Junior and Lauren Find Each Other Again

Nico “Junior” Trocci has grown up knowing exactly what his role in life is supposed to be. At twenty-nine, he is the eldest son of Mafia enforcer Nico Trocci Sr., better known as “The Crooner,” and works alongside his younger brothers Alec, Stefan, and Greg doing whatever unpleasant jobs their father requires.

The novel opens with the brothers disposing of evidence connected to missing mobster Tommy Marchetti. They push a car containing a mutilated corpse into a flooded river, then clean blood from an old fishmonger warehouse. It looks very much as though Tommy has been murdered.

But when Junior gets home, his attention immediately shifts to the woman he has secretly obsessed over for ten years: Lauren Marchetti, Tommy’s daughter.

Lauren is now twenty-seven, works as an adult camgirl, advocates for sex workers, and lives with her best friends Ryan and Taylor and their enormous Shiloh Shepherd, Walter. Junior is secretly Lauren’s biggest subscriber on Me4U, where she knows him only as NT95. He spends enormous amounts of money on her content and has been interfering in her life from a distance for years. Most recently, he blackmailed the son of Councilwoman Marion Blackwell to help persuade Blackwell to support sex-worker safety legislation Lauren has been campaigning for.

Their obsession with each other actually began ten years earlier. As teenagers, Junior and Lauren secretly hooked up for about two weeks. Their relationship ended disastrously after Lauren’s jealous friend Kelly stole her diary and posted screenshots describing their encounters online. Junior publicly denied that anything had happened between them, making Lauren appear to be a delusional stalker.

Lauren never knew why he did it.

Junior finally sees her again when he attends Saturday Mass with his Irish mother, Moira, and Alec. Lauren arrives with her eighty-eight-year-old grandmother, Nonna Bianchi, and Junior corners her after Mass. The attraction between them is still immediate, but Lauren has no intention of forgetting how badly he humiliated her.

Back home, she tells Ryan and Taylor what happened all those years ago. What she still doesn’t know is that Junior’s denial was meant to protect her. Tommy beat Junior badly and threatened to kill him if he went near Lauren again, while Nico Sr. threatened Lauren herself. Junior decided that letting everyone believe Lauren had lied was safer than admitting they had been together.

Junior’s Secret Obsession Comes Into the Open

Junior has never actually stopped watching Lauren. Without her knowledge, he slips a military-grade tracker into her handbag and follows her to Velvet, the underground members-only sex club Lauren co-owns with Ryan, Taylor, and Sylvia.

Using a fake ID obtained through mob hacker Mack, Junior gets inside and joins Lauren during a voyeur performance. When he finally apologizes for what happened in high school, he explains that denying their relationship was the only way he knew to keep their fathers from hurting her.

Their confrontation quickly turns sexual, confirming that the attraction between them is very much alive. Junior also reveals just how far his obsession with protecting Lauren has gone. After she was humiliated as a teenager, he personally beat Principal Michaels badly enough to put him in the hospital and planted marijuana in Kelly’s locker so she would be arrested.

Junior still has another piece of Lauren’s past: the diary Kelly stole. He took it from Kelly’s bedroom years ago and hid it beneath a floorboard.

Using his NT95 account, Junior sends Lauren a $7,000 request to meet him at the abandoned arcade where they spent time as teenagers, attaching a photograph of one of the diary pages. Lauren and Ryan immediately realize the truth: Junior is NT95, the mysterious subscriber who has been spending huge amounts of money on Lauren.

Lauren nevertheless agrees to meet him. Junior has restored power to the old arcade and decorated it with fairy lights, recreating part of their shared past. After an intensely sexual reunion, Lauren agrees to go on a real date with him at Velvet.

Junior Tries to Build a Life Outside the Mafia

Junior’s growing relationship with Lauren collides with his obligations to his family almost immediately. Nico Sr. summons everyone to a mandatory dinner and announces that Junior is being promoted. He will now oversee the Mafia’s expanding counterfeit Italian olive-oil smuggling operation, known as the Agromafia.

Junior doesn’t want the job, but refusing his father has never been simple, so he accepts.

His date with Lauren at Velvet deepens their relationship, but another problem is threatening Lauren’s future. Velvet’s landlord, Patrick McKinney, plans to raise the club’s rent to an impossible $50 per square foot, effectively forcing it out of business.

At the same time, Lauren discovers the tracker Junior planted in her purse and realizes the full extent of his surveillance. She also learns from Nonna that Tommy has officially been reported missing.

Junior continues trying to prove that, however disturbing his methods may be, he genuinely wants to help Lauren rather than control her. He admits that over the years he has erased her parking tickets, replaced a smashed car mirror, intimidated a bad landlord, and secretly helped her political campaign through his blackmail of Blackwell’s son. He promises to stop interfering without her permission.

