8. Kane
KANE
A LITTLE WHILE EARLIER
Nobody ever stops me at the door at these things. It baffles me.
So many times, I’ve come unannounced and uninvited to kill a man, or blackmail him, or torture him into giving me things or answers I need.
And never once does anyone think to ask, Who are you and why are you here?
Tonight might be the closest I’ve ever gotten to getting turned away. A woman who has clearly drunk far too much eggnog comes wobbling up to me.
“Are you Dorsey side or Boyd side?” she slurs, eyes crossing.
“His.”
“Aren’t you handsome?” She pats my arm and goes tottering off.
I stand in the doorway and take in the scene. There are at least fifty people here, weaving around and chattering among one another.
I only give a fuck about one of them.
I’m sure he wishes I didn’t. Connor Boyd might’ve thought he could take my money and disappear, but if so, he thought wrong.
I came tonight because I’ve learned, in my many years as pakhan of the Makov Bratva, that men among their family tend to yield much faster than they do when they’re all alone.
When you have them in a dank dungeon cell or cornered in a filthy alley, they get their hackles up and try to fight—or worse, to negotiate.
But when Grandma is one room away and she’d hear you scream if I started to fillet you with the serrated knife I keep in my boot?
Things go much more smoothly.
All I need is ten minutes with Connor in a quiet corner.
Luckily, I’ve just spotted him.
Unluckily, he’s in the middle of a throng of people. I clench my teeth in disgust at the sight of him. He’s happily chatting, waving a full drink around to underscore the punchlines of the story he’s telling.
He looks too fucking happy.
A man who owes me four million dollars ought to be sweating into his collar and glancing fearfully at every patch of shadow.
I’ll have to wait to get to him; he’s too far in right now. At least he hasn’t seen me yet. I want to be the one to sneak up on him.
So for the time being, I slink into a corner, pour myself a drink from the bar, and wait.
But as people finish eating and the tide of the party shifts toward me, I decide that I’m better off finding a more secluded hiding spot.
I don’t want to answer any questions or, God forbid, have that drunk woman come pawing at me again and making fuck-me eyes in front of all her friends and family.
I look around me and find the perfect spot.
Just off the kitchen, there’s a pantry door with good sightlines into the rest of the house. I snatch up the entire bottle of whiskey to bring it with me for safekeeping.
Then I duck inside.
It’s dark and quiet in here, with an L-shaped bend in the floor plan that gives me a place to duck further out of sight if the need arises.
For a while, I sit, drink, and muse about something that’s been bothering me.
It’s not a concrete sort of something. Nothing I can kill with my bare hands.
More of a gnawing, indistinct sense of dissatisfaction in my gut.
It’s something like this, more or less:
I haven’t felt alive in far too fucking long.
Over the last decade, my territory has quadrupled, my revenue has multiplied by millions on millions, and my enemies have tucked tail and run to greener pastures.
I’ve acquired almost all of the building blocks of what will be the next phase of my empire, a strip of waterfront property along the harbor. As soon as I complete the last of my purchases, I’ll own the most valuable square mile in Brooklyn.
If Forbes kept track of the wealth of men like me, they’d have to make a whole new list just to keep up.
So with all that under my belt and the future as bright as it can fucking get… why am I not satisfied?
Fuck knows I’ve tried all the other normal ways.
I’d never snort or smoke or inject anything—those were my father’s vices, not mine—but I’ve drank myself stupid.
I’ve gambled. I’ve fought bare-knuckled in poorly lit arenas that have no name.
I’ve taken woman after woman to bed in search of someone who doesn’t meekly kneel or bend over at the snap of my fingers, fawning to please me.
None of it worked.
Especially not the last one.
Half of those women got kicked out of my penthouse before I ever removed a stitch of clothing.
How am I supposed to get hard for the human equivalent of a doormat? I want someone with fire.
True fire.
Not an influencer with daddy issues or a desperate actress looking for a leg up.
I want a taste of the kind of sweetness no money can buy.
I’m lost in thought, wondering where the hell I can find that, when the door opens again.
Somebody comes in and shuts it, but does not turn on the light.
I quickly step back behind the bend to stay hidden.
I can tell by the breathing and the scent that it’s a woman. She rests her back against the shelves on the other side, just a few feet from me, and lets out a ragged, nervous breath.
“Okay,” she whispers. “From the top.”
And then she starts to talk.
Instantly, I’m fucking mesmerized.
It’s clear that I’m hearing something I’m not supposed to hear. But it’s the most captivating shit I’ve heard in a long time.
The anger in her voice—the fire—grows and grows the longer she talks.
