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“They call us liars, cheats, morally reprehensible, and still shamelessly attend our functions and revel in the benefits. It’s appalling, the blatant hypocrisy displayed by these…these certain individuals who undermine my leadership. Look at them, the bloody bastards.”

Across the room, a middle-aged woman dressed like old money and cigarettes, leaning by the grand staircase, was looking at our table. Beside her, a young journalist took mental notes, her press badge tucked between the folds of her evening gown. The woman by the staircase caught Jeffery’s gaze and raised her glass with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

And with a smile even less friendly, Jeffery’s acknowledgment was icier, just a gesture with the tip of his glass toward her, before he turned back to us.

A scowl pressed deep lines at the corners of his mouth, the wrinkles on his forehead making an ugly fold when he rolled his grey eyes. He chugged down the sparkling white in his glass with the speed of light and grimaced like it was a mix of whiskey and lemon.

“That’s Ambassador Ruiz,” he pointed out.

We didn’t ask, but I’d known the man for more than a decade. Long enough to know he was going to keep talking….

“She thinks we don’t know it, but she’s fucking Governor Langley. Oh, and Senator Phil. Do I pity their wives? Maybe. Sometimes.”

…and talking.

“When the lights are on, you’d see her smiling at me like an early Santa with presents in May. But when the lights go off, the bitch has a butcher’s knife hovering behind my back.”

In the midst of the music and low, chatty buzz, I took a look at him. A good look at him, past the facade of the respectable man in the Ralph Lauren Purple Label Kent suit, past the cloud of irritation and false piety he wore as a mask, till I stared at the sly bastard with a skunk for a soul.

The seasoned politician had celebrated his sixty-seventh birthday recently, but his appearance told a different story.

His eyes, which were once bright and full of life when we’d first been introduced in my office, now seemed sunken, as if a weight bore down on him. His mouth hung limp, the streaks of gray in his hair dominated the shades of brown, and his skin appeared paler than usual. He looked like an eighty-year-old ball of pale beef.

“Tomorrow….” He was still talking. “One of ‘em—could be Ruiz, or any one of them here—will likely perpetuate further falsehoods through their stupid blogs to spread the toxicity of misinformation that I’m already trying to deal with.”

I was cautious not to spill a word and instead clenched my fingers and gritted my teeth. Having Damir constantly give me the “check” with his eyes wasn’t helping, either.

113 degrees Fahrenheit.

With one thumb caressing the flute and the rest of his fingers curled around the crystal stem, Damir threw his head back to finish the last of his champagne and chuckled dryly. “I’ve been trying to stay in my lane, but I guess I can’t help it. What’s got you so riled up? It’s your evening. You’re one of those who put this together. You should be enjoying the night.”

Maybe it’s the fact that he’s a snake.

“Just some idiots trying to cause a scandal with my personal shit from the past,” Jeffery said. Then, he quickly added, “But it’s not going to mess up anything on our end, I can assure you.”

And by “our end,” the fool meant his business with us. Of course, it wasn’t going to mess up anything. Nobody was stupid enough to cause trouble on my turf and not be prepared to face dire consequences.

Jeffery Smith was one of the big dogs in politics and had worked with us the longest—precisely fifteen years since the Bratva gained his support.

It’d been good. More sunny days than stormy clouds working with him.

He’d kept his end of the bargain, offering some level of protection, giving blind spots for operations, and covering our tracks, and we’d kept ours, giving him money’s worth for a service well done. Business had been running smoothly, and before tonight, I’d worn a huge maniacal smile on my face.

That was until a little birdie perched on my window this morning with some irritating news.

“You should feel proud, Smith. You’re accomplished, living the life others would literally kill for. Take this place, for instance. Blackwood is one of the finest five-star hotels in the state. Making a hell load of money is bound to piss some people off. But it doesn’t matter what shit others are spewing; your eyes should stay focused at all times.”

I shared a brief look with Damir for two reasons. One, we both knew he was buttering up Jeffery on purpose. And two….

Let’s just say Damir was giving the bastard a heads-up at the temperature shift in the room because he’d been seated right there, at the other end of my desk, when that birdie perched and knew I wasn’t going to let it slide.

149 degrees now.

Jeffery scoffed. “Don’t patronize me. We’re talking about power, and you’re finding hotels fancy.”

Safe to say, the old man didn’t catch the hint flashing like a neon sign.

“I’m just saying you’re not that bad. People talk shit all the time, and some others just want to kill you. But….” Damir caught my gaze, and his brows creased slightly before he returned his attention to the pining politician. “What exactly are the people saying?”

“You haven’t seen the papers or heard the news?”

Damir shook his head, and I killed the cold retort on my tongue—a ready reply to Jeffrey’s stupid question. My patience was running thin, and I was reaching the boiling point pretty fast. The needle had crossed 170 degrees and was speedily rising toward 200.

I knew what they were saying. Damir and I both knew. We knew why there was an uproar amongst the people and what the pressure from the media had caused him to do.

