meant to fall in love. He was the proud enforcer of the Costa Family who perhaps enjoyed the violent, bloody parts of his job a bit too much. All that changed, though, when he was put on a job that had him crossing paths with a woman who changed everything. She was not the kind of woman to have hope. The life she found herself trapped in had very little to look forward to. Until a dark figure turned up and showed her a way out.
Books in Series:	Costa Family Series by Jessica Gadziala
Books by Author:	Jessica Gadziala

CHAPTER ONE

Brio

“You sure you want to put that rabid dog on this job? Emilio asked the boss man as I made my way silently down the center hall toward where they were in the kitchen of the brownstone.

It was no secret that I had a certain reputation. And that I wasn’t always the guy that got sent on jobs unless they included a fuckton of bloodshed and pain.

I was okay with that.

I wasn’t offended that Emilio knew that about me.

“Who else am I going to send? You?” Lorenzo, our capo dei capi, asked.

There was silence at that, making me wonder what kind of job there was that Emilio didn’t want to do. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen him turn down a job before. He was Lorenzo’s right-hand-man and had been since we were all kids.

True, Emilio didn’t always like to do the gory shit. But he wouldn’t question Lorenzo calling me in if this was that sort of job.

I was the resident gory shit handler.

“Hey boss man,” I said, moving into the opening to the kitchen, finding Lorenzo sitting at the table in his dark gray suit, as usual.

Emilio was a few feet away, leaning against the counter in his suit pants and button-down, and a rooster belt buckle with the word “Cocky” under it.

“What’s up, man?” I asked, inclining my head to him.

“Do I want to know where those bruises on your knuckles came from?” Emilio asked, shaking his head at me.

“Prolly not,” I said, shrugging, having forgotten all about them.

“Then I won’t ask,” he said, looking over at Lorenzo. “Lorenzo has a job to discuss with you.”

“Figured as much. What’s going on, boss man?” I asked, going toward the stove where Lorenzo’s woman, Gigi, had left out homemade chocolate chip cookies.

“We need some intel on someone we think might be fucking us over,” Lorenzo told me.

And it was no wonder Emilio was confused about him calling me in on it.

I wasn’t someone who did surveillance work.

I was the guy you called in when you wanted the walls painted a nice, bright new shade of Arterial Spray Red.

“Surveil who?” I asked, making my way back to the table, pulling out a chair, and dropping on it backward, resting my arms on the top of it.

“Eren Polat,” Lorenzo said, and I instantly understood Emilio’s disinterest in the job.

Eren Polat was the head of a Turkish crime family that Lorenzo’s old man had made a deal with fucking ages ago.

But that relation was passed onto Lorenzo with his father’s death.

Whether he liked it or not.

Fucking politics.

That was one of the many reasons I was glad I was not in charge of the whole family. Shit was too tangled, too confusing. And you had to be diplomatic about shit you didn’t like.

Give me a baseball bat and some bones that need breaking any day over that shit.

“What’s he doing wrong now?” I asked, knowing that Eren had been nothing but a headache since Lorenzo took over. “He not kicking up the right tribute?” I asked.

Because that shit was right up my alley.

That was why I was the one Lorenzo sent out to collect from all the local businesses who owed us.

I specialized in… motivating people to pay their tribute to the Family.

“We have no proof of that,” Lorenzo said, holding up a hand in a ‘down, boy’ gesture that made my lips twitch.

“But we do think that shit isn’t adding up,” Emilio added. “They’ve opened three chains of their restaurant in the past ten months. The way they are paying us doesn’t add up with how much money that must be costing them.”

“So you want me to, what? Just follow and watch to see money changing hands?”

That could take weeks or months to give them enough evidence to make a move against the bastard.

“That’s part of it, yeah,” Lorenzo agreed, nodding. “But we also want more intel about their business. Seems like it isn’t just the dozen or so men he claimed he has working for him. We need proof of that shit if we are going to move against him. And we just need to know their true numbers so we know what we might be getting into,” he added.

“Aight,” I said, nodding.

“That’s it? No questions?” Emilio asked.

“Yeah, I got one. Why the fuck me?” I asked, snorting. “This isn’t my usual job.”

“No,” Lorenzo agreed. “I would send Christopher or Anthony,” he said, naming two lower men in the organization, “but I have them on other jobs at the moment. And Emilio…” he said, waving a hand toward the man in question.

“Doesn’t want to do it,” Emilio admitted.

Once upon a time, Emilio and I would have been on equal footing, would have been forced to do whatever shit jobs anyone wanted to toss at us.

But that changed when Lorenzo became the boss.

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Read Online Books/Novels:

The Woman with the Scar (Costa Family #4)

Author/Writer of Book/Novel:

Jessica Gadziala

English

Jessica Gadziala