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Chapter Text

It was four in the morning when Katya met him. She’d just gotten out of work, and while she waited at the train station, the full moon hanging low in the sky as she played with her diamond necklace, she saw a wolf on the other side of the tracks. Katya had no idea what the beast was doing here - as far as she knew, wolves hadn’t lived in Chicago for hundreds of years, so it must have escaped from the zoo. She raised her phone into the air, and just as soon as she was ready to snap a picture, the wolf raised its snout into the air and howled at the moon - an oddly perfect photo op.

Suddenly, the sun peeked over the horizon, and something strange started to happen. The wolf stumbled across the tracks, his claws retracting, his ears shrinking, his fur disappearing to reveal dark chocolate orbs and a chiseled six-pack.

“What just happened?!” she exclaimed.

“D-don’t freak out,” the devilishly handsome man said.

“What else am I supposed to do?” Katya said. “You were a wolf, and then you turned into a guy! A guy with a ridiculously sharp jawline!”

“Yeah, I’m a werewolf,” he said. “That’s what we do.” There was an incredibly awkward pause, and then he said, “I’m Wylder Wellington Woolfe, by the way.”

“That’s the worst name for a werewolf I’ve ever heard.”

“My cousin Wherewolf Therewolf Therecastle would beg to differ,” Wylder said. “So what’s your name?”

“Katya.”

“Katya,” Wylder repeated. “And what are you doing out so late? Or should I say early?”

“I just got out of work.”

“At four AM?”

“Yeah,” Katya said sadly. “I have this job where my boss makes me write two whole chapters of a paranormal romance novel every single day. It takes up a lot of my time. I haven’t seen the family or even been to my apartment in days…not that I can pay the rent, given that I only make $15 per chapter, which adds up to the paltry sum of $7800 a year. They keep saying that they’ll pay me more, but it’s not exactly enough to live on.”

Katya sadly stared out into the distance, and Wylder gave her a sympathetic look, but before he could say anything, she suddenly pulled out a bag of garlic jalapeño chips and popped one into her mouth. “Want one?” she asked Wylder.

“Sure,” he said. “Let’s spice things up.” Katya handed him a chip, and as he took a bite, his mouth burning from the high heat, he said, “You know, I could help you out with your rent.”

“Really?”

“My pack has a mutual aid fund that we can use.”

“So you’re rich?” Katya said, a note of suspicion in her voice. “Are you with the mafia or something?”

“No, not exactly,” Wylder said. “We took most of our money from the vampires.”

“There are vampires here too?”

“Unfortunately,” Wylder said. “They’re richer than God, but they spend it all on stupid stuff like poorly-managed social media companies and spicily shaped rockets. My pack…we’re like Robin Hood and his merry men. We steal from the vampires, and we give it back to the humans they feed upon. On top of that, we started a labor union, and we’ve been tirelessly advocating for fair hours and fair compensation, and for everyone to make a living wage, whether they’re baristas or warehouse workers or freelance romance novelists.”

“So you’re going to help me?” Katya said hopefully.

“Yeah, I…I really think you need it,” Wylder said. “I mean, ten chapters a week? That’s a lot! It would take me a week just to write one chapter!”

“It’s rough, but…”

“No buts,” Wylder said. “You deserve better.”

“Wylder!” someone suddenly shouted from the other side of the tracks. Katya quickly turned around, and on the other side, she saw a man with sharp fangs and slicked-back hair, holding what appeared to be a bone-shaped rubber chew toy.

“Is that…”

“Yeah, I should have mentioned that the vampire coven might be trying to steal their money back from the union,” Wylder said, but his eyes were fixated on the chew toy.

“FETCH!” the vampire shouted as he threw the toy like he was a pitcher in the World Series, letting it fly all the way to the dog park on the other end of town. Wylder sprinted away, barking happily as he ran after the chew toy, and just like that, Katya was alone with the vampire. The fanged monstrosity crept closer and closer, sparkling like Bowie in the morning sun, and he opened his mouth wide, ready to sink his teeth into Katya’s neck and suck her blood…

And that was when she pulled out a pistol, turned on the silencer, and shot the vampire in the face.

The vampire slumped to the ground, and a few seconds later, two more bloodsuckers emerged from the shadows, their eyes fixated on Katya, but she quickly shot one of them with her pistol while she slit the other’s throat with a knife. The two of them died instantly, and Katya glanced around the train station, searching for more vampires, but all she saw was a swarm of bats perched in the rafters. Just as she aimed her pistol upwards, the bats suddenly swooped down and transformed into an army of vampires, all of them ready to kill. Katya didn’t stand a chance against them, at least not with a single gun, but just as the vampires approached, she had an idea.

She opened up her bag of ridiculously spicy garlic jalapeño chips, and she threw them at the vampire army.