But the reason for his betrayal didn’t matter to me. A betrayal was a betrayal.

Jeffrey, on the other hand, looked paler than ashes when his bony fingers combed through his hair. He sighed. “They’re calling me a pedophile—which I am absolutely not. I fell in love…. We were in love—”

Talk about the saddest shit I’ve ever heard. Tell me a man’s stupid without telling me a man’s stupid.

“She was turning eighteen in two years, and the plan was to keep our heads low until then. But some nosy journalist blew our cover. PR tried to contain it, and for ten years, I’ve been good. Somehow, it’s resurfaced, and the heat surrounding it is a lot worse than before.”

“What did you expect? This is the Generation Z age, where everything is blown out of proportion on social media. Different narratives, stupid hashtags. Christ, you were fucking a sixteen-year-old.”

Damir didn’t hide the disgust in his tone or the clear depth of darkness in his eyes. His scowl was deeper now than his reaction the first time we heard the scoop, and his tightened grip on the flute told me he wanted to break a tooth maybe as much as I did.

“Yeah, I guess you wouldn’t understand….”

No shit.

Jeffery chuckled dryly and tilted his head from our view to hide the wallowing sadness in his eyes. “Some fanatics are calling me the worst of God’s creation to be in the seat of power.”

“But aren’t you?”

Jeffery’s head perked up, and Damir just about froze and then sighed.

It was the first time I’d outrightly spoken since we arrived at the shitty party—the first words I’d said to Jeffrey since the start of the evening—and I thought I saw a flicker of fear cross his eyes before he masked it with the facade of over-confidence and annoyance.

“Aren’t I what?”

I inclined in my chair with a shrug. “The worst of God’s creation to be in the seat of power?”

A scowl settled on Jeffery’s face, and he looked offended. Anger blazed in his gaze when he leaned forward, and when he hissed in a low growl, the brewing heat in my chest might have as well passed the 212-degree mark for all I cared.

“Says the devil incarnate himself, Miron Yezhov.”

“At least I don’t pretend to be some saint.” I tilted my head and kept eye contact. “And I don’t fuck children, idiot. A real man wouldn’t even have the thought, fucking son-of-a bitch.”

“The hell is that supposed to mean? You, Miron, know better than anyone else that in our line of work, the number of saints we have is closer to the negatives, but I try to maintain clean hands where I can.”

And I officially blew beyond the limit of a steamer.

Intense anger coursed through my veins, and it felt like a raging inferno had come alive, consuming every fiber of my being. My heart pounded in my chest, pumping adrenaline-fueled blood through my arteries like a firehouse, threatening to burst free in seconds, and I drew in short, ragged breaths while the air thickened.

“Damir, the bottle.”

Beside me, my lieutenant sighed. “Miron, don’t.”

“The fucking bottle, Damir,” I seethed through my teeth. “I need a drink.”

Reluctantly, Damir passed the capped bottle of wine, and my fingers curled around the cold neck, waiting for that golden opportunity to pour myself a drink.

Jeffery’s eyes were on my face, with nostrils flared and his teeth gritted like a wild animal. The bastard wasn’t focused, which was good.

“Maintaining clean hands, you said? Was taking an eager jump on Victoria Clarisse’s offer one way to do that last night?”

The look of shock on his face was all the confirmation I needed to know the bastard accepted the offer to team up with the Italians—for a hefty price, of course. He would provide them with information on the Bratva’s business, open new channels for them to expand their reach, and they’d protect him and help quell the pressure from the media, erasing the problem as if it didn’t exist.

The legs of my chair noisily scraped the floor, dragging some attention as I rose to my feet.

Never had I been more pleased that I towered over someone with an intimidating height, and I relished in the sick satisfaction of knowing I was about to pass judgment on another man.

“You thought you could be the pro and play on two fields? Function under the Familiga and Bratva coverage, and I wouldn’t fucking find out?”

Jeffery opened his mouth, no doubt ready to spit some flimsy excuse I wasn’t ready to hear.

But before a word could form on his tongue, I swung hard and didn’t flinch when I felt the base of the bottle connect with hard skull.

Two women close by released earsplitting screams at the sight of the politician’s bloodied head dropping on the table and the rest of his body growing limp.

Slowly, starting from a teasing trickle, a thick flow of crimson rolled from his head, matting the gray strands of hair to his scalp, and seeped between the fancy gold tablecloths. He lay there, eyes closed, unmoving, unconscious. And yet, I thought I didn’t hit hard enough to knock him out of his body for the rest of eternity.

Damir rubbed between his eyes and sagged his shoulders, more exhausted with putting up with me than anything. But I didn’t care. Not about him, the mass hysteria that suddenly erupted in the room, or the number of multiple people screaming for security at once.

Unscrewing the cap on the bottle, I tipped it over and watched the red liquid slosh over his face, creating a fine mix with the dark hue of red that pooled underneath his cheeks.

“Hypocrites irritate me, Jeffery, and I hate fucking traitors.”