LEANING BACK IN THE CHAIR, drawing the Romeo Y Julieta into my lungs, I watch my Indonesian associates drink my cognac liberally and flirt with my female staff. It’s nearly eleven p.m., and the volume has escalated with alcohol-induced confidence.
Scattered around the room, members of the Cosa Nostra discuss business, showing an interest in our foreign guests.
Beside me, Vinny prattles on about his cousin who has been hitting big numbers in crypto currency, the conversation vaguely reaching me.
The warm fumes circle within my mouth and throat before I exhale them slowly, watching the sweet brown vapour cloud my vision. I blunt it out in the crystal tray before spreading my arms wide across the back of the sofa.
Good hospitality was taught to me in boarding school but instilled in me by Jimmy Storm. That man had impeccable manners. He went from warm and inviting to Reaper in less than a second. I smile, imagining him now in this room. A large presence, who enjoyed a far sultrier vibe, but I was always going to move our association away from its sexist origins. Women no longer used as commodities, was one thing Aurora held fast with when we negotiated our business. I allowed it.
For now.
Still, as I gaze across the room, there are plenty of pretty things to watch move and share a drink with. For a moment, I miss Jimmy. Not for the women he made sprawl across my lap for my drink to rest on. But for his guidance and assurance.
It is all on me now, though.
Every decision.
Every order.
Every execution.
The cognac heats my head, not a feeling I often allow. I usually cut myself off before letting any unpredictability take root, but not tonight. Not after seeing my little deer near faint from the fumes in this room. I sneer to myself. Dolled up and on show for them to gawk at, just as discussed with my family.
At risk.
She is always at some kind of risk, not having a man to care for her while she is the most vulnerable she will ever be. I glance over at Aurora as she entertains Bulan, then across to Lorna, who leans in close to Arif. I don’t know anything about vulnerable women.
The Indonesian fucker who approached Fawn and myself earlier drops a glass, and I watch as he carelessly steps on the shards, further grinding them into little pieces. I don’t know him. He must be a low-level member of their party.
My stare zeroes in on his shoe.
Feeling their eyes, I glance at the five guards around the room, letting them know not to react to the accident, for now.
‘Let’s discuss the shipment, shall we?’ I state softly, but the entire room falls quiet with even my whispers.
Vinny stops talking.
Some look at their glasses. Some at the floor. But Eka and Bulan walk confidently over to me with wide, fake smiles and white teeth that I would like to rearrange. ‘Have you spoken to your storeman about the missing product?’
Eka speaks, his words short and mispronounced but understandable. ‘We thought business could wait until tomorrow, Mr Butcher—’
‘Please,’ I say, still not inching from my sprawled-out position on the couch, ‘call me Clay tonight, seeing we are such good friends now.’ Or maybe you’d like to call me an arsehole again? I dare him with my stare.
They share an amused glance, and I don’t miss the way Vinny shifts under the disrespectful interaction, ready to call them out on it.
Heat wraps around my shoulders.
Sitting down on the chair opposite us, Bulan says, ‘Count again. All the stock is there.’ That alone is a mockery of the highest sort because it has taken Vinny twenty people and two weeks to sort this most recent shipment.
‘I counted it twice,’ Vinny states, sucking air through his front teeth.
Wanting to offer them a polite way to conclude this conversation, I say, ‘Let me make a deal with you. Let us stop this miserable back and forth right now, and I offer you twenty percent of Dustin’s cut of the diamonds in exchange for your business. No more loose crates. No more missing weapons.’ I pause, watching my proposal sink in, knowing they will rebut, but the polite Sicilian blood in me finds it necessary to offer. ‘And your loyalty, eyes, and ears in Indonesia.’
Eka stares at me with that large mocking curve set into his lips. ‘What might you need eyes and ears in Indonesia for?’
Vinny huffs. ‘That is not how to talk to a boss—’
‘Vinny.’ I raise my hand to stop him.
I smile softly at Bulan and Eka, but the fire in my head starts to singe my nerves. ‘I think you know.’
Bulan waves his hand dismissively. ‘We don’t do business with Mr Nerrock anymore.’
