Kian
I’m extremely aware of my body as I head to my office. Adrenaline pumps through my veins, desperate for an outlet.
Usually, when this happens, I go out to a random club and pick a woman. I’ve had three decades of practice. By now, the sport of it has all but disappeared. It comes as naturally to me as breathing.
She doesn’t have to have anything specific. She just needs to catch my attention. And really, there are only two things I’m really looking for when I want a woman for the night.
She needs to be willing. She needs to be wild.
Some nights have ended in triumph. And some nights, I’ve ended up with the wrong girl. But I’ve honed my gift over the years. I can pick out the girls who don’t have limits from the ones who have very clear boundaries drawn.
When it comes to Renata… she’s definitely wild. There’s a sense of abandon inside her that’s desperate to break free. She just doesn’t know it yet.
There’s no denying the sexual tension between us anymore. I’m hard around her more often than not. And considering the way she reacts to me, I’m pretty sure the feeling is mutual. But that possibility… it feels barred to us. Off-limits.
To her, I’m the monster that murdered her father right in front of her.
To me, she’s the five-year-old I left surrounded by a pile of dead bodies.
And yes, there is a certain amount of guilt I associate with Renata. It has nothing to do with killing her father. It has to do with my less-than-pure thoughts about her now.
She was a child when I first met her. How many years stand between us? Two decades.
I’m forty-five. She’s twenty-five.
It shouldn’t matter either way. Even if she was older, she’s still be off limits. She’s a fucking Lombardi. The enemy. The scum of the earth. But somehow, I can’t bring myself to care about that as much as I should.
When I get to my office, I sit down behind my desk and pick up the phone on the side of the table. I dial in Phoenix’s number first. He picks up almost immediately.
“Uncle Kian,” he says. “I was just about to call you.”
“Anything to report?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
“No?” I ask, frowning. “Nothing at all?”
“We’ve been scouring the city looking for Lombardi,” Phoenix says, and I can sense that he’s not happy about what he has to tell me next. “Nothing’s come up so far. We’ve been monitoring Italian and Greek mob connections, too. And it’s all quiet as the fucking grave. Their regular haunts seem to be empty, too. Like they all just up and left.”
“Hm,” I growl. “That’s not good.”
“We’re still looking—”
“If there was something to find, you would have found something by now. Drago Lombardi didn’t just disappear.”
“We’ll find him,” Phoenix says with the kind of steely-eyed determination that comes from youth. “I’ll find him.”
“He’s not working alone, Phoenix.”
“I know. Whoever’s helping him is obviously covering his tracks. So if we find them, we’ll find him, too.”
“I’m not sure how loyal the Greeks are to Lombardi,” I admit. “Yannis may just be using Drago to leverage his support. So you need to do some digging. Try and flush out the last remaining Lombardi loyalists. There might be breadcrumbs there.”
“You really think he has many supporters left?”
“Not necessarily,” I explain. “But a few powerful guys in your corner can do more damage than a lot of inconsequential allies. Any news about Rokiades?”
Phoenix hesitates for a moment. Again, I can sense his disappointment with his own report. “I’ve got men scouting around in all the Greek territories in the city,” he tells me. “There’s nothing there, either.”