The scent of roses hits my nose, before I even reach the door to our room, and that’s all it takes for my dick to get hard.
Shifting the mugs into the same hand as the coffee pot, I adjust my half-sprung cock before turning the door handle.
My eyes immediately look across the room and find the bathroom door open, but the room beyond is dark and silent. I feel a tinge of disappointment at missing Payton in the shower.
Then I see her, and a sense of rightness fills my chest.
She’s standing in the doorway to the walk-in closet, damp hair twisted into a pair of braids, her bangs half-dry and a little wild. And her eyes…
I use my foot to kick the bedroom door shut behind me.
Her eyes are filled with a sparkle that’s half excitement and half nervousness, and looking at them is like main-lining pleasure straight into my veins.
Her soft purple shirt…
I swallow.
She’s so pretty. So fucking beautiful.
And I know I’ve done nothing to deserve her. But I’m keeping her all the same.
“Hi.” Payton raises her hand in an awkward little wave, and I smile.
I honest-to-god smile.
Not a grin. Not a smirk or a sneer. A smile.
Her lips pull up to match my expression. “That coffee?” She tips her head toward my hands.
“Yeah.” My feet unfreeze from the floor, and I cut the distance between us and hold up the mugs for her to take one.
Her nose crinkles in displeasure when she slides the handle off my finger.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
Her brows shoot up. “What? Oh, nothing.”
“Payton.” It’s just her name, but she knows what it means. It means tell me the truth.
“It’s really nothing, I promise. It’s just…” Her cheeks pinken. “These cups are boring.”
My eyes drop to the mug in her hand and then to the one in mine. “They’re coffee mugs.”
She huffs. “Exactly. Plain, boring, white mugs.”
“As opposed to…?” It’s been a long time since someone has dared to look at me like I’m an idiot, but that’s exactly the look Payton is giving me. “What?”
“You’re sending people to get all my stuff, right?”
I nod.
“Good, then I’ll have something to contribute to the household.” When I open my mouth to chastise her, wanting to tell her that she adds more than enough by just being here, Payton shakes her head. “I know what you’re going to say, but just let me have this one. I’ll feel good about sharing them with you.”
“Fine.” I lift the pot to chest level. “Still want some coffee, or do my boring mugs ruin it?”
Payton smirks. “I guess I’ll survive.”
Carefully, so I don’t splash any hot liquid on her hands, I fill our cups then set the pot on the side table. “I thought you might be sleeping and would like coffee in bed.”
“I was thinking about going back to bed after my shower, but then I got sidetracked putting my clothes away.” She cups her hands around the bottom of the mug, holding it close to her face. “I hope that’s alright.”
“Baby, you can do whatever you want here. It’s your home now.”
She chews on her lower lip for a second, and just when I think she might say something infuriating, like we’re moving too fast, she surprises me by not arguing at all. “I’m excited to see the rest of it. It’s a pretty great home. Especially the shower.” She lifts one of her braids to her nose. “I don’t know when you had time to buy all that shampoo and stuff, but they smell amazing.”
Shampoo is a stupid thing to feel pride over, but I feel it anyway. “I’ve been collecting them since the night you gave me your virginity. I figured you’d eventually be here to use it. And I was right.”
“Oh.” Payton’s earlier blush intensifies. “I thought about you a lot, too.”
Every time this woman speaks, she sparks new emotions to life inside me.
“Come on.” I take her coffee and gesture to the mattress. “I wanna have that coffee in bed.”
Obliging, Payton climbs up. When she’s sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed I hand her back her mug, then seat myself with my back against the headboard, so we’re mostly facing each other.
We both take sips.
“Sorry, I didn’t have any creamer,” I apologize, thinking this is nothing like her favorite latte.
“It’s okay. I like coffee in all its forms.”
I hum, not sure if I really believe that. “Make a list of all the things you’d like to have in the house.”
Payton’s shaking her head before I even finish. “You don’t need to do that. Black coffee is seriously fine. I drink it like that at home all the time.”
“At your old home,” I correct her. “And I don’t just mean creamers. You need food. Things to eat when you don’t want to order something. And whatever you need to make your coconut honey lattes.”
“Well, to make it right, I’d need an espresso machine. And those are crazy expen––”
“Already have one,” I cut her off.
Her mouth drops. “Really?”
