by Nicole Fox
“Where are we?”
“My nightclub,” Rokiades says with a leering smile. “The heart of my empire. The capital of the kingdom our son will inherit.”
I balk at the mere suggestion that we might have a child together one day. I can’t think of a worse jail sentence than that. He doesn’t linger to see my disgusted expression, though. He lumbers out, and his men push me out of the car and I’m forced to follow him into his nightclub.
The music pulses around us as we make our way into the club through the private entrance. A separate corridor ferries us directly into the VIP section.
The nightclub’s décor is a mix of reds and blacks. It’s meant to be dark and sexy. But it just comes off as depressing. I wrinkle my nose at the smell of cheap booze, sweat, and sex that pervades the atmosphere.
We pass through the VIP section, where several groups of patrons are clustered around large booths and sprawled across luxe red sofas.
I’m surprised by how crowded it is, considering it’s midday. But then again, in here, it might as well be nighttime.
Rokiades starts walking up a flight of stairs that taper off at the back of the VIP section. I glance behind me, hoping for a window of opportunity to escape, but there are two security guards at my back ready for anything. So, swallowing my disappointment, I trudge along in Rokiades’s wake.
The staircase leads to a massive, glass-walled office that overlooks the dance floor. There’s no desk that I can see. Just more of the same red couches, spread beneath gaudy chandeliers that look like they belong in a cheap brothel.
There’s also a huge bar on the left-hand side of the space. Mirrored shelves behind it bear racks of premium liquor, far nicer than the bottom shelf garbage I saw people drinking in VIP. Apparently, Rokiades likes to keep the good stuff for himself.
I hesitate at the threshold, but one of the guards shoves me inside. The door clicks shut and I know without checking that I won’t be able to get out.
I just stand there, intent on keeping as much distance between Yannis and me as possible. My body is as stiff as a board, but I’m already trying to figure out my escape plan.
There are several objects I could use as weapons. I fought off Kian with less the first time. And Rokiades is nothing compared to the O’Sullivan don. Yannis is fat and slow, whereas Kian was fast and strong in a way that defied logic.
“A drink?” Rokiades asks me.
“No, thank you.”
“Drink something,” he snaps. “You don’t want to be rude.”
I suppress a sigh. “Water, then.”
He raises his eyebrows, but to my surprise, he doesn’t insist on offering me something harder. He moves to the bar and starts pouring. His back is to me, so I can’t see what he’s doing. But more importantly, he can’t see what I’m doing.
I sidle a little closer to the coffee table between the ugly red sofa and pick up the metal bottle opener that’s casually lying there. I hide it in my jeans just as he turns around with a clear glass in hand.
“Drink up,” he tells me as he ambles over and presses the glass into my hand.
I make sure to sniff it first, but it’s definitely water. I take a big gulp to appease him and then set the water down.
“I must say,” he says, looking me up and down like he’s appraising me, “you might be the most beautiful of all my wives.”
I grit my teeth as a wave of dizziness hits me. “I’m not your wife,” I remind him.
“Ah, but you will be.”
I shake my head. “When hell freezes over, maybe.”
He grins. It’s the nastiest grin I’ve seen in a long time. I practically expect to see slime oozing from between his teeth.
As a matter of fact, when I blink again, that’s exactly what I see. But it seems weird somehow. Like all the colors of reality are melting and blurring together. I struggle to find words as the room spins suddenly, making me lose focus of the predator in front of me.
Is it the music? The lights? My own head turning on me?
“Are you alright, my beauty?”
“I… I…”
I don’t quite understand why I feel so off. As though I’ve been drugged.
A gasp gets stuck in my throat as my eyes dart to the glass of water he’s just given me. I stumble back with the realization, but that doesn’t help the vertigo. If anything, it just makes it worse.
The motherfucker roofied me.
“What’s the matter?” Rokiades asks with a sickening smile that betrays him.
I shake my head, trying to clear the fog in my brain, but I don’t quite succeed. I can still see him, but everything’s fuzzy. My vision is impaired and my sense of dimensions are distorted.
“What did you give me?” I stammer.
“Oh, hardly anything. Just a little something to relax you.”
Oh God. The panic is real and immediate. I want to run, to scream. But I feel as though I’ve been paralyzed. I can still move, but everything is sloppy, clumsy, uncoordinated. If I tried to run, I’d probably faceplant before I got anywhere near the exit.
Where can I run to, anyway? He’s got me locked in this room with two men standing just outside the only door out of here.
I’m trapped.
“Please, no…”
“Don’t worry, my pet,” he says in an oily tone that makes my knees buckle with fear. “You’ll enjoy it.”
Enjoy it? Enjoy what?
Having successfully depleted my ability to fight back, he starts advancing on me. His hand drifts to his crotch, and that’s when I notice the bulge there. Pointed directly at me.
He’s going to rape me.
No. Not again.
Old wounds resurface. Old memories threaten to break through.
After all the time I’ve spent burying them, I don’t want those demons coming back up. I don’t know if I’ll survive relieving what I went through all those years ago.
Yannis starts unbuckling his pants.
I close my eyes. Reach for the bottle opener. If I’m going to go down, I’m going to go down fighting.