I hear about a thieving sister, a cowardly husband. Fucking on the night of her father’s funeral? Christ, shame has no limits, does it?
“… And now, my husband has given away my life’s work as collateral for money I never saw a penny of.”
Just like that, it all snaps into place.
It’s one of those moments where life or the universe or whoever the fuck is in charge of this existence arranges things so beautifully that I can only laugh.
The woman on the other side of these shelves is Connor Boyd’s wife.
Boyd borrowed my money and pledged her building to get it. I knew what he was doing—planned it, orchestrated the whole fucking thing—but I didn’t know that this was who he was doing it to.
I’m not offended on her behalf. I don’t have that particular emotional capacity.
But I am definitely amused.
I had plans of my own when I got here tonight. In a nutshell, it was something like this:
Get Boyd alone, clamp my hand on the back of his neck, and let him understand what he owes and how soon.
This feisty little thing has a much better version.
Get him alone? Find a quiet corner? Fuck that.
Eviscerating him in front of everyone he’s ever known is much, much better.
So I put my cup down on the shelf and I applaud her.
Clap.
Clap.
Clap.
She turns around. In the dark, she’s nothing more than a curvy shape and the shine of her eyes.
“Who the hell are you?” she says in alarm.
“I’d say I’m your newest fan,” I reply.
She doesn’t seem as flattered as she should. “How long have you been standing there?”
“Long enough to hear that you have a very interesting evening ahead of you.”
She sucks in a sharp breath. I hear fear in it, and anger, and fire.
“Are you going to tell anyone?” she asks.
“And ruin what’s about to be the performance of a lifetime? Hell no.”
The exhale that comes past her lips is brimming with relief. “Okay. Good. That’s… that’s good.” Then the suspicion rises back up. “You’re not going to ask me what it’s about?”
I chuckle. “You made it all pretty clear, I’d say. No follow-up questions necessary.”
Her gulp echoes in the space. “Am I about to blow up my life?” she whispers aloud.
I don’t think she’s actually asking me, but I answer anyway. “It doesn’t sound like it was much of a life in the first place.”
“No,” she concedes. “I don’t really think it was.”
“Then I’d say you have everything to gain and nothing to lose.”
“I guess you’re right.” Another calming exhale. “Who did you say you were again?”
“I didn’t. Feel free to take a guess.”
“A cousin?”
“Definitely not.”
“Some aunt’s new boyfriend?”
“God forbid.”
“Are you a caterer?”
That makes me bark out a laugh. “The pay is not quite enough to tempt me into that line of work.”
Her frown is audible. “Then are you even supposed to be here?”
“Not even remotely.”
“Great,” she says. “So you’re a stranger who broke into my mother’s house and now, you know all my business.”
“I didn’t break in. I walked right through the front door. In fact, a nice woman told me I was handsome the second I arrived.”
The woman in the pantry giggles. “That had to be Aunt Sherry.”
“If you say so.”
“She’d let a serial killer in if he complimented her earrings.”
“Then she’s an excellent host.”
She laughs again, and seems almost surprised by it. “I shouldn’t be talking to you,” she accuses.
“Probably not.”
“You’re not going to leave, are you?”
“And miss the show? I wouldn’t dream of it.”
She sighs. “Shit. Well. Alright. I guess I should get going. Do me a favor and don’t tell anybody I was in here,” she says. “It really undercuts the whole ‘vengeful bitch’ thing I’m going for.”
“I’ve heard men beg in five languages. You were braver than any of them.”
“That is the strangest compliment I’ve ever gotten.”
“You’ll get used to me.”
“Will I? Someone’s confident.”
“You have no idea how right you are.”
She fidgets for another moment, taken aback by this stranger in the pantry, I’m sure.
“Okay. Well.” She clears her throat. “Thank you for humoring my practice run, I guess. Any notes for me before I go?”
“None whatsoever.” I step a bit closer and inhale her scent. Flour and sweat. It’s strange, but intoxicating. “I like your voice.”
That stops her. “You… huh?”
“Your voice. It’s sweet. Does it match your face, I wonder?”
I start to reach for the light switch on the wall over her shoulder, but she darts out a hand to catch my wrist and stop me.
“Don’t,” she whispers.
I pause. There’s a note in her voice that confuses me. It’s almost like she’s… begging?
But not in the fun way. Not in the hands-cuffed-behind-her-back, bare-and-submissive-before-me kind of way.
This begging is a bit too desperate for my liking.
“Why not?” I ask.
She releases my wrist. “If you turn on that light, I’m going to see your face, and you’re going to see mine, and then this becomes a real conversation with a real person in it. And then I lose my nerve.”