Wicked Mafia King (Red Letter Syndicate #1)

Chapter 1

One

Rafael

Iam surrounded by a table of assholes.

Five of Chicago's most powerful, filthy rich men all sit around Redthorne's boardroom table drinking scotch and badmouthing each other like it is a competitive sport while we enjoy a game of poker.

Six men, including myself.

They are a motley crew of the smartest, most ruthless men I know. We've made billions. Built empires, crushed others. Made some friends who won't kill us the second we turn our back and plenty of friends who will.

They are men who will drop a man in one breath and send up a prayer for the widow they left behind with the next. Men who understand that mercy is a currency, and you only spend it when the return is worth more than the cost.

And they are men I would die for. They are my brothers when the world would rather see us dead and gone.

Our boardroom sits on the far edge of the thirty-second floor of Redthorne Holdings, wrapped in glass and steel.

Up here it feels like we are kings watching over our kingdom.

It's not far from the truth, either. We've cut out a decent sized territory for ourselves that has allowed us to thrive.

But like every kingdom, we have our enemies.

Only I never thought mine would come from within.

Night spreads across Chicago in wet, glittering layers, the streets slick from rain, the lights below smearing into long ribbons like someone took a brush to the city and dragged it across the midnight canvas.

Low thunder rolls in the distance, making this feel like one of those damn ambient videos my secretary is always putting on in the background. Only this is real life and the storm outside makes everything feel electric, as if it's only a matter of time before bad shit happens.

Or I'm a really jaded motherfucker.

A friend of mine reassures me that two things can be true at once.

Bleak and cold despite the choking heat of summer are the only two words eating at my thoughts as I consider the limited options I have before me. There's not much I won't do to secure my future and those of the men I have at my sides.

But go against my father? I would put him in a grave tonight if I knew it wouldn't start a fucking war among my ranks. He might be a bastard, but he has his loyalists among the men we have in our employ.

I push out of my chair and move to the large floor to ceiling window.

Low rumbles of conversation carry on behind me and I tune it out for a few more minutes and tip my head back.

I don't have the right after the shit I've done in this lifetime to ask for some help, but I send up a silent prayer that I'm either put out of my misery soon or I come up with a solution to my problem before my father calls again.

Speaking of…I take my phone out and eyeball the number of missed calls.

My gut clenches. I release a sigh, feeling my irritation grow. Fuck.

Not picking up for the last five times he's dialed in will send his blood pressure through the roof.

Would it be so bad to let the man off himself with his uncontrolled ire? Would be fitting. The asshole deserves the unceremonious burial I'd give him after he kicked it, too.

And then I would be free of the bastard and with clean hands.

It's not like the old fucker did anything to put the kind of money in our coffers that I have, but he doesn't see it that way. Never will, is my guess. I'm not my dead brother and will never measure up to his standards.

I roll a shoulder and work out the tight kinks forcing their way under my shoulder blades.

Too much old family drama is gnawing away at my brain tonight. I need to get laid and then shit-faced. In that order.

The room smells like polished wood and expensive cologne. Spirals of cigar smoke mingle with the scent of freshly minted Benjamins from the middle of the table.

Drake Moses, the man who could shut this city down without palming a weapon, sits to my left with his silvering hair impeccably groomed and his sleeves rolled to the elbow like a man who has never confused power with needing to look like the billions he's worth.

He controls the unions, the dockworkers, the trucking routes, the concrete veins that keep Chicago breathing and growing.

When Drake says no, the whole city feels it in its stomach like a gut punch.

My oldest friend is quiet tonight, which means he is thinking, and when Drake Moses thinks, someone is about to have a very shitty week. Or end up dead.

I already feel sorry for the poor fucker, whoever they are.

He gestures toward my cards with a tattooed finger. "You okay, brother? You done for the evening?"

Drake shuffles his hand of cards closed, that I suspect is a royal flush, wearing his usual mask of indifference.

