Page 47 of Dangerous King (Savage Kings of New York #2)

I watch her walk back toward the house, her dress swaying with every step, Shadow bouncing around her heels like he's guarding a queen.

Mine.

I like the sound of that. She is mine.

Unfortunately, now's not the time to fully claim her. As soon as the front door closes behind her, I slam the Hummer's door shut and shift gears, both in the car and in my head.

The call was from Marcello.

Somebody tried to kill Kingsley last night.

But they didn't get the job done.

Because Marcello—smart bastard that he is—had guards on Kingsley, too.

Not just the senator's own detail, most of whom are dead.

He gave me the address of a warehouse where he's keeping the senator safe for now.

I drive fast, too fast, until the city's glitter gives way to the industrial sprawl on the edge of the Hudson.

Broken streetlights, cracked pavement, the stink of rust and wet concrete.

The location alone is enough to push all thoughts of Cat from me and put me into the right frame of mind.

The warehouse is one we've used before; it's a mirror of the one Giovanni was held in. The perfect place for talking or killing. Or both.

Marcello's guards recognize me and wave me in without frisking or asking me to hand over my weapons. A gesture of trust I appreciate. He's waiting inside, but he's not alone; Stephano is with him, and both look like they've seen a demon and are ready to perform an exorcism.

"You both look like shit," I say, stepping in, shaking hands.

"You look like you got laid," Marcello shoots back without missing a beat, making me want to punch him. I resist. Barely. On the one hand, he's right, but on the other… well fuck, this is Cat he's talking about.

Kingsley is standing apart, looking gray and fearful and bloody.

He's pacing, limping actually, up and down, lowly muttering to himself.

I notice a few bruises on his face. Marcello must have given him a good beating.

Good. He deserves it for what he did to Barbie.

He deserves a lot more, which he'll get as soon as he outlives his usefulness for us.

"Fill me in," I demand.

Marcello crosses his arms. "How about you start? Like maybe with the part where you identified Ledyanoy Prizrak and forgot to mention it."

Stephano raises a brow but doesn't comment. He doesn't have to. His cool silence carries enough weight.

Fuck, he's right. "You're right. I should've called. But in all fairness, I didn't know Kingsley was a target until now. I only got confirmation from Stephano yesterday about the man in the photo."

Marcello's eyes narrow, but he gives a brief nod, accepting the apology the way men like us do: silently and without sentiment.

I nod to Stephano. "Tell him."

In a steely voice that reminds me of a scalpel slicing through bone, Stephano fills him in, "The man in the photo with Kingsley?

His name's Alaric Bastian. At least, that's the one he uses most often.

He's got over fifty aliases that we know of, probably more.

I can't find any traceable records of him.

No prints. No financials. Just whispers.

He's not on any international database. Doesn't exist on paper.

Neither is he in any of the… darker databases I have access to. "

Marcello scoffs, incredulous. "And yet you're telling me that this Ledyanoy Prizrak was standing next to Kingsley in Manhattan last week?"

Stephano doesn't miss a beat. "If I say it's him, it's him."

I cut in before the testosterone fog gets too thick. "And if it is him, we've got a problem that makes our other problems look like schoolyard bullies."

Stephano nods once. "Alaric isn't some street-level trigger man. He's a phantom, the kind hired when the price doesn't matter and witnesses aren't an option. High-value, zero-fail. If he's in New York, someone's paying a king's ransom to shift the entire board."

"Kingsley is being targeted for a reason." I point out.

Marcello stares at the man in question, who stops his pacing to ask, "What?"

Marcello ignores him. "Kingsley was about to sign a bill. A bill that would limit, if not completely destroy, human trafficking and child porn."

Stephano snorts, "Politicians, the worst hypocrites in the world."

He's got that right. Somehow, Kingsley seems to think it's okay to beat up women but draws the line at human trafficking.

"Whatever gets the votes," Marcello adds. "So somebody, with a lot of money, doesn't like that bill and has hired… Ledyanoy Prizrak ," he rolls his eyes and waves his hands in a mock scared gesture, "to stop Kingsley before he can put the bill to a vote?"

Stephano nods, "It would seem so."

"So we need to find out who profits from human trafficking the most," Marcello nods.

"That's a long list," I say, shaking my head as names roll through it.

