“How’d you feel about the delivery, then?” Alto asked, and I realized I’d been drifting.
“Sure, yeah, whatever. Just make sure the shipment of girls arrives on time. Don’t wanna keep Smithson waiting for the crossover.”
“What’s going on with you today?” he asked me and raised an eyebrow.
I raised one back. “In what sense?”
He shrugged. “Just seem a bit . . . distracted. Even for you.”
“I’m doing just fine,” I said with a glare. “Carry on.”
He carried on.
His words didn’t get any more engaging. I was frustrated, bristling with boredom, wishing he’d fuck off and be done with it. My concentration was weak, jaded, and faded until the very second he spoke her name.
“This Elaine Constantine stuff, you gonna use it to wipe her out, then?”
Elaine Constantine.
I snapped back to focus. Fast.
The woman’s name should’ve given me rage, not a prickle in my balls. It gave me both.
I answered his question with a scowl. “Of course I’ll use it to wipe her out.”
“You gonna tell the others about it? Shit’s really gonna hit the fan if you go near her, you know.”
My stare must have been evil. “You aren’t my personal security, Alto, and you sure as fuck aren’t my personal advisor. If I need a fixer, I’ll call Declan. Not you. Get on with your business and stop irritating the shit out of me.”
He held up his hands. “Sure thing, boss. Just saying. Shit’s really gonna hit the fan. She may be the cokehead embarrassment of the Constantine family, but it’s still gonna start a war if you hurt her.”
I leaned forward in my seat. “We’re already at war. We’ve been at war for decades.”
“Yeah, but not a war like that one would be. Your dad would blow his fuse.”
“Like I said. You aren’t my fucking advisor. Get back to your business.”
He shrugged again, looking at me like I was an idiot. “Sure. No prob. Whatever you want.”
And that’s where the problem was. Despite what every rational part of my head was screaming, I wanted Elaine Constantine.
I wanted her pretty wet slit around my fingers, and her sweet little bullet of a clit against my thumb. I wanted her eager wet tongue in my mouth, seeking more. I wanted her curious eyes pulling at mine.
I wanted to fuck her up. Hard.
I wanted to take her virginity and make her beg for more.
No. I couldn’t be that much of a damn fucking fool. I tossed the business card aside as soon as Alto was gone. Still, it sat on the desktop, tempting. Coaxing.
I shouldn’t. I really fucking shouldn’t.
I should have thought about my own calendar and my own social schedule, handshakes and glamor and illusions. Trade deals, and company takeovers and guffawing with the billionaire crew at Regent Country Club. Not about which NYC club events Elaine Constantine was going to be embarrassing herself at over the coming weeks. But then it occurred to me. Not even I was quite as insane as to think there could be anything more at play in my mind than what she could do for me. For the Morellis, and our hate.
There couldn’t be anything more at work. I couldn’t want a single scrap of that woman other than her pain. I could use her, then destroy her, and destroy a whole vein of her family line along with her.
I could be calculated and controlled, making my way in closer and closer. Learning about the woman and who she was, weaknesses on top of weaknesses. And then, when she was too fucked to fight me, I could use her and kill her in the aftermath.
Time to take the Morelli-Constantine feud to the next level. I was done with the simmering hatred underneath the fake social sheen we’d come to paste on it.
It was time to act.
She could be my road to the action.
She could be the naive little slut to give me my power.
Yes, she could. My chest swelled with the thrill to match my dick. I could fuck them up. I could fuck them all up. She was just the kind of foolish pussycat I could exploit to help me.
I used the business card link to click in to the data, and there it was, just as Alto said it would be. Elaine Constantine’s calendar.
Parties, and magazine appearances, and family gatherings. Everything. She even had her damn periods mapped out on it. It gave me a strange thrill to think of her inputting her life into the thing, so private, and so out of bounds.
She was at three social events that week. One at Halcyon building – the Constantine’s main NYC business hub. One at Petra Constantine’s dumbass charity fundraiser gig on Thursday, and one listed as ‘Tristan, Blue Hawk show.’
I’d never heard of Tristan or Blue Hawk show, but given how casual her listing was, I imagined she knew them pretty well.