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“I’m tired and need a shower. The key is on the dresser. You can show yourself out.”
He closed the bathroom door behind him, leaving me completely baffled. A drug lord who compromised? One who was kind? Yeah right. I guess I would find out how kind Boss was.
I shivered, unsure if it was caused by fear or desire.
Boss
“What are you doing, Boss? Really? I don’t fucking get where your head’s at. She’s just Smith’s cast-off junkie whore and you’re going to trust her in your house? At least when you kept her locked up you knew she couldn’t fuck with your shit or get in the way.”
With my arms crossed and my back to Milo, the muscles spanning my shoulders pulled taut when he callously insulted Miri. I gnashed my teeth to tamp down my anger and continued staring out the kitchen window at the stunning sight in my backyard. Miri was wandering aimlessly around the manicured gardens, wearing the clothes one of my men purchased for her last week. Whoever went to the store chose well. Today, Miri wore a beautiful, loose cotton dress, the material printed with delicate flowers.
It was only ten days ago that Miri came stumbling onto my property and into my life, bringing her red hair, green eyes, and feisty attitude with her. Yes, she was argumentative, and yes, sometimes she stared at me as if she wished me dead. But there were times when I would swear she was looking at me differently. In a way that made me wonder if she might find me attractive. Not nice, not pleasant. I knew she thought me to be cruel, and make no mistake, I was. But sometimes, I felt the weight of her gaze when she thought I wasn’t looking. Miri wanted me, despite the shit I’d said and done to her since she got here. Me? When she was pissed, shouting and fighting like a fiery little storm, my cock turned hard as steel. But now, even watching her do mundane things like meander in the yard, mesmerized me.
In ten short days, Miri somehow made me feel as if I’d known her a lifetime. Milo, however, had become a huge problem. The normally reticent man bitched about Miri louder every day. He refused to understand why I insisted she stay. Each of his increasingly rude and cutting comments made me angrier by the minute. Milo was of the very loud opinion that I should dump Miri on a street corner as if she were worth less than a sack of garbage. Oh, after fucking her and passing her around to every other guy on the premises, then slitting her throat and gleefully watching her bleed to death. How could I forget that part?
To a guy like Milo—to most of the guys in this business—Miri was garbage. She was disposable. Her value began and ended with sex. After what happened to Rose, that mindset infuriated me to the point I was seething with rage. It took extreme amounts of self-control to shove down the urge to spin around and drive my fist into my lieutenant’s throat. Instead of giving in to the violence, I spoke quietly, yet the threat in my tone was crystal clear.
“I don’t answer to you, Milo. I’ve said this before and you know I don’t care to repeat myself.”
My burgeoning anger stemmed mostly from Milo’s lack of giving a fuck. But I couldn’t deny part of it was that I was pissed at myself for wanting Miri in a way I shouldn’t. When my cock throbbed from the fantasies I spun of Miri lying naked on my bed, I shook it off and refocused on the garden. It made me smile to watch Miri track a large yellow butterfly flitting around a cluster of purple flowers. When the insect landed on her bare shoulder, Miri’s face broke into a huge grin. My heart lurched at the sight and my damn cock swelled, stiffening inside my pants.
Miri was still much too thin, her skin sallow and riddled with scars, but the woman in my backyard looked a thousand times better than the filthy, desperate girl from a week and a half ago. Milo grunted and out of the corner of my eye, I saw him staring lasciviously at the vision in the garden. Watching him eye-fuck Miri infuriated me to the point I wanted to dig Milo’s eyes out of his skull with one of my throwing knives. I tore my gaze from Miri to face my lieutenant, who was currently walking a very, very thin line.
“How long will she be here?” Milo hissed, his face a mask of contempt mixed with lust.
So she’s a piece of shit junkie, but he’d obviously still stick his dick in her.
