Engaged To The Don

ENGAGED TO THE DON A GIOTTI & GRECO ORIGIN STORY LEXI LOVEJOY Edited by JASON PETTUS Copyright © 2023 by Lexi Lovejoy All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. MAILING LIST Sign up to my mailing list! Subscribers will receive exclusive offers, freebies, and giveaways. Click the link below to join. LEXI LOVEJOY MAILING LIST CONTENTS ENGAGED TO THE DON 1. Lara 2. Christian 3. Lara 4. Christian 5. Lara 6. Christian 7. Lara 8. Christian 9. Lara 10. Christian 11. Lara 12. Christian 13. Lara 14. Christian 15. Lara 16. Christian 17. Lara 18. Christian 19. Lara 20. Christian 21. Lara 22. Christian 23. Lara 24. Christian 25. Lara 26. Christian EXTENDED EPILOGUE MAILING LIST Agreeing to marry her was the only way to save her life. My billion-dollar New York Empire was the only wife I ever wanted. Not this hot-headed beauty who keeps running away. This princess dreams of escaping Mafia life to choose her own destiny. So, marrying her brother’s best friend is another gilded cage. With our ten-year age gap, I never intended to fall for her. Now loving and protecting her is all I can think about. She swears she’ll never love me, but I will change her mind. Even if making her dreams come true, costs me everything. She calls me a devil, but I will be her salvation. And little did I know that she would be mine. Especially with that tiny life growing inside her. 1 LARA Hell’s Kitchen New York City April 1973 I groan audibly when I see the vile look on the man’s face. It’s the same look that most of the men my father introduces me to give me—the look that gives away their desire to crack me open and suck out my fruit, as if I was a ripe melon grown and harvested for their pleasure alone. It sickens me. “You should be nice to them,” my father scolds later in the day, after I’ve already feigned a headache in order to retreat to my bedroom and avoid the rest of his “business” for the day. Honestly, at the age of twenty-five, it’s ridiculous that I’m still kept on such a tight leash. If I wasn’t part of a mafia family, I’d likely be living in my own apartment somewhere, pursuing a career in the city by day and clubbing by night, like the rest of the girls up there in the Upper East Side. Instead, I’m stuck here. “It doesn’t do you any good to be so prickly to every suitor I bring to you,” he continues. My father has this way of looking over the bridge of his nose at you that makes you feel inferior no matter who you are. “Please,” I scoff in response. “As if this is about courting me like some sort of Renaissance fairytale. We both know you’re just trying to keep me here against my will.” He laughs and it instantly unnerves me. “This isn’t a prison, Lara,” my father says. His voice holds just enough warning in his tone to indicate otherwise. “But we both know you can’t be trusted on your own.” That’s the biggest bunch of horseshit ever. What he really means to say is that he knows I would try to get the hell away from him if he didn’t have men in his crew watching over my every move, and herding me right back home if I wander too far from the path my father has me sternly set on. Sometimes, I think my father fears me leaving the mafia and turning my back on our family. I think he worries that if I were to ever get out of our life in the criminal underground, I might expose things that should remain hidden. After all, no one leaves the mafia unless it’s in a body bag. And that’s exactly why he keeps trying to marry me off to some big-shot capo who could make my father’s drug trafficking operation in the city all the more profitable and less conspicuous. He views me as an asset because I have a pretty face and a body that most of his runners drool over. And he also sees me as a liability if I were to ever succeed in defecting from this life. I don’t know what I would even do with my freedom if I had it. All I know is that I crave it more than anything. But my father is a dangerous man. He was less dangerous when my mother was still alive. At least she tried to soften him, although it was nearly impossible. Now that she’s gone, though, there’s nothing to tame his temper. Some say he’s one of the most powerful drug traffickers in the entire metropolitan area, and has exclusive control of the street trade from Midtown all the way down through Tribeca. Considering how wealthy our family is, I don’t doubt it. “I wasn’t being prickly. I have a headache.” I know there’s no hope for me to bend his ear or grow any empathy in his hollow chest. The most I can do is keep trying to feign illness for as long as it takes for me to figure a way out of here. “Well, make sure your headache’s gone by dinner,” he says sharply. “You’re one of the most sought-after women in Hell’s Kitchen. Every attractive single man in the mafia wants you.” I wish I hadn’t been cursed with my mother’s beauty. I want out of this life. For a few seconds I let myself indulge in a fantasy of forging a new life somewhere else, maybe even outside of New York City entirely. But that moment is cut short when my father grabs me by the