Ruthless Vow (Vegas Vicious #2)

3. Leo

3

Leo

Two weeks later

Beating the shit out of someone usually puts me in a good mood but today it’s just not working.

Maybe that’s because Enzo Bianchi, the man who shot my father, is dead—thanks to my brother Damian—and I didn’t have the chance to kill him myself.

Maybe it’s because my right leg still throbs where I took a bullet on the yacht. A flesh wound. It’s healing well. But the wounds inflicted on my perceived invincibility, my ego, and my temper are not healing well at all.

Most likely, it’s because I have yet to find Nicole Milano. She betrayed my father. She had us all fooled, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Fuck, Papa even once asked me to take care of Nicole if anything ever happened to him. And now, she has betrayed me. Betrayed the family. Almost got my brother and sister killed. And she is still out there.

I tell myself that’s why I can’t stop thinking about her. Maybe if I keep telling myself that, I’ll start to believe it at some point.

Nicole Milano. Innocuous. Invisible. Until she wasn’t, until she stood staring at me with those wide, dark eyes, her expression laced with lust. I’d stared back while I fucked another woman’s mouth, wanting to fuck her mouth.

Which makes no fucking sense because she is not a woman who would normally catch my attention. She wears her dark hair scraped back in a tight bun, no makeup, no jewelry, thick black-framed glasses, unpainted short nails. She’s tall, but keeps her shoulders hunched, her neck jutting forward. She wears the ugliest clothes I’ve ever seen, so shapeless I can’t even begin to imagine what her figure looks like.

Nicole Milano. A little mouse. Until she wasn’t. Until she stood glaring at me with a gun in her hand, her expression laced with hate.

Nicole Milano. Spy. Betrayer. My former executive assistant. My would-be assassin. An assassin who hadn’t been able to make herself pull the trigger.

Why? Why hadn’t she taken the shot?

And why the fuck am I thinking about her again?

I bob and weave as my opponent feints and lands a solid blow to my ribs, but his hook to my jaw catches air as I duck to the side. He’s a brawler… likes to exchange punches, gets in close, relies on aggression.

Which is fine by me. I’m feeling aggressive.

The sharp scents of sweat, leather, and disinfectant hang in the air, familiar and welcome. Beneath our feet, the canvas mat is scuffed and stained. Thick, padded ropes line the regulation-size ring sitting under the bright lights that hang from the metal supports of the unfinished ceiling. Around us are heavy bags, speed bags, free weights, kettle bells. Lining the cinder-block wall to the left is a row of older-model stationary bikes and treadmills. This place has no bells-and-whistles. No frills. It’s a place people come to hit things, or each other.

I slam my fist into my opponent’s gut, the hit brutal and targeted. I’m aiming for maximum pain. He hunches forward, the air forced out of his lungs on a sharp exhale. But he’s no amateur. His arms come around my torso as he clinches me, stealing a moment to recover as he draws a deep, gasping breath.

“Hurts, huh?” I say close to his ear.

“Fucker,” he says, his voice tight. He releases the clinch and dances back, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

My opponent is my brother Damian, who fully deserves an ass-kicking.

“You fucking killed him,” I snarl. “Didn’t occur to you to keep Bianchi alive so I could question him?”

In our business, knowing your enemy gives you power. My father knew Vlasta, the head of the Ivanov syndicate, even had a grudging respect for him. That meant that for almost twenty years the Russos and Ivanovs had been able to divide up Las Vegas in an amicable way, run our affairs without treading on each other’s toes.

Then Vlasta died. His brother Mikhail inherited the leadership position. And Mikhail hired Enzo Bianchi to ice my father.

Nothing amicable about that.

Damian got a confession out of Bianchi before he shot him. But a confession isn’t enough for me. I want to know every detail—when Bianchi was hired, how much he was paid, what information he was provided in regard to the hit. Because when I kill Mikhail Ivanov, I want to repeat every tiny morsel of information to him as I slice off parts of his body one at a time. Fingers. Then toes. Then ears. Then balls. Then whatever snags my interest.

