Midnight Seduction (Midnight Dynasty Book 1)

by CR Robertson

  I slowed down as I sidled up to the old cast iron gates that belonged in a horror film. The perimeter always looked old and dilapidated, belying what lay beyond it. One of the world’s biggest mafia bosses had made his home secret from his enemies, his family safe from all those who wished him harm.

  Ash and I were our father’s heirs and the only way to ensure that business was kept secret was to do it ourselves. Intermediaries could be bribed, but when you had a vested interest, then the integrity of secrets became your lifeblood. The gun tucked into the back of my belt became the equivalent of my suit, because this was a different aspect of our business, but just as important.

  The other bikes came to a stop on either side of me. Sliding my visor up, I met the eyes of the two men I trusted most in the world. No one would ever know what happened when we travelled together because our lives depended on it. Later today, Jordan would upload photos onto social media that would make people believe we were living the lives of playboys.

  The gates swung open with a creaking progression that told me that Lucas had been watching our arrival. He’d requested our presence, we just never let anyone know when we were arriving.

  He stood waiting for us at the front of his mansion as our bikes crunched up the meandering driveway. A warm smile lit his face, his arms opening in welcome.

  “Hey, Uncle Lucas,” I shouted up to him, placing my helmet on my bike. “Dad sends his love.”

  “I doubt it,” he groaned, wrinkling his face in his characteristic scowl. “The old bastard has been waiting for me to die for years.”

  Lucas Black was my mother’s brother. She married my father without his permission and Uncle Lucas never failed to remind Dad that he wasn’t good enough for her.

  I chuckled, taking the steps two at a time until he grabbed me in a bear hug that threatened to break a few ribs. “You look more like your mother every day,” he whispered, tightening his hold on me. “It’s as well, or I’d have to put a bullet in the back of your head.”

  He shrugged innocently when I gave him a filthy look.

  “She loved Dad,” I chided him.

  “And that love killed her,” he snarked back.

  “A defective heart valve killed her, and you know it.”

  He merely narrowed his eyes at me. He once accused Dad that his love had made her heart sick. My uncle was a cantankerous old bastard, but he was the only one I had, and he showered me with affection.

  Ash and Jordan wandered up the steps and he gave each of them one of his bone-crushing hugs. “Come in and we will eat, then we will talk. A man needs a full stomach and a good cellar to relax.”

  Jordan glared at him. “He needs a bottle of whiskey and a bad woman.”

  Uncle Lucas barked out a laugh. “You never change, do you?”

  His arched eyebrow and shrug were the only reply Jordan gave.

  Ash stretched and creaked his neck from side to side. “I’d settle for a masseuse right now,” he grumbled. “You two are maniacs on your bikes. We barely even saw the countryside.”

  Jordan snorted and strode in as if he owned the place.

  I’d spent countless summers here in my youth. Uncle Lucas had shown me how to ride my first motorbike on this estate, much to Dad’s disgust. Uncle Lucas told the world he’d been blessed with daughters, making me the son he never had. Hence the reason we were here today.

  Family took care of their own problems.

  “What’s up, Uncle Lucas?” I asked as he dragged me inside with his arm around my shoulders.

  “There’s a problem with one of our buyers. He forgot to pay several times.” Uncle Lucas’ fingers dug into my shoulder, his anger pulsing off him in waves. “I do not accept disrespect. My last messenger returned with a fractured jaw and several broken ribs.”

  My eyebrows jolted up. Uncle Lucas was not the sort of man that anyone crossed. He possessed a long memory and always settled his debts, including those of flesh and blood. Whoever this buyer was should be sleeping with one eye open and a hand on his gun under the pillow.

  My cousin Lucrezia glanced up from her normal position in her reading nook beside the window. She lifted her hand in a brief wave before sticking her nose back in her book. Lucas’ daughters were his pride and joy. He’d castrate any male who went anywhere near them, much to their great displeasure. They had bodyguards with them when they left this compound, and I knew each of them had trackers discreetly injected into their bodies that none of them were aware of. Catarina was probably around the house somewhere painting her nails, and my eldest cousin Sofia was at university studying architecture.

