by Mary Madison
Why He Lusts: A Dark Billionaire Romance
Book 4
Mary Madison
Contents
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1. Chapter One—Chelsea
2. Chapter Two—Desmond
3. Chapter Three—Chelsea
4. Chapter Four—Desmond
5. Chapter Five—Chelsea
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Chapter One
Chapter One—Chelsea
“Better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven.”
It was the most famous line from one of my favorite books, John Milton's Paradise Lost—uttered by Lucifer. Those words had always intrigued me... inspiring me to pick up the book over and over again so I could try to picture the kind of individual who would feel that way. The sort of person who, when given the choice between living humbly in tranquility or lording over a realm of sheer horror and misery, would choose the latter. It had always excited my imagination, pushing me to consider that mindset and try to identify the type of man who would embrace it.
Now I knew. I had seen such a man firsthand—two of them, even—and I wished with everything inside of me that I hadn't.
Desmond's older brothers, Junior and Peter Biros, were the de facto boss and underboss, respectively, of Chicago's largest and most influential crime family, now that their father, Crazy Joe, had been murdered. According to Desmond, they'd had a golden opportunity to make peace with the Azzarellos, a rival family implicated in the cold-blooded assassination.
Instead, they had mowed down the two leaders of the Azzarellos, the Boss, Teddy, and his nephew, Billy, sending a clear message to the entire city that it was time for senseless slaughter, and damn the consequences.
They had also made it clear that Desmond would no longer benefit from their protection.
Which meant that as Desmond's estranged-childhood-friend-turned-current-lover, I wouldn't be protected either—even though someone, presumably one of the Azzarellos, had attempted to take my life the previous week. An attempt that still gave me plenty of PTSD and nightmares.
Now Desmond and I were holed up in his home, barely sleeping, staring red-eyed and bleary at the TV news programs and the moment-to-moment internet updates about the havoc Junior and Peter were wreaking on Chicago... and the myriad forms of retaliation perpetrated by the Azzarellos in response.
The violence was shocking. The resulting collateral damage was sickening.
There had been drive-by shootings. One of them had ended in a bystander being paralyzed from the neck down by a ricochet; another had caught a small child in the crossfire and sent him to the hospital, where he was comatose and on a respirator.
Warehouses and businesses had been firebombed. In one such instance, the flames had spread to a gas line and caused three nearby houses to erupt into flames, incinerating an entire family just as they were sitting down to Sunday brunch.
Junior ordered one of the Azzarellos—Billy's cousin, Shawn, who was barely out of his teens—kidnapped and tortured as a message. Shawn wasn't even involved in any of his family's operations. He'd been studying to be a heart surgeon. In response, the Azzarellos gunned down five of Junior's top enforcers and defiled Crazy Joe's grave, shooting a cemetery worker who happened to see them on his way to clock out.
And on. And on. And on, with no end in sight.
Rather than just quietly go about the business of assuming control of Crazy Joe's empire—rather than make minor concessions to the Azzarellos to end hostilities and restore peace—Junior and Peter had gleefully turned the Windy City into a red hell of their own making, one they controlled utterly... and they loved every minute of it.
“Part of the problem,” Desmond had explained while we stared at the evening news with mounting terror, “is that with Teddy and Billy gone, all that's left of the Azzarellos is middle management—guys who aren't too bright or restrained or resourceful, who weren't ready for this kind of responsibility. And they especially weren't ready to lead during an all-out war. So they're tripping all over themselves, spraying bullets indiscriminately instead of thinking things through.” He sighed heavily, adding, “Not that it would matter at this point if they did. It's looking like Junior and Peter won't stop until they've exterminated everyone who so much as peed next to an Azzarello in a public men's room.”
“Do you think they could do that?” I asked wide-eyed. “Finish off the entire Azzarello family?”
Desmond nodded grimly. “My brothers may not be too bright, but they're a pair of unrelenting psychos, plus they've got fifty times the money and manpower the Azzarellos do. So yeah, I'm pretty sure that's the guaranteed outcome here.”
I thought about all those bodies piling up—not just those of the rival crime family, but more innocents too. People who might be walking around that day, shopping, visiting relatives, enjoying their lives without realizing that a careless bullet from all of this senseless violence could hit them or one of their loved ones at any moment. The image made me shudder with fear and revulsion.
“But even if they do that,” I went on, “what would happen next?”
Desmond thought it over for a moment, then shrugged. “Hard to say. Assuming that one of the Azzarellos doesn't get lucky and take one or both of them out? With all these people they've killed, including the civilians, it's a good bet that some cop is going to find enough evidence to tie them to first-degree murder and put them away for life. I mean, the police department is going to have a lot of egg on their face as long as Peter and Junior are going apeshit and tearing the town apart with impunity.”