“Really.”
“You know how to use one?”
I find myself smiling again. “Not a clue.”
She looks even more stunned. “Then why do you have one?”
“It was a housewarming gift from King. He said it made me look smarter.”
She laughs, and the sound lodges itself behind my ribs. “That might be true if you’d actually used it.” She takes another sip before asking, “I take it you’ve known each other awhile?”
I nod as I think about how to start. “I was fifteen the first time we met, which would’ve put him around nineteen.”
“So, a long time ago, Mr. I-Just-Turned-Forty.”
I give her a fake glare and she gives me a sweet smile.
“Okay so you were fifteen…?”
“I was fifteen and working for the Russians.”
“The Russians?”
“Russian mafia. Bratva,” I explain. No secrets. “I started as a runner, carrying money for them when I was just a kid. I think I was like eight.”
“So young,” she says sadly and I shrug.
“Typical story. Bad home life. Bad attitude. Lured in by the money and power of the brotherhood. Wanting someplace to belong.” I can see the sympathy forming in Payton’s eyes, and for the first time ever, it doesn’t bother me. “When I met King, I was a soldier, and he was working for the Irish, doing pretty much the same thing. Except he wasn’t the usual mobster type.” I use Payton’s term from the other day. “He came from a well-off family, wasn’t a stray with no last name like me.”
“No last name?” Payton stops me.
“Must’ve had one at some point. But I was dumped at the church doors before I knew it.” When she looks like she might cry I reach out and squeeze her knee. “It’s not something to dwell on, Baby. It is what it is.”
She lays a hand over mine. “Still sucks.”
My lips pull up on one side. “And look what I’ve become.”
Payton rolls her eyes. “Uh-huh.”
“Anyway, neither of us were the norm. Used to be you had to be a blood relative to join, but as the years passed, and the families spread out, they were forced to relax their rules. Hence how a kid like me got in. But King wasn’t some orphan. His family was well off, parents still married, at the time. But he was bored and brash and found himself joining, same as me. So even though we were supposed to be enemies, we”—I lift a shoulder—“connected. Became friendly. I was always a little jealous of him. Having that cushy life to fall back on. But over the next ten years I watched his grandparents die, his father get murdered, his mother abandon him.”
“That’s awful.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “My life was hard from the start, but I was used to it. Didn’t have a rug under me to be pulled out.” I squeeze Payton’s knee again, because I know she gets it.
“You guys were kinda like Romeo and Juliet,” she teases.
I bark out a laugh. “Please tell King that next time you see him.”
“You were star-crossed friends.”
“We would’ve, and did, deny it. But yeah, we never really fit in under the old rank. So, the few times a year the families would play nice, we’d end up gravitating to each other.”
“I heard once that soulmates aren’t just for romantic relationships. You can have friend soulmates.”
“I don’t know anything about soulmates. And King might be my brother. But you are my life.” I rub my palm up her thigh. “No comparison.”
She presses her lips together, and rather than making her respond, I keep going.
“It didn’t take us long to realize there were rats in both families. Only the idiots thought they could use us to pass some secret code bullshit. Except King and I aren’t idiots, so we cracked the codes and decided to make it work in our favor.”
“This sounds like a movie.” Payton cradles the mug to her chest.
“Except in movies everyone is beautiful. You should’ve seen these old guys. They were hideous, inside and out. The leaders of both families were corrupt, vile people, who stood for nothing. They’d never had to work for what they had. Never had to claw their way out of the gutter. Never even killed a man unless he was already being held down by three others. But when we figured out what else they were doing…” My anger bubbles back to life, thinking about it so many years later. “They were bringing in women from their home countries. Stealing them. Selling them.”
“Human trafficking,” Payton whispers.
“They hid it well. Only certain members were even aware of it, which is where the rats came in. Two guys thought maybe they could break off, join forces and build an empire on the backs of women. That’s when King and I got dragged into the mess.” I take a breath. “I wasn’t lying when I said I did bad things. I do. But we don’t do that. We don’t sell women.”
“I know.” Payton doesn’t flinch. “You wouldn’t.”
“I wouldn’t,” I repeat. “And we wouldn’t let them either. So, we planned. We brought in only the men we trusted, recruited some more from the streets, and when everything was ready… we slaughtered them. As many as we could get our hands on. In both families.” Payton dips her chin, and I swear it’s approval. “We hit the same night, at the same time, with no warning. Most of them died. Some of them ran. And some joined us. And then together, we became The Alliance.”
