She rolls her eyes.
“Right?” I press.
“Yes, Lucian,” she mutters. “Sure. And what about the warehouse?”
I wave a hand. “We’ll give the cops something.”
Her mouth turns up in a smirk. “Like what? An invitation to a ball?”
I smooth a hand over my bloodstained suit. It’s so like Vittoria not to see the bigger picture. “We direct the narrative.”
She wants revenge. Not just because; she wants it for me. It’s almost sweet.
“And the de Santis compound?” she asks.
“We hit that. Make it look like a de Santis uprising and power grab gone horribly wrong.”
“So that’s how you’ll give the cops their mafia investigation.” Her slight smile tells me she likes it, but she does ask something else. “But if thereisanother threat, and they come looking for us, what do we do then?”
“Then we’ve flushed them out.” I go behind my desk.
“We need an enemy for de Santis.”
I laugh. In the mafia world, like the supernatural, enemies abound. Power grabs abound.
It’s all in choosing the right one.
I’m not going anywhere tonight. I’ll need more blood later, just to hit my pre-draining self. But I have discipline. I thrive on it. And in the bedroom, it gets me off. This isn’t far from that, this self-torture game of control.
“We don’t need to act tonight,” I say. “I’m going to look into who the biggest enemy of de Santis is, and if there isn’t one, we’ll create a straight-up power grab gone wrong.”
“For the cops,” she says.
I nod.
“Good,” she says. “And if someone else does want another fight?”
I smile, spread my hands. “Bring it the fuck on.”
Chapter
Three
Elliot
Idon’t know how long I’ve been locked up. The collar around my neck burns. The lack of fresh blood direct from the source tortures. The mindless rages drain me.
And though it all, I cling to one thing.
I fucking hate Lucian Vale for doing this to me.
My stomach hurts, an ache that gnaws at me, and I try to ignore the hunger that wants to consume and claim me as its own.
I could easily sink down—and there’s a part of me that wants that.
But the other side beckons, too. Control. Using my hate and anger and lust for blood.
I close my eyes for a moment. A part of me wants to cling to Lucian, but he’s no longer the man I fell for in my head. The god-like creature who I thought could feel something for me. Everything has shifted.
