Bound to the Crime Lord (Dark Mafia Tales #2)

Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

Manuel POV

I looked over last night's sales in silence. Rodrigo sat on the opposite side of my desk, with the same stone face expression he wore.

“Are you going to speak or are you here to keep me company?” I lifted my gaze only for a moment before I looked back down at the report.

“William was shot last night after an ambush down 19th Street. The doctor was able to patch him up, but she ordered him to be in bed rest until he is done with physiotherapy.”

“Bed rest?” I was sure the look on my face said it all. “What the hell does she mean, bed rest? Was it not a superficial wound?”

Rodrigo shrugged. “She said that if he’s to get back on his feet again, he will risk ripping his stitches and then she will have to work on him again. And she said if she has to patch him again, then she will make sure she maims him so he will be forced to rest.”

The amusement at hearing that filtered all throughout my body. That was a little firecracker. The woman had a bite to her that came out at the most random and strangest of times.

“Fine, keep him rested. Give his post to someone else until he is back on his feet.”

From the way Rodrigo’s eyes bulged out of their sockets, I was almost certain that he had not been expecting me to say that.

“Boss, if I may…”

I placed my file down and leaned back in my leather chair. “Go on.”

“Are you sure that bringing her on was such a good idea? We don’t even know why The Triads wanted her. Is she a part of their organization? What ties does she have to this world? Can she be trusted?”

I rubbed the side of my jaw, thinking his words over. These were not questions that I hadn’t already asked myself.

“We did our check on her, Rigo. She came up clean. I understand your reservations and your concerns, but she is not one of them.”

“But how can you be certain? You don’t even know her, Manuel. I understand that you think she’s a little pretty thing to fuck, but women like her are a dime a dozen. There is nothing that you can find here that you can’t find in someone else.”

My eye twitched, and I balled my hand into a tight fist, holding back much of the annoyance that wanted to seep out. I needed to keep in mind that Rodrigo was not only my second, but a childhood friend who had stood by me. He was not coming from a place of malice. His job was to protect me and the organization, and to take down any possible threat that was pointed our way.

“Are you concerned that my judgment is lapsed?”

He straightened his spine and stared me dead in the eye. “Quite frankly, yes. I am worried that this woman has blinded you and you cannot see beyond what you are willing to see. Pussy is plenty, brother. Why are you hung up on this one?”

That was a very good question. Why was I so hung up on her?

The simplest answer was that she intrigued me, and I wanted to see just how deep her fire burned. I wanted to know what it was that gave her those jagged and sharp edges that she tried so hard to blunt for everyone else.

But both Rodrigo and I knew that there was a far more complex answer to that question. I wasn’t going to say that answer, and neither was he. So…

“It doesn’t matter why, Rigo. Just know that she is here to stay for as long as I see fit.” That was the end of that conversation. “Now, tell me what we have on The Triads. We need to put an end to these fuckers once and for all.”

Rigo cleared his throat and put his business face on. I knew that the issue of Juliette was far from over. He would bring it up again sometime in the near future.

“They hit us hard, boss. We had a shipment coming in from Michigan. But they got the truck on the highway and took the product.”

“Shit,” I hissed, “how much did we lose?”

“About two million.”

The poisonous rage poured into my system like a thick black tar. It scorched my insides, filling me with an anger that was as hot as Satan’s fire.

“How is it possible that we are still getting hit time and time again? We change the routes and they still manage to catch on. What the fuck is going on?”

“We have a mole.”

An eerie silence fell over us.

“A mole.” I had been having my suspicions. Ever since my father’s assassination four years ago, I had a feeling that there had been an inside hand at play. I didn’t want to believe that anyone in the Brotherhood could betray me in such a heinous way.

“Yes, I believe that we have someone telling The Triads information about where the shipments are going and how they are moving. There are only a handful of people who have access to such information, and I’ve already begun looking into possible names.”

Blood. That was what I wanted to taste when the culprit was revealed. My knife had been dying to be dipped in blood. Now was the perfect time.

“And do we know where they operate from?”

Rigo shook his head. “We are working towards locating their base, but as far as we know, they are just freeloaders. They have no real base. They just tend to wander around, destroying operations of various organizations.”

“ Organization .”

“Sorry?” He looked at me confused.

“Savina Baratelli has yet to be hit, which means that they are only attacking me. If they truly were after power, the dismantling of the four families would be their top priority. After Savina and Andres wed, they became the most powerful family on the East Coast. Combined, they have far more power than we do.”

He nodded his head in agreement. “And we are yet to hear of any commotion going on that side. I will keep digging and I will scale down the transport team.”

I grunted my agreement.

I picked up my file to get back to the work I had been preoccupied with previously when I heard a loud bang that shook the entire club building.

Rodrigo and I stood from our seats, our guns already drawn.

“What was that?”

Rigo was already racing to the door to ask the guards posted outside. They had their guns drawn and looked just as confused as we were.

I looked at my security monitor and saw a large hole in the damn wall of my nightclub downstairs.

The rage that had only just now begun to quell surged forward and flooded my system. My grip on the handle of my gun tightened.

With each second that ticked, I felt the rage torch more of my system. Rigo walked back inside and came to stand behind me. He stared at the monitor in silence.

“Find whoever is responsible for this and bring them to me, now!” The rage boiled my blood, only adding to the bloodlust.

I had let these little nuisances have their fun for far too long. If war was what they wanted, then war was what I was going to give them.