I Accidentally Called the Mafia Boss “Honey” in Front of 30 Employees—Then He Summoned Me to His Private Office

The kiss was not gentle. It was a collision of raw survival, adrenaline, and months of repressed longing.

Gabriel let out a low groan in the back of his throat, his good arm wrapping around Paige’s waist and pulling her up against his bare chest. He hauled her onto his lap, his mouth claiming hers with a fierce, possessive hunger that stole the breath from her lungs. Paige tangled her fingers in his damp, dark hair, pressing herself closer, wanting to erase the memory of the gunfire, the blood, and the ghost of Kevin’s lies against the burning heat of Gabriel’s skin.

When he finally pulled back, resting his forehead against hers, both of them were breathing hard. His slate-gray eyes were ablaze with a dark, untamed fire.

“If you stay on this floor tonight, Paige,” Gabriel murmured, his voice thick with restraint, “there is no going back. You understand that? You won’t be my employee anymore. You won’t be collateral.”

“I don’t want to go back,” she whispered against his lips.

He picked her up effortlessly, carrying her out of the cold bathroom into the shadowed warmth of the master suite.

For the first time in six months, Paige did not dream of unpaid bills, shadowy debt collectors, or empty apartments. She slept cocooned in the heavy, protective warmth of Gabriel Moretti’s arms, her head resting against the rhythmic, steady beat of his heart.

The morning shattered the peace with brutal precision.

At 9:15 a.m., while Gabriel was on a secure conference call in the adjoining study, Paige’s personal phone—the cheap burner she had kept hidden in the bottom of her handbag—vibrated violently on the bedside nightstand.

Her stomach seized. Only three people had that number: the urgent care clinic, her mother, and Kevin.

With trembling fingers, she picked it up.

A text message glared from the cracked screen:

*“I know you’re with him, Paige. I know he’s sleeping with you. Look outside the window of your mother’s house in Dayton. If you want her to see her sixty-second birthday, you have forty-eight hours to bring me the blue ledger from Moretti’s private safe. Don’t tell him. If Moretti finds out, she dies before his men even cross the county line.”*

Attached was a photograph: Paige’s mother, Martha, watering her hydrangeas on her porch in Ohio. In the foreground, reflected in the side mirror of a parked sedan, was the silhouette of a man holding a telescopic camera.

Paige’s blood ran ice-cold. A wave of dizziness hit her so violently she had to catch the edge of the mahogany dresser to keep from falling.

Kevin was not in Miami. Kevin was working directly with Santoro’s hitmen, and he had targeted the only piece of Paige’s life that still felt innocent.

She stood frozen in the center of the bedroom, clutching the burner phone so tightly the plastic casing creaked. Down the hall, she could hear Gabriel’s authoritative voice giving orders to his capos, moving pieces on a chessboard to annihilate the Santoro syndicate.

The blue ledger. She had seen it yesterday on Gabriel’s desk. It contained the real, unvarnished names of every corrupt port authority official, judge, and state senator on the Moretti payroll. If that book fell into Santoro’s hands—or the hands of the Department of Justice—Gabriel’s entire empire would implode within twenty-four hours. Gabriel would go to a supermax prison for life.

And if she refused, her mother would be murdered in cold blood.

Paige dropped to the edge of the bed, burying her face in her trembling hands. The crushing weight of her reality returned with suffocating force.

*What do I do?* she thought hysterically. *Steal from the devil to save my mother? Or let the devil find out and watch Kevin burn everything down?*

The door to the study swung open.

Gabriel walked into the bedroom, buttoning the cuffs of a crisp charcoal shirt. The moment his eyes landed on her hunched figure, his expression darkened instantly.

“Paige?”

He was across the room in three strides, kneeling in front of her, his hands coming up to cup her pale face. “What happened? Are you in pain? Is it the glass from last night?”

Paige looked at him. She saw the genuine, unmasked terror in the eyes of a man who ruled an underworld without mercy—terror that something had hurt *her*.

In that split second, Paige Winslow made her choice.

She didn't run. She didn't lie. She had spent two years cowering beneath Kevin’s manipulations, and she refused to let that coward dictate her life for a single second longer.