5. Ares
Ares
Like every morning, I wake before the alarm. My body trained itself. Yet my taut muscles protest this morning just pushing the covers aside. Sleep did not relieve me of the gnawing stress from last night’s drama at Winterhall.
Squeezing my eyes shut, champagne-blonde hair fills the dark space behind my lids.
Lourdes.
I’ve never woken up and immediately thought of a woman.
That has me quickly getting out of bed and into my routine. Routine breeds discipline. Discipline feeds my need for control. And rigid control has never failed me.
I flick on a lamp and grab my workout gear. Outside my window, the sound of light traffic hums on Fifth Avenue.
I rule Lower Manhattan, and it’s time my presence reflects it. My new center of power, the Aurelian, is almost ready.
I roll my shoulders, loosening the muscles in anticipation of a tough workout. Yet, with every breath, I feel a stutter. Something’s not right. Pulling on shorts, a tank top, socks, and sneakers, I’m distracted by the memory of amber eyes.
By the time I step into my home gym, she occupies every corner of my mind. Slender fingers with long nails wrapped around the margarita glass, her pink tongue darting out to lick the salt. The way she held my gaze a fraction too long. The pause before she said her name.
I add extra weight to the barbell for my bench presses today.
The memory of her shouldn’t matter, shouldn’t linger in my thoughts. Enough beautiful women look at me with curiosity, calculation, or hunger. I’ve indulged regardless of their motivations. Only mine have ever mattered.
No woman was ever misled. I’m brutally honest about my intentions.
Working up the plan in my head to propose an arrangement between us, I didn’t think she was auditioning to be my next indulgence. She didn’t come across overly impressed with me. That drew me in. She was cautious. Rightfully so, given who I am.
I hadn’t predicted a husband would show up. For the first time in my recent memory, I judged a person and a situation absurdly wrong.
I lower the barbell down to my chest, my fingers wrapped around the steel as I press up, welcoming in the pain. Controlling it.
That’s when he appears in my mind the way he did in the VIP lounge.
My teeth grind remembering David’s grimy hand closing around her wrist and seeing the pressure of his fingers around her arm. Not gently, not possessively, but with irritation. Ownership without worship.
Arms burning, I keep pressing the weight, losing count of my reps.
Fuck.
I punish myself harder to clear these thoughts from my head.
By the time I reach my bathroom ninety excruciating minutes later, I’m a sweaty, heart-pounding mess.
In the shower, I turn the spray to cold, but that doesn’t stop my cock from aching with need. I deal with it in the shower. And at the moment of climax, her eyes and her lips appear to me, and I imagine coming down her throat as she watches me fall apart.
While I dress and knot my tie, my valet checks in and asks what I want for breakfast. My stomach is a churning sea, but some days food is just sustenance.
An hour later, I step into my Wall Street office, and before I do anything else, I call Daria Franklin, my chief intelligence officer.
She answers on the first ring. “This is rare. A call from you rather than written orders.”
I calculate that she’s right. I can’t turn back now. This ache to figure out what the hell I witnessed last night will infect everything I touch today.
Lourdes is another man’s wife. An inconvenience solved with either a big fat check or a bullet. But that tattoo on her husband’s neck and his authority in a Bratva club give me pause. Making that woman mine won’t be easy, but easy is less appealing.
“I need a profile,” I say coldly.
“Details?”
I picture Daria with her short silver hair, dark glasses low on her nose, fingers already moving across a keyboard.
“Winterhall, Volkov’s club. Last night around eleven. A blonde.”
“This is a first. You never indulge with women at Winterhall and then care about who she is the next day,” Daria says.
“This one, I do.” With my words, an inferno of emotion rushes through my system and steals my breath.
Lourdes is a fireball I haven’t been able to douse. A face I can’t unsee. She can wreck me and destabilize me. But it makes me want her more. I won’t rest until I have her in my bed.
“Got a name?” Daria says.
I steady myself to say it out loud. “Lourdes Sinclair. Married to David Sinclair. He was there, too.”
“Husband?” Her voice pitches up.
“For now,” I growl. “You have thirty minutes.”
The line clicks without a goodbye. Her lack of warmth amuses me. It mirrors my own. But right now, I feel blue fire under my veins.
Unable to think of anything else until I have this intel, I move to my office windows overlooking Wall Street.
The new U.N. campus is near completion, which will end my business dealings with Quinlan Empire.
Except, my sister Ava is married to the head of the Irish Mob, Griffin Quinlan.
A marriage I arranged to end the war with the Irish.
The silence stretches too long, and I think the deadline has passed. Furious, I turn around, ready to storm into Daria’s office, but she’s standing in the doorframe, holding a laptop.
“Ares.” The ex-CIA agent in her mid-fifties greets me using my first name because she has the clout to do so.
Even if it irritates me. “Well?”
“I got something.” Daria struts past me into my office wearing a black pantsuit that looks as expensive as mine.
I pay her well. She’s worth every penny.
She drops into a seat at my meeting table without an invitation and opens the laptop. I stand behind her, watching the screen.
“I had to grab Winterhall’s feeds before the nine-a.m. purge to get visuals to make sure the identities were even valid.” She routes through three layers before it stabilizes.
Talking to Lourdes last night didn’t feel like it would turn into an intel reach I would grind my company’s workday to a halt to pursue.
Yet here I am.
