Chapter 2
AXEL
Focus, Axel.
Viktor's hand is on my arm, pulling me away from the main floor, and I want to break his fingers. Seven years. Seven years I kept Viktor alive, kept him fed with orders from my cell, and now he's interrupting the first interesting thing that's happened since I got out.
The girl's still standing there. Dark hair, dark eyes, curves in a red dress that should be illegal. Watching me walk away like I just broke a promise I didn't know I made.
Just forget her.
"Boss, we got a situation." Viktor steers me toward the private room, his voice low enough that the music swallows it. "Dmitri's crew hit one of our shipments at the docks. Small stuff, but they're testing us."
I let him lead us into the back room, but part of me is still out there. Still feeling those eyes on me like a brand. Twenty-four years old, maybe twenty-five at most. Young. Too young for a man who just spent seven years in a cage.
Too young for a man who's forty-three and has more blood on his hands than he can wash off.
This is fucking laughable.
I’ve walked away from wars, from cities, from people who begged me not to leave. I don’t fixate. I don’t linger. I sure as hell don’t think about some girl I’ve never spoken to like she carved her name into my spine.
And yet—
My body doesn’t care about logic. It clocks her the way it clocks threats. The way it clocks opportunity. Immediate. Sharp. Unavoidable.
That’s dangerous.
The door closes. Three men wait inside—Viktor, my second. Sergei, the enforcer who's kept my territory clean while I was gone. And some kid I don't recognize, all eager eyes and cheap suit.
"Talk," I say.
Viktor pulls out his phone, swipes through photos. "They hit the container at midnight. Got away with about fifty kilos of product before our guys responded. No casualties on our side, two of theirs down."
I study the photos. Sloppy work. Rushed. The kind of play you make when you think someone's weak, when you want to see if they'll bite back.
"Dmitri knows I'm out?"
"Everyone knows you're out, boss." Sergei grins, showing gold teeth. He's built like a tank, with hands the size of dinner plates, and loyal as a dog. "Half the city's probably shitting themselves wondering what you're gonna do first."
The kid shifts his weight, trying not to stare. He can't be more than twenty-two. Baby face, nervous energy. The type who grew up on mafia movies and thinks this life is glamorous.
"Who's this?" I nod at him.
"Alexei Morozov," Viktor says. "Joined up about a year ago. Good with numbers, better with a gun. Wants to prove himself."
Alexei straightens, meets my eyes. There's fear there, but he's trying to hide it. Smart. "It's an honor, Mr. Santego. My father spoke highly of you before he—"
"Your father was Yuri Morozov?"
"Yes, sir."
Yuri. Dead three years now, caught in a shootout with the feds. Good man. Terrible poker player. I study his son, see hints of Yuri in the jaw, the eyes.
"Your father saved my life once," I say. "Took a bullet meant for me in '09. You need anything, you come to me. Understood?"
The kid's eyes go wide. "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."
"Don't thank me yet. You're about to earn it." I turn back to Viktor. "Dmitri's warehouse on Fifth Street. We hit it tomorrow night. I want inventory, cash, and anyone stupid enough to be there when we arrive. Make it messy."
Viktor grins. "Like old times."
"Exactly like old times." I loosen my tie, feeling the club's heat pressing in. Seven years of stale air and concrete walls, and now I'm back in the world of noise and chaos and violence. It should feel like coming home.
Instead, I keep thinking about her.
The way she looked at me. Not afraid. Not calculating. Just... curious. Hungry. Like she saw something in me worth wanting.
When's the last time someone looked at me like that?
Before prison, sex was mechanical. A function, like eating or sleeping. I'd pick someone, use them, forget their face by morning. It wasn't about connection. It was about release, about scratching an itch so I could focus on what mattered.
The business. The family. The empire I was building.
In prison, there was nothing. Although some of the female wardens offered themselves generously, I wasn’t interested in any hide and fuck game. So I learned to live without it. Seven years of cold showers and colder nights, and I thought I'd killed that part of myself.
Thought I didn't need it anymore.
Then she looked at me, and my body woke up like someone hit me with a defibrillator.
Christ.
I thought that part of me was dead.
Turns out it was just waiting for the right fucking trigger.
"Boss?" Viktor's watching me. "You good?"
"Fine." I pull my thoughts back, force them into order. "What else?"
He hesitates. Glances at Sergei, who suddenly finds the floor very interesting.
"What?" My voice drops, and the temperature in the room drops with it.
Viktor reaches into his jacket, pulls out a manila folder. Slides it across the table like it might explode. "You're not gonna like this."
I open it.
Photos. Reports. Bank statements. My jaw tightens with every page I turn.
Leo.
My son. The boy I gave everything to, the boy I’ve tried to mold into something worthy of the Santego name.
Drunk at clubs. Fighting in the streets. Throwing money around like it's confetti. One photo shows him stumbling out of a casino at 4 AM, supported by two women who look like they charge by the hour. Another shows him screaming at one of our soldiers, face red, finger jabbed in the man's chest.
The bank statements are worse. He's bleeding money. Gambling debts. Designer clothes. Cars he’s crashed within a month of acquiring them. In the past seven years, he's burned through millions of dollars of family money like it's nothing.
"How long has this been going on?" My voice is quiet. The dangerous kind of quiet.
"About... six years," Viktor admits. "Started about a year after you went in. We tried to control it, boss, but he's your—he's Leo. He pulls rank, says you left him in charge of his own affairs."
"I left him with an allowance and explicit instructions to finish school and stay out of trouble."
"Yeah, well." Sergei shifts. "Kid's got your last name. Thinks that makes him untouchable."
I flip to the last page. It's a police report. Assault charges. Dropped, of course, because we own half the department. But the details make my blood boil.