He will not die quickly. He will die screaming and sobbing, drooling, begging, pissing and shitting himself. He will die like the pathetic worm he is.

“Bianchi laid hands on Alina,” Damian says, his tone like ice. “He hit her. Bruised her. Hurt her.”

“So why didn’t you just fucking beat the shit out of him, cut off his hands, and bring him to me alive?” I snarl.

“We’ve been over this. It was heat of the moment,” Damian snarls back. “You would have done the same if he hurt your woman.”

I flick a glance at my brother’s face but don’t bother to reply. My woman? I don’t have a woman.

I fuck women. I escort women to events when business interests benefit if I am seen with a date. I care about none of them. I can’t imagine caring about a woman other than my mother, who is dead. My sister, who is the precious baby of our family and who, at our father’s insistence has been trained to fight and shoot and take care of herself. And Alina, simply because she is Damian’s woman and, as such, deserves my care and respect and protection.

Don’t get me wrong. I treat women with respect. The wives and girlfriends of my employees. Their daughters and mothers. The women who work for me.

I only fuck women who give explicit and very clear consent.

But I don’t give a shit about any of them.

So, no, I do not understand why he had to kill Bianchi instead of just maiming him. But clearly, he feels he was justified.

Damian and I circle each other, breathing hard, looking for a weak point to take advantage of. I feint with a jab. Damian’s guard goes up. I step in with a right hook, going for the side of my brother’s head.

His left arm snaps up, partially blocking the blow. He steps back, trying to create a buffer zone. I follow, closing on him, smelling blood in the water.

He jabs to hold me off and follows with a straight right.

The straight slams into my chest.

Hurts like hell. But it’s only pain. Pain is finite.

I come at him with a series of jabs while he weaves and bobs, looking for his opportunity.

We’re both breathing heavy, sweat flying with every punch.

Again, we circle each other.

“With Nicole gone, who’s going to help organize Sabina’s engagement party?” Damian asks.

“What?” His question catches me off guard, but his right hook doesn’t. I block and circle.

“Nicole,” he says. “She organized your life. Your calendar. Business shit. Charity events. Parties. Everything. So who’s going to help organize Sabina’s party?”

“Sabina can do it herself,” I say, testing his defenses with a series of jabs. “Alina can help her.”

“Who’s going to make sure no one important is left off the guest list? I don’t think Sabina knows enough about who needs to be invited. She’s never shown an interest in that. And Alina definitely doesn’t know. She needs time to learn who’s who.”

He seems genuinely concerned. Concerned enough to drop his guard. I don’t take advantage of the opportunity because I see his point. An oversight that causes insult to another family or an ally would be disastrous this early in my tenure as boss.

“Fuck me,” I mutter as Damian heads to the side of the ring, grabs a towel for himself and throws one to me. The problem isn’t just the engagement party. Damian’s right. Nicole organized my life. And now Nicole is gone, hiding somewhere out there.

I’m exceptional at puzzles and games, including hide and seek. She won’t be missing for long. But that doesn’t solve the issue of who will take over her position. Fully training a new assistant will take months.

At that moment, Luca crosses the gym, catching my eye. He offers a nod and I wait until he reaches the side of the ring and grins up at me.

“Found out her father’s name,” he says. “Bruno Moretti.”

“Moretti,” I say, recognition making things a hell of a lot clearer.

“I thought her last name is Milano,” Damian says.

“That was her mother’s last name,” Luca says. He turns to me. “You think her father was one of the old Moretti clan?”

The old Moretti clan. A family that had held power almost half a century ago. But they’d been arrogant, undisciplined. They’d grown too fast, overreached, stepped on toes as they climbed too high. They’d fallen just as quickly. In the span of a single month, there had been a war fought in the shadows, one that had ended the hold the Morettis had on any power here in Vegas. They’d been left broken and bloody, licking their wounds.

And now it seems one of the children’s children is out looking for revenge on the family that took them down. My family.

“Nicely done,” I tell Luca with a smile, savoring the adrenaline surge of the hunt, one step closer to finding my little wolf in ugly clothing.