Page 4 of Unholy Tsar

He chuckles again, “Are you always this mouthy? No matter. I’ll make you see God—and you’ll spend the rest of your life pleasuring yourself to memories of tonight.”

I try to scoff again, but this time only a puff of air escapes. My heart starts racing.

I have no doubt he can do that either.

“Come,” he commands, turning away from me.

There’s no other option but to follow him. Not only because I desperately crave more of what he just gave me… but because of what waits outside, in the dark, in the cold.

I wrap my arm around my naked chest and scurry along behind him, catching glimpses of the apartment through the moonlight. The place is nice. More than nice. It screams money, even with its minimalist decor. There’s just this way a moneyed apartment looks, no matter how simple the decorations are.

And the size of it all—every open door we pass seems to lead into another world, each one more impressive than the last.

What a surprise… considering how dark and damp the alley outside is.

A shiver passes through me. For a second there, I thought I might never make it out of that alley. Then…

I shake my head, not ready to let those thoughts in. Tomorrow. I can worry about who was chasing me tomorrow.

The stranger opens a door leading to a darkly masculine room. He offers his hand to me. I hesitate; I don’t know why. We already had sex. Why am I suddenly feeling so shy?

“If you don’t want to—” he begins.

“No,” I stop him, my chin dipping to hide my shame. “I do.”

With a sharp inhale, I grab his hand and follow him into the bedroom.

He closes the door behind us.

1

MAKSIM

Present day…

“We looked into the Italians like you said, sir,” Dante, my head of security and right-hand man, reports as he places a stack of photographs on my desk. “You might be right about them brewing something, but we can’t be sure yet.”

I glance at the pictures. The first one shows Leo Camporese and some of his men getting into their cars. Leo is one of the Italian mafia dons who controls a small slice of territory down on the Lower East Side, right next to his rival—or rather ex-rival—Don Adriano Sabatino.

Ever since my nephew, Rian, killed Adriano two years ago, Leo and the other Italian dons have been relatively quiet. Until now…

I flip to the next picture. It’s Leo meeting with Francis, another Italian don, in front of a nondescript building. And in the one after that, they seem to be entering through a side door with their backs turned.

The Italians and the Irish mafia haven’t had the best relationship over the years, but after Rian’s father, Aiden, married Elisa—the daughter of one of the old Italian dons—there’s been a tentative truce between us.

So why would two of our allies be meeting secretly in the middle of the night?

“Were you able to sit in on their meeting?” I ask, though I doubt he was. He would have mentioned it.

“No, sir,” Dante replies, shaking his head. “Both Dons had their men on high alert, as if they were expecting trouble. It was too risky for me to get close to them.”

I nod. If my hunch about them is right, they were most likely expecting trouble. But fuck, I hope I’m wrong. “Keep watching Leo.”

“Are you going to inform the boss, sir?”

I shake my head. I want more concrete evidence before bringing this to him. Besides, it’s been a very eventful few years for the young king. I’m not going to disrupt this new peace in the family if I can help it.

“What’s next on my schedule?” I ask, moving on.