I give a stiff nod and jut my chin toward my abandoned hand of cards at the head of the table. "Yeah. Count me out. I'm done for the night."

Everyone else folds and grabs their winnings.

A cut crystal decanter sits on the table calling my name. The liquor inside catches the white light from overhead and turns it into an amber fire. Six heavy-bottomed glasses ring it in a neat arc.

Drake catches my eye from his place beside my empty chair, reading my mind. I grunt my acknowledgement when he points at the liquor. The edge of his lip curls with a knowing smile.

He reaches for the decanter with a lazy confidence I've never seen in another man.

He has the kind of calm that never reads as softness, but speaks volumes about deep-rooted control born out of living a violent childhood.

Back when we first started out, he swore the abuse he suffered would not ruin his adult life.

So far, he's kept that promise to himself.

Across from him, Luca Valentina is doing what Luca does best at every meeting…

absolutely nothing productive. He has a pen spinning between his fingers with the absent-minded precision that makes you forget the man uses those same fingers to ruin lives and empires.

He used to be a runner which is a coded way of saying assassin-for-hire for our competitors, Club Genesis, and then he got smart, joined my side and with that came the riches.

Now he runs intelligence, blackmail, and surveillance networks that stretch to three continents.

Luca knows your fucking secrets before a priest does after Sunday Mass.

He is also, infuriatingly, the most naturally charming man I have ever met, which means he gets away with things that would get anyone else thrown from this floor.

Massimo Santoro is our legal counsel and damage control architect.

He's reading something on his phone and wearing the expression he always wears in these meetings, which is the expression of a man silently calculating how much everything happening around him will cost to fix.

Either in money or blood, in most cases.

Massimo turns sins into paperwork and paperwork into survival.

He has saved every man in this room at least twice, and the fucker has never once let any of us forget it.

Konstantin Vetrov, who prefers Kon, sits with one leg crossed over the other and a glass balanced on his knee.

He is Bratva, which means he was born to a particular school of problem resolution that makes our methods look like a strongly worded letter.

He controls enforcement, security, the work that none of us want to discuss by name in a boardroom with glass walls.

He is also, to the constant irritation of everyone present, funny.

Not trying-to-be-funny. But actually fucking funny.

He has a dark, bone-dry humor that makes you laugh and think you're going to hell for it.

And he's the size of a brick wall in an expensive suit which has the tendency to draw the wrong kind of attention.

Let's just say going out for drinks with him always ends with mashed bottles, busted up bar tables and bruised knuckles.

And then there is Rowan Volkov. I feel the burn of eyes drilling into me.

I look up to find him watching me from across the table with those observant, ice-colored eyes that miss nothing.

Rowan controls the ports, the shipping lanes, the Eastern European channels that run goods across oceans.

He speaks rarely, moves constantly, and is always exactly two steps ahead of wherever any conversation is trying to go.

He already knows what I am thinking tonight, and that's why he's watching me.

These are the men of the Red Letter Syndicate.

And I am their king.

I take my drink back to the window because I need the distance right now.

I also need to feel the burn of the scotch against the back of my throat while I remind myself that I built everything that is spread out below me.

Every light below me, every judge, every regulator, every contract that keeps the empire breathing is mine.

I built it from the rubble of what my father tried to break and what my brother's death tried to finish.

I built it with eighteen-hour days and decisions that kept me awake until the gray edge of dawn, with sacrifices that left permanent marks on everything soft I once had inside me.

And in four months, I could lose all of it.

The thought sits like a stone where my heart should be. My father's ultimatum is not new, but it has grown teeth in the last few weeks. Four months to produce an heir.

Not a plan for an heir, I need to point out.

No, Enzo Milano wants me to breed a woman and give him a physical heir for the Milano empire before he dies. Or at least have one well on the way. Something has the man spooked and thinking the reaper has his name on speed dial.

The reason behind his demand doesn't matter when the end result is the same if I don't comply.