QUE, my first guard and assistant, ever the gentleman in his suit, with his regal manner, enters my office moments after I sit down.
Even though I ran two magazines out in my range before coming here, I’m still tense about what must happen next. The finality of the week ahead, hunting down Dustin, breaking our treaty with the bikers, leaving the women in another country—it coils my muscles to cool, unwavering steel.
A cup of coffee is set down in front of me while I open the building plans my brother Max sent through from the city’s database. “Thank you, Que.”
“Your father is here, Boss.” He pours the steaming liquid, and I nod, abruptly thinking about how Fawn shouldn’t have any if I want her… healthy.
“Fawn will need decaf from now on,” I state, staring across the polished-wood office table at him. “Don’t allow her to drink anything caffeinated.”
He nods politely, no intrigue or interest ghosting his eyes. Good man. “I shall get some for Miss Harlow this morning.”
“Where is she now?” I ask, although I am one click away from seeing her for myself. I dare say that once I allow myself that sweet view, she becomes somewhat of a perpetual distraction.
“In the lounge area with Bolton and her new cat,” he advises and leaves me to my business.
I find myself grinning at the vision of her sitting crossed-legged and playing with the small animal. A soft smile on her face. Shuffling around with the reminder of me stretching her little arsehole. My cock pulses. I relish being her constant thought. Being inside her always. My present in her. My cum still deep and perhaps the building of something else as well…
I stare back at the building plans Max easily accessed as City Architect. And while I don’t entirely understand all the information, he does, and I’m confident he will be able to chart a course in and out of the biker’s complex. I study the halls and spaces; it’s a vast compound with dozens of rooms.
Dustin could be hiding in any part.
If only we had a man on the inside—I sigh, eyeing the documentation—but we don’t. Our man on the inside was born and bred District local Dustin Nerrock.
Fucker…
Nevermind.
“Do you have a whiskey for your old man?” Butch enters with my mother, surprising me with her presence. She looks slim, far leaner than the last time I saw her.
Almost sickly.
I stand to greet them, firmly shake my father’s hand, and lightly kiss my mother on both cheeks. Hit with a wave of perfume from her neck, I’m instantly reminded how much I enjoy Fawn’s natural scent. “Well, now that you’re here, it would be ill-mannered for me to not also have one with you.”
My father sits, taking up the full breadth of the chair with his thick, muscular physique, while my mother disappears into her one. She crosses her legs, her spine rim-rod straight. She’s tense. “So, he’s in The Stockyard Compound,” Butch muses, usually the quietest man in any room if not one on one, living by the golden rule that words spoken should hold meaning or not be spoken at all. “That isn’t good. I never suspected that. I should have.” He shakes his head. “I should have but their lifestyle didn’t suit his own, and so… I was misguided.”
“Can we get any alliances on the inside? What about the president, Cross? Surely, he doesn’t need a war with the Family?”
“He doesn’t like Sicilians, son. He is a swastika tattoo away from a Nazi.”
I prepare us two whiskeys and sit back down opposite my father. Leaning back in my wingback chair, I rub my jawline and hum. “True.” I raise my glass, saying, “cheers.” I take a generous mouthful before setting the glass down.
When my mother swallows hard as though she may vomit, I measure her up. She is oddly quiet, holding her stomach in a protective way. “Are you well, Mother?”
She smiles stiffly, even for her. “Very.”
I shift my gaze between my father’s even stare and her hooded one, sensing a significant issue in their relations. Body language screaming they are amid an argument. Not something I have time for.
I note her tired eyes, dots of blood speckling the whites. “Are you hungover? Do we need some kind of rehab for you?”
My father folds his arms across his chest. “Your mother has always been a drinker, Clay. You have far more important things to take care of than—”
“Than my mother?”
“I am sitting right here. And I do not have a drinking problem compared to the men who have started their whiskeys at 7.am. Thank you very much.”
Butch barely reacts as she climbs to her feet and flattens her dress down her thighs before wandering from my office with a slow sway. “Excuse me.”
Frowning at her mannerisms, I watch her leave. I don’t like that. Pressing my intercom, I speak to it. “Que, get my mother some water and take her outside for fresh air.”
Finished with that disruption, I return my attention to my father. “My police informant, Marius, sent over a list of known Patch Members and Prospects that we may find living in the compound. Only ten or so actually reside there on a regular basis, it seems.” Readying myself to deliver a regretful truth, I sip my whiskey. He sips his. I chase the burn with the facts. “You will not be needed. In fact, I would prefer if you were not actively a part of these kinds of operations.”
Blue eyes stare blankly at me.
I go on, “You may be stronger than most men, but you are not swifter and not stealthier.”
Unimpressed, he says, “Never missed a meeting.”
A meeting. A hit. Such words are synonymous with large scale execution in the Cosa Nostra. My father has been by the Don’s side for half his life, offered his greatest years, and his sons to the Family agenda. Now, though, he has earned leave.
I stare at the man who had little to do with raising me, but with whom I share blood and unparalleled respect. “I know you haven’t,” I acknowledge smoothly. This has nothing to do with his capabilities. “That’s the way Jimmy ran things. With you both at meetings. A presence. Intimidation. I don’t need you on the frontline anymore,” I declare. “Moving forward, my face is the only one they need see. And you’re valuable to me in other ways.”
He grips his glass, his eyes cast down, losing focus within the pool of brown liquid. I’ve undermined him. I know. But this is the way it must be. I won’t put him in danger in his sixties. “I’m a liability, is what you mean, son,” he firmly states.