“Well, I know they're your brothers,” I pointed out tentatively, “but if either of those scenarios were to happen... if they were killed or arrested, I mean... you'd be in charge then, right? At least you'd be in a position to smooth things out and put your family's businesses back on track?”
He chuckled humorlessly. “It's possible. It's also possible—likely, even—that all the other gangs in Chicago would see that as the perfect opportunity to join forces against our family—take us out while we're weak and in a transitional period, just in case I turn out to be as much of an insane headcase as Peter and Junior and come gunning for them next. No. However this shakes out, it's basically looking like a lose-lose scenario for me at this point.”
I wasn't sure what else to do at that moment, so I scooted closer to him on the couch—where we'd been spending most of our days since Desmond had been ejected from the Biros estate—and gently ran my fingers through his hair. He was so beautiful... even when he was brooding, even when shadows filled his eyes. All I wanted was to be there for him, to do whatever it took to comfort him.
“There's still the Stavros Shipping merger,” I told him hopefully. “We could still get them to sign, so you can legitimize most of your father's business interests and distance yourself from all this. We could still have a way out.”
Desmond looked at me, his face pale and haunted. “I want to believe in that, Chels. I want that so much. But I can't hope for that right now. First of all, how much progress have you made in terms of convincing the Stavro
s people it's safe to do business with me?”
I swallowed hard. The truth was, it hadn't been going well.
Garth Morrison—one of the name partners of EEM&M, the law firm I worked for—had checked in a few days ago with his usual mild threats about ensuring that the multi-billion-dollar deal happened soon. I'd been doing my best, but the Stavros Board of Directors was running scared thanks to the news coverage of the gang war. The name “Biros” had been thrown around a lot over the past several days as it related to all of the terror and butchery. The shareholders were afraid for their professional reputations, not to mention the potentially dangerous blowback of being in business with a high-profile mob family. They were having visions of waking up with horse heads in their beds.
Desmond must have seen these thoughts flickering behind my eyes because he nodded. “Yeah. That's what I thought. And second, yeah, Junior said he wouldn't stop me from making this deal—but after the shit he pulled in that warehouse with the Azzarellos, who says he's going to keep his word? He has no interest in seeing our dad's dream of going legit come true. In fact, if it does, it'll weaken his position even if he's allowed to remain the head of the criminal element of our organization. He won't have the same cash backing and global resources he did before. So my guess is, if he starts to think the merger might actually go through, he'll kill it in its crib the first chance he gets.”
I suddenly felt a chill that sank deep into my bones. I put an arm around Desmond, burrowing against him for warmth and comfort. “Then what are we going to do, Des? How are we going to get out of this?”
“I wish I had a good answer for you,” he said, kissing the top of my head tenderly and stroking my upper arm. “But the truth is, I have no idea. For now, all we can do is stay put, keep our guard up, and try to survive all of this. The only good news here is that no matter how much Junior might disapprove of me—no matter how much he might try to sabotage the merger—he's still family, so at least he doesn't want to see me hurt. As long as we stay alert and stay out of the way, we have a good chance of making it through.”
And we had been “keeping up our guard.” We'd been unable to leave Desmond's place for almost a week. He'd done his best to clean up and make it hospitable for me, but I was still slowly going crazy from being isolated for so long—cabin fever was very real. The days were blurring together, and I was beginning to feel like I'd never feel the sunshine on my skin again, like I would live out the rest of my days in this apartment while watching the whole world burn just outside the windows.
Desmond seemed to spend most of each day peering outside cautiously, surveying the street for potential threats. Every time a car drove by, I could feel him tense up, as though preparing to throw me down on the floor and cover me with his body in case a hail of bullets shattered his windows.
All of our meals came via delivery, and every time there was a knock at the door, Desmond would leap up and sneak over to it with his gun in his hand. Well, not “his” gun, since he'd never been the sort of person to obtain or carry one before—he'd picked it up off one of the corpses in the warehouse, unnoticed, after the bloodbath perpetrated by his brothers against Teddy and Billy Azzarello.
At first, seeing the heavy, ugly metal weight in his hands had frightened and upset me. There was a big part of me that still saw him as the little boy I used to play with as a kid, running around his family's palatial estate just a few houses down from mine and laughing like loons. When I saw him cradling the gun anxiously, my mind's eye pictured him all those years ago, a skinny child holding the weapon in both hands like some terrible burden he could barely bear.
Desmond wasn't a thug or a killer like Junior and Peter. He was a good man in a situation where the dark and churning waters just kept rising around him implacably until they threatened to drown him.
I wanted so desperately to be able to help him. I was determined to try. I had to.
I just didn't know how.
“I'm going to make a call,” I told Desmond, grabbing my cell phone and getting up to head into the kitchen.
