Mafia King's Contract Breeder
Chapter 21 A Well Run Criminal Empire

Chapter 21: 21 A Well Run Criminal Empire

Lara POV

Oh God. Oh God.

What a complete disaster.

I put my head in my hands and groaned weakly.

That was—

Not according to plan.

I was supposed to stay professional and charm Emmanuel Sagres into giving me my phone back by blowing his mind with a devastatingly good orgasm.

Instead, he made me squirt all over the breakfast table without even breaking a sweat.

Or getting an orgasm out of it himself.

Why?! What does he get out of it?

The man was giving me whiplash. He said that all he wanted was a toy, a breeder to carry his child. All transactional.

But every time he laid hands on me...

It felt like he wanted my soul.

I squirmed at the thought of Emmanuel’s filthy orders: no touching myself without his permission.

Which I had agreed to.

I groaned again.

Though — I don’t know how he thinks he can stop me from touching myself when he’s not around to see it.

(He better not have cameras in my room, the sick, controlling asshole!)

"Hey, you gotta eat," said Mr Ricci.

I jumped, glancing up at him startled.

The dining area felt even more ridiculously spacious when it was just me at the table. Me in my rumpled, ruined designer dress, at a massive table for twelve.

The butler was standing at my shoulder, watching me impatiently, tapping his foot.

"Are you going to just stand there until I eat the food?"

"Yep," he said. "So hurry up."

I spooned yogurt into my mouth mechanically, barely tasting it.

For most of my life, having food to eat at all was already a win, let alone fresh, healthy food. I never expected eating could be such a chore.

I stabbed my fork into the last piece of avocado toast and chewed it, then put down my knife and fork pointedly.

Then I looked up at the burly butler breathing down my neck.

"There. Can I please go and play now?"

Mr Ricci made a sound through his nose and began to clear the plates again — with a loud clatter of porcelain, unlike the silence he had managed when Emmanuel was here.

"Back to your room now," he said briskly, "Lunch will be served in an hour and a half."

I stood up gingerly on my high heels.

"Wait, seriously?" I said slowly. "You want me to just stay in my room apart from meal times?"

No way.

I needed to understand more about this place. I wasn’t going to just stay in my room cooped up with my thoughts. That was the way to go crazy.

"What’s wrong with that?" Mr Ricci said indifferently. "You’re here to warm the Boss’s bed. I ain’t got no use for you when he’s not home."

My mouth fell open in outrage.

I was so done with everyone in this fucking organization treating me like a doll they could put back in the box.

"Even prison inmates get allowed fresh air sometimes!"

Mr Ricci glared at me like he was hugely inconvenienced by this.

"I don’t get paid enough for this," he grumped.

"Oh, I’m sorry. Did it not say how to deal with your boss’s ’personal breeder’ in the butler manual?" I said sweetly.

Mr Ricci rolled his eyes.

"He didn’t keep the other whores overnight," Mr Ricci muttered under his breath. "And there wasn’t no butler manual!"

So Emmanuel Sagres brought ’other whores’ back here. Not surprising that he was sexually experienced, that much was obvious.

Did he only sleep with prostitutes, then?

Why didn’t he get any of them to be his ’breeder’ instead?

Mr Ricci rubbed the back of his neck.

"Fine, fine. I’ll give you the tour. Go over the basics, so you can’t bat your lashes and say you didn’t know."

"Fine," I said.

Mr Ricci cleared the plates and led me back towards the elevator.

I watched him limping with the tray and couldn’t resist asking, "Can I take that for you?"

"No," Mr Ricci said crossly. "I do my job, you stick to yours."

"Okay," I muttered, rolling my eyes.

He stopped in the elevator lobby and said, "You only come up to the penthouse when the Boss wants you here. Else it’s off limits. No wandering about here. Back downstairs."

I looked around curiously before the elevator arrived. The elevator lobby seemed to be in the middle of the penthouse space, and there were lots of spaces beyond the living area and dining area I hadn’t seen.

So much for ’warming his bed’. So far, I hadn’t even set eyes on Emmanuel Sagres’s bed.

Did he even sleep?

We took the elevator down one floor.

"This isn’t really how I imagined a mafia boss’s house," I said.

Mr Ricci scoffed.

"What did you think it would be like?"

"I don’t know. Dungeons?" I said sheepishly. "Not this...organized?"

Mr Ricci barked a laugh.

"That’s why the Boss is the Boss, and all the other mafia heads are dead or working for him," he said. "We used to be out by the ports. But now we movin’ up in the world."

That seemed to be his style, I was starting to see.

The elevator arrived back on the floor where my bedroom was located.

"This floor you can move around in," Mr Ricci said. "This area is for my household staff. Kitchen’s here — you’ll come here for lunch later."

I could smell the scent of cooking from the back of the kitchen, Chef Srisuk no doubt working on a delicious meal. The staff dining area was empty for now, functional and clean, unlike the garish display of luxury upstairs.

I nodded and picked up the conversation thread again, hoping to fish out some more useful information with from Mr Ricci, who seemed to be very familiar with Emmanuel.

"I didn’t know that about him," I said. "Mr Sagres, I mean. I just heard bad things happen to people who cross him."

"Oh, that you can bet on," Mr Ricci replied. "If I teach you one thing, it’ll be don’t get on the Boss’s bad side. But if you’re loyal and serve him well, he won’t let you down."

Mr Ricci stopped to slap a palm against his leg. The one with the limp.

"See this?" he said. "Almost lost my leg in a gunfight."

He sounded awfully proud about it.

"Doctor said they’d have to take it clean off, at first. But Mr Sagres got me better doctors. Then when they said I wouldn’t be getting out of any more fights with this bad leg, he gave me this job."

He sounded like Emmanuel Sagres might has well have hung the moon.

"That’s...decent of him," I conceded reluctantly.

It was hard for me to think of Emmanuel as anything other than an evil, ruthless monster who profited off the suffering of others and killed anyone who stood in his way. He didn’t really care about people, whether it was those who worked for him or the ordinary people just trying to make a living in the district where he played God.

I supposed even a mafia boss needed to be decent to some people for lackeys to do his bidding. He was still an awful person.

And where was this generosity when my dad went to prison for him?

I pushed down a surge of bitterness.

"So what are on the other floors?" I asked. "How many floors even are there?"

"Eighty-something. The rest of it is business that you don’t need to concern yourself with, girl," said Mr Ricci, waving a hand dismissively. "You just stay where you’re told and keep the Boss happy with you."

I rolled my eyes.

—

Meanwhile, in the basement of Sagres Tower, 88 floors down.

Emmanuel POV

The metallic tang of blood hit me the moment the reinforced cell door swung open. I drew in a slow, deliberate breath, letting the thick, coppery scent settle in my lungs.

Satisfying.

"He won’t talk," said Dover, stepping into the cell just behind me. "He’s been leaking information, but we don’t know what or to whom."

"How did he do it?"

"Smuggled in a burner phone. I’ve already made sure that won’t happen again."

The man was still chained to the wall, head hanging forward, blood matted thick in his hair and crusted along one side of his face.

One of my men stepped forward without needing instruction and threw a bucket of water over him. The splash echoed sharply off the concrete walls.

He coughed hard, water and blood dripping from his chin as he slowly lifted his head. Even now, he managed a red-stained, defiant smile.

"Anything to say?" I asked.

"Fuck you, Manny."

The guards around him stiffened. They knew better than this fool what consequences could come out of offending me.

I smiled back at him.

Interesting choice of last words.

Not exactly creative.

"You can insult me," I said lightly, inclining my head. "As long as you understand what it costs."