  His main reception at the back of the property overlooked the sprawling valley in a breath-taking view that never grew old no matter how many times I stared at it. This was one of the few places in the world I considered home. Dad’s house was the other. Both men had been father figures in my life in different ways.

  “Stay away from my daughters.” Uncle Lucas pointed at Jordan in warning as he dropped into a chair, stretching his legs out in front of him and his arms folded behind his head.

  “I’m attached to my dick,” Jordan snarked back, his lips twitching in a half smile.

  None of the protective fathers ever warned Ash, and he was probably as big a deviant as Jordan. Ash tended to cultivate his tastes in the dark or with his partner tied to a St. Andrew’s cross and a whip in his hand.

  The warm Tuscan air surrounded me in a welcoming embrace that made me close my eyes and inhale deeply. “It always smells like home,” I muttered absently.

  Lucas’ hand tightened on my shoulder before he released me to stride to his personal bar. “That is because it is home. Your mother loved it here and her blood flows through your veins. Your grandfather worked tirelessly to buy this haven for his family.”

  Family meant everything to my uncle. He disapproved of my father remarrying. It didn’t matter that Dad wasn’t happy, Lucas believed that you only ever said your vows before God once.

  “Not that I’m objecting, but is there any particular reason we’re here?” Ash asked, accepting a glass of amber liquid and lifting it in silent salute.

  My uncle’s dark, brooding eyes snapped in Ash’s direction. He was in his fifties with silver dominating his hair instead of the black that was once there, but he was still an imposing presence in any room. “I need you boys to visit someone and show them what respect means.”

  I slowly lifted my glass of amber liquid to take a sip, holding the scotch in my mouth for a few seconds before swallowing. Uncle Lucas and Mum were the owners of several distilleries, and one of them had made this expensive scotch. I inherited her share of the business when she passed away.

  Jordan threw his drink back in one gulp, standing to prowl to the bar and lift the decanter to pour another. “You need them scared or permanently spoken to?”

  Every single man in this room had blood on his hands. We got our hands dirty so no one could ever go to the authorities like Michael. It was why none of us had ever been linked to anything—we were ghosts that disappeared into the darkness. It was one of the reasons I invented The Midnight Rooms. They were the perfect place for men like us to frequent since we lived our lives in the shadows.

  A dark smile that bordered on a sneer crossed my uncle’s face. “Merely scared at the moment, but if he doesn’t see sense, then you can have a more permanent chat with him.”

  The stiffening of Jordan’s jaw and set of his shoulders said he would have preferred to start with the more permanent option and get it over and done with.

  The landscape drew me to it with a magnetism I couldn’t resist, my hip braced on the frame of the patio doors that opened into a courtyard. Out there under the pounding Tuscan sun was where Uncle Lucas taught me to fire my first gun. Dad preferred to allow others to get their hands dirty and merely issued commands. Uncle Lucas taught me the importance of leading by example. It was the number-one reason no one messed with us in the Council back home.

  As if we�
�d merely been chatting about the weather, Uncle Lucas’ face broke into a smile. “Now, let us enjoy the sunshine and I will cook for you all.”

  He had a barbeque installed in his courtyard where he hosted his parties. His long-suffering cook would have the meat marinating as she created exquisite salads and side dishes to accompany it. My uncle would stand guard over his grill and proclaim that he had slaved over a hot fire for us. These were the memories of my childhood from the first time I visited here with Mum.

  An errant thought flitted through my head of where Cas would fit into this. My life had been filled with sexual encounters, but something had happened when I found her in The Midnight Rooms. Her body responded to mine instinctively, and for the first time in a long time, I wanted to kiss the woman I had my dick buried in. More than that, I found myself wanting to step out of the darkness and see her in the light.

