Page 6 of Scandalous Kingpin
“Go back to your family, Ivy.”
He turned to leave and I knew, deep in my gut, that I wouldn’t see him again for the foreseeable future.
Chapter Two
PRIEST
Secrets had a tendency to fester inside your body and soul. It was inevitable that sometimes those secrets destroyed the people around you too.
I’d seen the impact on my brother, Dante. I’d felt an impact firsthand. Over a decade of abuse was hard to forgive and forget. Unlike me, Dante wasn’t a bastard son, so he was spared some of it. We shared a father, and although we grew up believing we shared a mother, we’ve since learned that wasn’t true. My blond hair and blue eyes were finally explained. My biological mother was Aisling Brennan Flemming, who recently became DiLustro. Wynter, my newfound half sister had a better life than Dante and me, but there were invisible scars etched in her soul too. Courtesy of the secrets Aisling kept buried. My cousins Basilio and Emory suffered too, and it all boiled down to the things our parents kept from us and the cruelty we endured either by their hands or as a result of their fuckups.
But it was the deeds that were best left unspoken that had the power to ruin everything. They were like nuclear weapons we kept close to our chest while everyone else stood at arm’s length.
Untilher.
The redheaded angel that made me too fucking weak. Some days I thought she was it, the only one who would ever penetrate my pathetic excuse for a heart. I’d had one taste over a year ago now, and it was enough to consume me. I often thought about her when I lay in bed at night, her face as she came pinned to the backs of my eyelids.
And then there were the days I truly believed she was my trigger, the pulled pin to my grenade, and if I didn’t stay away from her, everyone I cared about would perish. Not that it was a particularly long list, but I’d miss my brother and my cousin.
After my sister-in-law’s involvement in Ivy’s athair’s death, I decided it was best to distance myself from the entire Murphy clan. Her brothers, the infamous Irish pricks, had a tendency to kill first and ask questions later.
I wasn’t a good man, not by a long shot. I’d learned from a young age to be jaded, that some people were just plain bad. And while I believed in delivering justice to those who existed in the dark shades of gray, I didn’t want the innocents to pay just because I couldn’t have the Irish mafia princess with a soft tongue and even softer touch.
Ivy Murphy had buried herself in a far-reaching corner in my mind. Even now, in the middle of an important meeting, I couldn’t shake her.
As I sat back in my chair in my club’s conference room, restlessness ghosted under my skin. I was surrounded by five men from the Corsican mafia who wouldn’t hesitate to kill me if I made a singular wrong move. Especially after they’d been forced to turn over their half of the city and go back to France with their tails tucked between their legs. That shit show was courtesy of Dante’s negotiation with Alessio Russo—he’d needed to get his woman out of Afghanistan, and Russo just so happened to owe him a favor.
Needless to say, they weren’t exactly our friends, and in recent months, the Corsican mafia had been trying to make a move back on my territory, making plays for the ground they’d lost. Nightclubs. Development sites. Docks overlooking the river.
But money talks, and I was able to make a deal with them to keep them appeased. Let them do their shit in France, not here. Things got a bit tense when we’d first sat down, the greedy fuckers wanting more than they could chew, but we came to an agreement that benefited all parties.
The only downfall? My brother, cousins, and my papà were here too. And they were far too opinionated. I preferred to run my city alone—the way I’d always done it—so having them descend on me like some overbearing nonnas and zias had my eye twitching.
“I don’t see this as a token of goodwill,” said Jean-Baptiste, the head of the Corsican mafia, his voice penetrating my thoughts.
“You’re getting a ten percent stake of our drug trade in Europe. It is more than you have now,” I pointed out.
“Here’s an idea, why don’t we—” I wasn’t surprised he tried to push for more.
“Why don’t you spare me your ideas and fuck off,” I cut him off, my voice remaining impassive. “Take it or leave it.”
A tension crept through the room, but I refused to sit here for another round of dick measuring. Jean-Baptiste was reckless and arrogant. How he’d survived this long was beyond me. If the Corsicans valued their standing in this world, they’d have to look to his brother for a better leader.
“I was only trying to help us both,” he seethed, standing.
“If I wanted help, I would have asked for it. But rest assured, it wouldn’t be from you. I’ll give you twenty-four hours to make your decision. You can see yourselves out.”
Jean-Baptiste and his men stomped through the room like bratty children and slammed the door on their way out. Good fucking riddance.
Silence followed, and I narrowed my eyes on my family. “Are we done here?”
With some shifting gazes, my cousin Emory spoke from where she sat next to me. “Someone needs to get laid, and it isn’t me.” She cocked a loaded brow and added, “And I’m guessing all the young, married couples”—my papà cleared his throat and she quickly corrected herself—“and not so young, are getting plenty, so it isn’t them either.”
An understatement if I’d ever heard one. But there was one thing nobody knew. Sex wasn’t my first or last choice when I needed some relief. It was dishing out revenge on those who wronged me. Even though I knew I became a jackass when I abstained from getting my hands dirty—okay, maybe the correct term was torture.
Except, it had been close to six months now since my last encounter with the redheaded angel at her father’s funeral and not even that seemed to give me any respite. Maybe I needed to see her more frequently, touch her… I didn’t know, but the urge was beginning to burn, to bubble over until it became an absolute necessity.
“Not good business, son, pissing off our business associates,” my papà said, lighting a cigar and leaning back in his chair. He shook his head, disappointment etched between his wrinkles.
