Fuck.
I blew out a breath, letting my hand slowly sift through her silky strands. We’d been at the penthouse for four days now while I’d been trying to remind the boys in the Battery who their real boss was.
Adrian was moving fast, far faster than I expected, and even after I left from the meeting, I had a sneaking suspicion that my position was much weaker than I thought it was.
I was fucking sick of it. I should have had that bastard killed the moment I became Don. Instead, I gave in to a moment of mercy and let him live. Now, he went from a thorn at my side to a snake at my heel.
I would have liked to say that most of my days were spent focusing on business, but with Leda around, I found it hard to stray from her for too long.
I had tried it once, heading to one of the clubs for a drink, and found it an utterly unpleasant experience.
The club had been too noisy, the air too stuffy. And the women—hell, I had scared most of them off the moment they approached the table. Before I had had no problems having one or two join me, but none of them were Leda, and that was the problem.
None of them.
Disentangling myself from her body, I rose from the bed and found my loafers. I slid them on and walked out of the bedroom for some air.
Leda was in my fucking blood. She was all I thought about when I wasn’t with her and all that I wanted whenever I came through the door at night. I wanted her smile, her laugh, and the way she fucked me right to sleep at night.
I felt at peace around her, and that scared the shit out of me.
After pulling a water bottle out of the fridge, I walked out onto the same offending terrace from my nightmare, glad to find it empty. A storm battered the city tonight, the rain matching my dark mood.
I didn’t like this feeling Leda invoked in me. I didn’t like her infiltrating my walls and making me care about her.
She was supposed to be my trophy, my triumph over Carmine. She was supposed to be my tool that brought the war to remove Adrian from my side without dirtying my own hands.
She wasn’t supposed to become an obsession like this.
Now I couldn’t even concentrate on work because of her, because of what she had done to me.
She made me want to be a better man, something different than what I had built for myself in my mind. She made me want to fight for her smile.
I wanted her fucking love.
“No,” I barked into the storm. I didn’t deserve her fucking love. I had bought her for reasons that should have made her hate me. I had wanted to use her and then cast her aside, a broken, used shell of a woman, to piss off Carmine.
Love had never been part of the bargain, but Leda was making me fall for her. She was making me feel things I couldn’t afford, not with this shit with Adrian hanging over my head.
I couldn’t afford to lose my credibility now. I couldn’t afford to show my weakness, especially when that weakness was Leda.
Chapter 46
Lucas
I didn’t sleep after my nightmare.
Quietly I dressed and called Rocco to come get me as soon as the sun started to lighten the sky. “Where to, Don?” he asked the moment I climbed in the waiting car.
“We need to make more rounds,” I told him, gripping my phone tightly. “Make sure that Leda is watched today.”
Rocco arched a brow but said nothing, typing out my message on his cell phone. “Yes, Don.”
We ended up on the other side of the city, in the outer boroughs where I had spent far too much of my time. When people said that the city never slept, they were talking about Manhattan. In the outer boroughs, people were just starting to wake for the day. Halal cart vendors were firing up their grills, and New Yorkers rushed to catch whatever train or bus that was already fifteen minutes late.
I didn’t have to tell Rocco where to start. He knew exactly where to send the driver, and my expression grew hard as I stepped out of the car, buttoning my suit coat.
“He’s not here,” Rocco said as he joined me. “He sends his regrets.”