Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 80471 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80471 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
My entire face felt like it couldn’t breathe. But no matter how bright a light I shined on my face, I couldn’t see the bruises anymore.
That was all that mattered.
Well, that, and doing a halfway decent job of wrapping up my ribs, so they didn’t smart when I was walking around.
Because it was time to get back to my life.
And, more so than that, my job.
See my men.
Make sure everyone knew I was still around, still in charge, still willing to knock some heads together if someone was fucking up.
As for the other shit, the stuff involving my attack, and the revenge I owed some pieces of shit for that?
Yeah, I planned to deal with that too.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Dav
She’d erased herself from my apartment before she’d left. And, honestly, that was almost as bad as her absence. At least if I’d found traces of her somewhere—hair ties on the coffee table, her toothbrush or deodorant in the bathroom, even one piece of forgotten clothing—it wouldn’t feel like the last month had never happened.
But she’d taken absolutely everything. Granted, she hadn’t had much to begin with. And she’d clearly left in the outfit she’d been wearing when she’d shown up all beaten and bloody.
Still, fuck, I hadn’t anticipated the way her cold farewell would gut me.
Enough so that now, three full weeks later, I still felt like someone kicked me in the stomach when I thought about it.
I’m embarrassed to admit that I even found myself over in her neighborhood a time or two, doing shit that any one of my fucking associates or soldiers could handle, just on the offshoot that I might come across her in a way that wouldn’t make her feel like I was trying to push my way into her life.
But no luck.
I knew she was around.
The guys talked about seeing her all the time, about how she never seemed to be sleeping anymore, about how she claimed she ‘twisted’ her wrist when she’d tripped and tried to catch herself. Like Cinna was some clumsy lead in a fucking romantic comedy.
I mean, I was glad she was still wearing the brace, though. I figured her stubborn ass would have taken it off the second she got home.
I couldn’t stop from wondering about her ribs. Were they better? Had I screwed up their progress by fucking her too hard?
“Did I lose you?” Elian asked, making me jolt back to the moment, finding him looking at me, brows scrunched.
“For a second, yeah,” I admitted, since there was no way to claim I’d been paying attention. “What were you saying?”
“I was asking if you’d heard anything about the Russians making some big moves lately,” he said.
We weren’t the only organized crime in the city. The Italian mafia might be, you know, the most notorious. All those flashy movies about us. All the documentaries where some washed-up cops and prosecutors claimed they’d chased us all out of the city. Someone was always running their mouth about the Cosa Nostra.
But we were just one example.
You had the Japanese Yakuza. The Chinese Triad. The Irish mob. Eastern European crews. And, of course, the Russian Bratva.
We’d been dealing with a pesky Irish crew for a while in our area. It was something Renzo was always keeping an eye on, always checking the pulse of.
But so far, the Russians seemed to stay off of our turf.
“No, I haven’t heard anything,” I admitted. “But I haven’t been doing much listening either,” I added. “They still doing the massage parlor shit?” I asked, thinking of the buildings with their innocent-looking spa pictures on the windows. But if you looked at their website, it was full of “massage therapists” who all looked like they could be contestants on some Russian beauty pageant.
As a whole, I had no problem with the world’s oldest profession, with modern day variations of sex work. You know, where women are in control and shit is safe. I just didn’t like the predatory shit with abusive pimps that beat and drugged up their girls.
I had no idea what kind of operation the Bratva ran, since they were every bit—if not more so—tight-lipped as the mafia was about their dealings.
But if they were getting bigger and more powerful around here, I could only hope that they weren’t doing all the harmful shit.
“What kind of moves?” I asked. “Into other lines of work?”
“That’s the thing. I can’t get a read on it. And Renzo wants me to look into it. But if I start sticking my nose in their business…”
“They’ll be quick to cut it off for you,” I finished.
“Exactly,” he agreed, nodding to the guy behind the counter, who was bringing over some of the order he’d placed before we’d gotten there. He’d probably bought the place out of chicken, meatball, and eggplant parm hot subs.