Spotlight & Giveaway: Brutal Capo by Lucy Monroe

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Lucy Monroe to HJ!

Hi Lucy and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Brutal Capo!

Thanks so much for having me!
 

To start off, can you please tell us a little bit about this book?:

Brutal Capo is the fifth book in my standalone mafia romance series, Syndicate Rules and has a bit of a Beauty and the Beast vibe. Salvatore is the most brutal capo in New York and the minute he lays eyes on Bianca, he wants her. But she’s a disgraced mafia princess in hiding. The last thing she needs is a one-night stand that will cost her job. After she’s attacked on her way home one morning, Salvatore insists on taking care of Bianca in his penthouse and keeping her there. A slow burn to extra spicy passion follows.
 

Please share your favorite lines or quote(s) from this book:

Makes me smile:

BIANCA
I give him a once over, ignoring the way my body wants to lean toward his. “You’re gorgeous, I’ll give you that, but you don’t have game.”
“No one has ever complained before.”
Arrogant much? “And were you paying these women for their time?”

Makes my heart hurt:

BIANCA
“I willingly offer my life,” Salvatore says solemnly.
Don De Luca intones, “I accept your sacrifice.”
Tears burn the back of my eyes and I blink rapidly, but they don’t go away. Hot moisture spills down my cheeks. I shouldn’t have come here.
My attempt to save Salvatore is what is going to get him killed.

What inspired this book?

I fell in love with mafia romance early last year and after reading tons of them, ideas for my own started percolating in my brain. The idea for this book started as a heart wrenching line that I heard Bianca saying in my head, “My nightmares aren’t about killing a man to save my sister. They are about the time no one was there to save me.” This one line sparked my love for Bianca and need to tell her story.

How did you ‘get to know’ your main characters? Did they ever surprise you?

These two came to me pretty well formed in my head as characters often do. They did surprise me, more than once, though. Bianca’s reason for becoming an exotic dancer wasn’t what I thought it was and I didn’t find that out until about 75% into the book. Neither does she.

What was your favorite scene to write?

Usually, my favorite scene to write is the crisis point, but I played that scene in my head so many times, writing it was more like journaling. The scene that surprised me and I found a lot of fun to write because of that was their first intimate moment.

What was the most difficult scene to write?

The resolution. By the time I’m at the end of a book, I *know* the characters are meant to be together but I sometimes struggle with getting it all down because I think readers know what is in my head. lol Anyway, I had to rewrite and revise it twice so all the stuff in my head made it onto the page.

Would you say this book showcases your writing style or is it a departure for you?

It is both. Readers who have been with me a long time know I love to write over the top alpha heroes, but the mafia element takes this story to a darker place than my previous books (before I started this series) and Salvatore’s morally gray character isn’t something I would have written two years ago.

What do you want people to take away from reading this book?

Life shapes us into the people we are and we don’t need to be that perfect idea of who we *could* have been to be loved.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have planned?

I’m just starting Miceli’s book (Forced Vows), the next book in my mafia romance series. It will be out in July. I’m also working on a serialized billionaire romance with the installments available in my monthly newsletter only. (It’s reader participatory and a lot of fun.) I have a dark romance book duo on the back burner and of course the next mafia romance after Miceli’s book.

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: For international winner: ebooks: Convenient Mafia Wife, Urgent Vows and Brutal Capo (all my Italian mafia stories to date)
For US shipping address only: signed copy of Brutal Capo with some book swag (pens, stickers, bookmarks, etc.)

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: Do you like books set in the Italian mafia, Irish mob, Greek mafia, or Russian bratva best? I have to admit that I love them all as long as the enemies are vanquished, the romance reaches my heart and the spice is part of the story, not in place of the plot.

 
a Rafflecopter giveaway

 
 

Excerpt from Brutal Capo:

SALVATORE

“Boss, there’s blood on this asshole’s knife. She might be wounded,” Pietro says.
Bianca sways. I catch her as she crumples. She’s bleeding like hell from a gash on her forehead and the back of her t-shirt is soaked with it.
Pietro reaches out like he’s going to touch her and I jerk her backward, snarling.
He puts his hands up. “I won’t touch her boss, but she needs a doctor. There’s a rip in the back of her t-shirt and she’s still bleeding.”
Cazzo. We have to get the Lucchese soldiers off the street, but Bianca needs medical attention now.
I shove my handkerchief against the wound on her back and start jogging to the car. “Franco is still at the club. Call him and then wait here for backup.”
Severu De Luca, the Genovese don, and my boss, will go nuclear over this.
“Already called him boss. The Audi is fast, but not ideal for disposing of bodies,” my driver says.
A black metallic SUV slams to halt right behind my SR7. Franco and two men jump out.
“Take the one still living to The Box,” I bark. “Store the others on the sublevel until Severu decides how he wants this handled.”
He’ll want to make a statement with the bodies, but whether it is a pile of dismembered parts dumped on the don’s front lawn, or something else is anyone’s guess. Some people might think our don has grown soft since getting married, but the opposite is true.
Keeping Catalina safe makes my boss twice as deadly.
“Tell Severu I want to be there for the questioning,” I yell toward Franco as I slide into the backseat with Bianca.
What are Lucchese soldiers doing mugging a woman on Genovese territory? Interrogating the stronzo my feisty server hit with her pepper spray will have to wait.
“Take us to the hospital and show me how fast this fucking car can go getting there.”
We peel away from the curb as I press one of the black hand towels, we keep for situations like this, hard against Bianca’s back over my handkerchief. I take another and press down on the oozing wound on her forehead.
She sucks in a breath and her eyes pop open. Her face contorts in pain, but she doesn’t cry and she doesn’t complain. Her silence bothers me.
“You will be alright. We’re taking you to the hospital.”
She names a hospital on the other side of the river. I tell my driver to take us to the Cosa Nostra hospital instead.
Her eyes narrow and I have no doubt that the woman in my arms would argue with me, except she loses consciousness again. Cursing out the Lucchese bastards who attacked her, I press harder on the towels.
Too bad there is only one still alive. He’s going to pay in pain for attacking a woman in our territory.
For attacking this woman, he will pay double.

