by Ada Scott
There was no time to contemplate that though, as I was led at a brisk pace down a long hallway. At the end was a door, flanked by two men wearing suits and looking for all the world like Secret Service agents. One of them told me to hold my arms out to my sides as he waved a metal detector over me, while the other inspected my handbag for contraband.
I felt like it was a pretty thorough inspection before walking the plank. What would they do to me back at work when they heard I actually made it into Jace Barlow’s office? I racked my brain trying to think of everything I’d heard about him, trying to come up with something halfway relevant to ask.
About a year before I would have been ready, the security men were apparently satisfied that I wasn’t an assassin, and gave me the all clear. The receptionist knocked on the door and opened it, ushering me through before standing at my side.
If I thought the waiting room was expensively decorated, it had nothing on Jace Barlow’s office. Everywhere I looked were sleek, sophisticated lines, fine furniture and tasteful art.
The man himself was sitting behind his desk, and my breath caught in my throat. I’d seen pictures of him before, of course, usually with a woman who looked like this receptionist on his arm. So I knew he was handsome, but I never could have expected what it would feel like to have those eyes on me in person.
All the luxurious surroundings and art in the world couldn’t hide the fact that he wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth. I could see the edges of tattoos on his neck and arms, lurking just under the Armani, like snakes waiting to ambush unwary prey. He looked like if he flexed his muscles the suit would explode off of him as if he was a bomb.
Behind those dark eyes, I swore I could see thoughts beneath the surface that contrasted just as starkly with the cool exterior. None of the guys back home ever looked at me like that, and in this big city I was practically invisible. I almost felt naked in front of him.
It’s a shame that the more you try to stop a blush, the worse it gets. I hated standing next to this beautiful tall woman. It was impossible not to notice the contrast between the two of us. She looked a lot like my sisters, and that was one of the comparisons I’d been desperate to get away from my whole life.
A barrel-chested man with a shaved head had been standing next to Barlow’s desk, and now appeared to be leaving.
“Kendall Brookes, from The Weekly Enquirer, sir. Would you like coffee? Tea?” she asked me.
“No thank you,” I squeaked.
She smiled and stepped out of the way of the man who was leaving, holding the door for him and following him out of the room. I heard the click behind me and gulped.
“Take a seat, Miss. Brookes,” said the one and only, Jace Barlow.
Jace
Something about her stopped me in my tracks. When I saw her sitting there in the waiting room through the one-way glass, I made the decision on the spot to break the rules and invite her into my office.
She wasn’t going to be getting a meaningful interview for The Weekly Whatever-the-fuck it was, she was going to be getting some hard cock. That’s all I was willing to give her.
I was sick to my stomach of the kind of girl that used to hang around with us, back in what I could only think of as the old days. Back then, I was hired muscle, working my way up the chain in the Picolli Crime Family’s organization.
Those bitches were barely one step above prostitutes, if that. Once I took over and put one foot into this world, this legitimate front, I was disappointed to find that they were all the same no matter where I went.
This one though, Kendall Brookes, she looked different. Her tits were small enough to be real, big enough that she’d have to hold on to them when I got to fucking her good and hard. A dainty little thing, she looked like she’d never been through the kinds of things I was going to do to her.
Fresh and innocent, I bet the guys in her world brought flowers and asked her father’s permission. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d asked permission for anything, except when I already knew what the answer was.
The way she was holding herself, I could tell she was terrified. Those little arms crossed over protectively in front, as if she could hide behind them or something.
With a visible gulp, she closed the distance between the door and the chair I’d directed her to, and I watched her intently. She really was petite. I bet she was tight as fuck.
I was already undressing her with my eyes, looking past the clothes that were on the old side, and probably hadn’t been worth much when they were new. She reminded me of one of those chicks from those movies in the nineties, where the ugly duckling had a superficial makeover and suddenly became the hottest girl in school.
The best part about it was that she obviously had no idea how sexy she was. Damned if she wasn’t making me hard already.
I tented my fingers in front of me as I leaned forward and waited for her to sit. Scenes of me circling around to the other side of my desk and forcing her to her knees to suck my cock flashed through my mind.
As she sat in the chair, she immediately dropped her handbag, the contents spilling at her feet. That blush deepened as she muttered an apology and bent down to pick her things up, giving me a quick flash down her top at those tantalizing curves of her breasts, before her luxurious dark brown hair obscured the view.
No. This one was too good to just fuck straight away. I was going to play it out, just a little, make her so wet that she’d be begging for my cock. Then I’d make her wait a little bit longer, and by the time I finally gave it to her, she’d be so desperate that she’d hardly notice that she’d never spread her legs for a man like me before. Not until it was too late and I was already taking everything I wanted from her perky little body.
“Sorry about that,” she said, sitting upright again and stuffing everything back in except for a notepad and pen.
“It’s fine. So what can I do for you, Miss Brookes?”
“Well… uh… first of all… um… thank you for, you know, making the time for me. I, and The Weekly Enquirer, really appreciate it.”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” I said.
