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Instead of going to bed, I had breakfast sent to my bedroom. The curtains were open, and we sat together at the dining table in my living area. My exhaustion wasn’t enough to ask her to leave.
The first thing she noticed was my hands.
“Shit…what happened?” She grabbed my left hand and examined the blood soaked into the gauze.
“Not as bad as it looks.”
“Well, that’s still pretty bad because this looks horrendous.”
I pulled my hand away, letting it rest on my thigh underneath the table.
“Bartholomew—”
“You’re making it a bigger deal than it needs to be. I’ve broken and bloodied these knuckles more times than I can count.” I grabbed my fork and took a bite of my steak. Steak and egg whites, my usual breakfast—or dinner, I should say.
“Why don’t you just use a gun like everyone else?”
I took my time chewing my bite, choosing my words carefully. “Anyone can shoot someone. But not everyone can beat a man to death. Gets the message across more effectively. Word spreads on the street. I’m not the kind of man you fuck with.”
When she realized I’d killed a man before I’d come home and fucked her, her rosy cheeks suddenly became pale. Her eyes dropped to her food as the understanding pierced through her skin and sank into her bones.
Maybe I shouldn’t have told her. “Don’t ask for answers you can’t handle.”
“Who said I can’t handle it?” she asked quietly.
“You’re the color of my sheets.”
She added more cream to her coffee before she took a drink. “Who are you killing? Men who have betrayed you?”
“You really want to go there?”
“Would I have asked otherwise?” She lifted her gaze and looked at me. Her eyes were hard as steel, but the rest of her face showed her unease at my barbarism.
“My men don’t betray me. They’re paid well. They’re treated well. Unlike other kingpins, I think you have to give respect to earn it. The men who suffer my wrath are those who think they can shave pennies off the dollar.”
She looked at me like she didn’t know what that meant.
“Some of my distributors try to pocket more than their share…like I won’t notice. But I have spies everywhere. For an enterprise this big, I need eyes everywhere, watching every little thing people do. Whether it’s a thousand euros or a single dollar, the punishment is the same. I beat them to death with my bare hands, stomp on their skulls with my boots until they crack, or turn their body into chum with a metal bat.”
She held the coffee mug in her hand, still and silent, like a deer in the headlights on a winter night.
“We don’t have to continue this conversation.” She was tougher than most women, probably because of the things she’d seen growing up, probably because she’d watched her mother die and survived her own trauma. But it still disturbed her.
“Aren’t you worried that someone is going to want revenge?”
“A lot of people do.”
“And you just…don’t let it bother you?”
“A wolf doesn’t concern himself with the thoughts of sheep, right?”
“No, but arrogance like that can get you killed.”
A small smile moved on to my lips. “You worried about me, sweetheart?”
She drank from her cup.
“I own most of the buildings around me. Security is stationed there twenty-four hours a day, searching for snipers, surveilling anyone who comes within a few blocks. I have men deep undercover with my enemies as well as my allies. I’m here, there, everywhere all at once.”
