Page 3 of The Mafia Bloodline
“You’re careless,” his voice cut through the night, low and rough, threaded with command. “Spying on Malakai alone. Do you have a death wish, or are you just reckless?”
My throat tightened. “I…I don’t even know who you are.”
“You don’t need to.” His gaze swept over me once, sharp as a blade, before snapping back to my face. “All you need to know is that you’re mine now.”
The word cracked something inside me, as impossible as it was infuriating. “Yours?” My voice shook, but not with fear…at least, not the kind I expected.
“Yes.” There was no hesitation, no flicker of doubt. The certainty in his tone sent another rush of fire through my veins. “You don’t belong here. You don’t belong to anyoneelse. From this moment onwards…” His jaw flexed, his nostrils flaring as though scenting the air. “…you are mine.”
Possessiveness burned in those ice-blue eyes, not the surface kind of a man staking a claim, but something deeper, more primal, as though every instinct in him had snapped awake.
I should have been outraged. I should have slapped him, or at least laughed in his face. But my lips wouldn’t move. My body wouldn’t obey. Instead, I stood there, heat flooding through me, every cell whispering the same treacherous truth.
I didn’t want to run.
Chapter 2
The briefing room was thick with tension, the kind that always came when Malakai’s name was mentioned. Draugr had spread the photos across the scarred wooden table, grainy shots taken by our men tailing a demon courier to one of their warehouses. The black sprawl of the building was familiar; it was one of Malakai’s nests.
But that wasn’t what caught my attention. One photo, it was off-centre and poorly framed, showed the rooftop. A figure crouched low, shadowed, barely visible in the grain. You couldn’t see the face, not really. Just the shape of a body bent forward, watching.
“Another one of ours?” Viking asked, his voice edged with impatience.
“No,” Draugr answered, shaking his head. “None of our men were positioned there.”
“Then maybe one of Malakai’s,” Roman said, leaning forward, his jaw tight. “Checking perimeters, making sure no one gets too close.”
But something inside me rejected the thought before it even finished leaving his mouth. My hand closed over the photograph, dragging it closer.
It was nothing more than a shadow. An outline. But still…something about it called to me. A pull in my chest that I didn’t understand, one that made my pulse thrum harder than it had in decades.
“No,” I said flatly, my voice final. “Whoever this is, they’re not his.”
Roman’s eyes cut to mine. “And you know this how?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t explain it, not without sounding insane. There was no logic here, no clean line of reasoning I could lay out the way I usually did. There was just the call. The undeniable, gnawing sense that this person mattered. That whoever was crouched on that roof was about to change everything.
“I want the rooftop first,” I said, standing from the table.
Draugr’s brow furrowed. “Volken…”
“I’m not asking,” I snapped, sharper than I meant to. The photo crumpled slightly under my grip. “I’ll take Jericho and two others. We will be quiet. If they’re one of Malakai’s, I’ll bleed them on the spot. If they’re not…”
I let the sentence die, because I didn’t have words for what I felt. Only the certainty that I needed to find out.
The photo burned in my hand.
It shouldn’t have meant anything. A grainy shot, half-shadow, just a silhouette crouched low on the rooftop. No face, no details, nothing tangible to latch onto. And yet my gut twisted, coiled, like something had reached through the paper and wrapped its fingers around my throat.
I wasn’t a man who believed in instincts without evidence. Strategy ruled my decisions. Cold calculation. I didn’t flinch at shadows or let emotions dictate my moves. But this…this was something else.
My brothers were still arguing, voices blending together, but I barely heard them. My eyes stayed locked on the blurred outline. The faintest curve of a body bent forward. Watching. Waiting.
A stranger. And somehow, I knew they weren’t a stranger at all.
Draugr’s voice cut through. “We should hit the warehouse before sunrise. It’ll take at least three squads.”
Roman nodded slowly. “Agreed. We go in with numbers. But first, we scout the perimeter…”
