Chapter Seven-Nico
CHAPTER SEVEN-NICO
“ W hat do we fucking know about this?” I bark.
“Warehouse is gone. Staz, the night guard, saw them creeping around with Molotov cocktails and called it in after he got to safety,” Luc answers first.
“And?”
“And Sanchez fucking junior doesn’t care what was mapped out with his father. He’s claiming this is his turf,” Angel explains.
Pure rage leaks into my vision. This fucking punk.
I look at the footage of what’s left of one of my warehouses and I fume. This prick set fire to it.
He’s lucky no one was injured. Lucky it was empty. But that’s not the fucking point.
“Want us to hit him back?” Angel asks.
My gaze flicks to Luc who’s still studying the footage. He is frowning, and I wait for him to speak.
Angel is my muscle guy. My cousin. My best friend. And Luc. Luc is my Council. Looking at him, you wouldn’t think he graduated from Princeton Law.
He’s wiry and tall, but his lean build belies his strength. I’ve known Luc a long time. Since we were both kids causing trouble for the dealers on our block growing up.
His sister OD’d before her twenty-first birthday, which was a year after my mother had done the same. Back then we didn’t know what we were doing. We were just angry.
The cops wouldn’t help, so we did it ourselves. We raided stash house. Chased away customers. Started fucking fights.
My cousin, Angel, joined us after I got my ass handed to me. Then he started training us. We learned to box. To shoot. To fight with knives.
Little by little, with Luc and Angel by my side, I built an underworld army. And with that army, I cut out a chunk of territory for us, for the Vipers.
The Den is just our base of operations .
Anyone wanting to play on our turf had to pay the piper, but there was some shit I just didn’t allow.
Like this fucking fentanyl bullshit. An opioid epidemic, that’s what they called it.
Some blamed the dealers. Some blamed the politicians.
But I don’t give a fuck whose fault it was.
People want to escape. They have for years, and whether it’s drinking, drugs, gambling, sex, or violence, they’re gonna have their outlets.
People with vices weren’t going away.
But the means by which people escaped can be controlled. They can be regulated.
Someone with enough balls could take charge of the pushers and the truly evil leeches that fed off human misery.
I’m not a fucking judge. And I’m not God, either. What I am is the motherfucking king of the Vipers.
I make the rules.
And if that little pissant Sanchez Junior thinks he can destroy my property and get away with it. He’s wrong.
So fucking wrong.
I give my orders to Angel, and he nods, showing me he understands. He’s my Enforcer. The head muscle guy and I have no doubt he’ll do what I say .
He’s too good at it not to. Angel leaves my office, and I feel a sense of excitement bubbling in my veins.
I always feel like that when something is about to happen. So, this makes sense.
Sanchez wants a fucking war, but he’s not going to get one.
The Vipers don’t just strike back.
We destroy.
We decimate.
We are the scourge that leaves nothing behind.
I exhale and roll my neck. Control is hard earned, but I mastered that technique long ago.
Luc is quiet, but that’s nothing new. His eyes are trained on the security monitors while I cipher through my thoughts.
My eyes flick to the bedroom door in my office and I steel myself against the unwanted emotions coiling through me.
Six months ago I had her in my bed, and then she vanished without a trace.
Anna Keller is the very definition of the one that got away.
But maybe it’s for the better.
Every time I think about tracking her down. Something stops me .
I might think it’s my conscience if I had one of those. But there’s no voice in my head telling me what’s right and wrong.
No Jiminy Cricket motherfucker telling me what to do. To leave her alone.
Still, what could I give her?
Before I can fall down the rabbit hole of the ifs and buts of pursuing Anna Keller, I hear Luc snort.
“What?”
“You know that little flower who came in here six months ago to pay off her brother’s debts?”
“Yeah,” I reply, and I lean forward.
“Well, I think she just walked in, and uh, Boss, she’s got a surprise.”
My heart is hammering. She’s back. Anna is back in town, and she is here. In my place.
I don’t care what brought her here. I just know I want her. Six months did nothing to dampen my need for this woman.
“Boss?”
“I got it,” I say.
Then I stand.