Page 22 of Ruin

Again.

The Chicago Outfit’s shipment was intercepted, millions of pounds of guns seized, nine men arrested with bail prices starting at half a mil each. Two of the Irish’s pool halls were raided whilst my men were there, resulting in more arrests and the assault and battery of five police officers.

And now, barely even a week later, I have the Italians breathing down my fucking neck. Their product gone missing like it never existed, and none of my men can fucking tell me shit. How does a shipment of that quantity just disappear off the face of the globe? Now I’m fourteen million down and a whole lot more irritated.

Dima hovers beside me still. He very rarely speaks, but I can feel his silent, bulking presence as though I were looking directly at him. I sigh again, heavier than the last, and reluctantly, drop my hand from my face. Fingers curling over the arm of my chair, I look up into his small brown eyes.

“Yes, Dima?”

He shifts on his feet, looking uncomfortable, eyes averting just a little to the left.

“What is it?” I almost bark, my chest heaving with the sudden intake of breath. “Just,” I blow out the breath, huff another through my nose, “just tell me.”

I massage my temples, watch as Dima shuffles back just a small step, and then circle a hand in the air, gesturing him to get on with it. Unsure how anything could make this day any fucking worse. I just want to go home.

“Charlie Swallow just walked in,” he grunts, Russian accent thick, his tongue rolling the word Charlie around his mouth like something he’d quite like to spit out.

Everything gets very loud then, the inside of my skull knocking with my pulse. I can hear the bass of the music three floors below, some ridiculously priced DJ mixing shit that, in my opinion, sounds fucking awful. But, The Glass House is popular because of the European musical geniuses, again, in others’ opinion, we always seem to snag. The club is forever full and there is always a queue of people still hoping to get in.

Head cocking, hands dropping back to the arms of the chair, my chin dips, eyes flicking up onto Dima’s, my gaze roves across his face, a single bead of sweat rolling down his right temple as he waits for some sort of reaction out of me.

“And…?” I ask slowly, dragging the word out for too long, knowing there’s obviously something more.

“He’s bloody.”

A laugh erupts out of me in a bark, raucous and sharp. That is absolutely ridiculous, of course he’s bloody. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the man anything less.

“And he’s causing a problem?”

“Well, not exactly-”

“Show me,” I order, hand held out, he places his phone into my open palm.

I bring it closer, the writhing floor full of dancers, but he’s there, always the first thing I see in any room. Stark white hair a sky blue beneath the strobe lights cutting across the floor, his head cocked, eyes on mine through the screen as he peers directly at the discrete camera.

A tremor creeps its way down my back, sweat slicking my nape. I roll my lips together, curl my bottom lip between my teeth. It is not a coincidence that out of all of my establishments, he shows up to the one I am actually at. He is as aware of me as I am of him. But we do not just drop in on each other. We do not talk or text or fucking breathe in the same proximity. And yet, twice, two visits in only so many weeks, he shows up looking like my worst fucking nightmare. It’s not even that it feels unwelcome, the pounding of my heart, hammering of my pulse in anticipation, the unknown, what it is he’s here for, it’s that no matter what. Where, when, why. We never ever make a fucking scene.

My spine snaps straight, Dima’s hands flailing, struggling to catch the phone as I toss it back at him. I rise from my chair, sweep a hand down the front of my shirt, buttons catching on the side of my palm. My shoulders tense, the healing stab wound in my shoulder pulsing with a dull ache making my teeth grind.

Regardless, I tear the office door open, the thwack of it loud in the dark hallway, more of my security standing at various points along the walls. I tear past them all.

“Stay!” I bark out, footsteps stilling as the word cracks from my tongue.

I tear down the steel stairs, curling around the landings between floors. Thetap, tap, tapof my dress shoes against the steel-edged steps echoes upwards in the stairwell and then my feet are slamming into the bare concrete as I reach the ground floor. Hands grappling at the handles to wrench open the doors and there he stands. Twenty feet down the empty, dim hall, hands loose at his sides, low rise black jeans, grey boots. Bare chest, head cocked, chin dipped, face shadowed with the orange strip bulb at his back.

I don’t stop, my feet taking me at a quick march to meet him. My chest smacks into his, the force of the collision sending him back a step. I grip his upper arms, twist him around and slam him into the wall. He doesn’t fight me as I mash his cheek into the wall, pinning him in place with my hips. His arms up, palms flat to the white wall, fingers splayed, he peers at me through a bloodshot eye. Bloody scratch marks mar his perfect pale skin, a claw mark slashed through his eyebrow, over the wrinkling of his eyelid, down the top of his cheek is gouged in deep, blood weeps, clotting on the fresh wound.

My heart is grinding, his own hammering through his back, vibrating into my chest. His gaze is on mine, that glaring emerald orb flicked to the very outer corner of his eye. One of my hands plants on the wall, in the space between his head and hand, the other snaps up, finger and thumb pinching his chin. I jerk his head further, twisting it on his neck until I hear his spine crack.

Breath pants through my nose, teeth clenched, I drop myself onto his bare back, crushing him flat into the wall. My muscle is much denser than his, his tall, lithe body much thinner than my own bulk. But he could fight me off.

If he wanted to.

“What thefuck,”I hiss through my teeth, “do you think you’re doing here?” Tip of my nose pressing to his scratched-up cheek, his scent filling my nostrils, smoky, clean, copper. “You’re a fucking mess,” I spit, dropping my blurred gaze down the length of him, unseeing because I’m too close, my vision too cross-eyed, but I know every inch of this body like it were my own. “Who did this to you? Hmm?” I hum, my lips parted against his cheek as I suck in greedy sips of his scent. “You deserved it, though, didn’t you,” my finger and thumb tightening on the bone of his chin. “You deserved it because you’re pathetic,” I whisper directly into his ear, licking my lips, my tongue catching his lobe. “You’re my pathetic little whore, aren’t you,Malysh?”

His hips grind into the wall beneath me, my hard cock digging into the split of his arse, a desperate groan locked in his throat. I lick a stripe up the side of his neck, pulse pounding beneath the flat of my tongue. I grip his chin harder, our eyelashes brushing each other’s where I’m leaning in so close.

“Why did you come here?” I ask roughly, words gritting out as his arse cheeks flex.

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