Another glass smashes to my side, the sound like a shorting circuit in my head, but I hold their eyes, fighting through the internal Butcher habit to beat the table with my fist until they all drop their unconcerned grins.
Eka looks at his associate and laughs before finding my gaze again. ‘Count the crates again. It is all there.’
Vinny is getting more and more agitated, moving in place to keep from jumping to his feet while I stay perfectly still and relaxed. Stoic.
‘I would very much like some hospitality of the female kind,’ Bulan says, drawing my eyes to him as he licks his thin, tanned lips and peruses the room. ‘The girl from before, the little blonde one. She is pregnant, no? I thought I saw a small bump… such a sexy thing, and I have to admit I have a… How do you say it, a fetish? I get hard for pregnant women, especially little ones like her.’ His eyes twitch daringly. Is he challenging me? ‘Did you know that pregnant women have tighter pussies? It is a fact; the lovely flesh between their legs is swollen with all the blood pumping to that area.’
I still don’t move.
He continues, ‘They are far more sensitive down there. I would make sure she enjoyed it. I’ll be very gentle with both her and the baby.’
They look at each other and exchange another meaningful laugh. I share in the amusement, chuckling softly as my head burns in molten lava. My mirth gets louder, drowning theirs out, and their faces fall.
Across the room, my other capos and associates, brazenly watchful, measure the situation closely.
Then Vinny flips the table over, sending it and the glasses on top, hurtling to their feet, liquor splashing across their clothes, the glasses shattering on the marble tiles.
I stop laughing and tsk my friend and colleague for his outburst. ‘Vinny, please. That’s not how we treat our guests.’
He walks through the glass to get another drink, muttering, ‘Sorry, Boss.’
I rise to my full height. The silence in the room is so crisp now, a bullet hurtling through the air would be explosive. I do nothing for a moment, while their muscles shake against the fight not to show any emotion.
Exhaling calmly, I smooth down my jacket. ‘I’m glad to hear you don’t do business with Dustin Nerrock anymore, Bulan. I know you two were very close. Your wife and his wife are related, no?’
Bulan’s eyes are wide. ‘Half-sisters.’
‘Well, I doubt you want to fuck the girl then. She is your niece. Nerrock’s daughter, with Nerrock’s grandson inside her womb. As for cutting ties with him, I hope it hasn’t affected your family too much, not with the news of your wife’s very ill father,’ I remind. ‘That is a tragedy.’
I walk around the broken table, over the glass, the crunching beneath my shoes like an echo of consequence, and I can’t help remembering the night in the kitchen when I mindlessly scooped her into my arms.
Fucksake, I care.
I care about her.
Everyone’s attention is on me. My guards have their hands hovering above each weapon. ‘I am beginning to feel offended, and you don’t want me to feel offended. So perhaps you don’t know why you are here. Not to use my wife as a tour guide. Not to drink my liquor or to ask me for my girl.’ The my wasn’t a mistake. I mean it to my core. Mine.
I continue, ‘Not to ask me for anything. You are here—’ I grip the arm rest either side of Bulan’s chair and lean down until I am inches from his face. ‘To woo me. Do you know what that small word means? It means to persuade, to gain my love. Sicilians are full of love. And in case you have forgotten, this is the Cosa Nostra. Not the Preman. We are the federal police. The taxi drivers. We are the pilot who flies you back to Indonesia. The man who delivers your fruit on his bicycle every day. We are everywhere.
‘And this here, in Australia, is my thing. So, you, my friend, are here to make certain I trust you. To convince me to do business with you in lieu of going straight to Saudi Arabia where you attain the stock for half the price you charge me.’ I smile at him. ‘A kindness on my part, but now that we are such good friends, I feel the rate should drop considerably.’
My message seems to sink in, his entire demeanour changing, stooping, like a puppy when it meets a full-grown dog for the first time, stomach to the floor, simpering expression.
He exhales. ‘Let’s start again.’
Vinny sits back down, nursing his newly poured scotch. ‘Now, that’s better.’
I nod. ‘What a good idea.’