A very fucking long list. Kingsley's bill doesn't only affect New York; it would spread like wildfire through the whole of the US, probably further.

But what if… what if it was just somebody in New York who didn't want it to go through?

Simultaneously, Stephano and I say, "Giovanni."

For the first time, I'm not thrilled that I killed that bastard; it looks like I have more questions for him. Unlike Ledyanoy Prizrak, I don't think he's coming back from the dead, though .

The Giordanos would lose a lot of revenue.

Marcello shakes his head. "This doesn't make any sense. Giovanni wouldn't stage his own death…" Stephano and I watch him as the wheels in his head turn. "Unless someone in his family or in La Famiglia wanted it to look like Giovanni ordered the hit on Kingsley but didn't want to face the fallout."

He's right. Not that we care much about fallout in our line of business—we are the fallout. But ordering a hit on a sitting US senator would cause some raised eyebrows. Stir up things that are better not stirred up. Unless it were put to a vote, nobody would dare a hit like this.

"The old adage, follow the money , is there for a reason," Marcello concludes, "who in our La Famiglia has the most money to lose if Kingsley's bill goes through?"

I know Stephano and I are standing on the same side: against human trafficking, and it seems so is Marcello—another thing we have in common.

"Besides the obvious, the Giordanos?" Stephano asks, then answers his own question, "Edoardo, he gets a nice little percentage from it."

"So do we all," I put in. Toni's family's part is to launder the money going through; he gets a certain percentage of the money he cleans.

During that process, he invests like seventy percent of all the family's income in the stock market.

Since it would be impossible for him to track all that money, our grandfathers decided long ago to throw all that into one pot.

At the end of every month, Toni pays out the interest on the earnings.

This would result in a substantial loss for each family should the Giordano side of the business be shut down.

"So every family had a motive," Marcello concludes.

"It wasn't mine," I say with conviction. My father and I might not see eye to eye on a lot of things, but both of us were in agreement that stopping human trafficking, forced prostitution, and child porn would be worth the financial hit.

Stephano tilts his head. "I'll talk to my old man, but I don't think it was him."

Stephano's father, Gustave, is a bit more old-school.

I don't think he's a fan of human trafficking, but as long as he doesn't have his fingers in it, he doesn't mind the payout.

Now, I'm not sure that if he did order the hit, that Stephano would necessarily tell us… but that's another bridge to cross.

"I don't think Carlos is smart enough to pull something like that off.

" Marcello's purposeful reference to his father by his first name doesn't escape my notice; I expect he's trying to make the obvious rift between them clear to us.

"He's too busy trying to save his own hide from going to jail. But I'll check into it."

"Someone with deep pockets, motive, and opportunity, not only hired Ledyanoy Prizrak to kill Kingsley, but also to take my sister and make it look like Giovanni was responsible.

They were smart enough to know that I would kill Giovanni for it.

" I theorize. "They were going to blame a dead man for the fallout of a dead senator. "

"There's one flaw in this." Marcello points out. I look at him questioningly, and he continues, "Your sister was taken before Kingsley was killed."

Stephano disagrees, "Maybe Ledyanoy Prizrak was going to finish the job on Kingsley that night, or the next day, but having Kingsley detained by you," he grins at me, "put a little damper into their plans."

"Possible," Marcello agrees. "Plausible enough not to disregard it just yet. Either way, this is way too sophisticated for my old man to pull off. Besides, he wouldn't pay a billion dollars for a hit; he would order one of our enforcers to do it. No matter how messy."

"Plus, he's still trying to win Edoardo's favor back," Stephano agrees, "he wouldn't risk another fallout so soon after killing Jacomo."

I contemplate telling them that for the same reason, Toni is out. He wouldn't want to incur Edoardo's or La Famiglia's wrath right now, not while he's waiting for an opportunity to take Carlos out. I decide against it. For now. I might bring it up if they start contemplating Toni.

"Why Giovanni though?" Marcello's eyes move back to Kingsley without seeing him.

"What do you mean?" Stephano asks.

I get Marcello's drift. "Whoever ordered this could have picked anybody in our family. My dad, your dad," I look at Stephano, "hell, they could have blamed it on Toni or Carlos."

"For Edoardo or Toni, it would have been easier to blame Carlos," Marcello nods.

"Someone in the Giordano family, then." Stephano looks at Marcello and me, and all three of us have the same thought.

"Roberto."