YES DADDY Read online

  YES, DADDY

  ___________________________________

  By

  Dani Wyatt

  Copyright © 2019

  by Dani Wyatt

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places,

  events and incidents are either the products

  of the author’s imagination

  or used in a fictitious manner.

  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

  is purely coincidental.

  www.daniwyatt.com

  Cover Credit PopKitty

  Editing Nicci Haydon

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  YES, DADDY

  1

  2

  3

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  WHAT IF

  OTHER TITLES BY DANI WYATT

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  A NOTE TO MY READERS:

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  Dedicated to those bad days

  that turn into the very best ones.

  For Ella because some days

  I need a reminder.

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  Now, let’s get on with the show...

  1

  Vito

  I WATCH AS THE AUTO shop owner counts the stacks of hundred-dollar bills. He’s nervous. I’m not like his typical customers, and my requests for the customizations on my new black Suburban were unique to say the least.

  “We square?” I grumble as I stare at my phone, answering texts and emails while he opens a safe behind his desk and stacks the money inside.

  “Y—yes,” he stutters, taking the last of the cash and securing it in the little black box, unaware that I could break his safe in less than thirty seconds if I wanted to.

  I paid nearly double the quote for the upgrades on my new ride under the condition that he would get it done off the books and in less than a week.

  He did both, so I’m pleased, and I’ll send him more business from people like me who need services like his. He may be nervous, but I have a sixth sense for people, and I’m betting he understands what loyalty means.

  He rustles through a stack of papers on his desk, pushing empty coffee cups, screwdrivers and other shit around that looks like it’s been sitting there for years. Every few seconds he glances my way with an apologetic nod, but all I want is for him to calm the fuck down.

  I don’t think he knows exactly who I am, but he has an idea of what I am. We didn’t exchange names. Most people wouldn’t know me on sight, but they would know my name. My family has a history in Detroit, and I’ll admit not all of it is good.

  In fact, most of it isn’t good.

  But even without knowing my name, I’m intimidating. Both in looks and presence. Add to that, the bulletproof glass, reinforced-steel roll cage and other customizations, I think he’s got some idea I could be a problem for anyone I found didn’t serve me.

  “Here. Your receipt.” He raises the piece of paper from the desk with a shaky hand.

  I scowl. “I don’t want a fucking receipt.” My brows draw together. “What part of ‘no records’ did you not understand?”

  “I’m sorry.” He slowly pulls the paper back to him. “I just thought you might want a...list of everything we did. I don’t know how this works...” He rubs the center of his forehead with his other hand.

  “Did you do everything I asked?”

  He nods.

  “Then I know what you did. I don’t forget things. Or people.”

  I see him swallow hard as he tears the receipt into tiny pieces and throws them into a trash can. I hold out my hand, and he takes it in a limp shake that has me fighting off the urge to squeeze harder and give him a speech about being a man. Instead, I opt to get on with my evening. I’ve got some uncomfortable business to take care of, and I don’t like to put things off just because they're unpleasant.

  If I did, I’d never get anything done.

  He raises the shop door as I hop in the Suburban and start it up. It rumbles under me, then the noise disappears completely as I shut the door—the stone silence of the interior is just what I requested.

  The first flash of lightning brightens the dark sky as I pull out of the garage and make my turn toward my former business partner’s office.

  My former office.

  But things change. Even in my somewhat shady business, people draw lines and have their own limits. There are things I won’t do. I’m no saint—I’ve done things that would make most mothers cry. But it’s how I grew up, and the truth is, my mother was proud of me.

  God rest her soul. She passed away three years ago from complications of pneumonia. My dad preceded her by ten years, taking a slug from a rival family while he was having dinner at a now closed business-friendly restaurant downtown.

  He was eating spaghetti with my former partner’s father one second and taking a bullet between the eyes the next. The other guy got a bullet into the shooter, but it was too late for my father. Our families have been friends and partners of one sort or another for three generations. Salvatore and I grew up together, got in scrapes together, and always had each other’s back.

  Unfortunately, when Sal started to branch off into sex work with girls barely old enough to drive, I drew my line in the sand and made it clear we were going to part ways.

  I’m willing to take a financial hit to distance myself as quickly as possible from that shit, and honestly, I’m seeing a side of him that makes me glad we’re dissolving our business relationship.

  I’ll still manage a lot of the weapons sales. That’s been under my supervision primarily, and Sal doesn’t have the knowledge necessary to make it work. Trying to persuade a buyer that you know what you’re talking about, when all you really know is how to point a gun, is liable to get you killed.

