Will & Patrick Meet the Mob
Read Will & Patrick Meet the Mob Online
Authors: Leta Blake,Alice Griffiths
An Original Publication From Leta Blake
Will & Patrick Meet the Mob
Written and published by Leta Blake
Cover by
Dar Albert
Formatted by
Frostbite Publishing
Copyright © 2016 by Leta Blake
All rights reserved.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and locations are either a product of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious setting. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or people, living or dead, is strictly coincidental. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without written consent from the author. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
First Digital Edition, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-6262275-1-4
Other Books by Leta Blake
The Training Season Series
Co-Authored with Indra Vaughn
Gay Fairy Tales
Co-Authored with Keira Andrews
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to express their gratitude and appreciation for Vanessa North for her input and advice, and Keira Andrews for speedy-yet-thorough editing. Leta would like to thank her friends and family for their endless support. Alice would like to thank Leta for being a wonderful and giving writing partner and for all the laughs. Leta would like to thank Alice for the same. It’s been a blast!
Dedications
This trope-based serial goes out to the Girls Who Cried Havoc and their beautiful ilk in celebration of the community playpen in which we joyfully cut our teeth and exercised our creativity.
Follow Will & Patrick in this fifth installment of the romantic-comedy serial,
Wake Up Married
, by best-selling author Leta Blake and newcomer Alice Griffiths!
Patrick has finally accepted that he's in love with Will, but his newfound determination to do something about that runs up against his father-in-law's mobster plans. Though just what those plans are have as yet to be determined. As far as Will and Patrick can tell, they consist of blowing through town, wreaking small havoc, and turning the Patterson family's lives on end.
Will must face the truth about his family before he can fully come to terms with his feelings for Patrick. And Patrick has to decide if this whackadoodle world is something he truly wants to be part of forever.
Episode 5 of 6 in the
Wake Up Married
serial.
Disclaimer
“Depiction does not mean endorsement.” ~ Kathryn Bigelow
Sometimes what’s sexy in fiction can be—and sometimes is—injurious or even deadly in real life. This episode of the Wake Up Married serial depicts a few kinky sexual acts. When it comes to breath play, we cannot stress it strongly enough: please don’t try this at home!
The maple-ginger doughnut is warm and sweet on Patrick’s tongue as they leave Brown Gargle and take a shortcut through a dark, abandoned street. Will walks beside him looking smug and affectionate all at once. It’s an expression that makes Patrick’s heart do all the acrobatics it’s started performing since he met Will in Vegas: the wacky flip-flop, the dive and soar, and the wild burst in his chest. Maybe this isn’t love. Maybe he just needs to see a cardiologist.
“Do you feel better?” Will asks.
Patrick doesn’t want to talk about the piano or his confession to Will about Mr. Roland. He doesn’t want to talk about the Hammond malpractice suit or his inability to practice medicine until it’s cleared up either. He focuses on his doughnut. “This could be the key to world peace. Maybe we should send Missy Hammond a dozen or three.”
He wonders if placing doughnuts on their bed at the Tallgrass, laying them out in the shape of a heart, is a romantic idea or a stupid one. He has no idea how to start, or where to begin in changing the direction of their relationship, but while playing Healing High’s out-of-tune piano in the little gazebo, Patrick came to an irreversible decision. He’s in love.
No cardiologist is going to cure his heart problem. And he wouldn’t want them to. He wants Will to love him back.
Unfortunately, wooing is outside his wheelhouse. Give him a pineocytoma any day. He’ll gladly take on one of the most difficult of all neurosurgeries with a grin on his face, but he’s got no clue how to go about winning Will’s heart.
Bumping Patrick’s shoulder, Will asks, “I’ve been wondering, when’s your birthday?”
Something about the question seems like a trick. “Why?”
“Maybe I’ll have an electric piano delivered to the Tallgrass to keep in our room. They take up less space and—”
“Now you’re pushing it.” Patrick wishes he didn’t love that quality in Will. But he knows, no matter what he says, there’s going to be an electric piano in the room at some point. It’s what Will wants, and Patrick’s stomach does a weird shivery dance, because giving Will what he wants is his new number-one priority.
“You’re an Aries, right?” Will says cheerfully. “So, that means…what? April? March?”
“I don’t want an electric piano, idiot. I just want to work at the hospital, eat doughnuts, and screw you. That’s my perfect life.”
Will’s brown eyes glow warmly and Patrick’s heart flutter-jumps, just like it has every time Will looks at him like that.
Will nudges him with his shoulder again, like he can’t seem to stop himself from touching Patrick. “All said and done, you’re really a simple man, aren’t you?”
“I’m simply going to murder you if you buy me a piano, yes.”
Will’s laughing kiss on his cheek clutches at his heart and Patrick would suffer through the gift of a million electric pianos if only that kiss meant Will is falling for him too.