  Fuck!

  I trailed my fingers through my hair. Cas made me feel things that I believed were dead a long time ago. Whoever the hell she was, she’d infected me like a virus that was slowly burning through my self-restraint, consuming my thoughts even though I was thousands of miles from her.

  Shaking myself from my thoughts, I joined the others for one of Uncle Lucas’ famous barbeques. The wine and scotch flowed as the meat sizzled on the grill. My cousins joined us as we shared stories and memories.

  Both Dad and Uncle Lucas had been widowed, but they’d taken different paths. One reverted into himself, while the other lavished his family with love so they would never doubt how he felt about them.

  Several times, I caught Ash watching my cousin Lucrezia from the corner of his eye. He always did have a weakness for women with long dark hair and big breasts. Jordan wasn’t joking earlier with my uncle. The last man who came sniffing around one of my cousins ended up needing surgery on his testicles. I doubted he would ever father a child.

  Later that night, I lay on one of the sunbeds outside watching the stars twinkle down on me. There were never skies like this back home in England with the air pollution.

  “Tell me, Xavier, what is on your mind?” Uncle Lucas lay in the lounger beside me, puffing on his cigar.

  “Not a lot,” I replied absently.

  “You’re quiet, and that’s not like you. Is it a girl? You know I would like great nieces and nephews.”

  After Mum died, there had been an endless procession of step-mums and father’s girlfriends as he tried to fill a void that would always gap open. Several times I’d contemplated a vasectomy, as I didn’t want to bring children into that life.

  “What does love feel like?” I asked randomly, needing to know the answer but refusing to acknowledge why.

  His chuckle swept over me. “I knew the moment I met Isabella that she was the woman that I would spend my life with. Her father threatened me, but what are words to a man who had met his mate?” He disappeared into his thoughts for several moments. “It’s a knowing inside you that your life would be devastated without that person being in it. I felt her presence when she entered the room that I was in. Sometimes at night in the dark, I still sense her.”

  Jordan blew a circle of smoke into the night. “To save them, you have to let them go before this life destroys them,” he said in a voice so low I could barely make out the words. “It kills something inside you, but their happiness means more than yours.”

  “Yes!” Uncle Lucas exclaimed. “You have felt it, that powerful need to put someone’s happiness before your own.”

  Jordan let out a heavy breath. “Yeah, and it torments me every fucking day. Every time some asshole tries to get close to her he has an unfortunate run-in with my fist.”

  “Jay?” I queried, sitting up. “Why did you never tell us?”

  “What the fuck was the point? If I kept her, I’d destroy her. Instead, I watch over her from a distance, close but never close enough.”

  Ash met my gaze, his eyes wide and troubled. Jordan never shared any of this with us in the past.

  “You should claim her,” Uncle Lucas stated as if his word was law to be obeyed. He thumped his fist on his chest. “Men like us know deep inside when it is the right woman. The good Lord only grants us that feeling once, Jordan. Claim her and set fire to the world around you, but keep her safe, never once let one of those flames touch her. My Isabella saw the flames dance in the distance, but never once did they come close to even heating her. I left my demons at the gates and she got the man.”

  Jordan stared at my uncle for several moments, his face an impassive mask that hid everything. My friend spent his life behind an impenetrable shield. “What if I was the fire?”

  “Then instead of burning her with your flames,” Uncle Lucas said. “You caress her with them and keep her warm.”

  It was hard to believe that the man sprouting love guidance was the same one who put a gun in my hand and showed me how to end someone’s life.

  Jordan returned to lying on his back and staring at the stars. He no longer participated in the conversation but lost himself in his thoughts. This was the one place he dropped the barricades he erected around himself. He was an orphan who Ash and I met at boarding school that quickly changed our duo into a trio. Everything he had in life he worked damn hard to achieve. Here, he was no longer the most dangerous man I knew, but a man sitting relaxing with his family.

