Page 35 of LA Reign

Her hands fly to her cheeks and she blushes. “Oh, God. Was I quiet enough though? Do you think he heard me?”

“No. I would have ended the call if you’d started screaming,” I smile at her. “I wouldn’t let anyone hear you come, princesa. That’s for my ears only.”

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t hold on,” she says as she bites her lip. “I did try.”

“I know you did.” I grin at her. “That’s why I’m not spanking that beautiful ass right now.”

“Oh. Well, in that case, maybe I could have tried harder, now I come to think of it…” She gives me a cheeky grin. “I do enjoy your spankings.”

“I know.”

“Especially over your desk,” she adds, shivering and gazing at the wooden surface with yearning in her eyes. I can’t help but laugh. I have met my match with this woman.

“Maybe later. Right now, I need to tell you something.”

“What? Is everything okay?” she stares at me. I hate to ruin the moment, but I also can’t keep this secret from her. It affects Lucia, and she will want to know.

“You know I’ve been looking for Blake Fielding?”

“Lucia’s ex? The asshole who assaulted me? Yes. I assumed you had.”

“Well, he was found this morning. He’s dead.”

“Oh!” Her hand flies to her mouth. “Who? How?”

“I don’t know. But that’s what my call was about. I’m going to find out.”

I wonder if she’ll find pity for him in that soft heart of hers, and I watch her process the news. “Do you think Lucia is danger?”

That’s the first thing she asks, and I glow with pride. That’s my queen, right there.

“No more than we already suspected,” I say before I kiss her forehead. “I’ll speak to her when she gets out of bed later.”

“Poor Lucia. I wonder how she’ll take it. I know she wasn’t his biggest fan, but he is her baby’s father.”

The thought had crossed my mind too. “Well, we’ll find out when I tell her. But she’s tough, we both know that. Now how about we actually eat this breakfast you made us before we go take a shower?”

“Sounds good to me,” she says, reaching for her panties.

I snatch them off my desk before she can take them and stuff them into my pocket. “I think I’ll keep hold of these. A little gift for me for later.”

“But I have to walk back through the house and your cum is dripping down my thighs,” she objects. “What if someone sees?”

“That better not happen. And if you’d done as you were told like a good girl and not made yourself come while I was on the phone to my associate, I’d have given you your panties back. But you didn’t. So they’re mine now.”

“You’re the devil,” she hisses as she grabs my t-shirt from the floor and slips that on instead.

“You’d better believe it.”

It is another two hours before I’m finally dressed and ready to go to the hotel. I fucked Alana in the shower and then again in our bed, promising her that I’d make more time for her as soon as work calmed down—for me, that means as soon as this shit with the Ortega firm is over with. They’re becoming increasingly annoying, and I’m running out of the very small amount of patience I had.

We co-exist with a lot of other organizations, all smaller than us, some even on friendly terms. But all of them operate on the understanding that we are in charge, that they exist only because we allow them to. The Ortegas seem to have forgotten that rule, and I’m going to have to remind them.

They’ve been making small, stupid moves, trying to get us in trouble with the licensing board and sending their goons in to start fights in our clubs and hotel bars. Nothing that we haven’t stamped out immediately, but it makes me wonder if they’re just distracting us while they get ready to make their big move. Making us look at the left hand while the right hand screws us over. I’ve always excelled at this side of the business, but lately…well I enjoy the actual business side of things more than the bloodshed. Depending on whose blood I’m shedding, of course. If it had been Blake Fielding’s, I’d have been overjoyed.

Still, none of this is new to me. I might run a legitimate business, have political connections, and regularly lunch with the mayor, but I’m no innocent. My family made sure I served my time, did my apprenticeship in all aspects of the organization. Between the ages of eighteen to twenty-three, I worked with my uncles as the family enforcer, and while I was good at it, my father and I both knew my head for business was more useful than my aptitude for violence.

We have an army of guys who can dole out beatings and punishments, but there is only really me and my father who can see the bigger picture, see how all the moving parts fit together. Have any kind of vision for the future. That’s when he made me the CEO of the Montoya Corporation, and I became somewhat more legitimate, at least on the surface. I still have to use brute force and inspire outright fear when the occasion calls for it, but at least half of the time, I get to solve problems with my head instead of my fists.