Murder is a sport.
A wicked game of violence and power, of strategy and corruption. A line that you must tread carefully, one that will tip you off the edge should you lean too far to one side.
But when the bloodlust runs dry, and the bodies turn cold, what do you do with the left-over rage that still heats your blood? What do you do when the game isn’t finished but everyone around you has already lost?
It never goes away. That rage that forces my fingers to curl around a throat and steal a life, the fury that allows me to pull the trigger or bury a knife into flesh. It’s a constant itch under my skin.
I’ve watched hundreds of men die, in various ways and even thinking about it does nothing to dampen the anger that continues to flow like wildfire through my veins.
There were still too many out there. Too many still standing.
For the past six months my life has been consumed by righting the wrong committed against my sister, but I have hardly anything to show for it.
Six months ago, I gave her my word that it would finally be over, that we could move on from it, and yet here we still stand, fighting a war that should have ended the moment I got my hands on that information, and the reason my rage still burns hot and bright inside my body.
It needs an out.
That’s where the fucking comes in.
I watch the bodies on the bed, writhing with their pleasure, the sound of wet skin slapping together, of greedy mouths and tongues matching the tempo of the blood that pounds furiously inside my ears.
My cock is fisted in my hand, my body laid back on the crushed velvet armchair that sits directly opposite the foot of the bed, and yet the release I seek does not come.
The limbs tangled in the silk sheets become more frantic, spines arch, breasts pushed out towards the ceiling and moans turn to breathless pleas as one of the women finds her own release, and still, watching as I do, something I’ve done plenty of times before and used for my own gain, nothing fucking happens.
I curse and squeeze my hand around myself hard enough for it to hurt and the girl, a beautiful blonde looks up at me from beneath her lashes, gaze lust addled and grins. She climbs unsteadily from the bed, leaving the two remaining bodies to continue their search for pleasure and comes to stand before me.
I allow my eyes to drift down her body, taking in the long legs and narrow hips, the taut stomach bejeweled with a ring in her naval. Her breasts are small but perky, her nipples rosy and peaked, and the smile she gives me is nothing short of seductive.
“You always watch,” she lets her tongue run across her bottom lip, “but never join.”
Her eyes drop to my cock, still hard and aching.
“Do you need some help?” Her mouth tilts up at the corner.
Without invitation, she drops to her knees between my legs. My nostrils flare and before she can wrap those pouty lips around my crown, I catch her shoulder.
“Not tonight.”
I didn’t want the feel of another body near me. I didn’t want the kisses or the hands and the touching that comes with it. I just wanted to get my fucking self off and go to bed.
It’s been months since I sank into a woman’s body, months since I allowed myself that level of release. My hand and the odd lips around my cock have been enough so far but I knew I was getting to the point now, where unless I ripped apart this entire city, I wouldn’t be getting anything at all. And that’s my problem. Blood and sex mingle too closely together that one cannot come without the other.
Soon, I tell myself.
“Are you sure?”
A curt nod is my only response.
She shrugs and stands, hips swaying as she heads back to where the guy is now slamming himself hard into the second girl, hard enough that the bed rocks against the wall, the thump steady and rhythmic. Red welts line the skin on his back from fingernails dragged across his flesh. I shove myself back into my boxers and jeans and stand, eyes on the blonde as she diverts to a chest of drawers and pulls a giant silicon cock from the top drawer. As if sensing what she is about to do the guy forces the girl he’s fucking further down into the mattress and bends forward, giving her all the access she needs. I leave before she shoves it into his ass.
The house is a bedlam of sweat soaked bodies and alcohol infused breath, the wood flooring sticky under my shoes. People fuck against the walls, on the tables and furniture and the smell of sex, mixed with sweat and spirits tinges the air. Every body is in a various state of undress, some of the men with their trousers around their ankles, their women with their dresses pooled around their hips or waist, others completely naked, their partners the same, breasts and asses rocking and tensing.
I find Ace – Abel, my best and most loyal friend – with his cock down a red heads throat while he tips a bottle of beer to his lips. Before I took over the city, Crimson, the name of my elusive sex club, was already thriving and continues to do so. It was an escape. Sex had always, always, been the one thing that kept my head on straight. This club had kept me alive, even when I thought I was dying. But now it wasn’t doing what I needed it to do, even if it kept doing what I needed it to do for the men and the women under my payroll.
Every single person who walks through the Crimson doors is willing to be here. They come for the release, the thrill, the pleasure. I would have it no other way, despite the thin line I walk in every other aspect of my life.
With Ace too far gone in his pleasure I don’t bother to tell him I’m out for the night, instead I tell Micha, one of my security guys to relay the information that I’ve left for the evening, sorely unsatisfied.