Footsteps and voices ring out on the empty side street, and before he can distinguish in the newly fallen darkness how many are coming, and how much trouble they’re in, strong hands grip him, shoving him to his knees on the ground. Time is slow and fast at once. He struggles, but it gets him nowhere, and then a blunt, cold piece of metal presses against his head and he goes so still he stops breathing.
In that silent, frozen space, he seeks desperately for Will. He finds him and a soft whimper escapes. Two men in long black coats and shiny black leather gloves have restrained Will too. They look like twins with their dark hair and tan skin, white toothy grimaces (or grins) standing out in the darkness, shining like the reflected streetlights on the snow.
Will’s lips move and shape words, but Patrick can’t hear them. Fear is like a scream tearing through the straining urgency of his immobile body, but he makes no noise at all and only hears a loud humming sound in his head that he can’t turn off. His captor jerks him back, holding him by his neck.
“Hello, Guglielmo,” his captor says.
In the space of a long, terrified blink, Will’s released. He runs to Patrick and drops to his knees next to him. Running his hands all over, telling him to stay calm and saying it’s okay.
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, son.”
Fury and fear glitter in Will’s eyes. “Let him go, Dad! Why are you doing this?”
“Because I can.”
Patrick hears the
click
of the gun being cocked and wants to tell Will to run, to get up and run as fast and hard as he can. He wants to cover Will with his body, to protect him, but he’s held tightly and can’t seem to make his mouth work.
Will’s voice rips into the buzzing in his mind. “Dad! No!”
Panic sticks in Patrick’s chest, hurting there like a heart attack. How ridiculous. He’s going to die on his knees on an empty, cold South Dakota sidewalk, with snow flurries drifting down, and with a tiny trickle of pee on his thigh. Patrick squeezes his eyes shut and braces himself for the end. Death by Molinaro goon. No, not a goon. Will’s
father
. World-famous mobster Tony Molinaro himself is seeing to Patrick’s backstreet execution. He’d feel honored if he wasn’t about to, well,
die
.
This is what he gets for falling in love.
He should have known.
Unfamiliar laughter rings out in the night, and Patrick pries his eyes open, staring into Will’s wild, enraged face, trying to understand the meaning of the sound. The cold steel leaves the side of his head and Patrick sucks in a breath. Tony pushes Patrick’s shoulder and he falls forward, scraping his gloved hands on the concrete.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Will yells, tugging Patrick to his chest like he’s going to protect him from a bullet by the strength of his arms. “Leave him alone!”
Patrick’s breath puffs in the air between them. He’s certain he’s supposed to be tougher than this. He should say or do something right about now. Something snarky and smart. Something to show they haven’t gotten to him. But if wooing Will is out of his wheelhouse, standing up to an armed and insane mafia daddy is entirely off his ship.
“Where’s your sense of humor, Guglielmo?” Tony Molinaro’s voice vibrates with laughter. “I know your mother’s entrusted your raising to our dear-but-dour Kevin much too often. But tell me he hasn’t squashed your Molinaro sense of fun?” There’s a lilt to Tony’s speech reminiscent of Eleanora’s upper-crust mannerisms. It doesn’t fit Patrick’s internalized mafia stereotypes at all.
Will growls, holding Patrick so tight he can’t breathe. “You pulled a gun on my husband. Call me a killjoy but I don’t find that funny.”
“It’s a harmless antique!” Tony scoffs. He holds up the gun and opens the cylinder to show it’s empty. “Just a toy, really.”
“A Colt Single Action Army revolver,” the youngest of Tony’s men says and spits on the ground with a quick twist of his neck. “Eighteen-eighty-two.”
Will stands, dragging Patrick up with him—not releasing him, but not crushing him anymore either. Fat snowflakes float around them in a surreal snow globe effect. “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay,” Will whispers to him, his voice quivering with rage.
Tony shoves the “toy” into the pocket of his coat and tips his white fedora back, exposing his face to the rising moon. His strong jaw and dimpled chin (
so that’s where Will gets it
) are clean-shaven. Thick, dark eyebrows draw attention to his hazel, wounded-looking eyes. Chuckles shake Tony’s linebacker shoulders, stretching the dark wool of his long coat. Patrick bets he flings dainty Kimberly over them, like Scarlet O’Hara, and carries her off to bed.
In another life, he’d let Tony carry him off to bed too. Sure Tony’s an evil mobster with a crappy sense of humor, but his lush mouth (
another thing Will’s inherited
) looks like it holds plenty of talent, even if his experience is all with the ladies.
Patrick’s knees shake so much he can barely stay upright, but Mob Daddy is hot as hell. And he needs to re-examine his kinks. He knew he had daddy issues, but this is messed up. Like everything in his life since meeting Will.
“Son, take a joke.” Tony sneers. He turns to his henchmen. “It was hilarious—right, boys?”
