“That’s not good enough, Luis.” Davien’s voice cut into my bubble. “You know the rules.”
I couldn’t hear what my father was saying, but he was shaking his head and motioning helplessly with his hands. I shifted forward, ears straining. Davien was rocking his head slowly from side to side in disappointment. Nero wasn’t saying or doing anything. His attention was fixed on something at his feet, but there was a hard set to his jaw that reflected in the bunched knuckles at his sides.
My heart rocketed in my chest as I pushed to my feet and started downward.
“That’s not going to work,” Davien was saying when I reached the bottom landing.
“Please,” My father begged. “Please, just a few days. I’ve never been late before. It was an emergency.”
Ice formed in my blood, crystalizing, and freezing me from the inside. I felt the cold grip of terror leech the color from my cheeks until all I could do was stand rooted to the scuffed wood beneath my feet, staring at the back of my father’s head wondering how. How could we be late? I watched my mother count every bill just the night before. I watched her put it all in the envelope and seal it. How could any of it be missing in only a few hours?
“Eduardo isn’t going to like it,” Nero mumbled, speaking up for the first time.
“I’ve never been late,” My father said again, pleading for them to see reason. “Please. I only need a few days.”
Davien sighed and glanced over at his partner, but Nero was no longer engrossed in the conversation. His attention had drifted over my father’s shoulder and had settled on me. That hot, predatory hunger ate through my traitorous body, consuming me the way he had all those years ago. For a heartbeat of a moment, I nearly forgot what was happening, except how badly I wanted to leap into his arms, encircle his waist with my legs and beg them to take me. But sanity returned with a backhand of reality.
Davien elbowed his friend. When that didn’t elicit a reaction, he followed Nero’s unwavering interest to where I stood, trapped just over my father’s shoulder. Something in his jaw tightened, an annoyance that shriveled the rest of the heat in my gut, but my father took that moment to spin around. His face blistered white before blazing crimson.
“Mia! What are you doing here? I told you—”
I tore my gaze from the pair and focused on my father. I lowered my voice. “Mama counted that last night. It was all there. Maybe you missed—”
“This isn’t your concern, niña. Go upstairs.”
I lurched back as if he’d slapped me. “Not my … how can you say that?”
My father’s nostrils flared, intensifying the fury blazing behind his eyes. “Mia...!”
“At least let me count—”
“Upstairs!” my father roared, his patience reaching the end of its tether. “Now!”
I gave a startled jump at the booming sound. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d raised his voice to me. The severity of it had my jaw clapping shut. A hot prickle burned behind my eyes, a welling of tears I had to chew down on my bottom lip to keep from falling. Frustration had me glowering hard at him, accusation nipping on my tongue. But I clamped down on the urge to fight back and stalked up the stairs with two pairs of eyes piercing holes between my shoulder blades the entire way to the top. I didn’t glance back when rounding the corner and stalking to my room.
I closed myself in behind a locked door and growled through clenched teeth. My skin burned with a fever that had nothing to do with the sweltering heat outside or the usual arousal left behind after Nero and Davien had left. This was something else, something fierce and angry. It was violent and terrifying. All I wanted was to hit something, to kick it into a thousand pieces. But that wouldn’t help. It wouldn’t fix the problem we were in. Eduardo wasn’t a forgiving man. I’d heard stories of people who had their homes burned to the ground, who had their kneecaps shattered or their loved ones gunned down in the streets because they missed a payment. Neither Davien nor Nero owed us a thing. They had no reason to be lenient. This was their job.
I squeezed my eyes shut and struggled with the wave of dread threatening to consume me. I had no idea how short we were. I knew asking my father would amount to more yelling and telling me not to worry about it. But my parents had no way of getting that money. None of us did and I couldn’t just stand back and watch my family get slaughtered. I had to do something. I had to talk to someone.
Eduardo.
I had to convince him to wait, to give me time.
That was my only option.
But people didn’t just talk to Eduardo Bernardo. He didn’t have an office or working hours. I needed someone to take me to him. I could only think of two people with that power, and I already knew they would not be easy to convince, nor would they be easy to get to. If the rumors were true, I was about to walk into Satan’s very own workshop in order to save my family.
Chapter Two — Davien
The girl in my lap was chafing my dick. Her relentless gyrating probably would have been sexy as fuck if we were both naked, but the rough grain of my jeans mixed with the metal teeth of the zipper and her grinding was beginning to rub me raw.
“All right, that’s good.” I nudged her off me and straightened the alignment of my abused cock under the table.
I had no idea what her name was, or even where she’d come from. Most likely, she was like the other barflies staggering through the Black Serpent, hoping to catch the eye of someone important, someone who might take them home, fuck them and maybe earn a place of power if they played their hands right. Neither me, nor Nero cared for that shit. There were no shortage of women and neither of us were ready to do the whole settling down thing. But I knew we both needed a good fuck. It had been a while for both of us and it always seemed worse after our pickups.
That was a lie.
It was only this bad after one certain pickup.
Mia’s.
Fucking Mia.
Christ, I would.
In a heartbeat.
I would fuck her blind.
I would pound the shit out of her tight, wet pussy until she was begging me not to stop. I would destroy her again and again until she was a sticky, sated mess across the sheets. Christ, the daydreams I’d had of her spread open under me were nearly my undoing every time I walked into that damn house and she opened the door. She’d look up at us with those big, dark eyes and soft pink cheeks, and it would take every ounce of my restraint not to scoop her up into my arms, march her to the nearest flat surface and make her mine. I knew she would let me. I knew she would open wide and let me sink home. I wasn’t a stupid man. I knew when a woman wanted me, and she wanted us both. I knew that with a certainty that killed me.
But that went against our rules. We didn’t bang the girls at our pickups. It was a conflict of interest. If we overlooked payments in exchange for sex, that money would have to come out of our pockets to make Eduardo happy. Otherwise, it would be our heads on the chopping block. Sure, we’d get a lot of pussy, but we liked money — and our heads — more.
“Not in the mood?” Across the table littered with beer glasses, cigarette butts and a discarded basket of cold chicken fingers, Nero met my gaze with a raised eyebrow.