Page 11 of Dangerous Men

“Oh no,” I answer quickly. “I enjoyed ita lot, actually.”

“Then… Is there a problem?”

Oh no, there’s no problem here. Except that the book he’s picked is the first in a fantasy romance series, and despite the rather misleading cover, it’s… well…

It’s smut. Borderline erotica.

Almost a third of the chapters in this book contain—on page—steamy sex scenes, and I can’t imagine how Alec is going to react when he finds that out.

“No problem at all,” I say, giving him my best customer service smile and taking his credit card. I slip a bookmark advertising our store between the pages before handing all three books back to him. “I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.”

4

ALEC

Cryptic.

I replay my conversation with her again and again in my head as my town car takes me home, Earl singing tonelessly in the front seat, loud enough I can hear him through the privacy screen. My finger strokes the red cover of my new book as we reach the compound gates and the car stops, waiting for security to clear us for entry.

Yes. Cryptic describes Sydney nicely.

She’s a mystery. One I can’t seem to get out of my head, not since that first moment I spotted her at Tony’s club. My woman in red.

It wasn’t hard to figure out where she worked with her name and the right connections. It would have been even easier if I’d enlisted Sebastian’s help, but my own sources were enough to get me the information I needed quickly. I made myself stop by her store the evening after I’d found her passed out, just to assure myself that she was okay. That she’d recovered.

I’m not sure what drove me to come back the next evening.Or the next. And now I can’t seem to stop myself from going back to her shop, day after day, trying to tease her apart. Trying to pinpoint exactly why I can’t stop thinking about her.

At least the men who drugged her drink were punished for it. Or so Viper tells me. I didn’t share with him what they’d done, or why I wanted them dead. Just like Viper didn’t share with me all the horrible things he did to them before he turned them into carrion.

When Earl pulls to a stop and opens the car door for me, I slip the books under my suit jacket, out of sight. I have time to read a little tonight, don’t I?

The answer, it seems, isno, since there’s already a problem waiting for me when I make my way through the house and into my home office.

Ashton looks up at me from where he’s sprawled on the couch, his feet on the armrest, when I enter. The cleaning bills I have to deal with because of him are getting out of hand.

“Hey,” he greets me, sitting up. He runs his fingers through his sandy blond hair and frowns at the clock on the wall. “I thought your meeting with the board ended at four. Where have you been all night?”

“Out,” I snap. I maneuver the books I’m holding under my suit jacket subtly, sliding them onto my desk and covering them with a stack of papers to keep them hidden from sight. Ashton doesn’t seem to notice. “Don’t you have a fight tonight?”

Officially, Ashton retired from professional MMA fighting three years ago, when he formally accepted a position with my company. But it doesn’t stop him from setting up a new match every few months, drawing up hype and a massive crowd of people willing to pay top dollar to watch him in the ring. And, since I own the casinos that host these Fight Nights, I have no problem cashing in on his continued popularity.

Crowds will pay big money to watch a man who looks likeAshton beat the shit out of someone. Something about his movie-star good looks and his boyish smile really gets them going.

Ashton just shrugs. “I had Jacob cancel it and put someone else in the ring for tonight. We have a problem, boss.”

Great.

A muscle in my jaw tics as I sit, leaning back in my leather office chair to stare my brother down.

“What problem?” I ask, my voice dark.

“The payments from Golden Rings were short this month,” Ashton tells me, nervously bouncing his knee. I know immediately he’s not talking about front-of-house payments, the ones we report to stockholders and our board of advisors. He’s talking about the sorts of deals that go on under the table, the ones that aren’t exactly legal. “So, I sent Sebastian to go check it out…”

Of course he did. Sebastian handles all our accounts, legal or otherwise. I wait patiently for Ashton to continue.

“And my instinct was right. Giovanni, that fucker, has been keeping a cut for himself. When Seb confronted one of his thugs, he said it was protection money that Giovanni’s been paying to someone else.”

My eyebrows raise in surprise.