Page 144 of Mafia Obsession

I hate it.

From the floor-to-ceiling windows, the East River reminds me of a dark ribbon of silk. I hate that, too.

I miss the trees of Central Park outside my windows, the changing leaves of each season. I miss the scent of plaster and the years of smells it absorbed. My cologne and a trace of the food I love. I left the cook with Lourdes.

The valet followed me here. I order meals or slip into restaurants to eat in private.

Alone.

I sleep alone. When I can sleep.

I left my wife with the hope that the distance would cure me of the ache threatening to consume me. The way the war with the Irish destroyed my brother.

Pathetic.

Me. Not him.

My warning to Kirill is holding. He’s back in Chicago and has even been seen around the city with a woman. Yuri has only a few months to live and has given his approval for the marriage.

In weekly Zervas & Company conference call meetings, I listen to every voice on my phone, waiting to hear a familiar feminine sigh or even a throat clearing.

Waiting to hear my wife.

I hear nothing. Knowing she’s on the line and says nothing, as she’s done all this time, is driving me to distraction, rather than curing me of what I refused to face thirty days ago.

What was supposed to cure me from falling into a state of useless emotion has only grown into a restless tightening in my chest that I can’t shake. I’m fucked with it, and these damn walls are closing in on me here at theAurelian.

I visit the command center a few floors below the residence where I’ve built a network of spies to monitor all the mafia families and their consolidation efforts.

Daria, who divides her time between here and Zervas & Company, greets me with a stoic look. It’s business as usual. No woman to stalk. No companies to buy. No husband to kill.

She looks relieved to have returned to the cold, straightforward tasks of keeping House Zervas safe and one step ahead of our enemies.

“I have secured lines for your announcement to start monthly meetings with all the syndicates, Ares,” she tells me from her desk outside the command center. “We should send the communication this week.”

“I have to go to Santorini first,” I say. “The shelf is repaired. I want to see if for myself.”

“It’s a dangerous time. We need to emerge as the dominant syndicate,” she says.

“And leaders will know the Aurelian is the only place to make deals that is safe, and it is under my control. I’ll only be gone for a few days.” I turn to leave.

“Will you be taking Mrs. Zervas?” Daria says to my back.

“No. She’s doing fine without me.”

And that is an agonizing reality that is killing me.

Bags packed, I get into my Bentley, and then my plane, ignoring all the memories rushing at me about the last time I flew to Santorini with Lourdes. But as hard as I try, they consume me.

Once I arrive, I move through the Santorini house, and that feeling I usually get here washes over me.

I understood why Alexander used to come here when the stench of Irish bloodshed became too much, and the sound of gunfire grew too loud for him to think. My war delivered only the smell of sweet skin and the sound of a woman moaning my name beneath me as she came on my cock.

A war of the heart can’t be won when the enemy is myself.

Elani looks up from a planner on the kitchen island. “Lunch will be ready soon,” she says, smiling at me.

I nod and then stare out at the water. The sunlight flashes off the Aegean, the salt and wind used to feel cleansing, but now it’s just another reminder of what I miss.