Page 3 of Extradition (Mobsters + Billionaires 1)
RAND
I normally tryto greet the day with some level of enthusiasm. Is it manufactured? Occasionally. But I firmly believe that how you wake up determines how your day will go, and I have always determined that I’ll greet the day with aggressive positivity.
I’m not too proud to say that I am struggling with that this morning.
Actually, that’s a lie. I’m entirely too proud to say it to anyone but myself. And there’s no denying yesterday was a blow. It stirred up an old set of insecurities I’ve never quite been able to erase. I often feel like a poser, like a little boy trying to clomp around in his father’s ill-fitting Oxfords.
It was as if that guy in the rumpled shirt held an interrogation lamp to my inadequacies, and I couldn’t escape it. Unable to shake his words, I looked up the history of that wolf study last night, and the guy—Joe Something—is right.
Free wolves don’t need to establish dominance. And a pack is usually just the parents and their pups. A family, just like he said.
He also said something about neckbeards, which is a phrase I’ve never heard before. When I looked up the meaning, it was exactly what it sounded like and somehow so much worse.
Things did not improve when I combined a search of neckbeards and alphas. I fell down a Reddit rabbit hole that took me far too long to crawl out of. What I found was a bunch of cringe-worthy, gun-flashing men spouting the vilest misogynistic filth about what it means to be an alpha man in one’s life.
This Joe person was the first in my life to ever note the shared-word association, and I shudder to have any connection to those men. I don’t even own camo.
A few hours into it, I was swamped with an uncomfortable moment of recognition. These men and I cling to the alpha mindset because we’re fighting against the same deep feelings of disconnection and powerlessness, despite belonging to the most powerful demographic of modern society.
But I wasn’t ready for that level of self-awareness, so I kept scrolling.
After making a sizable donation to a women’s shelter, I still couldn’t sleep, so I started thinking of ways to pivot from the alpha language into something more freedom-related. Unfortunately, that Google search led back to the same Reddit articles, and…yeah, no.
I tried brainstorming after that. Maybe there could be something in the wild wolf. The untamed wolf? I didn’t get very far before finally passing out in a frustrated heap.
Things only got worse once I was unconscious. Despite his unkempt appearance, Joe is a rough, sexy sort of handsome. Not that I could make out the details from a distance, but his carnality translated across the room. It was in the way he held himself—he’s a man who knows his own mind.
While this sort of thing can never be public knowledge, he’s exactly my type.
How that leads to me pulling up his employee file is a leap of logic I’d rather not examine too closely. Joseph Portelli, resident of Brooklyn, recent MBA graduate, second in his class. His employee ID picture is frustratingly fuzzy, and a quick check of his social media reveals a mostly desolate wasteland and no photos. Not even a damn gym selfie.
Things get a lot more interesting on Twitter. In addition to dozens of business and self-help gurus, he follows several gay content creators, many of the OnlyFans variety. I close my laptop and set it aside because that little revelation is not helpful. At all.
I pull up the phone app three minutes later, proud of myself for holding out that long. Clicking through the accounts he follows, it’s clear his tastes run diverse, and he’s not opposed to tall and slender. Or kink, for that matter.
Not that his tastes are of any consequence to me. Though as I think about the animated man prowling the aisle, I can’t honestly say I’ve ever felt as deeply about anything in my life. I bet he’s just as passionate in bed. I bet he likes to take charge.
I bet he’s good at it.
Anyway.I’ve got well-paid men on the side for that sort of thing. Even though I was not thinking about them when I ejaculated into a handful of tissues at three-thirty in the morning.
While gripping my throat…pretending it was his hand.
I wonder if he smells like sandalwood or pine needles or just good soap.
On the plus side, the shameful—and eye-rollingly intense—orgasm finally allowed me to fall asleep.
Since starting the day on a positive note just isn’t in the cards, I check my phone. It’s four forty-five a.m., time to run. After getting dressed, I walk into my workout room, with its view of Central Park and the shades of sunrise just starting to color the morning sky. I sigh as I hit the start button on the treadmill and begin jogging, missing the feel of humidity on my skin.
I used to run through the park in the mornings, but then Wolfe Athletics went global. Being one of the youngest billionaires on the planet comes with a level of notoriety, and I refused to be that jackass jogging with his security detail.
Stuck as I am in the fishbowl, I use visualization to keep me motivated. I normally like to imagine being a wolf on the hunt as I get my six miles in, but that’s not particularly useful this morning. Maybe I’m more gazelle-like: elegant, above it all.
I Google gazelles through the first mile, and the only photographs I find feature lions dining on the ones they just mauled to death.
So, perhaps not a gazelle.
I run a few more miles, but my focus is shot to hell and the visualizations range from desperately sexual to violently bloody. Frustrated, I punch the stop button with a little more force than is absolutely necessary.