“In this case, yes,” I admit with due esteem holding my tone. Then I chuckle. “You barely fit in that damn chair, and you’re going to sneak around a compound at night? Climb through windows? I think not. The plan is this, we fly to Dubai in a few days. That will give me time to organise safe passage and reinforcements while we are there. I leave the women and children there. Bronson, Max, and I fly back. We require only the minimum number of men on this—four others, perhaps. We get in and out of the compound undetected. We finish it. And we fly back to Dubai to get the women. Do I have your support in this?” I ask, wanting the last word on major operations that rely entirely on his sons to be spoken by him.
He assesses me. “And you bring Dustin out with you?”
“Yes. We retrieve him from wherever he is hiding and bring him back alive if we can. To the gym. Where we finish this once and for all.”
Setting his whiskey down, he leans back. “You have my support. But let me give you some advice, son. You should not run the Cosa Nostra alone. You will drown if you do it all. Who will you rely on?”
“Am I not relying on you as we speak?”
“You are seeking council, se? But you need more men. You need loyal men,”—He points to the wall, waving his finger, a Sicilian mannerism deeply engrained— “out there.”
“I understand. I intend to make these alliances at the matches I’ve organised. The Irish, the Family, the entire District underground will be there.”
He nods his approval, blue eyes fixed on mine. “Allow me to run those events for you, son.” He pauses, and the silence thickens with the kind of sentiment my father rarely shows me. Over the last few years, he has changed, admittedly. He is dedicated to his family now, to my brothers, his grandchildren… I consider myself outside of those properties. But… his eyes fixed on mine, soften, and my chest tightens.
I don’t have time for this…
My muscles coil, wanting to leave the room under this new energy. I clasp my hands. “I need to manage these events,” I ground.
“Clay,” he starts, his tone a foreign empathetic timbre. A sombre drawl so entirely unfamiliar, I’m thrown as to who is addressing me. “I know I wasn’t there for you.”
What the hell is this?
He continues, “I know I didn’t raise you. I won’t tell you how to do this job because you were born to do it. You are the faultless product of Jimmy. I mean that in the most reverent way, son. But you can’t do this alone.”
A leader is, by default, alone.
I force my body to still while all I want is to move, flick the discomfort from my fingertips. He cares. I care that he cares. “That’s not what I’m trying to do here.”
“Yes. You are. You are more comfortable alone.” He laughs with derision, directing the contemptuous tone inward, to himself. “We are all particularly good at being impartial. I enforced such a way of life too. I don’t deny it. I know. I… struggled, se. With my anger. Like Max, it’s often better to beat it out. Beat it into a boxing bag. Or put behind walls. Butcher men all have walls, but you,”—his eyes lock on me, and I clench my jaw around the uncomfortable discussion— “you’re a fucking island, Clay. You don’t even need the walls. A truth that pains me some.”
I talk through my teeth. “Anything else?”
He sighs at my deflection, at my behaviour that feeds directly into what he just shared. “Yes.” He deflates but continues. “Jimmy delegated brilliantly. You were the link to the city. He was the Don of the Family. Dustin ran the locals. I ran the Family. Your brothers kept the order. I think you need to remove yourself from your official standing in the city. Allow Max to be the man on the inside. Choose someone else to run the locals.”
Irritation flares at my temples. I lean forward, press my elbows to the desk and say, “You want me to resign from a position I have worked the last decade to attain?”
“Yes,” he states adamantly, and I sink back into my chair, shocked by this new development.
What the fuck is going on here?
“That is exactly what I want you to do,” he states. “I want you to position a mayor of your choosing and be the Don of this Family. It is a full-time job as it is.”
Absolutely not.
I shake my head. “I can do both.”
“Can you do all three?” He sighs roughly. “Can you do more? I don’t want you to be like me, son. Absent. Too busy. You’ll miss it, son. The time just disappears.”
I ask what I already know. “Miss what?”
“Living. Watching her become a mother,” he states, and my chest tightens unpleasantly. “Watching your sons become men. It just happens.” He folds his arms across his broad chest, his white suit shirt stretching around each large bicep. “Do you want children with that girl?”
Damn him.
“How did we get here?”
“You were taking advice from an old man.”
Damn him.
It’s a truth that comes to me without invite. A phantom need that was coasting through my every action of late. The answer to his question. Yes. I want her pregnant. With my sons. Want her round at the hips, growing my heirs. Blood of the Cosa Nostra raised by a woman who is royalty and modest but humble. Sweet, even.
A sweet girl.
Levelling him, feigning nonchalance, I say, “Perhaps.”
Flat blue eyes filled with accusation train on me, their infliction growing like barbed wire beneath my skin. “You will not lie on your deathbed and regret raising your sons, Clay. And deathbeds find us young in this game. You will, however, regret not raising them.” He slowly nods. “I speak from experience.”
Too much.
Damn him!
Rising to my feet, stifling the impulse to lunge over the desk and fist his collar, growl at him for unloading his regret and bullshit on me when I need to focus, I simple smooth my tie down my shirt in lieu of that urge.
“All excellent advice,” I say, widening my arms for him, a gesture to indicate the discussion has ended.
He stands, unreadable again but for the pinched brows etched to his forehead, residual of his unreciprocated sentimentality. “Very well. Your mother needs to stay in one of the guest rooms for a while?” he says. “I have pissed her off. She might knife me if she stays in the house with me, se?”
Can’t possibly understand why…
I smile easily, and where I would usually decline, I don’t. As I’m itching to remove myself from this sentimental energy. “Of course. I will have Que make up a room in the other wing. She will have the entire extension to herself.”
