AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTERONE
DARIUS
One law governs the way we rule over our empire.
One. It keeps our focus where it belongs—on making money and protecting our assets. Keeping the streets of Seattle safe doesn’t happen when we have our dicks in our hands or our heads wrapped up in a woman.
Until now it’s been easy to keep. My father died an unnatural death, leaving me no choice but to step in or watch his legacy burn to the ground. No one has had time for carnal pleasures. Not when one problem after another rolls in nearly daily. My father left behind debts that put me and my blood brothers—Augustine and Victor—in dangerous positions with men who shoot first and don’t bother with questions. We pay one off and another one comes out of the woodwork. It’s been a year since we buried the man and we are still paying for my father’s sins. But what keeps me up at night is that we are no closer to finding his killer than we were when I found him at the ass end of an alley with a bullet in his back.
But the way my brothers stare at our enemy’s daughter tells me all three of us will forsake our oath to the family if it means having her.
I look at Vi first. A sheet of paper holds more character than his expression, but thirty years as his best friend comes with a wealth of knowledge and I can read between the lines. His tell is his blank expression, believe it or not. No one sits there looking void of life on purpose. None of us leave our hearts on our sleeves, but Vi has made living behind a mask into an art. Beside him, Augustine runs his finger over the rim of his bourbon glass. That is his tell.
We are all taken by the hellcat.
Bailey D’Angelo.
I know little about her beyond the obvious—adrenaline junkie, too young, too damn naïve, and trouble from the day she was born. But I’d like to know more. Does she want children? Do her kisses taste as sweet as I believe they will? I want to know what drives her to steal from her father’s enemy and does she scream when a man takes her from behind?
I know the latter question will drive me mad until I find out she’s as untouched as I believe her to be. There are few men who will take a mafia princess to bed. They are too scared of daddy.
Looking at her lights a fire to the last thread of my humanity. Because all I can think about is luring her between me and my brothers for a night—and a lifetime—of debauchery.
Who am I kidding? The second she comes for us, we will be toast. I know it as a fact like I know before twenty-four hours are up I’ll make damn sure she’s moaning my name.
I fill my lungs with warm air and take a minute to process the possessive streak tearing through me at the thought of another man besides us touching the sweet, not-so-innocent D’Angelo hellcat.
Three and a half decades of my father conditioning me for a lifetime of solitude warps into nothing more than bad memories as I stare at Bailey’s leather-clad body caught by a security system she missed during her sweep for cameras.
And in a snap of my fingers, my shared future with my blood brothers changes from bleak to hopeful of all things. When I strapped on my gun holsters and stepped into my office this morning, being hopeful wasn’t on my to-do list.
Yet here I am getting worked up over an image on a screen and the idea of licking all that gorgeous beauty.
I run the word through my thoughts again. It is heavy, unfamiliar and forces me to think of the world more than just black and white.
Hope.
What a loaded concept.
I spill blood for a living. We ruin lives by night and grow our empire by day.
Hope doesn’t have space in our lives.
Until today.
The idea of the coldness inside me finding warmth makes me want to drop to my knees and beg to be worthy of someone I shouldn’t want at my side, in the first place.
No. It’s not that I don’t want love. I’m not soulless. It is the cost it brings with it that keeps my head down and mind focused. I’m not about to sentence an innocent woman no matter how much desire they stir inside me or any of us to a life of crime and death. And I know Augustine and Vi feel the same. We’ve talked about it enough times for me to know my friends’ desires.
We have nothing else to offer a woman and I don’t see that changing soon. Not with the Mounts, D’Angelos and my family constantly battling for the same territory. And now a group from Chicago has moved in taking a cut of the gritty underbelly of Seattle for themselves. I see opportunities for business while others see a threat to their survival.
Square-minded fuckers.
It’s tiresome to think about on a good day. All the fighting keeps us in the filthy trenches when we should rule from a throne in the highest penthouse.
I lean an elbow on the edge of the hearth and stare into the flickering flames.
The more I see of D’Angelo’s daughter on the screen the more I have to wonder if we are all kidding ourselves thinking we control anything in our lives. None of us factored in fate and here we are, standing in the office of a man we should hate and listening to him beg us to help find his daughter.