A frown pulled at the edges of my mouth and my molars ground together. “She’ll be here for as long as I fucking say.” Two strides and I was in Milo’s space, our chests bumping . “Besides, it’s none of your fucking business. I. Am. The. Boss. What I say goes, no questions asked. If I tell you I want a goddamn harem of junkie whores living in my house, eating my food, using my drugs, and spending my money, you ask how many to bring. You do not question if it’s a good idea. I’m getting really fucking sick and tired of having this conversation, and I’m warning you, Milo, I won’t have it again.”
Milo’s dark eyes flashed with anger, but he knew his place and backed off. That didn’t stop me from noting his disgust at my show of my power over him.
“I got it, Boss.” His gaze flicked past me to the backyard and he openly leered at Miri. My fists ached to smash into his sick face. I needed to get Milo away from me before I did something vicious and irreversible to my right-hand man. He might be very useful and damn good at his job, but no one was irreplaceable.
“I want you to go find Four and work out his section. One or two of his guys haven’t been meeting their quotas. I expect a report in less than an hour.” Milo understood the code we used to discuss business. Because of the potential for eavesdroppers, every dealer was referred to by his area number, not a name.
“Yes, Boss Man.” With a huff, Milo spun and stormed out of the room.
Fuck him.
His constant bitching about Miri really got under my skin to the point where the brutal man inside me was becoming difficult to hold back. Even now, I flexed my forearms under my dress shirt, taking note of the tight leather bands that held my blades.
I learned the art of knife throwing as a bored kid living in the ghetto with no supervision of any kind. As an adult, I simply felt more comfortable with my blades on me at all times. But goddammit. No one questioned me. Ever. Not even Milo, who had been with me since the beginning, was safe from suffering my wrath if he dared to defy me too many times, and he was getting really fucking close to my limit. Apparently, I gave him too much leeway in voicing his opinion.
That would stop immediately.
I stepped back to the window and smiled as Miri wandered through the lush garden, trailing her fingertips over the various plants and flowers lining the stone walkway. The sun shone bright behind her, lighting up her red hair in a fiery halo around her head. Junkie or not, nothing could hide that fact that Miri was gorgeous. Breathtaking.
Movement in my peripheral vision caught my attention and I tracked a member of my security team as he approached Miri. Miri startled when he appeared on the path. The prick slipped out from behind a dense shrub, purposely scaring her. The verbal exchange that followed made the guard grin, but Miri’s back was facing me, so I had to study her body language to decipher her reaction.
From the stiffening of her spine, it was instantly apparent—Miri did not want this asshole anywhere near her. She took a step back as discomfort radiated off her body. I was about to head out the back door when the guard’s hand shot out and caught Miri by the roots of her hair. He yanked hard, twisting her neck, and forced her to her knees on the stone path.
Rage flushed hot over my skin. How dare he lay a goddamn hand my fiery yet frail doll. I flung open the French doors in the kitchen and sprinted across the lush green lawn. Without the thick bulletp
roof glass separating us, I was able to hear Miri’s frightened cries. The pitiful sound speared me right in the heart. I increased my speed and my vision sharpened from a burst of adrenaline.
By the time I reached the garden path, the son of a bitch had Miri pinned facedown on the ground with a hand around her tiny neck. Her billowy dress was shoved up and her underwear pulled down, exposing her pale buttocks as the man used his free hand to fumble with his belt. All of the pent-up anger I’d been harboring toward Milo had finally found an outlet. My brain was running on pure primitive instinct, every bit of rational thinking depleted at the sight of Miri lying beneath this rapist asshole. With a roar, I grabbed the man and tore him off of the tiny, sobbing woman. One flick of my wrist and I had a blade in my hand. He froze when I held it to his throat.
“You motherfucker!” I spat in his face. He put his fists up at first, ready to fight, but when he realized who I was and felt the cold steel against his skin, he drained stark white. The man’s eyes grew so wide they looked as if they would pop right out of his head. I wrapped my hand around his throat and pulled him until we were nose-to-nose. “How dare you touch what belongs to me.”
