My Target, My Love

Allison’s POV

Infiltrating a Mafia family as a spy was nothing short of a death sentence. If you weren't discovered and taken out by the family, a brutal inter-mafia war could claim you.

There was always a bullet waiting at every turn. Sometimes you get lucky. Other times you don't. My father didn't. He went missing without a trace ten years ago as an undercover agent and was never found—presumed dead. Yet, here I am walking right into the very death that claimed him.

The club pulsed like the belly of a living orgasm with bass-heavy music. The only thing that could be heard over the pulsating music was the cheering as the men dropped a dollar or two on the bodies of the dancing strippers while simultaneously pawing the strippers—pressing their butts and breasts and caressing their semi-naked bodies with their sinful, drunken palms.

I eyed the scene, lips curled tight in disgust. I sashayed through the dancing bodies for the stripping section. A haze of smoky air laced with sweat, perfume, and alcohol hung around the dance floor. I sift through it, heading for my own pole.

So that was how they would paw me too, touch me like I was their willing prostitute. The FBI instructor that taught me pole dancing and the entirety of how to be a stripper for three months before the mission didn't mention this extreme level of decadence. In fact, the bitch had glorified it.

But I couldn't back out now. Mission Luca Tonelli had been on for a year now, and it all centered on me. I have waited for this day for years. The day when I finally get to infiltrate Luca Tonelli’s Mafia gang and not only bring him down but also find out what he did to my father—federal agent Henry Hayes.

I paused just a couple of feet from the pole, directly before the VIP booths. A daughter has got to avenge her father. I sighed to myself. I snatched a glass of whisky from the tray of a passing server. I poured it down my throat in one go.

The server’s gaze quizzed me as he waited for the glass, fingers balanced under the tray. I ignored the question in his eyes, and I took another glass, which ended just like the first.

The strong bite of the alcohol stung my throat as it numbed my senses a bit too. This was the only way I could do this—drunk. If I wasn't, there were going to be a lot of broken bones around by the time I began dancing, and they won't be mine.

I threw the glass to the floor, and it crashed out with a loud, sharp cry. The server made a startled gasp, jumping away from the broken glass.

The drunken crowd didn't. They parted as if to witness the passage of a divine entity, their cheering rising to the roof.

I sashayed into their midst, my stiletto crushing the shards of glass. I was just as sultry as the other strippers in the club, dressed only in midnight black lace lingerie that bared every inch of my body. Only my nipples and sex were safe from the lusting eyes tearing me apart.

I tried not to think about their palms slapping my ass and their hands fondling my breasts. I let the alcohol take control enough for me to carry out my mission.

I searched the VIP booths with my eyes until I spotted him. Partially hidden by shadows and a velvet rope, he sat with his back against the booth, arms spread across the top of the leather seat.

He had an untouched drink sweating on the table before him. The crash alerted him too, as I wanted it to. Because his eyes were on me—the deep blue eyes dark and unreadable, and damn fucking penetrating.

I stifled a gasp, hiding my shock behind my hand as I raised it to my mouth. I nearly faltered in my walk from a splinter of glass clinging to my stiletto, saved by a last-minute graceful stamina trick I picked up during my FBI training.

Pictures could be prejudicial, and they were to him—they damn well were. For a man in his forties, nearly twice my age, Luca Tonelli was nothing like the old, almost scraggy-skinned man the FBI official photos made him out to be. Every detail of his lean, slightly oval face was not just crude and dangerous but also outlined rugged and gorgeous masculinity. His large, muscular body was barely contained in his designer, custom-made three-piece suit.

The only sign of aging was his graying temples. Yet the dark hair, the color of midnight, with two thin locks nearly cloaking both eyes in sinful Cs, somehow eclipsed that. The inky strands shimmered like silk under the soft neon lights that traced circles on the leather couches in the VIP lounge.

He looked abominably gorgeous. His deep blue orbs penetrated me with more interest, following my slow, sensual walk to the pole. Not then did I realize I was staring.

Hell fucking no! I dragged my eyes fast from him, as if he was the plague. He suddenly looked far worse than a sewer rat to me. The bastard was nearly twice my age, and he murdered my father.

I threw the thoughts of him into the abyss of my mind. Now that I already have his attention, I just need to fucking dance. I grabbed the pole and hoisted myself onto the small stage.

We had a guy in the club’s lighting crew. I wasn't surprised when the spotlights suddenly dimmed on the other strippers and brightened in its full majestic glare on me.

I sucked in a deep breath, shut my eyes to the lustful stares around me, and I started to move my body to the slow beat vibrating through the loud speakers.

Cheers and murmurs rippled through the crowd. I wrapped one long leg around the pole, the other pointing skyward with elegance and control. Upside down now, I swayed, letting my body coil and uncoil like a serpent, sliding, twisting, letting gravity tease my descent while the room watched. I followed the instructor's guide in my head, repeating them to myself like a mantra: Don't just dance. Seduce the air itself. Make the music crawl across your skin. Make desire feel like a living thing breathing through your blood.

As I danced, I searched for him again in his VIP booth. Partially screened by dark shadows and a velvet rope, I felt his eyes on me, like I felt my own existence, his gaze—solid, dark, and outright unreadable as before.

He held his glass to his mouth, his lips teasing the rim with subtle charm as if he was flirting with his drink.

I arched my back, and I lowered to the stage, legs splitting, body undulating like water poured over velvet. My gaze never left his. Each sway of my hips, to trap his eyes on me.

Around me, blurred out a bit by the little alcohol I had, the crowd hooted and clapped. Dollar bills floated down like leaves on the wind, and drunken, perverted palms pawed my breasts and ass.

While the alcohol made it bearable, it didn't make it any less demeaning. My muscles strained against the lace lingerie as I kept my rage buried in my veins and continued dancing, legs wrapping around the pole, hips grinding, swaying with seduction.

By the time I stepped down from the stage, I was weary from exhaustion. Every bone in me creaked in protest. My legs were like lead under me as I dragged them with me and through the crowd to the dressing room.

Was he still looking at me? I thought in my head, ignoring the perverted hands on me and the soft spanking of my ass from a bastard or two in the crowd. I couldn't dare look up at him again. Looking at him after dancing would be an open invitation—an invitation to trouble. Because then he would be suspicious. But I hope the bastard took the bait.

I sighed as I pushed the door, stumbling into the dressing room. The other girls turned from their mirrors to me, their murmurings hushed. Finding it was their new colleague, one that just joined today—me—they turned their heads. Their murmuring resumed, louder than before.

Some cleaned off their makeup with tissues. Others put on something more respectable upon their lingerie. The whole room reeked of sweat as a slaughterhouse reeked of blood.

I was walking to my own desk when the door squealed open. A huge man in a large suit that struggled to contain his body strolled into the room.

His eyes did a fast sweep of the room and stopped on me. “You,” he announced with an authority that stilled the air. “Don Luca Tonelli wants you. Follow me.”