He claps me on the back as I exit, the loudness of the club suddenly silenced as the door slams shut behind me. Standing on the porch in a quiet residential street in the city of London, I take in a clean breath of air. It’s cold, winter had finally arrived with the trees bare of any leaves, a frost spreading across the ground, turning the grass stiff and white and making the glass on the cars parked along the curb frosted and opaque. The wind that howls down the road is bitter. My driver opens the door to the Mercedes when he spots me on the porch, and I climb in, sighing at the heat, and rest my head back on the cushioned headrest as he peels away from the curb, heading towards the city centre and my penthouse.
When we arrive, the driver drops me at the doors where two of my men stand, dressed head to toe in black suits. I know they conceal weapons under their jackets, knives hidden in their boots but mostly, their lethality comes from their hands. It was why they were employed and will remain so.
They nod as I pass, and once inside I stop at my private elevator, noting the security light that notified people whether I was home was green rather than the red it should have been.
There were plenty of people who had the code to my home but most, if not all, are accounted for, either at Crimson or doing various jobs I’ve told them to do around the city. It could be Isobel, I think, as I withdraw my gun and step into my elevator, flicking off the safety.
When I reach the penthouse, the doors slide silently open, and I step onto the tiles.
The penthouse is dark and quiet. My shoes tread carefully across the marble in the foyer, my body posed to strike, and my mind quiet of all except this task. I delve deeper into my home, watching, waiting.
A rustle of clothing catches my attention and I swing around the corner, leveling my gun at whoever it is in my fucking house.
Isobel sits in the middle of the room, an open bottle of vodka resting on the rug next to her leg and a cigarette dangling from her lips. Her red lip stain has been smeared across her mouth, her mascara leaving trails down her cheeks. She holds her own gun in her lap but makes no move to lift it as her glazed and red rimmed eyes lift to meet mine.
“Do it,” she whispers, “put me out my fucking misery.”
I deflate with a sigh at the sight of my sister and put away the weapon.
“Fucking coward.” She spits.
“Belle,” I placate, carefully walking towards her, “what’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong!?” She mimics with a slight shrill, “what’s wrong is that it’s been six fucking months, six months since you – we – came back from the US. Six months since you got hold of that flash drive and what has happened since!? Nothing. Fuck all.” She sucks in a breath, “you have everything you need, and what are you doing with it!? Leaving it in a safe neither me nor anyone else can access. You’re killing minor players or fucking your way across the city but doing absolutely nothing to pay back a debt owed.”
“These things take time,” I tell her. I wasn’t lying. They do take time.
It was true though but not entirely. It had been six months since all my plans, everything I’ve been working towards finally fell into my hands.
I had worked for years to find and end the organization that was responsible for my sister's turmoil, and I was putting the plan in motion. But with rushing came mistakes and I could not afford a mistake.
Mistakes were weaknesses and weaknesses got you killed.
Everyone knew Isobel was my weakness and I made a point of proving that she would not be an easy target. But any other weakness was a no go for me. I would not put anyone else I cared about in the line of fire.
Doing this, enacting this plan would put an end to more than just lives. It risked everything. I hadn’t realized how far this organization stretched, but now I knew there were some things I needed to adjust.
Three years ago, I was given back the last piece of my family that I had thought lost. When I was Eighteen, my little sister, my fifteen-year-old sister was stolen from her bed in the middle of the night. There were no leads, no clues, and she was gone for six years, six years of searching, six years of nothing until one day I was given a lead.
An anonymous lead which told me everything I needed to know.
I arrived at the time and the place and there she was. With everything I could have ever wanted to avenge her gripped in her frail and pale hands.
It turned out our own uncle was the one who gave her over to this organization, our own uncle who saw me as a ruthless leader, one who was fit to take over from him when the time came but was too weak when it came to his sister. So, he took care of the problem himself, but instead of killing her, which would have been a kindness, he gave her over to an organization so depraved and evil she suffered for years before someone gave me a clue.
I found out it was because he was punishing me. A way to control me.
I killed my uncle.
Slaughtered him.
I remember the feel of his blood as it ran down my fingers, snaking over my hand and my wrist, I remember how hot it was and how the life in his eyes dimmed and then went out as my knife shredded through his flesh, through his muscle and drove into his heart.
He knew why, and the only thing he said was that it was the right thing to do for the future of the empire he had built from the ground up. Little did he know that the city would thrive under my rule, that my reign of the criminal underworld would bring in money and power, and violence, enough that I had some of the most influential people across Europe beneath my thumb. The only thing standing in my way of complete control was this organization, the Syndicate. And once I have ended them, I’ll have the satisfaction of avenging what they did to my sister and take everything they own.