“To whom?” he asked anxiously.
“Milos Andrianakis,” I answered, trying to sound casual—even though I was nervous as hell about picking up the phone. “He's the chairman of the Stavros Board of Directors.”
“What are you going to say to him?”
“Don't know, but I need to say something. I need to do my best to get these people back to the table to negotiate, so we can at least try to make the deal happen. It's our best shot at coming out the other side of this intact and having any kind of life together.”
He tilted his head, genuinely curious. “Do you honestly believe we still have a chance in hell of closing this merger?”
What could I say? The odds were stacked so high against us that I figured we had a better chance of being swept away by a flying saucer than getting the Stavros people to shake our hands. But I couldn't let myself give in to that way of thinking. More than that: I couldn't let Desmond lose hope. Not while he was under so much pressure already, watching his father's hopes and dreams die by inches and trying to keep us safe in the middle of what amounted to a battle zone.
“Yeah,” I said, trying to sound certain. “I think there's still a way for me to turn all of this around. It'll just take some creative thinking on my part.”
He smiled for the first time in days. “Thanks, Chels. I believe in you. I know you'll do your best.”
As I went into the next room, my stomach felt like someone was taking a jackhammer to it. I knew Desmond meant well in, and I should have found it sweet and reassuring... but instead, it just felt like more pressure. What if I failed? If this merger died, Desmond's only chance at pulling his family's name out of the bloody muck and mire of decades of organized crime died with it.
I depended on him for my life. But he depended on me for our one chance at a life together.
Nothing was more important to me than that.
I dialed the number for Andrianakis, telling his receptionist how urgent it was that I speak with him. I expected her to stonewall me and prepared myself to keep calling—to make an absolute pest of myself until he agreed to talk to me.
But to my surprise, he picked up, sounding testy. “Ms. Brooks, you have precisely two minutes of my time. I suggest you make them count.”
“Certainly, Mr. Andrianakis.” I tried to modulate the pace of my speech carefully, rather than letting him think he'd rattled me enough to make me rush through what I had to say. “Thank you for speaking with me. I'm calling about—”
“The merger with the Biros interests, yes, yes,” he cut me off. “I can already tell you that you're wasting your time and mine. At this point, given the headlines about what's going on with your people in Chicago, the members of the board would sooner merge with Satan himself than any member of that wretched family.”
“With all due respect, sir, I don't think you're being entirely reasonable in saying that.”
He scoffed. “Reasonable? My God, what kinds of lunatics does that firm of yours hire, anyhow? Reports of mass murders, of arson, of-of-of... body counts rivaling those of some third-world genocides! Stavros is a respected company. We've been in business for almost a century. We certainly aren't going to risk our reputation by doing business with a bunch of mobsters!”
“Mr. Andrianakis, the Biros family has had nothing to do with the items you've seen on the news.”
There was a long, incredulous pause. Finally, he replied, “You must think I'm some kind of simpleton, Ms. Brooks. Their names are all over the news in connection to these shameful acts...”
“I've seen the same news items you have, sir,” I continued relentlessly, “and every one of them has used the word 'allegedly.' And rightfully so because there's no proof that the Biros people have been involved in these misdeeds at all.” I cringed inwardly at classifying all that gruesome carnage as misdeeds, but I had to remain firm. “The news outlets in Chicago know that mentioning the Biros family will g
et them more readers, more viewers, more clicks, so they throw that name around carelessly without any arrests or corroborating evidence. It's tantamount to libel and slander, really, and we'll be taking steps to address that once this merger has concluded.”
“You're delusional if you think we'd take your word on that!”
“The only delusional party in this scenario, sir,” I countered, trying to sound tough, “is the one who would jettison billions upon billions of dollars in additional annual revenue over something as silly as a bunch of unsubstantiated rumors and gossip.”
Another pause... and this time, Andrianakis actually laughed. “You're tenacious; I have to give you that, Ms. Brooks. But even assuming I were willing to try to persuade the other board members, what would I be able to offer to get them to agree?”
I could feel Desmond hovering in the doorway behind me, listening. I snuck a glance at him and saw from his expression that he was impressed with me. I took a deep breath, hoping this next desperate gambit would work. “How about if we tacked Lisle Import and Export on to the package? Would that be enough to turn their heads?”
Desmond raised his eyebrows but remained silent.
“What the blue blazes does Lisle have to do with anything?” Andrianakis sputtered. “We've been over the paperwork on all of the Biros holdings at least a dozen times, and there's nothing about Lisle in there!”
He was right. There hadn't been, because Lisle Import and Export—a growing concern that had done one-point-five billion dollars in business the previous fiscal year and projected exponential gains for the next several—was one of the front companies for the Azzarellos... or at least, it had been, until the untimely deaths of Teddy and Billy, its silent partners.