And then—
A crash.
An explosion.
The rage of screams and shattering glass.
The world seems to collapse on all sides, and all I can do is pray that whichever monster bursts through the door next isn’t as bad as the one who’s in here with me.
16
Kian
An Hour Earlier—The Docks
The Lombardi loyalist turned informant lies at my feet. He looks peaceful in death. His eyes are closed, his wrinkles smoothed.
His neck, on the other hand, is a tapestry of blood and slashes.
I try to rein in the sense of satisfaction I feel at snuffing out this rat as I twist the new information around and around in my head. Rokiades has valuable cargo, he told us between screams and slices. He claimed he didn’t know what that cargo was, and after a while, I actually believed him.
To thank him for telling us the truth, I’d ended his miserable life.
This shit, Lombardi and Rokiades teaming up to challenge me… it’s not over yet. But soon—very soon—it will be.
I turn to Phoenix at my side. “You wanna do the honors?”
Phoenix nods somberly. Then he places his foot on the side of the informant’s body and kicks hard. The corpse flails around and catapults into the water beneath the dock we’re standing on.
“The authorities will find his body at some point,” Phoenix points out.
“One more dead Italian won’t bother the police at all,” I promise him. “Especially not a shit-for-brains loser like that motherfucker. Besides, I pay them enough to look the other way.”
“Fair enough. But now we’ve got to get our hands on this valuable cargo he told us about. Wish he’d told us what it was…”
“Doesn’t matter,” I say dismissively. “We know it’s valuable. And we know it’s critical to the Greek-Italian alliance. We also have a location. That’s all we really
need to know.”
“We’re heading there now?” Phoenix asks eagerly.
“Yes,” I confirm. “I’ve called in two more teams just in case this thing gets out of hand.”
“Will two teams be enough?”
“An excessive show of force is unnecessary. It implies that we have something to be scared of. We don’t. Twenty years in this city and I have yet to meet another man who frightens me.”
Rhys walks up to Phoenix and me, consulting his phone for a moment. “Speaking of the location, boss, I’ve got an ID on the place.”
“And?”
“It’s a nightclub in town.”
“A nightclub, eh? Who owns it?”
“Yannis Rokiades,” Rhys replies.
“I fucking knew it,” I snarl through gritted teeth. “This is good, though. We can nip this thing in the bud. Let’s go.”
“Let’s move in. Phoenix, you’re with me.”
We’re gathering in the alley down the street from Rokiades’s nightclub. Silencer screwed on and gun tucked in my pants, I’m ready to go. O’Sullivan men swarm around me, with more on standby if necessary.
I’m thinking of Phoenix’s mother when I order him to stay with me during the raid. Esme would fucking slaughter me if he got seriously hurt. He gives me a grimace, but doesn’t question my command.
We sneak around to the back of the club, while a few of my guys approach the front, posing as unassuming patrons.
There’s a lone bouncer manning the back entrance. The guy’s massive—at least a head taller than I am and three times as wide.
He turns to Phoenix and me suspiciously as we approach. “There’s no entry from here,” he says harshly, eyeing us both with keen dislike. “Keep it moving.”
I notice he’s got a pager hanging off his left hip. One wrong move, and he’ll be able to notify the entire club of our presence.
“Oh, shit,” I chuckle fake-drunkenly, giving Phoenix a clueless smile. “I told you this wasn’t the right way in!”
Phoenix looks at me as though he’s not quite sure how to play along. The boy’s too damn stiff, too damn conscious of himself. Determined not to look like a fool.
That’s another lesson I’ll need to drill into him. Sometimes looking like a fool can help con the other side into underestimating you.
“Sorry, man,” I drawl, even as I keep sidling forward towards the bouncer. “We’ll head out. Where is the entrance?”
He scowls at me. “It’s right around the corner,” he says. “Open your fucking eyes.”
“Sorry, man,” I repeat again.
I’ve managed to get within a few feet of him. And that’s all I really need. Proximity.
I pull my gun out, armed with the silencer, and shoot twice.
The sound is slight, definitely indistinguishable to anyone outside a ten-foot radius. The hulking bouncer hits the floor so heavily that I’m pretty sure I hear something break in his pocket.
Phoenix and I quickly drag him behind a dumpster. Then we slip into the club from the back.
The passageway is broad, darkly wall-papered, and dimly lit by hanging sconces lining the walls. It spits us out into the main body of the club.
The music out here blares, but since it’s still daytime, there isn’t a throng of people like there would be on any given night of the week. More than I expect, though. Not ideal. At least they’re mostly confined to the VIP areas.
Making sure Phoenix is behind me, I peer around from the passageway and survey the space.
A couple of scantily-clad waitresses roam around, carrying circular trays and vacant expressions. I spy two groups clustered in the VIP section—and behind them, a set of stairs.
“Okay,” I whisper to Phoenix. “We’ve got a pair groups in the VIP section. A couple of waitresses flitting around, too, but we can ignore them for now. Move in, kill anyone who needs killing—but don’t draw attention.”
“Not all of us have silencers on our guns,” Phoenix says.
I give him a wink. “You don’t need that. You just need me.”
