“Can I visit my grandmother once a week and stay with her overnight? She’s lonely, and I’m the only one who checks on her.”
“The junkie?”
His blunt response leaves me speechless. My grandmother has endured a lifetime of pain, married to a man who didn’t love her, a man who beat her constantly. Her sons are criminals who barely acknowledge her, and her only daughter, my mother, passed away last year after suffering through her own abusive marriage to my father.
Now, after surviving so much, she turns to substances to dull her pain, both physical and emotional. And because of that, everyone reduces her to a single word,junkie.
When I don’t answer right away, he moves on. “I’ll allow it. I’ll assign a bodyguard to take you there and bring you back. On the days you’re with her, no visitors. Not her sons, not even your brothers.”
I can barely hide my relief. “I understand. Thank you.”
He dips his head in acknowledgment before rising to his full height. His towering frame casts a shadow over me, and his gaze sweeps over my body before settling on my hand.
It’s only then I realize I’m still clutching Tony’s necklace like an idiot.
He extends his hand, and without hesitation, I place the chain in his palm.
“Tony’s gift?”
“Yes.”
He drops the necklace to the floor. Without hesitation, his boot comes down on it, grinding the delicate wings into the carpet with several slow, deliberate stomps.
Then, without a word, he turns and leaves the room, his calm, composed demeanor completely intact, like nothing had happened.
SIX
Tony
One Year Later
I stand in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, Scotch in hand, my gaze fixed on the river snaking through the city, flanked by skyscrapers stretching into the sky. Their lights drown out the stars, as if even the heavens bow to their presence. Chicago is nothing like Italy, from the ground beneath my feet to the air I breathe. This city isn’t just different; it’s a whole new world.
A world I’ve conquered.
In a single year, I’ve claimed this place as mine. Standing here in my penthouse, I don’t just feel like a part of this city. I feel like I own it. I’m bigger than its sprawling streets, taller than every skyscraper in sight.
For the first time, I feel like the lion that finally took the pride he was born to rule.
Out of the millions of lights in this city, the millions of lives scattered across its streets, there isn’t a single one I couldn’t extinguish, a single person I couldn’t bend to my will. The empire I fought tooth and nail to build, earned through bloodshed and slaughter, is finally mine.
But it’s not enough.
She’s not here; the woman haunting my every moment, waking or asleep.
Over the last year, I’ve had enough time to put the pieces together, to assemble the scattered fragments that have plagued my mind like a broken puzzle. Now, the picture is clear. I remember that night, every damn detail, like a scar burned into my memory.
Maybe those images are nothing more than illusions, traces of a drunken haze. Maybe they’re real. It doesn’t matter anymore. She’s not just a memory, she’s a craving I can’t shake.
She’s the prey I need to hunt down. The obsession I need to fuck out of my system.
No matter the cost, I need to claim that woman.
Even thinking about those arresting blue eyes, that silky cascade of blond hair, and those sinful lips warms my blood.
I shift my gaze back to the river stretching beneath me. It’s almost amusing. Primitive men built their entire civilizations along rivers like this. And once they’d staked a claim, built a home, even if it was just a shack, their next instinct was always the same: find a woman.
Thousands of years, nothing’s changed. Still the same animals. Same urges. All this evolution bullshit? Just a lie we tell ourselves to feel superior.