  I didn’t love Cas, but she evoked something in me that I couldn’t explain. Life had taught me to look beyond the physical, it was why my first independent business venture was to create The Midnight Rooms. Their success led to specialised rooms opening in different cities across the world. People craved an escape from their mundane lives, and The Midnight Rooms gave it to them. The Twilight Rooms catered to specific fantasies. If you could imagine it, then we could provide it for you within the realms of the law. Rape and underage sex were something that I would never tolerate in my rooms, but everything else was negotiable.

  “Are you in love, nephew?”

  “No,” I answered slowly. “But there is a woman who intrigues me and I’m afraid she could easily become an obsession.”

  Uncle Lucas chuckled darkly, his smoke anointing me as he blew it out in a puff. “My first great nephew will be named after your grandfather. He watches over us and you are the only boy of your generation. It would make your mother proud.”

  Jordan barked out a laugh, no doubt at my expression. Uncle Lucas had a tendency to interfere when he wanted something.

  “Maybe one of your girls will give you a grandson before a great nephew,” I commented sourly.

  Uncle Lucas cast a terrifying grin at me. “No man is brave enough to dance with the devil.”

  An unconscious shiver traced down my spine.

  “Papa!” Catarina groaned from somewhere to my right. “You cannot keep us here forever hidden from the world.”

  “If a man wants to woo my daughter, then he will come and tell me his intention. If he is sensible, he’ll bring his business portfolio to show he can provide for her and a ring to show his commitment.” Uncle Lucas had obviously thought this through.

  Ash had better get his portfolio in order the way he kept looking at my cousin when he thought no one was looking. I wouldn’t like to be in his shoes if Uncle Lucas realised what was going on under his nose and roof.

  ***

  Chapter Twelve

  Xavier

  Our shoes on the hard floor created our own theme music as we strode through the old warehouse. In jeans and dark T-shirts, we looked like we were on holiday instead of here to visit a scumbag who’d disrespected my family.

  An over-muscled goon stepped out to block our path, but Jordan had him on his back in a few seconds with a spinning kick to his neck. The guns in the back of our jeans were a weapon of last resort because we’d honed our bodies as weapons since we were children.

  We didn’t need to ask who the boss of this operation was, as we’d already seen his photograph. He sat among his men, trying to blend in and appear nonchala
nt.

  I pushed my sunglasses on top of my head and stared directly at him. “Lucas asked us to drop by and remind you that you forgot to pay him for your last shipment.”

  Marco’s jaw tightened, his fingers discreetly flicking to indicate his men spring into action. The click behind me told me that Jordan had pulled his weapon before anyone got ideas of how this was going to end.

  “My friend would prefer that this ended with everyone in this room dead,” I said in a cold tone. “He’s a busy man and doesn’t want to have to come back here if you renege on your deal. I would advise that you don’t give him a reason to paint the walls with your brains.”

  An asshole to my left tried to attack me, but Ash’s arm flashed out to jab his throat, pinning him to the floor before he got halfway across the room. The loud crack drew everyone’s attention as Ash broke his arm.

  “That wasn’t clever,” I chided him, glaring at Marco in disgust. “Pay your debts or next time you won’t see us coming. The authorities will have to piece you together to perform a post mortem on you.”

  “Fuck you!”

  Keeping my eyes fixed on him, I stalked across the room, slowly drawing the gun from the back of my jeans. A dark smile played on my lips as I slowly brought it up to his forehead. “No thanks, you’re not my type.”

  Guns were not something to be messed about with. If you carried one, you needed to know how to use it and when you were prepared to kill someone. Murder left a taint on your soul, no matter how evil the bastard was you sent to hell.

  His eyes focused on the gun as I cocked the hammer, his fingers digging into the chair he sat in.

  “Be sensible,” I coaxed. “Lucas is not the sort of man you want to cross. You really don’t want another visit from us.”