Page 18 of The Den of Sin
I raised my head from my laptop. “That cannot be right,” I told him. How did the puzzle pieces already start moving? “Unless you meant Vincent.”
“Actually, no. I’m talking about Lombardo Santos. He has a twenty-six-year-old daughter,” Sasha elaborated. “She hasn’t been part of his life, the mother kept her a secret, and he only recently learned about her. My sources tell me he knew about her for the last five years or so.”
“Name,” I demanded. I had to know what the Santos family knew. Or how much Sasha learned? I didn’t know what I would do with it, but it was always good to keep information in my back pocket.
“Don’t have one yet, but I'm hunting it down.”
“Sasha, no matter what, you do not make a move or approach the woman,” I warned. “You understand me?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Sasha was sometimes too impulsive and didn’t think about consequences. Clearly! “I don’t know why you don’t eliminate that fucking family off this planet. Especially after what they have done to Father.”
Our father learned that Lombardo held information about the woman he loved and walked straight into Vincent Santos’, Lombardo’s eldest son, trap. My father made a mistake of trusting Santos' words when in fact they were looking for a way to weaken our family. They desperately tried to expand their territory, so they could move flesh through Louisiana.
“And they paid for that,” I told him calmly. “If we eliminate all of them, there will be another Columbian family stepping up to fight their battle. I’d rather keep Santos, knowing I have them within my control than open the door for another power-hungry family eager to take their spot. The Santos family can never compare to us. We own businesses above ground and underground. They just have scraps.”
Not to mention Isabella’s connection to them!
“Whatever. Guess that is why you are good at this leading shit. I just want to kill them all.” I shook my head at my brother. I loved him but wished he’d think a bit more about the business aspect of making a killing than just eager to kill and eliminate. “I’m leaving the magazine here for your reading pleasure,” he mocked and strode out of the office.
The moment the door shut the Santos family and this whole bloody mob mess was forgotten. I reached for the magazine and searched out the page about Isabella Taylor. It wasn't hard to find it because they dedicated almost half of the magazine to the couple.
Ex-couple,I added silently. I couldn’t deny I was exceedingly pleased at how the events turned out. The image of the two of them together from the party grated on my nerves. I still wanted to kill the fucker for ever touching her.
Pictures of Isabella Taylor and Ryan Johnson plastered several pages of the magazine, capturing their last two years together. They were the main topic of the entire edition with multiple pictures of the couple, and I disliked every single one of them.
She looked beautiful, a painful reminder of what I held and threw away. Nobody knew how much I regretted those words that morning. It made me the true, cold bastard that people thought of me. I never minded it, except with her. I wanted her to see the real me.
She tried, my mind mocked.And you tossed it away.
The fact was that she saw the real me. That bastard that crushed her heart was the ruthless mobster everyone feared. I never bothered with a conscience or regrets. Those were for the weak. But I didn’t like the hurt that I saw flash in her beautiful eyes. She didn’t scream, cry, or seek revenge. She was unlike anyone I had ever met before. Taking the high road took a whole new meaning with her.
Shoving those thoughts all away because they were pointless, I focused on the magazine. In most of the pictures, she avoided looking at the camera. There were only a few photos where the photographer caught her whole face.
She was one of those women that had a striking beauty and timeless body. Her slim figure with soft curves in all the right places was every man’s wet dream. She was my sister’s age, just recently turned twenty-six but years made her more stunning. Her resemblance to her mother was her only fault in my eyes. I hated her mother’s guts for a majority of my life, but now… I was done. I couldn’t fight this lust for Isabella anymore.
I studied the picture of her face. Her almond shaped eyes and full mouth dominated her face. Her eyes, the color of whiskey, almost appeared like embers against her dark, thick hair that made her ivory skin look even paler. Unlike her brothers’ tanned skin, hers was like fresh snow. Her gaze, staring from the pages of the magazine, had the same effect I remembered. It shot straight into my soul.
Her eyes always did something to me. Like she could see every single rotten part of me, but instead, she focused on the very few good pieces. And when she laughed, she just shone. I could still hear that laugh in my head sometimes, along with the scent of the ocean and the pineapple tanning lotion that always seemed to linger around her. I rarely allowed myself to think about her. Each time I did, something inside of me stilled as my pulse raced with the primal need.
She is my biggest weakness.Nobody knew it, not even her. The hurt in her eyes as I laid her mother’s sins at her feet had been haunting me since that night. It had cost me more than anyone would ever know.
Shoving the past out of the way, I glanced through the rest of the photos. My most favorite photo in all the dedicated pages of the broken-up couple was the one where she caught him cheating. The calm expression on her face was the talk of the article. Why didn’t she scream or lash out? Apparently, all she did was drop off his keys and left without a word while he scrambled to run after her butt-ass naked.
But that expression on her face, it was the same one she gave me at her graduation. She only greeted me for Tatiana’s sake and then disbursed, her expression calm and closed off. The eyes that usually sought me out couldn't stand to look at me anymore.
The world didn’t know Isabella Taylor like I did. That expression was one of unforgiveness. She was done with him and would never give him another chance. He blew it.
Just like I did.Except I did it on purpose, methodically, giving back the taste of her mother’s medicine. Or so I thought.
The bitterness of that night still sour on my tongue, I stood up and strode to the mini bar in my office. I grabbed a bottle of whiskey and poured myself a glass. The coloring of it always reminded me of her. The woman was bewitching with an uncanny ability to get under my skin without even trying. I gulped it down in one swallow. But it still didn’t wash away the bitter memories.
My brother and sister would never know how much I had given up for this great Nikolaev name, cleaning up the mess our parents had left behind. And their mess was wrapped up in sins, lies, and betrayal - by my mother and father as well as Isabella’s mother.
* * *
A weeklater I was right outside the city parameters of New Orleans, in one of my warehouses. The sun was just rising and the stillness surrounding the city was almost unnatural. It would remain like this for another few hours and then, the buzzing and life of the city would start its cycle all over again.
Gambling. Drinking. Parties. Sex.
