Page 1 of Devil’s Promise

PROLOGUE

Angel

One week earlier…

The whore, giving my uncle his lap dance, takes a quick glance at me to make certain I want her to continue. He’s been pawing at her for close to an hour.

Normally a man doesn’t get to fondle the goods for this long.

He either moves on to a new girl, or he moves upstairs and pays the big money.

But tonight is different.

It’s not that he’s my uncle. Piece of shit should have to pay double. When his brother, Lorenzo, took me out of foster care and adopted me, he offered me a deal. Stay with him, do as he commanded, and get a place in the family business.

As a kid who’d been in the system, I took the offer without a look back. Lorenzo was a piece of shit father, but Uncle Vigo is a sadistic fuck. Beat me every chance he got and said it was for my education.

One by one, our adoptive father picked me and my brothers up off the streets, brought us together, made us his soldiers.

He taught us to fight, to steal, to kill. And Vigo taught us that this life hides the filthiest of men.

So tonight, I’m giving Vigo a lot of rope, not because he’s family, and not because his drinking, drugs, and red-hot temper are dismantling our business a brick at a time. Tonight, I’m hanging back because he finally pissed off the wrong person.

Or, if I’m being honest, the right person. He made an enemy of Rushton Smith. Billionaire, real estate mogul, and dabbler in the dark side.

Tonight Rush is going to kill my uncle.

And me? I’m going to let him.

I scrub my hand along my jaw, meeting the amber eyes of my brother Rock. We all have them. The eyes.

Lorenzo was successful in one endeavor. He bonded me and my adopted brothers so tightly, we have been able to keep Vigo from destroying our future by sheer force of our combined will.

Changing the pigment of our eyes was an expression of our commitment to our bond. Because I am the front man of this endeavor and I spend a fair bit of time on the straight side of our business, I have contacts when I want to return my eyes to brown.

“What is it?” I ask softly.

Rock sniffs the air. “Killian Smith is here in the club. Just stole Vigo’s gloves.”

“Stole his gloves?” Killian is Rush’s brother. They call me a psychopath for the way I can kill without a flicker of feeling, but Killian…the man is seriously disturbed.

“Probably a gun powder thing. Make Vigo’s death look like a suicide,” Rock says with a shrug.

I frown as my hand flexes under the table. I can’t have that. Vigo has racked up a debt to our biggest competitor, Vincent Morelli. If Vincent thinks Vigo killed himself to avoid paying it back, he’ll call in the debt immediately. “Can’t have that.”

Rock frowns. “What are you going to do?”

The problem is that Vincent is my main competitor. The man who could take over the New York underworld in Vigo’s place instead of me.

Likely why he lent Vigo so much money in the first place. It was a play for power.

But our family will remain at the helm of the New York underworld, and I will decide who plays and who pays. Vigo was never the man his father was, and his control has been slipping as he runs our business into the ground.

The clock hits three, and the DJ winds down the last song. With a flick of my hand, I dismiss the dancer, Chastity. Her fake tits barely bounce as she stands, making her way over to collect her pay for the dance.

I hand her the cash, with the extra for entertaining my uncle for so long. This club moves massive amounts of cash through its till, allowing us to slip the money we make from other…endeavors through its profits. I’ve got several more, and I like to keep the girls happy. Makes for good business and good money laundering.

Soon the place is cleared out, leaving only me and Rock with Vigo.