A shiver races up Patrick’s spine.
“Total LOLs, boss,” the super-young suck-up who knows what kind of gun Tony’s carrying agrees. “I think the doc pissed himself.”
Patrick lurches against Will’s restraining arms. “How about I hold a gun to
your
head and see how your bladder holds?”
Tony grins. “Now that’s the spirit. I like him, Guglielmo. Feisty.” He winks. “But that was just a toy.” He opens his coat and reveals the pistol he’s carrying in a holster there. “Now, this? This is business. Here.” He moves to pull it out.
“Stop,” Will snaps. “We get it. This is all a joke to you.”
Tony leaves the gun in its holster. “I thought your good doctor here might want to hold a piece on Gino and see how he reacts. He’s all youthful vigor and mouth, that one. It’d be funny.”
“Gun jokes are funny,” Tony’s other pal, a guy in his late-twenties with a squint, pipes up. “Right, boss?”
“Don’t be a yes-man, Mauro.” Tony rolls his eyes. “But, yes.”
“Like rape jokes,” Patrick mutters in disgust. “Guns and rape. Always hilarious.”
“Oh, now, there you go. He gets it,” Tony says, reaching out and clapping Patrick on the arm like a genuine pal. “I’m glad to see Guglielmo has chosen someone with a funny bone. I’m going to enjoy you as a son-in-law.” He grins wickedly. “I can tell.”
Patrick’s lip snarls up and Will knocks his father’s hand off Patrick’s shoulder.
“Don’t touch him.”
Tony chuckles. “Possessive?”
Will presses his lips together and glares.
“Have it your way,” Tony concedes, closing his coat to hide the gun again. “I never liked another man touching your mother either. As you know.”
Will sneers. “Yeah, Roger’s body floating face down in the YMCA pool was a great object lesson in your jealousy. Thanks for that, by the way. Love how you left my siblings without a father. That was great of you. And, no, you’re not forgiven.”
Tony measures Will with his eyes and then turns to his goons. “Soldiers, leave us.”
“Back to the hotel, boss?”
“I don’t care where you go or what you do. Order room service. Watch porn. Get a whore. Just go,” Tony says.
“Get a whore?” Patrick repeats, as the two “soldiers” hustle down the street, laughter lining their voices as they go. “Is there a brothel I don’t know about in this hick town?”
“No,” Will mutters.
“Lucinda Monroe’s place out on Cobbler Street is a known ‘house of ill repute,’” Tony says. “But it’s only our dear Lucinda and her sweet sister Juicy.” He clucks his tongue. “Neither one of them is exceptionally pretty. But with your eyes closed…” Tony winks. “They’ll get the job done.”
“Ew.” Patrick wrinkles his nose. He can’t say he’s never slept with someone he wouldn’t want to see with the lights on, but he’s never
paid
for the privilege either.
“Tell me why I shouldn’t call the police on you right this second,” Will interrupts, releasing Patrick but stepping slightly in front of him, shielding him from exposure to Tony’s toys.
Tony rolls his eyes. “Dramatics, Guglielmo? Come now. Don’t hold a grudge.”
“Oh, I hold more than one grudge against you, Dad. Try hundreds. Thousands.”
“Let’s not discuss business on the street. Let’s go back to your…hotel room, is it?” Tony puts his hand on Will’s shoulder and shakes him gently. “Son, why haven’t you moved into an apartment? Think of the gossip! Staying in a hotel room these last few months. It looks impermanent.”
Will throws off his father’s hand. “I don’t care how it looks.”
“It’s not as though you can’t afford a residence. You have money, power, prestige and a name that moves mountains.
Guglielmo Molinaro
.” Tony sweeps his hands through the air like Will’s name is on a billboard. “Why aren’t you using it?”
“I want nothing to do with you. Funny how you don’t seem to understand that.”
Tony lifts his white fedora, dusted now with snow, and runs a hand through his silver-streaked dark hair. “Funny how you’re happy to take Molinaro money when you’re given carte blanche with it.” He replaces the fedora and smiles, teeth glinting in the light from the street lamps. “You’ve got no complaints when the checks go through for your pet projects.”
Will’s fists clench. “I’m not discussing Good Works with you.”
“Fine, fine!” Tony lifts his hands in surrender. “I have no problem with your bleeding-heart ways. But can’t you live in a nice house while funding all these charity cases?”
Patrick feels like he’s floating an inch outside his body. It’s surreal standing in the cold, snow drifting down around them, talking about their living arrangements like this man hasn’t just held a gun to his head.
Will reaches out for Patrick’s gloved hand and squeezes it. “Where my husband and I live is our business.”
“Fair enough.” Tony shrugs. “I do see the appeal of the Tallgrass.” He smiles sharply. “I just settled into a room on the second floor myself. It’s nice. I think I’ll stay awhile.”