~ ~ ~

Bianca is not a good patient. She wakes up to argue with the doctor about treating her here, only to grudgingly give consent to treatment when the doctor explains that not doing so could result in a much longer convalescence.
She answers the questions about her health history grudgingly and asks her own about every damn test they want to run.
I make it clear to both her and the doctor that the tests will be done. Every last one of them.
“Bossy,” she grumbles.
“Irreparable damage could be done to your spinal cord if we don’t find out exactly where the knife went in,” the doctor explains patiently.
“What knife?”
“The one you were stabbed with.” I text Franco for an update and my driver to bring me a fresh suit.
Franco: Street cleanup done. On our way to work.
Good. New Yorkers aren’t going to faint at the sight of a little blood on the sidewalk, but nobody needs to see the dead bodies. Witnesses are a mess to clean up. Even when you pay them off, you have to monitor them.
It’s a headache.
They should be at the Oscuro building soon. I text Severu to give him a heads up.
Bianca is still arguing with the doctor. “He didn’t stab me. One of them hit me in the back. It hurts, but I’ll be fine.”
I walk over to the bed and grab the hand not getting an IV and press it against my blood-soaked shirt.
The blood is starting to dry, but her hand comes away smeared with red. “You bled all over me and my car. You were stabbed.”
Her eyes round and she blinks at her hands like she’s trying to make sense of what she sees.
The nurse frowns at me. “Her hands will have to be cleaned again and what if some of that blood is from the other involved parties?”
Involved parties? Is this a nurse, or a lawyer?
I shrug. “She doesn’t have any open wounds on that hand.”
The nurse looks like she doesn’t believe I checked. I don’t care what she believes.
My phone rings. It’s Severu. I go to the outer room to take the call and give my don a sit rep.
“She’s in treatment. I need to get back in there before she tries to sign herself out of the hospital against doctor’s orders.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Why do women ever do the things they do?”
When I come back into the treatment room, Bianca is laying on her stomach and there is an imaging machine above her. I’m right and she’s still bitching, but she’s not moving so they can get their pictures. And she’s not trying to deny treatment, so I don’t intervene.
“There has been no damage to the spinal cord or major vascular structures.”
“Then why the hell did she bleed so much?” I demand.
The doctor’s explanation sounds like he’s throwing out big words because he’s getting paid by the syllable.
“In English,” I demand. “Medical speak isn’t one of the four languages I’m fluent in.”
“Excuse me, but I’m the patient and I understood just fine.” The defiant words seem to exhaust Bianca.
Refusing to tire her further, I don’t argue. I will get my answers from the doctor later.
“Does she need a transfusion?” I ask.
“We can make do with plasma and fluids.”
“What part of being a doctor at this facility has anything to do with making do?” I fist my hands to keep from grabbing him by his pristine white coat and shoving him against the wall until he apologizes to Bianca for merely wanting to make do with her treatment.
He can apologize after she’s better.
“A transfusion would be best,” he hurriedly adds.
“What’s your blood type?” I ask Bianca.
“I have already ascertained that,” the nurse informs me in a snippy tone.
What the hell is going on with this place? Have these people forgotten who their patients are and who pays their salaries?
Bianca doesn’t seem to hear the nurse and says, “B negative.”
Satisfaction I don’t understand settles in me. “I’m B negative.” I glare at the doctor. “You’ll transfuse my blood to her. If she needs plasma after, you will take it from my stores.”
I expect an argument from Bianca, but her eyes are shut and her breathing is even.
I walk swiftly toward the bed. “Is she sleeping, or passed out?”
I don’t wait for the nurse or doctor to answer and jostle Bianca’s arm.
She hunches her shoulder, winces when that hurts her and mumbles. “Leave me ‘lone. Tired.”
Her eyes don’t open.
“Fix her.” I let the doctor see his own broken body in my eyes if he doesn’t repair the damage done to Bianca. “Give her what you need to not hurt her patching her up.”
The nurse grumbles about treating a patient without consent, but the doctor instructs her to administer local anesthetic before irrigating the wound on Bianca’s back, or doing anything else.
I insist on a plastic surgeon being brought in to do the stitches on both her back and forehead.
When Bianca wakes up, she immediately goes for the IV needle in her hand. I’m on the phone discussing the purchase of Juniper’s bars with Severu, but I see the movement and grab her wrist before she can rip it out.
“No. You need the plasma.” She’s already had a pint of my blood.
“Is she awake?” Severu asks me.
“Yes.”
“Find out why they targeted her.”
“You could ask the Lucchese asshole I sent to The Box if he was still alive,” I say in Italian.
Fury rolls through me in impotent waves. Since when does a made man bite off his own tongue and choke on his blood rather than face interrogation?
“Whoever sent them had them more afraid of our interrogation techniques than death,” Severu says with disgust.
“Pretty sure you and Angelo are the reasons the other families fear being interrogated by us.” Not that I can’t inflict damage when necessary, but both the don and his head enforcer have torture down to a fine art.
And the New York underworld knows it.
Bianca gasps, drawing my attention back to her.
“Do you need something for the pain?” I ask her.
“You sound damn solicitous,” Severu mocks me.
Bianca shakes her head. “I’m woozy as it is.”
“Is it true that you insisted on giving her your blood for the transfusion?” my boss asks.
“We’re the same blood type.”
“And I’m sure they have pints of B or O negative on hand.”
“No doubt.” We keep a supply of O negative available at all times because it’s the universal donor blood type. “I wasn’t letting the doctor put some random guy’s blood into her veins.”
“That’s how blood transfusions usually work,” Severu says, sounding inexplicably amused. “You didn’t have to use your private supply.”
“I didn’t.” Not for the first bag anyway.
All capos and their inner circles in the Genovese Family keep plasma in cryo storage, refreshing the supply once a year, or after it gets used.
“You had the doctor take directly from your vein?” Severu asks, all humor leached from the tone that reveals nothing of his thoughts.
“She needed the blood.” I’m glad Bianca doesn’t speak Italian.
This whole conversation is not something she needs to hear.
“Is there something I need to know about her?” Severu asks.
I grimace at what he’s implying.
I’m a capo. I don’t get married without the don’s approval. Not that Severu exercises his right of refusal. So far anyway and he’s been don for over five years.
“Other than that I want to fuck her until her throat is raw from screaming my name?”
Bianca squirms with discomfort again and I push the call button. She’s getting pain meds, whether she likes it, or not.
Severu barks out a laugh. “It’s like that?”
“It’s like that.”
“Sounds like she’s got some healing to do before that can happen.”
“Doctor said minimum two weeks before anything strenuous.”
“You asked?” Severu’s laughter lasts longer this time. “You have got it bad, Salvatore.”
“You know how it is. You want what you can’t have.”
Cold water saturates my chest and down the front of my slacks. Shouting, I jump back and lose my grip on my phone.
“What the hell?” I demand.
Bianca looks up at me, her pallid face showing exhaustion and pain, but no remorse. “I knocked it over.”
“And the lid slipped off too?”
“It was hard to get enough water, so I took the lid off.”
Cazzo. I should have been paying attention. “I’ll get you a new bottle of water.”
This one had better be easier for her to sip from or the medical staff here will find out how unpleasant it can be to deal with untreated pain.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

Another steamy mafia romance set in the New York Cosa Nostra by USA Today bestselling author Lucy Monroe.

BIANCA
I’m hiding in plain sight from the mafia. But when the don finds out who I am, he demands I marry the capo who broke my heart.

SALVATORE
She betrayed me. Or so I think until that fateful day when my don gives me a choice. Make it right and marry her. Or death.

This is a stand alone mafia romance with a guaranteed HEA. No cliffhangers. No Cheating.

CW: explicit intimacy, graphic violence, foul language, reference to SA in the past, parental abandonment (in past for Bianca).

Book Links: Amazon | B&N | iTunes | Kobo | Google |
 
 

Meet the Author:

With more than 10 million copies of her books in print worldwide, award winning and USA Today bestseller Lucy Monroe has published over 90 books and had her stories translated for sale all over the world. After a two decade long career in traditional publishing, Lucy has gone indie and she is loving the freedom to write the stories her readers enjoy most. Her new steamy mafia romance series, Syndicate Rules features the alpha heroes and spice she writes so well. While she is published in multiple subgenres of romance, all of her books are steamy, deeply emotional and adhere to the concept that love wins. A true devotee of romance, she adores sharing her love for the genre with other readers on social media.
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