AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Two days. It had been two days since I first laid eyes on Darya Munro in the flesh.
I had watched her run across the loading docks, casually walking behind her. It was amusing that she thought her little pepper spray stunt would be successful but I had to give her credit for trying— the idiot crew I sent to snatch her should have confiscated her bag from the start. It had been entertaining… until she turned around and I caught sight of all the blood on her pretty face.
Pure, hot rage ripped through me when I saw what they had done to her. She was covered in blood all down the right side of her face, clinging to her neck, and staining her shirt. She was wobbly against me when I grabbed her, her eyelids heavy from dizziness. The only thing that stopped me from murdering every single person within a mile radius was the way she gasped when our eyes met for the first time. It was pure electricity.
Naturally, I carried her back and put a bullet right between the eyes of the men who had bloodied her. They didn’t deserve to even look at her, let alone possibly scar her perfect pale skin. Rage poisoned my veins as they both hit the asphalt but it was cooled by her reaction– her scream. It didn’t hurt for her to see just how lethal I was but the urge to shield her from the scene was what shocked me. She would never know I murdered them for her– she didn’t need to know. If it kept her terrified and pliable, it was worth it.
I figured after all of that, she would have been too scared, in shock, to put up a fight across the border— but fight she did. Like a caged animal, she saw her window of opportunity closing and screamed for help. My desire flickered to life seeing her eyes widen when I joined her in the back of the cab and I wasted no time getting my hands all over her. Her body felt like heaven over mine. Each whimper, every arch against me was maddening, I couldn’t help myself from getting a taste.
Even after seeing my brother’s office, the padded, soundproofed room where he murdered countless traitors and enemies, she cursed at me. With those wide green eyes counting all the tools on his handmade table, her skin clammy, she fucking cursed at me. The little minx stayed brave in the face of danger, in the face of me, and something inside me snapped.
She should have been trembling with fear– but she was stubborn past the point of self-preservation and I couldn’t get enough.
I wasn’t used to having to prove that I was a monster. Challenge accepted.
Matteo was a pint of blood deep when I dragged Darya in there. If it hadn’t been so successful, I might have felt a twinge in my chest at the absolute terror on her face. But Eric had to die regardless of her agreeing to make the call, the fucker sold her out. Sure, Matteo had applied quite a bit of pressure and the information was key to finding out about her existence, but he was all too eager to transfer the heat onto her and I felt a strange irritation at that. Like only I was allowed to fuck with Darya and everybody else I would put in the fucking ground.
And now, I sat glued to my computer, pouring over the security feed of her cell and watching her fidget uncomfortably every five minutes. Every now and then, I would zoom closer. Sometimes to look at the healing gash over her eyebrow and the bruising below her swollen eye, and sometimes to look at the skin of her waist when her shirt pulled up during sleep.
It was addicting, watching her. Even when she did nothing, even as she slept along the concrete floor— stubbornly refusing to use the mattress, my body reacted to her and I couldn’t look away. Like a moth to a flame, with a throbbing cock in my pants, my obsession grew.
But watching her was a waste of time, so I clicked the red X and got back to work.
With my father on hospice, I was the one unofficially running the family business and it was no walk in the park.
I flipped through the notes from the last round table, where every singletenientehad been in attendance. Men I had known my entire life lounged at the long oak table, their battle hardened stares trained on me. It was no secret that my father’s heart was failing but anticipating the transfer of power and watching it happen were two very different beasts.
I wasn’t my father. My father was a cutthroat businessman. I was a ruthless dictator.
With every upper ranking member of the cartel at my table, each personally appointed by my father, there was an air of uncertainty. Each one with a glint in their eye– weighing the odds on their own chances of rising to capo.
But if there was one thing I was never willing to relinquish, it was the power that I was afforded at the head of the table. The power I’d been raised to claim– been feeding on since I was old enough to walk. Cesar Zaragoza wanted a successor and I was the only one properly groomed for that position.
My brother Luka’s hand writing was sloppy but his notes were clear. Eachtenientebrought reports, every one bleaker than the last. In the past year, supply had increased tenfold of everything you could imagine, but our men were being slaughtered and imprisoned for sport at the border. What a shit show I inherited.
As thecapo, it was my job to make sure each of mytenienteshad their shit together and apart from the immediate family members that held those roles, they didn’t. Denis, our cousin, ruled his group of psychos— all of whom had been selected from the lowest scum that ran the streets. Kids who were in and out of the juvenile system and then spit out with nothing but anger. My younger brother Luka was still a little green. He preferred jobs with less heat and I didn’t mind obliging. If it kept him out of the limelight, all the better. He was the best amongst the men in our family. The rest of thetenienteswere a combination of older men my father had appointed, men who had shed blood from their own hide to prove their loyalty to the family, and the sons of men my father had known. As much as I respected the legacy of Cesar’s rule, it was time to trim the fat and it wasn’t going to be pretty.
I sat up straighter after a knock at my door, “Come in.”
Matteo ducked inside, closing the door behind him and taking a seat across from me. He rubbed his neck, the lines on my older brother's forehead wrinkling slightly. His eyes darted around my office as if he was taking in the decor, or lack thereof, for the first time. Unlike the gaudy style of the meeting room, what my father preferred, my office suited me. Clean lines, no clutter, and a window to see when the sun dipped below the horizon.
“What is it?” I broke the silence.
His eyes darkened, a look I was familiar with from him. Usually only seen while watching my brother fulfill his family role assicario. “I was on board, you know I was, but…”
“But you’re letting what she said get in your head.”
He scoffed, narrowing his eyes at my insinuation of his weakness. “I’m thinking of the family. All I see when I look at that girl is a ticking time bomb.”
My chair squeaked as I sat back into it. I never understood how my dad looked so old, so withered. I’d imagined it was difficult sitting at the top, almost like being on an island all by yourself with no one to understand all the difficulties of surviving. The hardest thing was having to be the one with the vision, the bird’s eye view when everyone else was on the ground floor. Now, as I sat on one side of this desk, my closest ally on the other side, the distance between us couldn’t be greater.
Three years separated us and growing up under his shadow, I had always thought he would be capo, not me. At some point, our horsing around morphed into physically brutal battles— always in front of our father. Time after time I was bested by him and not because of the age difference. Matteo was an animal and at the tender age of thirteen, he began his training to murder without even blinking an eye. Since that day, my role in the family changed and we were both groomed to be exactly the men my father needed.
What my brother didn’t know was that I envied him. The responsibility of each move fell to me. The crushing weight of juggling a falling empire while trying to keep the rest of the family safe kept me up late into the night when I could hear his snores echoing through the walls. His dealings were in blood and force, mine were in calculations and money.
I stood. “All I see are the possibilities. Sure, we may have to kill her,” the words soured on my tongue. “But what if things go our way?” I turned toward the window, looking at our sister Lucia swimming in the illuminated pool, splashing around carefree. “What if we get everything we asked for?”
“That would be great.”
