Page 15 of Requiem

CHAPTER 6

ROQUE

THE PRESENT

“Roque, please. I-I love you.”

I fling her red-tipped nails from the front of my Armani suit. I don’t even respond to her ridiculous statement. Bianca Gordiono doesn’t love anyone but herself which is why I let her suck my cock for the last three months. She falls at my feet; large tears roll down her perfectly made up face.

Shit. Maybe she did love me. But that doesn’t matter now. Nothing matters now that my men have zeroed in on my girl.

The girl who was always meant to be mine. Blue thought I wouldn’t find her. But she thought wrong. Maybe she really thought I’d just let her go and let the past be the past. Six years I’ve waited, plotted, and made myself king.

“Are you sure?”

“I’ve run the DNA. Twice before I called, just to be sure.”

“The lock of blue hair? Does it match?”

“Yes. It’s the same woman. It’s her. The girl you met when you were at Princeton.”

My fists clench. My nostrils flare as I breath in. “Don’t tip her off,” Four words spoken low but laced heavy with the threat my weight carries. I disconnect the call, swiftly calculating my next move.

“They found her? Just let it go, Roque. I never understood what you saw in that broad.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Leave her be. Look what just happened to me. I thought—”, Johnny swallows hard not finishing his sentence.

“I’m not you,” I respond harshly, looking past him at the skyscrapers through the floor to ceiling windows making the walls of my apartment see through. The city below belongs to me. Chicago. When I left Italy, Chicago called to me. My cousins and I ran every fuck who thought they were the hot shit mob out and we made our way in. It was hard, grueling, bloody work but it was worth it. I now have the throne all I need is my queen to rule beside me.

The corners of my mouth lift as her image fills my head. She’s complicated. I knew her at twelve, bedded her at eighteen and now I’m about to meet her at twenty-six. So many years have passed and yet I remember her through them all.

At twelve she was a mixture of childlike sweetness morphing with the young woman her body was changing her into being. Even then she defied me. Tormented me with her sharp words and quick wit.

At seventeen she tried to fool me, by changing both her name and her looks. Fake contacts, dyed hair… trying her hand at being an actress and coming of street. But I saw through all of that. I saw her for who she was. I just didn’t know then what I do now. The girl I left behind and thought about every damn day would grow to be the same woman I obsessed over since I first saw her at that Frat party eight years ago. She was the first and last women to get close to my heart. She practically took a chainsaw to it. I’d be lying if I said

I pick up my cell and bark out orders to my pilot. I’ll be in Vegas by morning and nothing will stop me from making Romina my bride. I never dreamed it would take me this long to find her. But disentangling myself from the Castellione’s took longer than expected. And life… it just kept moving on. The more powerful I became the more afraid I was of the fall from my throne. And in my line of work nothing makes you more vulnerable than love.

My jaw clenches as I picture the look in her eyes when I come for her.

Vegas.

She’s a fool for hiding there. I’ll have her wedded and bedded before sunset tomorrow night and there’s not a damn thing she can do to stop what’s coming.

She thought she could evade me.

That I wouldn’t find her,

But I’ve searched the world for her.

Twice.

Outrunning me is futile and in about ten hours she’s about to find that out.

“Stay here and run things while I’m gone,” I order Johnny. He’s pissed that he’s now my second, but he fucked up. He’s lucky I steeped in and intervened, or he’d be at the bottom of the Hudson River in New York with all the other damned souls he sent there himself.

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