After our discussions, where deals are met and agreed upon, I am still not convinced I have Bulan on my side, given his family ties, but I do believe their organisation will be working for mine. If not, if I get one more unorganised crate, I’ll cut them off and dispose of a few party members for good measure. It means little to me as I have a connection in New Orleans. The Bratva. Jimmy would have never worked alongside the Russian Bratva, but I’m not the elitist Sicilian he was. Dimitri seems every bit the businessman I am. A man of his word. And he is keen to try his hand at the diamond trade, of which I have an abundance of stock that needs clearing.
He has weapons.
We will see.
I retire after the last black limousine rolls down the driveway to escort them back to their hotels. Instead of strolling to my room, I find myself stopping outside hers.
Bolton is stationed beside it, but he bares me no attention, as is his directive. I have become banner blind to most of the soldiers in this house, having them everywhere and silent, seemingly nowhere.
It’s two a.m. now. Insomnia, my old friend, doesn’t leave me tonight, and I seem to be eager for her company again. For her caring little questions that I answer honestly for whatever damn reason, I do not know.
‘You know, for a man that never wanted children, you make a very attentive father,’ Aurora says from beside me. Bolton stands up and walks further down the hall, out of earshot.
I turn to face her, shaking off her statement. She knows that isn’t what is happening here… ‘Where is Lorna?’
‘In my bed, waiting for me.’
Knowing we are alone, I shake my head once. ‘Bulan will race straight back to Jakarta with the news of Dustin’s heir… This’—I nod at the door—’is a bad idea. For—’
‘For you, ‘ she cuts in with a meaningful smile. Leaning on the wall beside me, Fawn’s door in front of us, she says, ‘I’ve seen you with women, Clay. For the past two decades, I have seen every aspect of your affection for them. I’ve seen you swoon them, eye-fuck them—’
‘Charming.’
A husky chuckle leaves her. ‘Charm them. I have seen you almost, almost love them.’ Aurora’s face softens. ‘But I have never seen you look at a girl the way you looked at her tonight.’
‘And how was that?’
She touches my cheek. ‘Like you couldn’t bear not to.’
I breathe out roughly before redirecting the subject completely, not able to feign this one with the women I share my legacy—my life— with. ‘She needs clothes.’
‘Well, I will have my store bring them to her room. She’ll need just pick them from the rack. Unless… you take her to my boutique tomorrow and spend some time with her. I think she will prefer your presence in this. It will seem less military to her and more…’
‘Intimate.’
‘Yes.’ She turns to leave, then says over her shoulder, ‘And you could use real intimacy in your life, Clay.’
I put my hands in my pockets, my black jacket fanning out behind my arms, my eyes glued to the silver handle, willing myself not to take it, not to turn it.
Not to fuck her.
Not to touch her.
But to have her ask me again why I can’t sleep.
Relenting, I push open the door. Meeting me instantly is the sound of Jasmine’s breathing, even but loud. I stop. If I wasn’t so damn obsessed with this girl, wasn’t nursing half a bottle of whiskey in my mind, that sound would stop me. I will remove her from watching Fawn. Leave her alone in this room so I can… visit.
Jasmine’s presence doesn’t seem necessary anymore. The girl isn’t a spy. She isn’t. She’s a stray. My stray. Could she think that little of herself that she would honestly give her child to a stranger, be him her blood or not?
Her father is a fucking stranger.
I walk up to Fawn’s bed side, my body casting a shadow over her petite form as I lean down to get a better look at her.
On her back, with the sheets around her waist, her body is a thing of perfect proportion. And yet, it is when she opens those doe eyes, a perfect green and a distressed blue, meeting mine that chips away at my stone soul.
Her eyes dance beneath their lids—dreaming.
Leaning down, I blow softly on her nipples, and they begin to grow to tight peaks beneath her silk nightgown. It takes every ounce of strength I have to not wrap my mouth around those exquisite tiny beads and suck on them through the silk. Another… perfection.
This girl is too damn pretty.
I grip the top of the white sheet laid across her waist and drag it down her hips, past where her little gown lies across her upper legs.
My fingers skim across her knee, panning upwards, nothing more than the slightest of touches but enough to drag her gown up to her waist, revealing the prettiest bald pussy lips in the triangle gap between her thighs. I know what they look like when they open and swallow what they are given to swallow.
Fuck.
I pull the sheet back up.
Walk from her room.
Away from sweet temptation.
