Page 6 of Dangerous Men (Fortune City Mafia #1)

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, is no , 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 like Ashton 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.

“Protection money?” I ask. Now that’s interesting. That sounds like someone is trying to hustle in on our turf. On my turf. “Who’s he paying it to?”

“We don’t know yet,” Ashton says. “The guy Doc questioned didn’t say.”

“Because he didn’t know, or because he wouldn’t talk?”

Ashton gives me a long look, and I retract the question. If Sebastian couldn’t get it out of him, then the guy clearly didn’t have the information. There’s less than a handful of people on Earth who could hold up to Seb’s interrogations and not talk .

And no one on Earth who could hold up to our other brother.

“Send Viper to have a chat with Giovanni,” I tell Ashton. He pales, but nods. “And figure out who can take over at Golden Rings quickly. I don’t need the board sniffing around if I don’t have a replacement who won’t run the damn thing into the ground.”

We can’t afford to have one of our top casinos out of commission, even for a few days, without attracting the board’s attention. It’d be best if we could just slot a new player in to run it the second Giovanni is out of the picture.

And once Viper gets him, well…

There won’t be enough of Giovanni left to fill a bucket, let alone run a casino.

“I’ll let Doc and Viper know,” Ashton confirms, coming to his feet.

“Good. Thanks,” I tell him as he heads toward the exit. “And close the door behind you.”

Ashton sarcastically salutes me, and the second the door shuts behind him, I reach out for the book that made Sydney hesitate, the one with the red cover. Maybe I have time to solve one mystery tonight.

Settling back in my chair, I open it and start to read.