“I didn’t take your money; I asked for it. And you freely gave it to me.”
He rushed over to the bed and grabbed me up by my throat, turning me on even more. “Shut the fuck up, Angel. Get off the bed.”
The second I was on my feet, he spun me around and pressed my chest flat against the bed. “Mm, look at how wet you are. And I can’t even do shit about it right now.”
“Xyleek, I—”
“You don’t listen!” He slapped my ass again. “I said shut up and you still talking,” he placed tender kisses up and down my back. “I love you, Angel, but rules are rules, so you gotta take your punishment.”
Letting out a soft sigh, I nodded and then reached back and spread my cheeks apart for him. I knew I was in for a long night of being split from the front to the back and honestly, I was looking forward to it.
By the time we finally turned each other loose, it was well after seven in the morning. Instead of going to sleep, we went downstairs to enjoy the free breakfast. Of course, people recognized him, but I had sunglasses and a hood on so that I could eat in peace. Once he was done yapping, he joined me at the table in the back of the lobby.
“You okay, Angel?” He reached across the table and gripped my hand.
“I’m sore,” I chuckled and shook my head. “I need a long Epsom salt bath when we get back.”
“When we get back…are you moving in?”
“Xy, I don’t know. That’s a big step for us, and I don’t feel like we’ve ever been able to live together and it work out that well.”
“We haven’t, but that’s also back when I was fuckin’ up. I’m not this time, so can you please move in with me?” He pouted with those sorry puppy dog eyes that got me nearly every time.
“I’ll think about it, X,” I bit into my toast. “With everything that just happened, I think I still need time to process it.”
“Process what, exactly? I told you everything there was to know about the situation. And if it makes you feel better, her momma is picking out plots for her and her sister.”
I rubbed the middle of my forehead while shaking my head. “Xyleek, your answer to everything can’t be murder.”
“When it comes to you? That’s theonlyanswer,” he said causally, sitting back and throwing a few blueberries in his mouth. “Nobody gon’ do shit to you and then live on the same Earth that you living on. Fuck that.”
“What did her sister do?” I asked, realizing what he’d said.
Clearing his throat, he looked around before filling me in on the fact that it was Gabriae and her sister, Cassie, who broke into my shop. It made sense, especially with the spray-painted messages. I knew Xy was a certified crashout, and death was the second thing that made the most sense to him but that didn’t mean I wanted him eliminating the entire human race.
“You know why I want you to live with me so bad?”
My bottom teeth slowly dragged across my upper lip. “Why?”
“Because you’re the first thing I wanna see and taste when I wake up. My days are so much fuckin’ better when they start with me seeing and touching you. I want to know that every single night, you’re safe because you’re lying beside me. When I walk in the crib, I want to see you on the couch with your iPad. I want…” he paused and chewed on the corner of his top lip. “I want that big ass house to feel like a home, but it only feels like that if you’re in it, Angel. I want a life with you, and I don’t like that you can just run toyourhouse when you’re mad at me. Run to the guest house in the back, but an entirely different house with a different address? I hate that shit.”
Those damn words slid right under my skin and hit every single soft spot I had for that man. Whenever he got to talking like that, it reminded me of the thirteen-year-old boy I fell in love with. The one who scribbled my name all over his notebooks, always got me the best snacks at lunch, and walked me home every single day like his life depended on it. And maybe that’s what kept me hooked on him because how the fuck was I supposed to erase the last eighteen years with him in it? He was the same man who broke and glued me back together a thousand times, and I wasstillletting him. That had to mean something, right?
Chapter Fifteen
Xyleek
Walking into Giulio’s plant shop, I spotted him and Deepti, the head of the Bakshi family, sitting out on the patio with cigars to their mouths. In Casa Oscura, which translated tothe dark house, each of the seven families were powerful, wealthy, and dangerous all on their own but under the house, they were a single force that bent every industry to their will.
The Lombardos were old money Italians who built their fortune in the aviation field, using planes to transport their drugs to anywhere in the world. The Bakshis were Indian royalty with their hands in tech, medicine, exotic animals, and crypto. The Velasquez family hailed from Colombia, and they were who I used to work for until I was able to secure a Peruvian connect that they hadn’t been able to obtain. To this day, I don’t know what Katari saw in me that he didn’t see in the Velasquezs, but it gave me access to the purest cocaine in the world, so I wasn’t complaining.
The Kovacs were Hungarian weapons dealers and could source any fuckin’ weapon you could imagine. If it fired, exploded, detonated, or wiped out a small village, the Kovacs had it readily available. The Nakamuras were the quiet Japanesefamily, but they were as deadly as they come. Their focus was robotics, AI, and surveillance but underneath all that, they were just a bunch of trained killers.
The Al-Saadis were from Saudi Arabia and were the definition of wealthy. They could buy an entire continent if they wanted to, and their money poured from their oil mines, all of the land they owned, and the blood they shed. Everyone in Casa treaded lightly around them muthafuckas because one word from their patriarch could weaken half of the Middle East, so imagine the damage they could do to the US. And last but not least were the Fabers from Rome, who invested dirty money in fashion houses and luxurious resorts overseas. They could take a hundred million dollars in blood money and make it reappear as a five-star beachfront in the blink of an eye.
Casa was the first of its kind as most races stuck to their own kind, but when Guilio formed it, he changed the face of organized crime. He pulled in power from every corner of the world and made them sit at the same table, share the same resources, and most importantly, respect one another. In other circumstances, there was a high chance any one of these families would go to war with one another, but under Casa, they operated as one empire, which made them the most powerful empire in the world.
And then there was me. Not a head of any of the families but very much respected and feared by all seven of them. They knew that without me, none of them operated at 100%. Could they get by without me? I had no doubt about that, but that would take too much work, so keeping me was much easier for them. The Peruvians dealt with me and Casa exclusively, so we were the only ones getting cocaine that was purer than a virgin.