  As for me, I know what I’m talking about, and I can hold my own if it comes to it, but I don’t pull the trigger these days unless it’s personal. The liquor and protection will be split evenly, as well as some of the enforcement. I have taken to contracting most of the hands-on work in that department over the years, so if that’s the price of leaving, I’m willing to let it go.

  Truth is, I’m happier than I’ve been in years. Going solo suits me right now, which shouldn’t come as a surprise, given my philosophy when it comes to my personal life. I watched my parents love story crumble around them when my father took up with some side action, watched it break my mother’s heart. She stuck with him; why, I don’t know. Tradition, I guess. But I lost all respect for him and any drive to have a happily ever after of my own.

  Because it doesn’t exist.

  My phone lights up as I sit at a red light, and I see it’s my sister, Maria.

  “Hello,” I answer, putting her on speaker.

  “What are you so grumpy about?” Her light voice takes a bit of the darkness from inside the car. She looks, sounds, and has a lot of manneri
sms like my mother—both of them perpetual optimists with kind hearts but steel backbones.

  “I’m not grumpy, just on my way to a meeting I don’t particularly want to have. What’s up?” I’m within a few minutes of my destination, but I always answer when she calls if at all possible. She’s my only family left, and while she may be a pain in my ass, I love her with every inch of my heart. Even if she does ride my ass like Zorro trying to get me to go legit, have a wife, family, picket fence and some hairy mutt to trip over.

  “Just wanted to remind you about dinner Monday. Rebecca will be there.” There’s a sing-song lilt to her voice, and I roll my eyes and try to hold back my irritation.

  She’s been trying to set me up for years, but she’s leveled up her push the last few months. I’ve dated, if you can call it that, but found that most of the women weren’t all that interested in me. They wanted the lifestyle and the pocketbook that came with it.

  Or it could just be that I'm a grouchy fuck. Doesn’t matter, I wasn’t all that interested in them, to tell the truth. Something just never clicked, and love has never been a priority to me.

  It’s not just the lack of belief that love is real, that it can last or is worth the effort. It’s also that my life is non-stop, 24/7 work. Dangerous work. And I could never have someone attached to me who could be used as a weakness. So, love, relationships, kids...it’s just not on my radar.

  “Yeah, probably not going to make it, sis.”

  “Please, Vito. You need to have some life other than business. You’re going to wake up one day and look back and see that’s not what matters.”

  The family business never did sit right with Maria. She took her own track, going to nursing school, but she still lives in our family home, which is just fine with me. It’s big. Bigger than she needs, with lots of upkeep necessary, but I help out with all the expenses because despite my grumpy nature, family sticks together.

  Even with my father’s indiscretions, we had a happy life mainly due to our mother and her unwillingness to have their marital troubles intrude on her children’s lives. Then, as we grew older, my father’s frequent business trips and the times we would find our mother crying started to make more sense.

  “Now is not the time for a lecture. I’ll let you know if I can come, but I’m busy now.”

  “Fine. You’re always busy,” she grouses. “I love you, you big idiot. I’ll bother you tomorrow.”

  We sign off, and I take the last turn toward Salvatore’s office as a bolt of lightning flashes and torrents of rain suddenly start to soak the streets and the car.

  Thunder claps so loud I can hear it in the silence of the car, and lightning fills the sky as I move down the nearly abandoned downtown street. No one is out in this neighborhood at night, even when the weather is nice; add a storm like this, and it looks like a ghost town of old warehouses and boarded-up storefronts.

  I pass a few glowing neon ‘Open’ signs in some dumpy bar windows, but other than that there is little sign of life tonight.

  I slow the SUV as rain splashes across the windshield, making visibility near zero. Then another bolt of lightning flashes. It strikes a streetlamp just in front of me, lighting up the night for a split second with a cascade of sparks, and I’m momentarily blinded. Thunder follows loud enough to shake the car.

  I throw my arm up to shield my eyes, but as I do, there’s a thud from the front of the vehicle and the front bumper warning sensors go off.

  I slam on the brakes as another flash lights up the night. “Fuck!” I bring the huge SUV to a dead stop, peering out my driver’s window into the wet street, straining in the dark and rain to see what I’ve hit. I see a red dress soaked and clinging around a motionless body lying in the street.

  I throw open my door, my heart pounding, and a flood of relief rushes through me as she moans, trying to sit up.

  “Easy.” I cradle the back of her head and see blood mixing with the rain and making a red rivulet in her blonde hair.

  Her red lips open as she tries to breathe through the downpour, eyelids fluttering as she looks up at me.

  And suddenly I feel like I’m falling.

  Tumbling into the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. Her bright red lipstick matches her soaking silk dress, which clings to her every curve and shows off hardened nipples under the thin fabric.

  “You hit me!” she snaps, blinking away the rain that clings to her dark lashes.

