Indebted to the Mafia King

Five Minutes Earlier... *Cal*

"Come on, Boss. Let's go outside. I need to have a smoke," Sam grumbles as he brushes past me. "People are fucking crazy tonight. I can't deal with this sober."

I actually agree with him. The bar is fucking crowded tonight, and truthfully, I could use a smoke too. I need to breathe some fresh air besides the smell of alcohol and sweat for a change.

It doesn't usually bother me, but some days it's hard to run this sort of business. Christmas Eve is one of them.

I follow Sam outside, pulling my pack of cigarettes out of my pocket and lightning one up, offering it to light Sam's next. I shouldn't be smoking. I quit a long time ago, but with all the cartel bullshit we've been dealing with this year... I'm back to old habits.

"I don't know why they have to be so loud all the fucking time," he continues to complain.

"They're just lonely, sad people who have too much shit to deal with during the holidays," I explain darkly. "It's just easier to drown themselves in alcohol and drugs, isn't it?"

Sam shrugs, taking a puff from his cigarette. "I don't know, Boss. I can think of thousands of things I'd rather be doing. Camping, road trips, going 'cross the pond to visit my ma... even just staying in my own bed the whole day...." He trails off.

"For someone who likes it quiet and peaceful, you chose the worst line of work to pursue, don't you think?" I tease with a grin on my face.

We both lean against the side of the building near our motorcycles parked by the sidewalk, watching as the cars pass by on the street. The night is fucking cold, and the streets are bustling with people walking in and out of stores to buy their last minute Christmas gifts.

I've always loved this side of New York City. There's always something going on. The city never sleeps.

My eyes dart toward the bookstore across the street, noticing the lights are still on despite the 'Closed' sign on the door. I take a puff of my cigarette, my gaze never leaving the woman inside while she moves piles of books from one shelf to another, making sure everything is in the right place.

I've lost count of how many times I've watched her do this. I've become mesmerized by the way she looks, the way she moves, the way she scrunches her nose whenever something happens that she doesn't like, and how she seems to be in her own little world whenever she's left alone inside the shop.

She is so painfully beautiful. Her long, light brown hair falls down to her hips making me wonder what it'd feel like to tangle my fingers in it. She has these ocean blue eyes that make me want to be the subject of their attention for a change. I don't even have a thing for bookworms, but I constantly find myself attracted to her tortoise shell plastic framed glasses that insists on sliding down her nose whenever she looks down.

I've only seen her up close once, when I finally grew the balls I needed to step into her cozy little bookstore two weeks ago and pretend like I was doing some Christmas shopping. She barely looked me in the eye when I slapped a stack of random cookbooks on the counter. I noticed that she has a small scar on her right cheek that makes me desperate to know more about her life. I want to know what happened to give her that unique blemish on her beautiful porcelain skin. "Careful not to drool, Boss," Sam teases beside me, and I snap my head to look at him, narrowing my eyes in a threatening way.

He raises his hands in surrender, but the grin on his lips still makes me want to punch it off his stupid face.

"Sorry, Boss. You're just making it too obvious," he adds.

"About what?" I growl, puffing smoke into the cold night air

"You wanting to fuck the book girl," he explains, gesturing at the store.

"What I really want is to beat you into a pulp and teach you how to mind your own fucking business," I retort, biting back a smile when I see him flinch.

It's clear to me he doesn't really think I'd do that, but he should know that he overstepped. However, it's not the first time I have one of my closest men teasing me about something, and I'm sure as hell it won't be the last. I'm annoyed because he's right.

I don't know what it is about that girl that makes me so obsessed with her without even knowing her name, but ever since I laid eyes on her, I can't force myself to look away whenever she's around.

Women were never a problem for me. If anything, I don't think I ever had one of them refuse to give me the attention I wanted or needed, but with this girl, it's different. I don't think she even knows I exist.

She comes and goes, making sure she pretends my bar isn't even here.novelbin

Shaking my head, I shift my attention somewhere else. My eyes roam along the street, watching couples walking together, tourists taking pictures of the Christmas decorations, families having fun with the thin snowflakes falling from the sky. Then something makes my stomach turn.

I spot a black car with tinted windows speeding down the street. It wouldn't be uncommon in New York to see crazy drivers, especially during the holidays, but I know this isn't one of those buzzed lunatics leaving an office Christmas party. The tires screeching make my skin crawl as I watch the vehicle coming to a halt in front of the bar, the back window rolling down.

Before I have time to process what's going on, gunshots fire. It takes me a split second to realize the men inside the car are firing at the bar, at us. Letting my cigarette fall to the ground, I grab my gun from the holster in my belt and aim at whoever's inside that damn vehicle while hiding behind a car parked right on the curb.

Screams from passersby ring through my ears, and I clench my jaw, pissed that whoever came for us is being so reckless as to start shooting in an open space, with innocent people so close and unable to protect themselves. "Keep your heads down!" I yell at my men who come running out of the bar like cockroaches fleeing from a sewer as soon as they hear the gunshots.

From my peripheral vision, I see some of them shouting at the scared onlookers, guiding them inside nearby stores. I'm glad they didn't think of taking them inside our bar. At first, it might seem like a good idea, but I have no clue who is aiming at us and what they intend to do next.

I fire back when a bullet misses my ear by an inch, unsure of where it came from. Another car stops behind the one already parked in front of my establishment, and more men start firing at us.

"These motherfuckers are cowards," Hunter growls as he drops to the ground next to me. He's one of my best shooters.

"Is everything okay inside?" I ask, not taking my eyes off our enemies. The bastards really are fucking cowards, since they are attacking us from inside a bulletproof car.

"Yeah, we took everyone to the basement," he tells me.

Good, at least none of my customers were hit or injured. Yet.

My mind spirals as I try to think of the best way to end the chaos and prevent innocents from getting involved in a mafia war that I have no idea who just started. I can't say I have a lot of enemies, but I also can't say I have just one. I don't know who's attacking us. They have their faces covered, so I don't recognize a single one of them, nor their cars.

I look over the parked car, and that's when I notice one of the assholes sticking his arm out of the car window, holding a fucking molotov cocktail.

"Watch out!" I warn, but it's in vain.

Hunter has already seen the guy and shoots him in the arm as he winds back to throw, making the cocktail fall on the opposite side of the vehicle away from us. It's rolling toward the other side of the street.

In the direction of the bookstore.

"Fuck!" is all I have time to hiss before a loud explosion momentarily blinds and deafens me.

The entire front window of the bookstore shatters, and the books on display instantly catch on fire. In just one second, the glass transforms into a curtain of flames preventing me from seeing what's happening inside. I can't see the girl anymore.

Was she hit? Is she okay? Is she.....

I can't finish the sentence in my head. The idea of it makes me sick to my stomach.

"Boss, are you all right?" Sam calls from behind a bullet ridden trash can, squatting down to protect himself. He has blood running down his forehead, but I'm glad to see it's not from a bullet. It's probably a scrape from shattered glass. I nod, swallowing the lump in my throat, too worried to think about anything else. I snap my head to the bookstore again, just in time to see the cars vanishing from my sight, speeding down the street as if they were never here in the first place. The sound of sirens splits the air.

"I'm going to check on the girl in the bookstore," I inform Hunter and Sam, who are the closest to me at the moment. "Get the hell out of here. Now" I order before darting across the street, not thinking twice about approaching the huge flames threatening to engulf me.