Indebted to the Mafia King
Spoiled

Dante

I walk into my house after another long day at Piacere trying to figure out if Cal Duncan's information is worth anything, and I have nothing on my mind but a quiet night at home with El. The empty foyer echoes with my footsteps, but she's been working on getting ready for school in her office upstairs, so I trudge up.

At the top of the stairs, the door to Eleni's office stands closed, but my our?-bedroom door is open, and light spills out onto the floor. I frown and walk in.

"Dante!" Eleni leans out of the bathroom. A few perfect curls swing away from her updo, and a long, silver earring that kind of looks like an elegant stick jingles. "You're earlier than I thought."

"Sorry?" I step farther into the room and realize she's just wearing a towel. "Did I forget we had plans?"

She laughs. "It's a surprise."

I nod slowly, trying to put together the clues. Fancy hair. Two garment bags sit on the bed. She's smiling. "Yeah, I got nothing," I say.

She steps out of the bathroom and kisses me softly. "Between eating with you every night and the reports I'm getting from my guys, it's no secret you're stressed."

I run a hand over my hair. "I'm just tired. There's nothing-"

She silences me with another kiss. "We have reservations at a Michelin star restaurant in the city in an hour. Get dressed, or I'll leave without you." She grabs one of the garment bags off the bed and saunters back into the bathroom, then kicks the door closed.

Warmth pours through my chest. She realized I was stressed and planned something to relax me. I open the other garment bag and change into the slim cut, deep red suit-with matching deep red tie and shirt, I note with a smile then sit back on the bed to wait for Eleni. I don't just have to come home to an empty house and keep thinking about work all night anymore. Fuck, I could even pick her brain about this. I'm so goddamn stupid not to have done this already. The bathroom door opens. She wears a long, slinky black gown with a tantalizingly high slit. I swallow and decide to act the gentleman, at least until her surprise is over. I want to let her take care of me. What a strange impulse. I stand and offer her my arm.

She takes it. "Armando is driving us into the city, and we have a room walking distance from the restaurant."

I grin. "You're going to spoil me if you're not careful."

She laughs. "I'd like to see that."

***

The restaurant turns out to be a seafood place in upper Manhattan I've been meaning to try for ages. I smile as we enter.

"Did someone tell you about this?"

"They didn't have to." She kisses my cheek. "You had it bookmarked on your laptop."

I laugh. "Did you find that before or after you moved all of my shit around?"

The hostess shoots me a look, and I duck my head apologetically. One of the reasons I've never been is because I heard a rumor there was a strict code of conduct. But if there's one thing Eleni and I can both enjoy, it's breaking the rules. She giggles behind her hand as the stern hostess leads us to a corner table, notably away from most of the other guests, and informs us frostily that our waiter will be by for drink orders soon.

"Why did you move all my shit around?" I ask a little quieter. "I liked it where it was."

She rolls her eyes. "Because the only thing you had protecting your shit was a geriatric antivirus I made Mama and Baba stop using years ago. Half the beat cops in this city could've broken in."

I shake my head, trying to fight off reminders of work. "I had a password."

She levels a glare at me. "The password was your dad's birthday. I guessed it on the second try."

I scowl down at my menu as the waiter walks up. It couldn't have been that bad, could it? I ran the Saints for years without El and without issue. I order a top-shelf scotch. Eleni considers for a moment, then asks for something called "Charisma." The waiter nods like that makes any sense and leaves.

"What the hell did you just do?" I ask to try to distract myself from the issue of cybersecurity. She's spoiling me tonight. My job is to enjoy that.

"It's a cocktail." She shows me with a smile.

The listing on the menu describes something frothy and tropical, with more different alcohols than almost anything else. I raise an eyebrow.

"I'm still experimenting." She shrugs, a little embarrassed. "I had my first real drink in Piacere, the night of the auction."

The memory of her coughing brings a smile to my lips, but the mention of Piacere just reminds me of all the work waiting for me on the other side of this date. My hands twitches for my phone. If I text Tony now, he can- El holds her hand out. "Phone."

"What?"

"Give me your phone." She wiggles her fingers. "You're distracted, and I'd love to know why, but I'm not going to ask while you can 'just give Tony a quick call,' you know?"

Emotions war in my chest. There's something intoxicating about being known so well, and something deeply embarrassing about having my flaws laid out in front of me. Especially when I know she's right.

"Fuck it." I slap my phone in her palm. "They'll probably call you if anything goes sideways."

She smiles and sets it on the edge of the table. "Now tell me. I know there's something new."

"Cal Duncan called Tony and I for a meeting."

The waiter drops off our drinks and asks if we're ready to order. Eleni answers before I can, informing him we'll be having the tasting menu for two. I smile at her confidence. She looks almost nothing like the woman I met in the Greek Corner, but I can see a little of her in that smile, in the way she talks to the staff. I remain silent until he's gone, then lean in and drop my voice low.

"The short version is, he says there's a mole in the Saints."

Eleni's eyebrows shoot up. "Does he know who?"

I shrug. "Someone I knew as a kid got out of the life and went federal. He's the one sniffing around, but I don't know who his moles might be."

She nods. "What can we do?"

The "we" hums through me like I'm a tuning fork. I grin despite the topic. "Weed them out. It takes fucking forever, and there's no relaxing until it's done, though."

Her gaze goes thoughtful. "How do you usually do that?"

"We create a short list. New guys, guys who have been shady, anyone we think is worth checking out," I say. "Then, we drop different scraps of fake information, and wait to see which of them turns into a raid. Whoever we gave that, we take out."

The waiter arrives, and the first course disappears under conversation about logistics of spreading the information, different pieces of the process we could automate. She lights up with focus, and suddenly, talking about work doesn't feel like an endless slog. My world expands in her eyes.

The second course appears, and she picks up her fork, then looks at me. "You said this was federal? How worried should we be?"

I shake my head. "Feds are tough, but the truth is, it's pretty tough to build a case against me unless they find me with a hot gun in my hand. Plus, half the NYPD is on my payroll, and I'm the biggest donor to the precincts on Staten Island every year."

"So you don't think we have to worry at all." She takes a bite of the food and moans softly.

The sound travels through me like I'm a live wire, and my cock springs to attention. "Not yet," I say roughly. "So what do you say we talk about something other than work?" Eleni looks me over with a small smile and nods.