Lauren eventually agrees to accompany him to the engagement barbecue for Junior’s cousin Aly Trocci, an ER nurse, and her fiancé Josh, a gifted hacker. Lauren and Aly immediately get along, giving Lauren her first real glimpse of the family Junior has built around himself outside his father’s influence.

Junior Takes Control of Velvet’s Building

Josh discovers that McKinney has an even bigger vulnerability than Junior expected: he owes $2 million in gambling debts to a mysterious high-stakes bookie.

Junior and Stefan track the operation to an enormous decaying freight ship at the old port. There, Junior discovers that the secret bookie is actually Tyler, Josh’s finance-analyst friend.

Rather than threatening Tyler, Junior makes him an offer. Junior will purchase McKinney’s $2 million debt, and Tyler will become his silent business partner. The arrangement gives Junior leverage over McKinney and, just as importantly, the possibility of a legitimate business that could eventually replace his Mafia work.

Junior then confronts McKinney personally. He cuts off McKinney’s pinkie finger and forces him to sign over Velvet’s building while also lowering the rents for the other tenants.

Junior has solved Velvet’s immediate problem, but Lauren is about to discover something that makes everything else seem irrelevant.

Lauren Thinks Junior Murdered Her Father

While visiting her pregnant sister Kristen, Lauren learns that Tommy was last seen with Nico Sr. Kristen explains that the Troccis work for mob boss Lorenzo Brusomini as a cleanup crew capable of making people disappear.

Lauren immediately connects Tommy’s disappearance with Junior.

She waits for Junior inside his apartment and attacks him with her taser, demanding to know what happened to her father. Furious and cornered, Junior lashes out by claiming that he killed Tommy and then slept with Tommy’s daughter.

Lauren believes him.

Devastated, she leaves and spends the next three days locked in her bedroom, convinced that she has fallen in love with the man who murdered her father.

Junior finally lets himself into her apartment with his spare key and leaves an envelope on her bed. Inside is the notarized deed to Velvet’s building. He explains that he bought it to secure Lauren’s future and create a legitimate business that could help him escape organized crime.

Then he tells her what really happened to Tommy.

Tommy isn’t dead at all. He had been cooking the books for Lorenzo Brusomini, and when federal investigators began closing in, Lorenzo secretly relocated him to a private estate in Tuscany. Blackmail videos are being used to ensure Tommy remains cooperative.

The grisly evidence Junior and his brothers disposed of at the beginning of the novel was part of the cover story. Greg obtained a headless, handless corpse from his morgue, and the Troccis used it to create a false crime scene intended to convince federal investigators that Tommy had been murdered.

Junior also finally tells Lauren everything about their breakup ten years earlier. Tommy had beaten him and threatened his life, while Nico Sr. threatened Lauren. Junior denied their relationship because he believed humiliating Lauren was preferable to allowing their fathers to hurt or kill her.

Lauren finally understands why he abandoned her. She forgives him, and Junior decides he is finished with organized crime for good.

Junior Finally Defies His Father

Two weeks later, Junior brings Lauren to another mandatory Trocci family dinner. This time, he has no intention of obeying his father.

In front of everyone, Junior announces that he has purchased a commercial building and is leaving the Agromafia operation to run a legitimate business.

Nico Sr. is furious. He turns his anger toward Lauren, insulting her and calling her a whore. Lauren refuses to be intimidated and mocks him right back. Nico Sr. throws a wineglass at Junior, then lunges across the table and begins strangling his son.

Lauren intervenes.

She drives her taser into Nico Sr.’s neck, dropping him to the floor and ending the attack.

The confrontation finally breaks Nico Sr.’s control over his children. Stefan packs a bag and leaves the family permanently. Alec and Greg begin preparing to move out as well. Moira chooses to remain with her husband, but only because she intends to force him into couples counseling and keep his behavior under control.

Junior, Lauren, Aly, and Josh decide they will create their own family dinners from now on.

Velvet Thrives and Junior and Lauren Choose Their Own Family

Two months later, Junior’s new life is taking shape. Velvet is thriving now that the building is secure, rents have been lowered, and the club has expanded its operating schedule. During the day, unused space is rented to boudoir photographers and adult creators, giving the property additional legitimate income.

Junior has also become comfortable participating in the world Lauren helped create. He joins her onstage at Velvet for a public bondage and exhibitionism performance, openly embracing desires he once kept hidden and demonstrating how completely their relationship has changed from the secret affair they had as teenagers.

The novel ends not with the Mafia, but with a late-season dinner on the deck of Aly and Josh’s home.

Junior and Lauren sit among Ryan, Taylor, Tyler, Jackson, Ben, Tyler’s new date Stella, and the rest of the people who have become part of their lives. Walter races around the yard while Aly and Josh’s cats, Fred and Maud, watch from inside.

Nico Sr. and Moira are still attending couples therapy, and Stefan remains on his own path. But Junior is no longer living according to his father’s expectations. He and Lauren are together, Velvet is secure, and they have surrounded themselves with friends and relatives who have chosen one another rather than remaining trapped by the families they were born into.