Prologue
Angel
One week earlier…
The whore, giving my uncle his lap dance, takes a quick glance at me to make certain I want her to continue. He’s been pawing at her for close to an hour.
Normally a man doesn’t get to fondle the goods for this long.
He either moves on to a new girl, or he moves upstairs and pays the big money.
But tonight is different.
It’s not that he’s my uncle. Piece of shit should have to pay double. When his brother, Lorenzo, took me out of foster care and adopted me, he offered me a deal. Stay with him, do as he commanded, and get a place in the family business.
As a kid who’d been in the system, I took the offer without a look back. Lorenzo was a piece of shit father, but Uncle Vigo is a sadistic fuck. Beat me every chance he got and said it was for my education.
One by one, our adoptive father picked me and my brothers up off the streets, brought us together, made us his soldiers.
He taught us to fight, to steal, to kill. And Vigo taught us that this life hides the filthiest of men.
So tonight, I’m giving Vigo a lot of rope, not because he’s family, and not because his drinking, drugs, and red-hot temper are dismantling our business a brick at a time. Tonight, I’m hanging back because he finally pissed off the wrong person.
Or, if I’m being honest, the right person. He made an enemy of Rushton Smith. Billionaire, real estate mogul, and dabbler in the dark side.
Tonight Rush is going to kill my uncle.
And me? I’m going to let him.
I scrub my hand along my jaw, meeting the amber eyes of my brother Rock. We all have them. The eyes.
Lorenzo was successful in one endeavor. He bonded me and my adopted brothers so tightly, we have been able to keep Vigo from destroying our future by sheer force of our combined will.
Changing the pigment of our eyes was an expression of our commitment to our bond. Because I am the front man of this endeavor and I spend a fair bit of time on the straight side of our business, I have contacts when I want to return my eyes to brown.
“What is it?” I ask softly.
Rock sniffs the air. “Killian Smith is here in the club. Just stole Vigo’s gloves.”
“Stole his gloves?” Killian is Rush’s brother. They call me a psychopath for the way I can kill without a flicker of feeling, but Killian…the man is seriously disturbed.
“Probably a gun powder thing. Make Vigo’s death look like a suicide,” Rock says with a shrug.
I frown as my hand flexes under the table. I can’t have that. Vigo has racked up a debt to our biggest competitor, Vincent Morelli. If Vincent thinks Vigo killed himself to avoid paying it back, he’ll call in the debt immediately. “Can’t have that.”
Rock frowns. “What are you going to do?”
The problem is that Vincent is my main competitor. The man who could take over the New York underworld in Vigo’s place instead of me.
Likely why he lent Vigo so much money in the first place. It was a play for power.
But our family will remain at the helm of the New York underworld, and I will decide who plays and who pays. Vigo was never the man his father was, and his control has been slipping as he runs our business into the ground.
The clock hits three, and the DJ winds down the last song. With a flick of my hand, I dismiss the dancer, Chastity. Her fake tits barely bounce as she stands, making her way over to collect her pay for the dance.
I hand her the cash, with the extra for entertaining my uncle for so long.
This club moves massive amounts of cash through its till, allowing us to slip the money we make from other…
endeavors through its profits. I’ve got several more, and I like to keep the girls happy.
Makes for good business and good money laundering.
Soon the place is cleared out, leaving only me and Rock with Vigo.
“Where’d she go?” Vigo slurs out. “After fighting today, I’m ready to fuck.”
I seriously doubt he could keep it up, and what he did today was not fighting. Rush Smith let my uncle win.
I saw the video that has already been distributed to all the New York families who run the drug trade. Rush never even threw a punch. He didn’t fight back. Just stoically took a beating.
Rush’s message in sending the video…
Vigo is getting what he deserves.
But I don’t argue my uncle’s assertion as I stand. Rock stands too, each of us taking one of Vigo’s arms.
I don’t have much time to decide, but I know I can’t let the Smiths fake a suicide. How my uncle dies is imperative to our future.
“Where are we going?” Vigo asks, stumbling as we make our way to the back door.
I grip my pistol, tucked in the back of my pants, as I prepare to enter the back parking lot.
It’s protected on all sides, closed off from windows, and we have guards patrol the rooftops so that we have a safe place to meet when needed. I’d bet my future that Rush is waiting there now.
“To find you a good woman to fuck,” I answer, grasping the door.
Vigo snorts out a laugh. “You turned out all right, Angel. Had to beat the weakness out of you, but you made it.”
I look over at him, my eyes narrowed into slits.
What I am today had nothing to do with Vigo Sinclair.
I’d been beaten plenty before him, and my fair share after.
My desire to be on the very top of this pile comes with the desire to lift myself above this pit of vipers, where we can live a life out of the dark and in the light.
I’ll drag my brothers with me.
But our exit is definitely built on a pile of bodies.
The next one.
Vigo Sinclair.
The moment we enter the alley, Rush steps out of the shadows.
Vigo stops, taking several seconds to process before he slurs, “Kill him. Weak piece of shit deserves to die the way he fights.”
“He let you win,” I grit out through clenched teeth, done hiding how much I hate this useless piece of shit.
“He didn’t let me win,” Vigo stumbles again, away from Rock, and this time, Rock lets him go. “I kicked his ass because he’s weak and pathetic. Hiding in his big building. Fucking my wife.”
“My wife,” Rush rumbles with such ferocity, one of my eyebrows lifts. Giulia is a beautiful woman, but Rush can have any woman he chooses. Why he’d take on the trouble of Giulia is beyond me. But that’s his problem.
Rush reaches out and grabs Vigo, pulling him forward, even as Killian steps out from behind his brother, lifting a pistol to Vigo’s temple.
On Killian’s hands are Vigo’s black gloves.
I have one final second, and taking it, I lift my gun and fire. But it’s not Rush or even Killian I hit.
Vigo drops like a sack, his dead body splayed out on the ground. I don’t feel anything. Maybe I’m the remorseless killing machine they’ve accused me of being. But as my eyes meet Rush’s, I smile. “You’re welcome.”
He glowers back. “You want me to thank you for a job I was about to do myself?”
“I’ve saved you the trouble. And I’d like to think that this is the beginning of a beneficial friendship.”
Rock looks at me with a question in his eyes. I love my brothers. I’m here for them always. But, like I’ve said, I’ve got plans to lift us up from the hellhole we’ve been in our entire lives and let us walk in the light.
Everyone, including Rush, is getting on board with my plan.
They just have to trust me. Because this, this is only the beginning…