I keep my gun held out of sight at my side as Phoenix and I snake our way around the edge of the dancefloor. We duck under the velvet rope to VIP and stick to the shadows as we delve deeper.
The stairs beckon at the back of the VIP section. A few of the patrons look up at us drunkenly, but they’re too deep into their partying to give much of a shit.
We’re almost there. Just a few more steps and—
Fuck.
Two armed men race down the stairs. Someone must’ve seen us coming and alerted security.
One of them fires brazenly. The first shot narrowly misses my arm. I duck to the side and fire three shots, one after the other. But since I’m not really aiming, both men manage to sidestep the bullets.
Thinking they have the upper hand, they charge forward. Big fucking mistake.
Phoenix pops out from behind a red leather couch and buries a bullet in the leading man’s forehead. He’s out instantly, his momentum carrying him crashing into a glass table.
It shatters. Shards erupt everywhere. Screams and loud music mix together.
But there’s still one more guard left to deal with. He’s taken cover behind a curve in the railing. As I watch and wait for my opportunity, he leans out and fires a barrage of bullets at us. He shoots and shoots until, click—his clip runs empty.
That’s my chance.
I charge forward. I still don’t have an angle to get a shot off, but that’s fine. I’ll just choke the life out of this motherfucker.
When I round the corner, though, he’s not where I expected him to be.
I turn, confused, just in time to see his fist come hurtling through the air. The punch catches me off-guard and sends me spinning into a velvet-covered wall. I bounce off it and square up.
He roars and lunges towards me, hoping to finish me sooner rather than later. He’s got a fifty-pound advantage at least.
But he’s no O’Sullivan.
As soon as he’s within range, I uppercut him. His teeth clack together and his eyes roll back in his head. I don’t rest there—I keep up the assault. Another punch to the gut. When his hands drop, I clock him across the jaw. A jab to the nose. Bone breaks. Blood spurts.
He punches back feebly, but all the strength is evaporating from him. I press forward and he stumbles backwards. We’re approaching the railing. I punch again and again and again. And then, with a lurching cry, he backs up one step too far.
The railing hits him in the back of the legs. If he were ordinary height, it wouldn’t matter. But the bastard is almost seven feet tall. So when the railing catches him, his center of gravity tips over and he falls.
I look over the railing just in time to see him hit the ground. He narrowly misses a group of partiers huddling for cover down there. I thought he’d be dead as soon as he landed, but a low, guttural moan drifts up to me here. Blood starts to pool beneath him.
“Should’ve minded your own fucking business,” I mutter.
Phoenix is busy dragging the body of the other guard out of the way. The VIP section has emptied, with blood and broken glass mingling on the floor.
“You go,” he says. “I’ll keep watch down here.”
I nod. Then, I turn back to the stairs and race up, taking them two steps at a time. There’s a door at the top, painted dark gold and shimmering in the strobe lights.
I don’t bother knocking. I just kick it as hard as I fucking can and burst through with my gun raised.
I’m roaring “Put your fucking hands—!” when my eyes fall on the stunning brunette standing just a few feet away from me.
Then my original words die on my lips.
Instead, I grimace and say, “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”
17
Kian
Renata Lombardi looks up at me like a deer in the headlights. Isn’t she supposed to be locked in the wardrobe in my guest room?
Her eyes are liquid fear. Something’s f
ucking wrong. She certainly doesn’t look like herself.
I turn to the other person in the room. The moment my eyes fall to his open zipper, I realize what I just interrupted.
Fury explodes through my body. It’s so fucking sudden and so fucking unexpected that it paralyzes me for a moment. Yannis Rokiades takes full advantage of that. He pulls out his gun and starts firing at me, forcing me to duck back out of the room to avoid the bullets.
He shoots until he empties the clip. Then I hear the fading sound of his retreating footsteps.
By the time I manage to get back inside, Renata is cowering against the wall and the fucker is making his escape.
I’d been so focused on Renata that I hadn’t taken a good look at the room. There’s a hidden door I overlooked. A secret escape tucked away behind the bar.
I raise my gun to cut him down, but the old Greek bastard has already disappeared into the narrow passageway and slammed the door shut behind him. I race forward, shooting blindly as I close in on the exit.
But this time, kicking the door down doesn’t work. He’s bolted it behind him, and the lock refuses to budge.
I pick up my phone and call Rhys. I don’t expect him to pick up, but two rings later, he does.
“Boss, situation is under control down here. We’ve evacuated all the civilians. Rokiades’s men are cuffed or dead.”
“The bastard made a run for it,” I tell him, speaking fast. “There’s a secret passageway from this room down to who-the-fuck-knows-where. Get the men to every entrance in this place. Maybe we can block him before he gets the chance to leave.”
“On it, boss.”
The line goes dead. I make another attempt at kicking the door down. When it stubbornly stays standing, I turn, preparing to head back down and help the man seal off the exits.
But my eyes land on Renata.
She’s still cowering in the corner, her body trembling as covers her face with her hands. I don’t know why the sight of her like that affects me so fucking much. But for the first time in my life… I stop. I don’t chase after the bad guy. I leave it up to my men.
