Maybe she’d get angry.
Maybe that was exactly what I needed.
"You’re going to sit down, Jennifer," I rumbled, my voice low, deep, obsidian black. A warning within a warning.
A stillness overcame her, and just when I knew she was about to argue, I reached up, curled a long swathe of her hair around my hand and tugged her head back.
"Don’t fight me on this, duci."
Her gaze darted over to the doorway, an awkward move considering the angle of her head right now, but I knew she was summing up the situation.
A different woman, another fool, might make me think she was checking out how far away the doorway was from here. Might be trying to calculate if she could make it out of my office intact.
But Jennifer?
No.
I knew she was recognizing that in front of Giovi, I had no choice but to dominate her.
Our eyes clashed and held, tension filled me, tension that invaded the room, sinking out into the atmosphere, changing it, morphing it, until, at long last, she submitted.
She sank into me, her body turning limp as she rubbed up against me.
"Okay."
The acquiescence was soft.
Her eyes, however, were hard.
I smiled, not in triumph, but in anticipation.
Something about her set my blood alight. Made me want to breathe her in. Inhale untainted air that wasn’t soaked with grief, vengeance, or rage.
She was clean.
Not unstained by this world, but free from the toxins of mine in particular.
Appreciation whispered into me as I held her against me, guiding her where I wanted her to sit.
Staring up at me, a mulishness entering her gaze, I decided to make a hasty retreat before she changed her mind. I had a reputation to live up to, and Giovi was the kind of man who’d appreciate me slapping her for her insolence.
I had no desire to do that.
So, I saved her from myself. From my reputation.
I retreated before she could say a word to piss me off, before her good reason failed her and she made me look bad in front of my soldier, and left.
The second I did, keying in the code to lock her in and keep her safe, I demanded, "Who was shooting?"
"The Triads," Giovi replied.
I turned to him with a scowl. "What the hell for?"
"They must have heard about the shipment."
"Did they target the crates?"
"I don’t know."
"How many were there?"
"We’re still counting."
"How did they find out about the shipment?" I questioned as we strode down the hall, me following him to wherever the hell we were going.
Russu was the front of a Twenties-era warehouse that I’d redesigned into a labyrinthine fortress to ensure maximum confusion during a raid by the cops. That meant we could have been heading to any part of the edifice.
He gulped, seeming to sense my growing impatience. "I truly don’t know, Don. The shooting took place out in the loading bay."
He said that like I should reward him for knowing that much.
I scowled at him. "Where are Rory and Stan? They’re supposed to be all over this fucking shipment. I didn’t even want to deal with the Lobos Rojos."
Goddamn street gangs. I didn’t care that they acted more like a corporation that dealt in illegal weapons, they were still a gang to me.
Wincing, Giovi muttered, "Don, they’re your siblings. I have no idea where they are."
My scowl only deepened, and his shoulders hunched forward as a result. The fear I triggered in him was born of ten years of his working alongside the Valentinis as we sought to regain our rightful position.
Back when I was in college, when I’d worked hard to get my MBA, I’d never in a million years imagined that I’d be terrorizing what was, essentially, my very own militia.
Terrorizing a boardroom, sure. A classroom after I returned to school with a different major, definitely. But this? No.
Reaching up to pinch the bridge of my nose—Giovi didn’t deserve to fear for his face just because my time with Jennifer had been disturbed by gunfire—I demanded, "The shooting is under control?"
"Se."
"Bonu. Any deaths?"
"Not on our side. The Triads who survived have been moved into cold storage until you’re ready to interrogate them."
Relieved not to have lost any more men this Natali, I dipped my chin before we maneuvered to the rooms at the back of the nightclub. The converted warehouse had many areas where less than legal business went down. Shit that would make the IRS sob with glee if they ever discovered them.
Not that they would.
Or, if they did, those particular agents would be having a very long walk off this very short pier.
As we ducked into one of the backrooms, I eyed the area, spying a couple of corpses on the ground. Peering at them, I asked, "You sure they’re Triads?"
He frowned. "Well, they’re inked like Triads. Not Yakuza."
I just hummed as I stepped toward one of them, then kicked the dead man’s foot. "How many were there?"
Lorenzo made an appearance. "Half a dozen." Thank God, someone with answers. "These two were the only ones who died."
"The Chinese aren’t usually so foolish." I narrowed my eyes at the corpse. "They sent them here as cannon fodder."
Giovi gaped at me. "Cannon, what?"
Cristo, I missed the academic world. A world where people knew what words meant. I wasn’t even speaking with him in English, for fuck’s sake.
Rubbing a hand through my hair, trying not to get angry because it wasn’t Giovi’s fault he didn’t have a goddamn bachelor’s degree in World History or an MBA in Business, I muttered, "Generals of old used to send in waves of foot soldiers to take the brunt of a battle, to wear down the front. It was a foolish game then, and it hasn’t improved with time." I grunted at the thought. "What’s their end game?"
"End game?"
With my patience about to reach the upper echelons of its limits, I grumbled, "Show me where the shooting took place."
Lorenzo chimed in, "I’ll show you, Don."
Don…
Feeling the mantel of power settle onto my shoulders, I strolled with him over to the loading bay which, back in the day, had been used to offload slaughtered cattle, where I found the destruction to be minimal.
I narrowed my eyes. "Have you checked the police scanners?"
"Se. Of course. No one’s interested in this part of the city. That’s why the club’s so popular. You know that."
He wasn’t wrong.
Russu was on the border between Two Bridges and the Financial District. On one of the piers, we’d gradually taken over each lot as it became available, and because Russu was known as a hotspot during the night, and because we were unapologetic about its past and refused to pretty up the exterior, it wasn’t like the other piers with their fancy restaurants and family eateries.
This was our slice of misery in Manhattan.
The FDNY were across the water, but with the noise from the club, I wasn’t sure if they’d have heard the shooting or not. Water carried sound, after all. I thought we’d have heard sirens by now, though.
Slowly, I checked out the pitch-black water that gleamed in the light from a thousand skyscrapers, scanned the ground where there were men scrubbing at bloodstains, studied the bullet holes that decorated the back wall of my club.