A cat-and-mouse game that I hadn’t initially thought about playing. At least, not with her.
But right now, I couldn’t figure out who was the cat and who was the mouse.
“Fuck,” I breathed softly. Exhaustion started to pull at my bones. I needed some sleep if I was going to face her again, if I was going to maintain some resemblance of control. Because right fucking now, I felt like control was the one thing I didn’t have.
It was those fucking eyes of hers that bothered me the most. There was something hidden in their depths, a secret that I wanted to uncover.
My cock jumped at the thought and I willed it down, taking another long swallow of whiskey before I placed it back on the table.
It had taken me years to get to this point, and I would not risk losing it all just so that I might pretend to play house with Leda.
Being Don was a twist that I hadn’t seen coming. I had been perfectly happy with killing people for Cosimo. After all, he pulled me out of the slums of his organization and gave me something to look forward to—something that would bring me true pleasure.
I didn’t have that. Not when I was the person I used to be.
I steeled myself against the memories that threatened to resurface, knowing full well it was a combination of being drunk, tired, and pleasured. But for a moment, I didn’t care.
At age fifteen, I hadn’t known much about the world I was getting into. I thought the day that my mom had handed me over for her next fix was the first day of freedom.
Instead, it had been the first day of being in chains. Gone was the ability to escape by attending school. Gone was the need to stay out as late as I could so that I wouldn’t have to come home and find her passed out on the bed.
My owner later told me that my face was my downfall. I was too good-looking to be anything other than what he made me. I was put to work and made to serve—did things that I didn’t want to remember but would never forget.
Cosimo dragged me out of that world. He told me that once he had seen theangerin me, he knew that my talents were being wasted doing anything else.
And that was that. He put me into enforcer training, kicking my ass for a few months before I learned to fight back. Soon, I was being put on assignments in the name of the Cavazzo Mafia.
I put more cold bodies in graves than warm bodies in beds.
When Cosimo asked me to be his personal enforcer, I jumped at the chance. Because now it meant some of those who had once treated me like shit was now afraid of me.
I craved that fear. Fear from others held me together. It forged me. Strengthened me. Became my shield and my sword.
It had also made others despise me.
Adrian was a perfect example. He was weak, as I had heard many times from his own uncle, not fit to lead an empire. I could keep myself in control, but Adrian couldn’t. He was always causing one shitstorm after another that his uncle was forced to clean up.
Usually, it was me who had to clean up his mess—one life at a time, one name at a time. I didn’t know that I was auditioning for the ultimate role at the time.
I shoved my thoughts away.
I wasn’t that man any longer. I was a Don, one that was going to outlive them all and put them out of commission. There was a new era coming, one that was more ruthless and bloodier than they could have imagined. Not one of them thought that it would be me who’d come to haunt their future.
I was going to ruin them all.
Chapter 15
Lucas
Leda rose from her knees, lips pursed in a saucy smile. “Tell me what you want, sir,” she whispered as her hands trailed up my abdomen to my chest. “Tell me how to please you.”
“Bend over the bed,” I growled, my cock in my hand. “Let me see that ass of yours.”
She did as I asked, raising her ass in the air. “Like this, sir?”
Fuck, yeah, just like that. I ran my free hand over her skin, tracing softness in her curves. I knew she would let me do anything to her, anything I wanted, and she’d fucking love it.
She was mine, my pet, my fucking everything.