She licked her lips and appeared to be desperately trying to think of something to say. I raised an eyebrow. Of all the journalists, reporters, and would-be documentary makers who had come running at the opportunity to interview me, only to fall victim to my long term plan to get them to fuck off, Kendall was easily the youngest.
“How old are you?” I asked.
“Me? I’m… I’m eighteen.”
The corner of my mouth rose in a smirk that would have cost me the game if we were playing poker. As it was, it only seemed to strengthen my advantage over her.
“Aren’t you a little… green, to be handed an interview like this? You wouldn’t believe how many fuckin’ calls Violet out there fields every day about this very thing.”
Kendall flinched at my swearing, and my smirk grew. After all the shit I’d been dealing with all morning, karma had handed me Kendall. Not only was she a tight little package, she was a good girl too, whose idea of hard sex was probably missionary position with socks on and lights out.
“I… I…” she stammered.
I waved it away. “Don’t worry about it. You’re doing really well.”
“Oh. Um. Thanks. So, Mr. Barlow, you won a hundred and eighty million dollars in the state lottery. Most people seem to throw their winnings away, or retire. Nobody ever did what you did. Why didn’t you take your winnings and live out your life on a beach?”
I almost laughed at the understatement. Damn right nobody ever did what I did. This girl, man, she had no idea. She’d never been shot at, never killed a man, probably never even been in a fight.
I’d been doing all those things as long as I could remember. Every skull I cracked was one more step in my grand scheme, but I never could have planned to buy a lottery ticket on a whim, win, and fast-forward my plans by ten or twenty years.
Leaning back in my chair, I rested one
foot on the opposite knee and laced my fingers together over my stomach. Fixing her with a look that had melted the panties off women far more wary than her, I gave her an answer that meant precisely fuck-all.
“Well. I had work to do.”
Kendall
There was no way I was going to end the day without losing my job. This interview was going less successfully than skydiving with an anvil for a parachute. So he had work to do, he liked baseball, he grew up in a group home, he recommended a healthy breakfast. What else?
“Um… do you like art?” I pointed at the paintings on the wall and the sculpture in the corner.
“It’s OK.”
With dogged determination, I wrote down “Art -> OK” in my little notepad, and when I looked up again, I swore I saw his eyes roaming over my body. I could almost feel them like fingers lightly tracing along my skin, and a shiver of misplaced excitement travelled down my spine.
Men didn’t look at me like that, not really. Certainly not men like Jace Barlow, who could have a harem at his disposal at the snap of his fingers. According to some rumors, he’d gone backstage at a fashion show in Milan and afterwards some of the models were walking noticeably bowlegged on the catwalk.
Still, it was an illusion I rarely had a chance to entertain, so I let myself bask in it for a few seconds. How often had I dreamed that some nice guy would look at me, like what he saw, and take me off the shelf?
I was about to ask him about his tattoos when his cell started ringing. He held up his finger to silence me and brought his phone to his ear.
“Go ahead,” he said and paused to listen. “Yes… What? Where? OK, keep him… uh.” He glanced at me. “Occupied until I can get there… I’ll get there whenever the fuck I’m ready, don’t forget who you’re talking to… Yeah, yeah... Bye.”
“So, Mr. Barlow, I was going to ask you about…”
“Sorry, Kendall, something’s come up, we’re going to have to cut this short.”
My heart sank. I’d known from the moment I walked in the room that the interview would be a disaster, what with my zero preparation and all, but I was enjoying my little fantasy.
“Oh. Alright,” I said, packing my pen and pad away.
Barlow stood and I did the same. Even from across the desk it was impossible to not note the incredible presence he had. It was more than just how much bigger than me he was, it was like an aura that radiated off of him.
He leaned over and extended his hand in my direction, and I approached his desk to do the same. It was so surreal, I was about to shake hands with a man who could probably buy my hometown and turn it into a theme park.
My heart fluttered when our hands touched, partly from sheer awe and the rest coming from the same silly parts of my mind the little fantasy had. What if he brought my hand to his lips and kissed it? I would faint!
“Thank you for coming to see me today. I’ll want a copy of that article when you publish it.”
You’re so hot!
“You’re so… I mean, you’re welcome. Yes, of course. Uh… goodbye then.”
I started to turn away, but his grip on my hand tightened and he pulled me back. Slowly, I turned back to him, and my eyes travelled from where our hands were still together, up to his eyes, where he was fixing me with a look that made me want to start taking off my clothes. Was my daydream coming true?
“Tell you what. We should extend this interview over dinner. Tonight, at Luc Monette’s. Be there at seven.”
My jaw dropped in a way I thought only happened in the movies. Jace Barlow, tall, muscular, multi-millionaire, was asking me, Kendall Brookes, a small-town nobody, out to dinner. That shiver went down my spine again and settled somewhere around my stomach, a buzzing little ball of excitement, but I did my best to keep a grasp on reality.
“Dinner. Just for the interview?” I asked.
Jace smiled. “Of course.”