“I have you outside Yuri’s office.” She nods to the video showing me sitting on the balcony overlooking the pit, clearly annoyed. “How did the meeting go?”
“It didn’t. I was late, and Yuri wasn’t even there. Kirill was, and he didn’t wait for me. I’m suspending those meetings until we know who is actually running that brotherhood.”
Watching myself in the footage, my skin itches. I detest being part of an assignment. To feel exposed like this. But I instantly know from the shape of my face the moment I spotted Lourdes down below.
“Skip forward to the VIP bar,” I say before Daria picks up on my turmoil.
“The VIP bar.” She forces the screen to pixilate in and out.
It’s blurry for a few tense seconds. And then it’s… Not.
The camera is thankfully pointed at the sofas. My body goes hot, seeing Lourdes sitting there. I see how she listened to me with interest in her eyes. That’s washed away with anger, knowing that moment with her husband was about to happen. That I was a sitting duck.
Daria types while I watch. “I can’t find a Lourdes Sinclair in New York DMV records.”
She’s not from New York…
“But here’s a hit from the Department of Labor,” Daria says, pointing to the screen. “Name: Lourdes Sinclair. Employment: Juniper Trading. Overseas Textiles. No exact position is listed, but I see W2’s filed for the last three years.”
“Who owns Juniper Trading?” I ask.
“Nathan Craig.”
Places like that operate clean on paper but are murky in practice.
“Never heard of him. Anything on the husband?”
“Searching on him…” Daria clicks faster. “Facial recognition isn’t matching. And I’m not finding any registered employer for a David Sinclair.”
“Nothing?”
“He must operate in shadows.”
That tattoo I saw on his neck means he’s useful to someone. And he might be dangerous.
“No ties anywhere on paper to Volkov? They were in his club. I heard something buzzing inside Kirill’s office. A tattoo gun. Drago, one of the bratva enforcers, stood guard. Said someone was being taught a lesson.”
David didn’t look like much at first glance last night. Average height. Average build. Light hair, although unkempt. Handsome face, but cold, vacant eyes.
He doesn’t look at me when he enters. His gaze was solely on her. It’s as if I wasn’t there.
“Pause,” I say.
The frame freezes, showing David pulling his collar down when Drago shows up.
“Zoom on Sinclair’s neck.” The tattoo I saw last night struck me, but it was half-hidden.
“Is that a skull and…” Daria stops to zoom in more. “A serpent?”
“Do you recognize that mark?”
She shakes her head slowly. “No. But the problem is where it’s located.”
I don’t like that answer. “Explain.”
“The placement on the neck,” she indulges. “It’s meant to be seen. It’s either allegiance…or a warning.”
“To who?”
“Anyone who knows what they’re looking at.” She meets my eyes.
“Worst case?” I ask.
“It’s the signature of an entity we haven’t mapped yet.”
“Should I be concerned?”
“Yes.”
My blood goes cold. Daria doesn’t do false alarms, and if she can’t place the ink with her covert expertise of crime rings, I’m opening a door to an unknown world by pursuing this woman.
Or David Sinclair could just be a tool who thought it was cool to get a neck tattoo with the same symbols used by a criminal organization.
With his blond hair and fair eyes, he didn’t look Russian.
He had no discerning characteristics that would make me think he’s another one of Yuri Volkov’s bastard sons.
Maybe Sinclair works for them. Or was trying to get a job from Kirill. A favor. Make an offer. His wife…
Pacing, I snap the pencil I didn’t even realize I picked up off my desk.
“She has a mark, as well,” Daria says, redirecting my focus. “On the inside of her wrist.”
“I noticed that, too.” I toss the pencil pieces into a wastebasket and return to her. “Any idea of its origin?”
“That’s an ownership mark,” Daria adds.
My jaw tightens. “You’ve seen that exact one?”
“Not exact,” she admits. “But close enough. Variations show up in controlled environments like cults and trafficking rings. It’s not decorative, Ares. Most likely, the husband made her get it.”
Anger heats my blood now. “It means that piece of shit Sinclair thinks he owns her beyond a damn piece of paper.”
“Or he wants someone specific to believe he does,” she says evenly.
“Someone specific?” I say, surprise rising in my tone.
Daria looks up at me. “I’ll research the tats some more.”
The feed continues to play out, and I watch the moment David grabs her wrist.
Not protective. Not affectionate. Impatient.
I grind my molars. “I need to know who Sinclair works for. Who made him get that tattoo and who branded his wife?”
“What if it’s another mafia house like the Vitales?”
“You mean the Borgias.” I remind her.
The Vitales collapsed under Julian Vitale’s gambling debt and penchant for high-priced prostitutes.
Nico Scava, the Borgia Don of Las Vegas, wiped out millions in debt for Vitale’s New York holdings. The fact that no one’s seen Julian Vitale in a year either means he’s dead or in hiding somewhere.
“I need a home address,” I say to end this.
“Hell’s Kitchen. One-bedroom. The lease is in her name.”
That gives me pause. Hell’s Kitchen is a cauldron of men like David Sinclair.
“And the company, Juniper Trading?” I ask, ridding my mind of that man.
“Office in Midtown.”
“Give me a full dossier on Nathan Craig.” I turn away to stare out at the sky. “And a hook into his network. I already have an idea.”
“This should be good,” Daria murmurs. “You’re contemplating an alliance with Craig?”
“You can call it that.”
“And the husband?”
“Total destruction.”