AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Escaping felt like defeat, but there was no other choice.
If I wanted to live.
One minute passed then five. Then fifteen. No one was following me.
As I stared into the rearview mirror, the lights of the strip finally fading into the distance, a single tear slipped past my lashes. It felt like I was going home with my tail between my legs. Would I ever be able to stop looking over my shoulder?
Would I ever be free again?
If only I had a hero to save me, a knight in shining armor to slay every dragon.
But men like that didn’t exist, at least not in the real world.
CHAPTER5
Consigliere: “A person who serves as an adviser or counselor to the leader of a criminal organization.”
—Merriam-Webster
Viper
An adviser. There was no getting around the situation or my place in an organization that up to a year ago I wouldn’t have agreed to. I wasn’t just providing advice to an old friend regarding issues of business. I was a trusted entity of a powerful crime syndicate, providing recommendations for operations of a criminal element. I hadn’t been raised that way, my mother teaching me about right versus wrong starting when I was a toddler. My parents had been proud of my accomplishments, cheering me on at baseball games and when I’d become the valedictorian of my high school class.
They’d expected me to marry well, providing at least two grandchildren. A girl and a boy, of course. And they’d anticipated I’d be a leader of industry, wealthy beyond my means. That’s because I’d laid out plans of my entire life before I’d hit puberty.
It was funny how things didn’t pan out, the organized chart I’d brought with me to college destroyed. It hadn’t been thought of when I’d joined the military, a sense of duty unbreakable. There was no family, certainly no rug rats running around my posh Malibu residence. There was cold silence, the kind that penetrated straight to my bones every night I walked through the front door. Did I have regrets for becoming the second most powerful man in the New York Cosa Nostra? Oddly enough, the answer was no.
But there were days I was reminded how dangerous my situation and how precious life was. Today was one of them.
I’d adopted a mantra my best friend had taken upon becoming Don.
There would be no guilt.
There would no humanity.
Only death and blood.
While it had been necessary to remind myself of that several times, at least there hadn’t been a war in the streets of New York up to this point. That allowed me to spend most of my time in California, which was preferrable to the doom and gloom of the Big Apple. However, there was always a chance the Bratva or the Irish mob would rear their ugly heads. It was just a matter of time before one or both organizations retaliated, given our rise to power in the city and throughout the Northeast. We’d become a formidable force to be reckoned with.
While it had yet to follow me to California, my hackles remained raised, given it was something that could occur any day. I’d prepared for an attack just in case.
“How’s single life?” Max asked. “Dated any actresses recently?” He grinned, scratching his forehead with his thumb as he waited for my answer.
“Are you really going to remind me of that for the rest of my life?” I’d made the mistake of spending two weeks with an A-list actress after tracking down her stalker as an assignment with Powers Security. That had led to being tabloid fodder for the two months after. While the fifteen minutes of fame had brought the security agency a flood of new business, the bad taste left by relentless paparazzi was long lasting.
So was the infamous, vivid photograph taken of me losing my shit over the umpteenth camera being shoved in our faces. While I’d enjoyed spending time with the girl, it had been a rebound from a job gone horribly wrong, which was something Max knew intimately.
“At least the son of a bitch photographer didn’t sue your lousy ass. There’s something positive.”
“That was months ago. Are you going to keep reminding me of that as well?”
He laughed and I scowled. “When it suits me.”
I shook my head. My friend of over a dozen years had often called me an attention pig, preferring the life of partying until all hours of the night. Sure, I’d done my fair share of dancing until dawn over the last decade plus, but I’d finally come to the realization none of the encounters or the booze meant anything to me.
That had been after a hard lesson learned, nights spent sitting in a chair in the darkness of my room, wondering what the fuck had gone wrong. A mission that had gone terribly off kilter, ending in a tragedy was the reason. I’d taken the brunt of the blame, although Max and everyone else on the team at Powers Security had tried to remind me otherwise.
Dating the actress had been a rebellion of some kind.
