Napoleon Told Me to Sleep With the Mob Boss

I climbed into a mob boss's bed with his wife sleeping right next door—and believe it or not, Napoleon Bonaparte was the one who told me to do it. Yeah. That Napoleon. That short French guy with his hand shoved in his coat. Here's the deal. My boss, Vivian Ashford, is five months pregnant with the Conti heir. Old money princess, Ivy League snob, married into the Conti crime family after her daddy got indicted by the Feds and lost everything. She hates it here. Hates the guns. Hates the guys in tracksuits. Hates her husband, Luca Conti — the family's Enforcer and the next Don. Today the baby kicked her too hard. "That's a soldier in there," she hissed, one hand on her belly. "A knuckle-dragger. Just like his father." My inner voice: Lady, it's a fetus. It doesn't have a résumé yet. Nonna Sofia, Luca's grandmother, was down on her knees in a five-thousand-dollar dress. "Vivian, please. He's the only heir we've got. *Please.*" Luca stood by the window, jaw locked, eyes red. He didn't beg. Men like him don't. But you could feel it — the whole weight of the Conti name pressing on his shoulders. Vivian's eyes slid over to me. I was folding her laundry in the corner like a good little maid. She laughed. Cold. Mean. "Y'know what? I'd rather that little rat over there pop out a poet's baby than carry a thug's kid." That's when I saw them. Five balls of gold light. Floating right behind her head. Furious. "You stupid bitch!" one of them screamed. "The Family's bled for this country for a hundred years, and Heaven sent us — us! — to be born into it!" I nearly dropped the laundry. Because the loudest of the five had a face I'd seen a hundred times. History Channel. Vivian's coffee-table book. The oil painting hanging in Don Salvatore's study. Short. Sharp eyes. Hand tucked into the front of his coat. "Oh my God," I whispered. "You're — you're Napoleon." He tipped an invisible hat. "*Bonjour, chérie.*" The other four glowing lights bounced around him like puppies. He waved at them. "My best marshals. Died with me at Waterloo. Good boys." I choked on air. "Listen up, kid," Napoleon barked in my head. "Whoever births us? That family gets two U.S. Senators. Three four-star generals. Grandma here gets a Presidential Medal, easy." "But this Ashford snob won't have us. So we've got seventy-two hours. Find us a womb, or we disappear. Poof. Gone forever." My heart was slamming against my ribs. Classy morals? Y'kidding me? I sold myself to this family when I was fifteen just to survive. Classy is a luxury. That night, I put on the sheerest slip I owned and knocked on Luca Conti's bedroom door. --- I'd barely touched the edge of his bed before a hand shot out and clamped around my throat. Luca stared up at me. Dead eyes. Hair still damp from the shower. His voice was low, rough, unimpressed. "Where'd a good little maid learn a stunt like that?" I dropped to my knees on his hardwood floor. "Sir, My life is hard enough as it is. What do I care about being classy? Let me carry your child. Please." He laughed. Not a nice laugh. "Oh yeah? Vivian sent you, didn’t she? She thinks my family’s blood is too low to be worthy of her, so she sent you to serve me in her place? Or you just here for the money?" My eyes burned. I bit my lip hard. "No, that’s not how it is." "The Conti family bled for this country. Every dock, every union, every neighborhood you protect — my mama lived on the streets you kept safe. A name like that doesn't deserve to die out." He went quiet. His throat moved. "Doctors say I can't have kids, Ellie. Took a bullet in the gut in Kosovo when I was nineteen. That baby in Vivian's belly? Miracle. One-in-a-million." His hand slid down to my jaw. "You wanna give me an heir? Prove you can." He tore the slip off me and pressed me into the sheets. The canopy dropped. And in the dark, the five gold lights were doing cartwheels. "YES! Mama! We found our mama!" "Go again! We gotta make it stick!" I don't know how long it took. Eventually the lights went quiet. Napoleon's youngest little soldier did a happy somersault mid-air. "Mama… we're not gonna disappear anymore…" Then I blacked out. --- Sunrise. The bedroom door slammed open like a bomb. Vivian. In full silk robe. Three maids behind her. "Luca, if you don't play by my rules today, I swear to God, this brutish little kid of yours is going straight into a trash can—" She saw me. In her husband's bed. Naked under the sheet. Her face went bright red. "You filthy little bitch." She crossed the room in three steps and slapped me. Once. Twice. Three times. "Ten years I've had you around me! Ten years! And you learned nothing but how to crawl into a man's bed?!" I held my burning cheek, and the whole thing felt like a bad joke. Classy morals? Sure, Vivian. Real classy. When my mama was dying, I got on my knees in her marble foyer and begged for a two-hundred-dollar advance on my paycheck for antibiotics. She sipped her chamomile tea and told me, "Elena, when it's your time, it's your time. Money is vulgar. We don't beg." She let my mama die on a cot in the servants' shed. That winter, she quoted some poet — "character is built through suffering" — and shut off the heat in the staff quarters. To "build our character." Meanwhile, her own fireplace roared 24/7. That's her class. Built on the backs of people like me. "You're absolutely right, ma'am," I said, sitting up on my elbows. "Some of us can't afford to eat morals for breakfast." "You *talk back to me?!*" Vivian was shaking. "Drag this whore out and kill her! I want it done in the courtyard! *Now!*" Up above, the five gold lights went wild. "Bad lady! She's hitting our mama! Daddy! Daddy help!" Marco, the old butler, came skidding in. "Mrs. Ashford, please! Last night the Boss — " "*Shut up!*" Vivian shrieked. "I am the Mrs. in this house! I don't need permission to gut a bed-hopping tramp! Try me again, old man, and I'll bury you too!" Two goons grabbed my arms. Yanked me off the bed. My feet hit cold floor. Then a voice cracked through the doorway like a gunshot. "*Hands off.*" "Whose call is it to touch what's mine?"