Jace
“There was a robbery in China Town, a liquor store. Owner’s all up to date on their payments, so they gave us a call asking what good our protection was,” said Lorenzo.
“We know who did it yet?” I asked.
Sitting back in my seat, I watched the world go by through the tinted window of the car as my driver drove the two of us back from an afternoon meeting to my office tower. This was some low-level crap that I was trying to delegate more and more these days, so I wasn’t prepared to give it my full attention.
Of course, like in any job, there were times when shit pissed me off. Unlike most other jobs for most other people, things could piss me off enough that I let myself get a little bit… hands-on with enforcing my rules.
That’s the thing in this world. You go for too long without fucking somebody up and some assholes start to get all uppity. They start losing respect, and that’s a death knell for somebody like me.
It was as true at the top as it ever had been when the Picollis used to send me to be the reminder about their rules. You knew you fucked up if you had me knocking on your door.
I built up a reputation, almost a legend. I had to laugh when I heard some of the stories come full-circle and get whispered back to me in hushed tones. Did you know the Picollis have got a guy who cuts off peoples’ heads and uses their skulls to drink their blood?
What a load of shit. I used the head to beat the truth out of a second guy, not to drink blood. That’s just fuckin’ weird. Not that I ever denied anything. No. The smart play was to use that reputation to get what I needed.
“No. I’ve got a couple of guys putting the word out. Are you happy for me to give the owner whatever he needs to rebuild? They trashed the place good.”
“Yeah. You handle it. When you find the dumb fuck who did this, we’ll see what assets they have that can be appropriated.”
Lorenzo laughed. “Look at you, Mr. Businessman with the fancy talk. You’re really getting used to the high life, aren’t you?”
Once, there was an Emperor who hired a servant to follow him around and, every time the Emperor received a compliment, the servant was supposed to remind him “you’re just a man.” Well, Lorenzo was about as close to that as I had.
The guy was old school, showed me the ropes when I first graduated from running packages to becoming a soldier for the Picollis. If I had a job that was too much for one person, Lorenzo was the first person I ever went to for backup.
I shrugged. “Gotta put the degree to use sometime, huh?”
A chuckle made Lorenzo shake a little bit, but the laugh didn’t quite make it all the way out. He never thought much of my business degree from a correspondence school, but it was certainly helping to keep us afloat with our legitimate fronts.
When I was studying, in between making people disappear or just very sorry, I was amazed at the parallels between business theory and the crime family. Corporate hierarchy, organizational culture, supply and demand, it was all there.
Of course, not all the rules were the same. There were family complications, and parts of it were like a cult, but once I grasped the business side of things, that was the first time in my life that I was able to envision the Picollis as a single entity. That was the first time I had anything more than a vague idea about how to fulfil my destiny.
You can kill a single entity.
“So, we’ve been avoiding something all day,” he said.
“Hmmm?”
“Don’t play dumb. We’ve got Santino duct-taped to a chair, running his mouth while the guys wait for you to get there. He’s right fuckin’ here, in Port Magnus.”
“So tape his fuckin’ mouth shut. We can afford it,” I said.
Santino Son-of-a-bitch Picolli. When I took over this city, I put the word out that anyone who’d been lucky enough to get away, better stay away. Port Magnus was off limits to them.
In reality, I had no plans to stop at Port Magnus, it was just easier to consolidate my position if they weren’t around fucking with my business. The fact that he was here was a real thorn in my side. It fe
lt like a backwards step.
The car pulled into the underground parking lot and paused while the guard checked the ID of my driver and opened the security doors. After a moment we continued.
“Well, let’s just go there, work him over and see what we can get out of him.”
“Pick up Roydon and head over there yourself. I’m going to sit this one out,” I said.
Lorenzo raised an eyebrow. “You serious? You’re not going to handle this one yourself?”
“What’s the matter, don’t think you can crack him?”
Lorenzo puffed himself up a bit, and I knew already that the argument was over before it had even started. My empire was built on fear and paying off the right people, but a little manipulation of ego went a long way too.
“You got someplace more important to be?” he asked.
“Dinner with that sexy little journalist that visited this morning,” I said.
Just mentioning her got my blood pumping. I wondered if she already knew she was getting fucked tonight or not. I could hardly wait to rip those panties off her, feel my cock sliding in, and watching her squirm.
“That’s an about-face on the media policy,” Lorenzo said.
“She won’t get anything she can use.”
“Well, you’re the boss. So, boss, how do you want me to play Santino? The reality is that he might not be crackable.”
I brought my hand up and rubbed my jawline as I thought about it. Lorenzo was right, guys like Santino had been brought up their whole lives being told to shut the fuck up about family business, or else.
Lorenzo hit hard, and I knew Roydon wasn’t going to lose any love on the Picolli family, but it was tough conditioning to break. Still, we had to get something out of this.
“Work him for an hour, two if you think he’s getting close to talking. Get what you can, but don’t touch his face. When you’re done, empty a few clips into him and leave him in front of the old Picolli place. Make sure he’ll be found and recognized. The six o’clock news will send our message. How’s that for a fuckin’ media policy?”