“NOOOOOO! NOT THE HIGH HEAT!!” the vampires screamed as they burst into flames from the searing, sizzling flavor of the garlic-flavored snacks.

She’d decimated the vampire army, but there was one more who hadn’t been hit by the garlic jalapeño chips, a ferocious, blood-spattered creature of the night, but as the vampire snuck around the corner and silently inched closer, Katya unclasped the chain of her necklace and used it as a garotte, strangling the vampire until he collapsed onto the ground, asphyxiated. Once the last vampire was dead, she took a moment to breathe, but all of a sudden, Wylder returned with the chew toy, and his jaw dropped as soon as he saw all of the mutilated corpses strewn across the train station.

“What was that?” Wylder said, his jaw hanging open as he looked around at all of the bloodshed. “Katya? You just killed those guys, and…wait a second, you’ve got that fancy diamond necklace. Even though you said you only make $7800 a year…”

“I lied to you,” Katya said coldly.

“About your job?” Wylder stammered.

“About everything,” she whispered into his ear as she pulled Wylder close and then held a gun to his temple. “My name is Katya Goncharova, and I am the billionaire capa dei capi of the Neapolitan mafia - the boss of all bosses. Come with me if you want to live.”

Chapter Text

“So let me get this straight,” Wylder said as Katya led him toward a building with a neon sign out front that read “VLB Holistic Synergy.” “You’re not an underpaid romance novelist struggling to pay her rent? You’re…a mob boss?”

Katya nodded and then said, “I’ll explain more when we get inside, but there are a few people I’d like you to meet first.”

“You can start by telling me what ‘VLB’ stands for.”

“Very Legitimate Business,” Katya said with a smile just as they entered the building, which was filled with soldiers and associates of the Neapolitan mafia, working on everything from protection rackets to gambling to extortion.

“Okay, so that’s Vinny right behind you,” Katya said. “And there’s Tommy, Gina, Big Poppa, the Freak Sisters, the Drunken Duo, Ice Pick Joe, Frying Pan Frank, Big Tony, Little Tony, Short Tony, Tall Tony, Tony The Perennially Itchy, Two-Knives, Pimpleface…”

“Don’t you mean Scarface?”

“Then there’s Jenny the Butcher, Larry the Soulless, Elvira the Lawn Care Specialist, Oswald the Mildly Annoying, and finally, the brains behind this entire operation, my consigliere, Sofia Ambrosini.”

Sofia was standing in the corner, her deep brown eyes sparkling like diamonds as she sank her teeth into a pomegranate. “Katya!” she said suddenly. “Why didn’t you tell me that the union organizer was a werewolf?”

“Wait, how do you know I’m a werewolf?” Wylder said.

“I just had a hunch,” Sofia said. “Also, there was a silver statue by the entrance, and you wouldn’t go anywhere near it.” She finished off the pomegranate, and then she said, “God, a real live werewolf. I have so, so many questions. But speaking of werewolves, Katya, I finished that book you gave me.”

“You did?” Katya said. She was trying not to seem too excited, but her heart felt like it might catapult out of her chest.

“Katya got me a signed copy of Accidentally Pregaganant By The Rogue Bad Boy Alpha Part 2 by Charlotte Below Novel for my birthday,” Sofia explained to Wylder.

“Well, what did you think?” Katya asked.

“It was just so romantic,” Sofia said, her whole face lighting up as she spoke. “Honestly, the main character reminded me of you, Katya.”

“Wait, was the book signed by ‘Charlotte Below Novel’ or was it signed by the overworked, underpaid author who actually wrote it?” Wylder asked, but Sofia and Katya both ignored him.

“I’m…I’m glad you liked the book,” Katya said to Sofia.

“I just wish I got to work with you more on the labor union racket. It seems so interesting.”

Katya nodded, and then her eyes met Sofia’s for a moment, and she knew that she could have listened to her talk about werewolves and vampires all day, that she never wanted to leave her side, that she would end her days with her in a hail of bullets…

“Hey Katya?” Wylder said suddenly. “You still haven’t told me why you kidnapped me.”

Katya cursed under her breath, and then she turned to Sofia and said, “I’ll talk to you later, okay?” She then led Wylder into another room, and she explained everything.

“We’ve known about your little union for a while now, and to put it simply, we’re looking to infiltrate it,” Katya said. “Our plan is to use the union to threaten strikes and collect bribes, but to do that, we’re going to have to induct you into the family, and per mafia rules, that means you’ll have to carry out a contract killing for us.”

“What if I don’t?”

“Let’s just say that you already know too much,” Katya said. “We have ways of making you disappear.”

Wylder felt sick to his stomach, but he knew there was no way of getting out of this. He’d already seen what she’d done to those vampires with only a gun, a knife, and a bag of garlic jalapeño chips, so he turned to Katya and said, “Okay.”