Luca walked in slow. Suit. No tie. Silencer already screwed onto the Glock in his hand. He kicked one of the goons off me and pulled me behind his back like I was made of glass. Vivian didn't even flinch. She just rubbed her round belly and smirked. "So this is what we're doing now, Luca? Turning on your wife for a piece of maid trash?" "Actually, fine by me. Thugs and tramps — perfect match. Keeps you two out of my sight." "Out of your sight?" Luca took a step closer. His voice dropped. "You forget who signed off on this marriage? If Don Salvatore hadn't taken pity on your bankrupt father, you'd be turning tricks in Atlantic City right now, Vivian. You're eating off our table. And now you're gonna cry it's dirty?" Her face went ugly. She grabbed her belly with both hands. "Watch your damn mouth. You want this baby? *Do you?*" "Then you sign the house over to me today. Every account. Every key. Every capo answers to me until this baby is born." "Or I take a handful of pills at lunch and you can kiss your bloodline goodbye." She looked at me and laughed. "You think this alley cat is gonna give you a Conti heir? Please. Your family's got so much blood on it, babies come once in a generation. Dream on." The five gold lights were popping off the ceiling. "Bad lady! There's FIVE of us in Mama's belly! *Boo!*" Luca stared at her belly a long time. Then he walked to his desk. Picked up a pen. He signed. He slid the paper across the marble. "House is yours till the baby's born. And if anything happens to him — anything — you know what I do to people, Vivian." "You'd better pray this baby comes out breathing." --- Vivian took that paper and lost her mind. Three days. That's all it took to trash the compound. She said the gym stank of "gym rats." Ripped out the boxing ring, the weight racks, the shooting range targets. Replaced everything with a "wellness studio." Bamboo. Orchids. Wind chimes. The soldiers walked in, saw a yoga instructor, and walked right back out. She said the security guys looked "trashy" in their tactical gear. Ordered custom Italian suits for every man on the compound. Silk. Slim cut. One of the guards tripped over his own pant leg and accidentally shot himself in the foot. The whole family was miserable. Then she came for the Memorial Room. The Memorial Room is sacred. Eighteen generations of Conti photos. Bronze urns. Rosaries. Every capo who died in the line was on that wall. Don Salvatore's own father. Luca's dad, killed in a hit when Luca was twelve. Vivian walked in, wrinkled her nose, and covered her mouth with a silk scarf. "Ugh. This whole room stinks of death. Bad for the baby. Rip it out." The house manager dropped to his knees. "Mrs. Ashford — please — this is the family's memorial hall —" She kicked over a candle. She set fire to the corner of the rug. "A bunch of dead thugs in frames. Waste of square footage. This is gonna be my library. I'm hosting poetry readings in here. That's how you raise a civilized Conti child." By the time Luca got there, his grandfather's photo was on the floor. Glass shattered. Face torn. Luca pulled his gun. "You want a bullet, Vivian? Keep going. Give me a reason." She backed up one step. Then she thrust her belly out and walked right at him. "Do it, tough guy! Pull the trigger! Kill your last damn heir while you're at it!" Nonna Sofia threw herself between them, sobbing. "Luca! Luca no! That baby is the last Conti blood in the world!" Luca's knuckles went white on the grip. He was squeezing the metal so hard his hand bled. "Fine. *Fine.*" He locked eyes with Vivian. "You'd better pray, sweetheart. Pray that baby comes out screaming and healthy. Because if it doesn't — " Vivian rolled her eyes. "Save the movie lines, Luca. You're a thug with a gun. That's all you'll ever be." --- Late that night, Luca sat alone in the garden drinking whiskey straight from the bottle. I came out with a first-aid kit and started wrapping his hand. "You think I'm pathetic too, huh?" His voice was rough. "My grandfather bled out for this family. I can't even protect his picture on the wall." I looked up at him. My throat was tight. "You're the reason this family still exists, Luca. Every guy on your payroll eats because of you. Every widow gets her check because of you. Everyone in this neighborhood sleeps at night because of you." "The old-timers know what you are. And so do I." His hand froze under mine. Then he turned his wrist over and grabbed mine. Hard. Above us, the five little gold lights were spinning in circles. "Mama's so nice! Don't cry, Mama, we'll grow up fast and beat up the bad lady for you!" --- Just after dawn, Marco came running in white as a sheet. "Boss! Boss, we got a problem — Sean Ashford, Mrs. Ashford's old flame — the Feds just picked him up! Wire fraud. He skimmed thirty million off the family's shell company!" The words hadn't even hit the floor when Vivian kicked the door open. "Luca. Get. Him. Out." "Every hair on Sean's head better stay on his head, or I swallow a bottle of RU-486 right now and end your bloodline. Try me."