Page 11 of Dangerous Men (Fortune City Mafia #1)

SEBASTIAN

I’m surrounded by idiots.

“Can you take that stupid thing off?” I ask, glancing over at where Ashton is lounging on the couch, taking up the whole damn thing all on his own. As usual. “It’s an eyesore.”

Ashton just shakes his head with a laugh, running a hand over the front of his new shirt. The words printed on the front are stretched so tight across his chest they’re not even legible. A grotesque cartoon something above them looks like it was flattened by a truck.

“No way, it was a gift from our girl,” he says, grinning like an idiot. “I might never take it off.”

“Excuse you?” Alec says, pivoting in his office chair to stare him down. “Since when is she ‘our girl’?”

His tone is openly hostile, but he’s not fooling either of us. For whatever fucked-up reason this is what he’s always preferred. What both of them have always preferred. One woman shared between the two of them. Whatever possessive streak he has with this new one is hardly going to change that.

“Since I saw her and fell head over heels in love!” Ashton groans, rubbing his face.

“And come on, you can’t tell me she isn’t down for it.

With that stuff she likes to read? Fuck, I bet she’s thinking about it right now, imagining all the things the two of us could do to her. All the ways we could take her…”

Fucking idiots.

“ Focus ,” I snap. “Viper will be here any minute, and she’s not going to be anyone’s girl if he finds out about her, right? So, cover it up or take it off .”

Grumbling, Ashton finally does as he’s told.

Smart move. Our final brother isn’t exactly right in the head, and if Alec and Ashton are the type to fixate on something, it’s nothing, nothing , compared to how obsessive Viper can get.

They’ll want to keep him as far from her as possible until they’re finished with her and have moved on.

Right on schedule, a few seconds after Ashton pulls on a massive hoodie to cover his ridiculous shirt, the door flies open, and in he walks. Murder on two legs. Almost as big as Ashton, hair cut right to the scalp to showcase all his scars, Viper stalks into the room.

Viper was never quite right, even back at the orphanage where we all grew up together. He was always a little too violent, a little too close to having a full-on meltdown over nothing at all.

Years of working for the East Coast mafia in Empire City with us under Dante just made him worse. Far, far worse. And now the creature that stands before us isn’t so much a man as he is a loaded fucking gun. Thank God we’re the ones with our finger on the trigger.

Viper doesn’t say anything. He enters with a grin, showing too many teeth, and walks right up to Alec’s desk before dropping something heavy on top of it .

Giovanni’s decapitated head lands on the wood with a wet thud.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Ashton swears, standing up from the couch and turning away from it.

He grips his hair in his hands, bending forward at the waist, and I wonder briefly if he’s going to be sick.

For all his fighting, for all the violence he’s endured and inflicted, Ashton never really developed a taste for blood.

Not like some of us.

Alec barely reacts. He stares into Giovanni’s cloudy gaze for a long moment before looking up at Viper.

“Did you get a name?” he asks.

Viper laughs, slow and soft at first, letting it build until he’s practically hysterical.

“I got a name!” he squeals. Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out a voice recorder.

A guttural scream fills the room when Viper presses play on the device, and this time, even Alec flinches. Ashton swears again, voice low and nearly inaudible over the sounds of the recording. I don’t move, don’t even blink.

I’ve seen Viper’s work up close and personal so many times it doesn’t even faze me anymore.

“Please!” the man on the recording shrieks. “Oh God, please, I’ll give you anything.”

“This is the best part,” Viper assures us, smiling. His eyes are wild and black, like a shark’s. The sound of loud buzzing whirs to life on the recording, and the screaming intensifies. I shoot Viper a glare, recognizing the sound of a bone saw.

My bone saw.

“I cleaned it. Don’t worry, Doc,” he assures me with a wink.

Idiots, every single one of them.

“Viper, is all this really necessary—” Alec begins, reaching for the recording device. Viper just laughs, holding up a finger for him to wait.

The screaming goes on for another ten seconds. Long enough that I’m sure, this time, Ashton is going to be sick.

And then…

“ DANTE!” Giovanni’s disembodied voice screams from the recording. “Oh God, he said his name was Dante. That he knows you from way back. Please, I beg you?—”

The recording stops.

“ Dante!” Viper coos, throwing his arms wide in excitement. “Told you I got a name! And what a fucking name it is!”

But Alec isn’t looking at him anymore. And Ashton isn’t looking for the waste bin.

They’re both staring at me.

The symptoms of a panic attack are remarkably similar to a cardiac event. So much so that patients often confuse the two. A racing heart and tightness bordering on pain in the chest. Sweating. Numbness or tingling in the hands and arms. A sense that you are, at this very moment, about to die.

I don’t let any of it show on my face as my brothers watch me.

“He’s lying,” I hear myself in a voice completely devoid of emotion. Inside, I want to fucking scream. “Dante is dead.”

Even as I say it, a sickening voice inside me asks, But what if he’s not?

What if you fucked up?

The look on my brothers’ faces makes me wonder if they’re thinking the same thing.

“It’s a trick,” I hear myself say. “We’ve been actively encroaching on his old territory over this last year. Someone is trying to scare us away, that’s all. Trying to make us think he’s back.”

It’s smart. Something I would do. Dante was the face of organized crime on the East Coast for decades before I put a bullet in him. He was feared. Untouchable.

The perfect phantom for someone to use if they wanted to scare us.

We had hoped that the mess we’d left Dante’s organization in had hobbled any loyalists that bastard still had.

Hoped it was over. And when Alec started taking over Dante’s territory in Empire City piece by piece over the last year with no pushback, it felt like those hopes might be proven true.

That we could finally reclaim the kingdom that should have been ours.

Alec as the heir apparent, back to take his throne.

Turns out I’m a fucking idiot, too.

“You think this is a takeover?” Alec asks me carefully. “Someone making a play for our organization?”

I shake my head.

“I think… I think someone is testing the waters,” I say, willing myself to believe it. “They’re trying to see if we’re as strong as everyone says we are. Trying to see if we can be scared away. A first strike. They’ll be looking for any blind spots and how to exploit them next.”

“Well,” Alec says, coming to his feet. The head on his desk stares up at him blindly. “Let’s make sure they don’t find any, shall we?”