  “I didn’t see you.”

  She winces and brings her hand to the side of her head, pushing herself up on the pavement with her other arm.

  “I’m wearing a red dress,” she hisses, motioning with her hands to her midsection. “How could you not see me?” She smacks my hand from the back of her head. “Stop touching me!”

  I feel a loss as she shoves my hand away, and I want to scoop her up to draw her in closer. “I’m sorry. It’s not the greatest weather for seeing things,” I mutter, unused to making excuses or apologizing. “Even beautiful, red things.”

  2

  Esme

  THERE ARE BAD DAYS.

  Then there are bad days.

  After everything else going on in my life, I’m now laying in the street, soaking wet, looking up at a man that looks like he could kill me with his pinkie.

  Or break my heart with his eyes.

  “What are you doing running around out here in the rain, anyway?” he asks, reaching down to slide his hand under my back even after I slapped him away a second ago.

  I let it go because...ugh...I kind of want his hands on me.

  “That’s on a need-to-know basis,” I snip, the pressure from the day and the horrific outcome of what I thought could be a saving-grace job bringing out more bitchiness than is my usual. “And you don’t need to know.”

  “Okay, then.” His voice is as deep as the thunder rumbling above, and another crash and flash of lightning make me startle and yelp. “I don’t need to know, but I do know we both need to get off this street. Let me get you in the car before we become lightning rods—or we both get run over. You okay to stand?”

  He runs his hand down one leg, then the other, making my heart pound. It’s not sexual—his touch feels protective—but it’s having a crazy effect on me nonetheless.

  The headlights from his SUV show a face that looks like it’s seen its share of fights, but the ruggedness gives him an edge that is wildly sexy. He’s older, like a lot older, but that, too, is only adding to whatever voodoo he seems to have cast over me. Rain is dripping from thick black hair plastered onto a jutting forehead and running down over lips that were made for kissing.

  Even crouched down next to me, he’s enormous. Like, otherworldly enormous. And I wonder if he has to have all his clothes custom made.

  I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment, realizing it must just be the bump on my head making me feel weird.

  “Yes, I can stand,” I answer, shifting my legs under me and smoothing the wet fabric of my dress down around them, trying to shake away the vulgar porno playing with him as the lead in my head. “They don’t hurt, just scratches.”

  That’s a lie because my head is pounding, and my knees are burning from smacking the pavement. Water is running into my eyes and down my face, soaking through the dress and sticking it to my skin. My nipples tingle and harden, and I’m not entirely sure if it’s from the freezing rain or something else.

  There’s something about this guy that feels both dangerous and safe at the same time. He looks like he belongs in a boardroom, but the energy around him feels more like The Godfather.

  He helps me up, leads me around to the passenger door and lifts me up and inside before jogging around the front of the SUV and hopping in the driver’s side while I fight back more tears.

  When I showed up for work yesterday morning at the courthouse, bringing everyone who’s anyone their morning coffee, as usual, I did the best I could to hide my swollen, red eyes. I had spent the night before at the dining room table with my mother at the home
where I grew up, two hours away in Greenbriar, going over the mountainous stack of medical bills and other past-due expenses for my father’s now full-time nursing home care.

  He broke his back falling off a ladder six months ago. I offered to postpone school and come home and help, but my parents were both adamant that the best thing I could do for them was to stay in school and work my hardest. So that’s what I did in between bus trips home to visit and offer the best support I could.

  My parents ran a house painting company their whole lives, but when Dad fell, their medical insurer weaseled out of paying, citing a loophole in their policy that work-related injuries needed to be covered by a separate rider. I didn’t know how serious their financial struggles were until the night before last, when Mom finally told me that, despite fighting, there was no insurance money.

  The only saving grace, as I know from a case I worked on, is that as long as we make a payment plan with the doctors, hospital, rehab, etc., we can manage it all. But they still need money every month to make that happen.

  Being an intern for the district attorney’s office was what I planned for all year. I saved money from my waitressing job to be sure I could afford a little apartment and my meager expenses for the summer. I got a full-ride academic scholarship to the University of Michigan, so I could save almost everything I made during the school year. Little did I know taking an unpaid internship—emphasis on unpaid—would leave me desperate and wondering if I’d made a terrible mistake.

  Hence the need to find paid employment that could fit around my work schedule.

  Yeah, that didn’t exactly work out as planned.

  I glance over now to see the man looking at me. His size is even more evident here inside the vehicle. He takes up the entire space behind the wheel with the seat pushed back as far as possible, and I wonder if I’ve just put myself in another position I will regret.

  “Here.” He reaches into the back seat and pulls a suit jacket off a hanger, handing it to me. “Lean forward.”