Leo tried to force himself on some girl at a party. When she fought back, he hit her. Hard enough to split her lip, bruise her ribs. She had him arrested. He bribed his way out within four hours.
"The girl," I tap the report. "She pressed charges?"
"Tried to," Viktor says. "We made it go away. Figured it was better to handle it quietly."
"Paid her off?"
"Tried. She wouldn't take the money. Wanted him in jail." Viktor shrugs. "But without her testimony, the case fell apart."
Something about that sits wrong in my gut. A girl who wouldn't take money, who wanted justice instead.
Who is she?
"Where the fuck is Leo now?" I close the folder, fighting the urge to punch the table.
"His penthouse. Probably sleeping off whatever he took last night."
"Get him up. I want him in my office tomorrow morning, eight sharp. And if he's late, fucking drag him there in whatever state he's in."
"You got it, boss."
I stand. The meeting's over. Sergei and Alexei file out first, the kid throwing one last awed glance over his shoulder. Viktor lingers.
"It's good to have you back," he says quietly. "Really. Things were... they were stable while you were gone, but they weren't the same. We need you."
"You did good, Viktor. Better than good. The organization's stronger than when I left."
"Yeah, well. I had a good teacher." He grins, then sobers. "You okay, though? Really?"
Am I?
Seven years in a six-by-eight cell. Seven years of watching my back every second, sleeping light, eating food that tasted like cardboard.
Seven years of running my empire through coded messages and weekly phone calls, never sure if the guards were listening, if someone had turned, if today was the day it all fell apart.
But it didn't. Viktor kept it together. My soldiers stayed loyal. My enemies stayed scared.
I should feel victorious.
Instead, I feel hollow.
"I'm fine," I lie. "Go home. Get some sleep. Tomorrow we remind Dmitri why crossing the Santego family is a death sentence."
He nods, leaves.
I'm alone.
The club's bass still throbs through the walls, muffled but relentless. Out there, people are dancing, drinking, fucking, living. And I'm in here, surrounded by reports and violence and the weight of a crown I never asked for but can't put down.
I pull out my phone. Scroll through contacts until I find the name I'm looking for.
Luca Olivera.
We go back twenty years. Brothers in everything but blood. He took a bullet for me once, back when we were young and stupid and thought we were invincible. I took the fall for a job that would've put him away for life, spent seven years in prison so he could stay free, could raise his daughter.
I should visit him. Soon. Reconnect, rebuild the alliance.
But first, I need to stabilize my own house. Need to deal with Leo, with Dmitri, with the fifty other fires that have been smoldering while I was gone.
I pocket the phone, and head for the exit.
The club's main floor is still packed. I scan it automatically, looking for threats, checking exits. Old habits.
And I see her.
The girl in the red dress. She's leaving, flanked by two friends—a blonde and a dark-skinned woman. They're laughing about something, pulling her toward the door.
She glances back.
Our eyes meet.
For a second, everything stops again. The music, the crowd, the world. It's just her and me and this stupid, impossible pull that makes no sense.
Then she's gone, slipping out the door into the night.
I don't follow.
I'm not that man. Not the kind who chases girls half his age just because they make my pulse race. I've got control, discipline, decades of practice at keeping my wants separate from my needs.
But I watch the door for longer than I should.
Who the fuck is she?
My penthouse is on the fifty-third floor of the most expensive building in the city. Floor-to-ceiling windows, imported marble, furniture that costs more than some people's houses. I bought it the year before I went to prison, barely got to enjoy it before the feds kicked down my door.
Viktor kept it maintained. Fresh flowers in the entryway, fridge stocked, bed made with Egyptian cotton sheets.
It's perfect.
It's also empty as hell.
Exactly the way I like my space.
I pour three fingers of whiskey, stand at the window, look out at the city lights. Somewhere out there, she's going home. Climbing into bed. Maybe thinking about me, maybe not.
Probably not.
I'm forty-three. Silver hair, lines around my eyes, scars from fights I barely remember. Seven years in prison didn't make me prettier. The last thing some young woman wants is a washed-up convict with blood on his hands and ice in his veins.
Even if she looked at you like she wanted to climb you like a tree.
Fuck.
I drain the whiskey and pour another.
Before prison, I could ignore women. Could walk through a room full of models and not feel a thing. Sex was just sex—mechanical, forgettable, something I did when the urge got too strong to ignore. Faces didn't matter. Names didn't matter.
Nothing mattered except business.
But tonight?
Tonight I can't stop thinking about her.
The way she stood up when I looked at her. The way her breath caught—I couldn't hear it, but I saw it in the rise of her chest, the parting of her lips. The way she crossed her arms like she was trying to hide how her body reacted.
She felt it too.
I shouldn't care. Shouldn't want some random girl whose name I don't even know. But I do.
I want her.
Want to know what she sounds like when she moans. Want to see if she tastes as sweet as she looks. Want to find out if that fire in her eyes translates to fire in bed.
This is the celibacy talking. Seven years without sex, and your brain's finally melting.
Maybe. Probably.
Or maybe she's just the first person in a decade who looked at me and saw a man instead of a beast.
I set down the glass. Stare at my reflection in the window.
Silver hair. Hard eyes. Expensive suit that can't hide what I am underneath.
I'm Axel Santego. I've killed men. Broken bones. Built an empire on fear and blood and ruthless efficiency.
I'm too old for her. Too brutal. Too everything.
But I want her anyway.
The thought shouldn’t even cross my mind. Instead, it's the first thing that's felt real since I got out.
I turn away from the window, and head for the bedroom. Tomorrow, I'll deal with Leo. Deal with Dmitri. Deal with the empire that needs its king back.
Tonight, I'll lie in my expensive, empty bed and remind myself why my body shouldn’t get what it wants.