I wasn’t usually lazy, but I’d admit to not giving much of a fuck about my security in recent days.
What with leaving the country frequently to fulfill jobs, and when I was here, getting into fistfights with my father over this fucked up wedding, I hadn’t really thought about changing the passcode.
Which someone had taken advantage of.
But who?
I tapped a few keys, initiating the resetting feature, and with a touch of whimsy I wasn’t known for, used today’s date as the code.
Once that was done, I had three options.
Figure out who the fuck had thought it was funny to send my mistress to my new home when they had to know I’d be bringing my bride back with me—half of goddamn Manhattan knew what was going down today.
Or figure out if that same person was the fucker who’d given her the code to my residence.
Or go and appease Inessa.
The fact I wanted to appease her even a little was testament to the way I’d appreciated her comportment today.
She might have been eighteen, but not only had she acted like a lady in the face of all the shit that’d gone down, I figured she deserved my respect.
I knew for a fact that any other bitch who came into her new house and saw some other cunt with her legs spread wide as she sprawled back on the sofa like she was in some kind of porn shoot wouldn’t have just walked off.
They’d be nails out and claws deep in the other bitch.
I rubbed my chin again and, though she deserved an apology, decided to ruin Conor’s evening first. I’d seen him eying up some Bratva pussy and knew I needed to save him from himself—what could I say, the Bratva were fuckers, but they bred hotties.
Inessa was no different.
After I reached for my cell and connected the call, only a few seconds later, my brother ground out, “Aren’t you supposed to be dick deep in your wife? Like I was trying to be in Klara?”
I rolled my eyes. “Consider it my way of giving you a pre-emptive thanks. If you fuck her, you know Da will have you by the ballocks.”
“But what a way to go.” He whistled, and a feminine giggle sounded in the background. Unlike Inessa’s, it was contrived. Nothing like the pure, sweet sound she’d gifted me with back in the registrar’s room.
The thought made me ache a little, and I wasn’t a man made for aching unless it was thanks to a bullet wound to the belly or something.
Uneasily, I stared at the city ahead, seeing a side of it few ever would. This high up, the ground was a blur, and the skyline was awash with lights you only ever saw in photos. In the flesh? It was a thousand times more magnificent.
I’d been all around the world, holed up in tiny places, high up and away from the rest of humanity, but never had I seen a view that compared.
I strode over to the wall of windows to overlook the city that never slept.
This was my home in more ways than one. This city was ours. Hell’s Kitchen was only our playground.
“Eoghan? The fuck? You just called and go heavy breathing on me? I have someone to do.”
Anger washed through me, making me see red again. “Got back to Leticia sitting in my apartment.”
The words had silence filtering down the line.
All my brothers knew how particular I was about my personal space.
I figured it was thanks to a childhood of hand-me-downs and the like—we might be rich as fuck, but Ma was a shrewd mare. No way was she going to buy the youngest of her five spawn new gear when she had plenty of old stuff sitting around.
I was used to everything being recycled, everything having belonged to another of my brothers—until this place.
It was mine.