“So, the Russians and the Irish are gone, and now you and King run everything?”
“Except most people think it’s just me. An organization like this is most effective when it looks like one man runs it all. People can’t think it’s a democracy. You can’t give them the chance to try and turn you against each other. So, it had to be one of us, and King didn’t want it to be him. By then, his dad was dead, but he still had sisters and a mom around. It was safer for them if King sank into the shadows. And considering any of the Irish guys who might’ve tried to out him died that night, it was easy for him to slip into the shadows.”
“What about the people he’d recruited? Wouldn’t they know he was kinda in charge too?”
I flip my hand over, and she laces her fingers with mine. “Most of those guys are dead now too.” She grips my hand. “In the months that followed there were a lot of people coming for us––me–– wanting to take the throne I’d created.”
“But you kept it.”
I grin. “I kept it.”
“And now King is like a silent partner that no one knows about.”
“Basically.”
She seems to think it over before accepting it. “And he’s close to his sister? The one that went with you last night.”
“If, by close, you mean is she constantly bugging him and making him do shit he doesn’t want to do, then yes.”
This gets me another, more subdued, laugh. “That’s good to know. I’ll admit I don’t really understand all the other stuff, but it’s clear King is important to you. And I feel bad for feeling so scared of him.” I open my mouth, but she squeezes my hand. “But, knowing he’s close with his sister makes him seem more… normal.”
“King is far from normal,” I deadpan. “But he’s one of the few people I would trust your safety to. So please don’t be scared of him.”
“I won’t. And if you say I should trust him, then I will.”
“Thank you.”
I’m used to people doing what I want. But they do it because I pay them, or because they fear the consequences of disobeying me. To have this sort of compliance based solely off of trust… It’s a different feeling altogether.
Payton’s thumb brushes against my palm. “Thank you for telling me. I’m sure there are a lot of men in your position that wouldn’t, but I’m glad you did.”
I lean forward. “There’ll be no secrets between us, Payton. No lies. No half-truths. If you ask me, I’ll tell you. And if I ask you, you tell me.”
I watch as she accepts this. “How did Arthur die?”
I should’ve expected that. But I’m not about to go back on my word. “Badly. But not badly enough.”
“What do you mean?”
I let my memory replay the details of that night.
The fear in his eyes.
His screams when I started to rip his finger off. The number of yanks it took me.
The pain he must’ve felt.
The way his eyes bulged while he choked on his own appendage.
“I did it before you told me––” My chest expands as I inhale, trying to calm my rising rage. “If I would’ve known that he was planning to sell you, I would’ve made him suffer for weeks. Not mere minutes. I would’ve––” I think of all the things I would torture him with. All the vicious ways I could prolong his torment. But I don’t need to put those thoughts in Payton’s mind. “I would’ve made him beg me for death, rather than surprising him with it.”
“You did it before I told you…?” She doesn’t look shocked, just pensive. “I guess you would’ve had to, unless you went and did it right after I told you, before your party. Does that mean you went to North Dakota?”
Great time for me to implement the no secrets rule.
“The first night we slept together, I woke up in the middle of the night and flew straight there. I have a plane. That I fly,” I clarify.
“But if I hadn’t told you everything…”
“I knew enough from your nightmare on the couch. The night we met.” Her mouth opens and closes. “I knew he’d hurt you. And that’s all I needed to know.”
She nods, and I watch her throat bob as she swallows hard. “Was my mom there?”
“No. She was working. We left her alone and torched the house. But if you want her gone too, just say the word.”
“No,” she whispers. “She never did anything to hurt me, but she never stepped in to help me either. So she can stay right where she is. It’s what she deserves.”
Payton keeps nodding, her breaths on the verge of ragged, so I take the mug from her hands, and set both of ours on the nightstand.
“Come here.” I move down the bed until I’m lying on my back, arms open.
Payton crawls into my side. “Thank you, Nero.”
My arm tightens around her. “You never have to thank me, Payton.”
She snuggles further into my side. “But I always will.”
I let my eyes slide closed. “I’d give everything for you.”
Her palm presses over my heart. “But I’ll never ask you to.”