“I knew you’d come around,” Katya said. “I’ll have to tell Sofia that we’re opening the books. She came up with all of this, you know. She’s brilliant, but she’s been busy with other projects, so I had to find you myself. She would have loved meeting you at the train station though. Did you know that Sofia was a werewolf researcher before she joined the mafia? She actually spent two years in Transylvania studying werewolf-vampire interactions.”

“It seems like you and Sofia really like each other,” Wylder interrupted.

“Of course. We’ve been in the mafia together for years.”

“No, that’s not what I meant. It seems like you like each other…but as more than just friends.”

Katya went quiet for a moment, her heart pounding, and then she asked, “Do you really think she likes me back?”

“I thought it was kind of obvious.”

“I’ve been trying to tell her that I like her for ages, but I thought she wasn’t interested,” Katya said. “First, I tried to buy her a hat, but she thought that was some kind of covert signal to bribe a police officer. After that, I asked her if she wanted a kiss of death, and she thought that someone in the family had betrayed us. Then, I asked her if she was interested in making a marriage, but then she went ahead and set up a meeting between us and the Detroit Partnership. How can one person be that oblivious?”

“I think it might help if you stopped flirting with her exclusively in mafia slang.”

“That’s a good point,” Katya said, but before she could reflect on her relationship with Sofia any further, one of the mobsters walked up to Katya and Wylder.

“This place sucks!” the mafioso complained. “I have to work long hours under extremely dangerous conditions, I don’t get paid enough, and worst of all, Sofia reads all of my emails!”

“I can help with that!” Wylder said. “What’s your name?”

“Ice Pick Joe.”

“And what do you do at this very legitimate business?”

“I murder people with ice picks.”

“A very important profession,” Wylder said. “Do you think the others might agree with you about the pay here?”

“Obviously. Katya is a billionaire, and we make peanuts,” Ice Pick Joe said. “I just don’t know if there’s anything I can do about it.”

“Well, if we get enough people to vote to unionize, we could negotiate with the mob bosses to raise our salaries, improve working conditions, and maybe even prevent Sofia from reading your emails!” Wylder said. “So what do you say we put the ‘organized’ in ‘organized crime?’”

Ice Pick Joe cheered, and when the two of them left to go pass out union support cards, Katya went to go talk to Sofia and tell her how she felt about her. She headed upstairs to Sofia’s office, and sure enough, the consigliere was there, re-reading another one of her werewolf romance novels.

“Rejected By My Unwanted Alpha Mate?” Katya read. “Do the main characters even want to be together in that one?”

“As far as I can tell, no,” Sofia said with a laugh as she set the book down on the table. “What’s up, Katya?”

“There’s something I want to tell you, and I don’t think I’ve been as direct with you about it as I should have been,” Katya said. “I like you. I’ve liked you ever since that day when you told me that you wanted to steal that Kia Soul on 13th Street and run away together. I don’t know if you feel the same way as I do, and it’s okay if you don’t, but…”

“Please. I’ve been in love with you ever since the day you taught me how to shoot.”

“Wasn’t that the day we met?”

“You made quite the first impression,” Sofia said with a smile.

“So do you want to get coffee sometime?” Katya said. “Tomorrow morning maybe?”

“I’d love to,” Sofia said.

Katya smiled, but just as she inched closer to the consigliere, the door suddenly swung open, and to her surprise, Wylder was there, along with every single other member of the mafia. “We’ve held an election, and we’ve decided to form the Union of Mobsters, Mafiosi, and Made Men, otherwise known as UMMMM,” the werewolf explained.

“That fast?” Katya said skeptically.

“We demand a 20% pay raise, a standard, eight-hour workday, OSHA-compliant working conditions, and a better dental plan.”

“AND FOR SOFIA TO STOP READING MY EMAILS!” Ice Pick Joe shouted.

“And for Sofia to stop reading Ice Pick Joe’s emails,” Wylder said. “If we don’t have these changes implemented as quickly as possible, we won’t hesitate to go on strike.”

“What’s stopping me from killing all of you instead?” Katya asked.

“Actually, we need our mafiosi if we’re going to make money,” Sofia reminded her. “And it will cut into our profits for now, but it’s better in the long run if you just accept their demands. They’ll work harder if we keep them happy.”

“Fine,” Katya said. “You can have everything you wanted.” However, just as the mafiosi started celebrating, she said, “But remember Wylder, you’re technically not a mafioso yet. You still have to make your bones, to prove your loyalty to the mafia by killing someone for us, and I think I’ve decided who I want it to be.”

“Who is it?” Wylder said nervously.

“Your beloved cousin and a fellow member of your pack,” Katya said. “Wherewolf Therewolf Therecastle.”