Page 50 of Forbidden Empire

When I was twenty-two, I made it to Vegas with a couple of buddies, and the place got under my skin in an instant.

The lights, the nightlife, they were the obvious draw. But damn, the women. Everywhere you turned, gorgeous girls in barely-there dresses, hips and legs and laughter in every direction, and for a kid in his early twenties, it was like something out of a fever dream.

But I wasn’t just wide-eyed and wasted, even if the liquor, sex, and drugs had done their best to drown out everything else.

I was always watching and learning. It hadn’t taken long to see where the real game was being played.

Vegas was a city in motion, always building and expanding. Casinos and chain restaurants fought for space with local dives and little tourist traps.

The possibilities felt endless, and the rules? They bent for anyone with the nerve and the bankroll to make things happen.

With the right connections and the right cash, you could do just about anything. And make a killing doing it.

All those casinos, strippers, and showgirls were smoke and mirrors for the tourists. The real deals happened out of sight, in back rooms and smoky lounges, where fortunes changed hands and nothing was ever as simple as it looked.

Vegas was a wild city. And I wanted to own it.

I'd earned my reputation in this city the hard way, every promise kept, every threat delivered. Sometimes that meant showing my hand, brutal and fast, making sure no one ever doubted the violence I was capable of.

It was important, and they needed to see it, remember it, let it haunt them.

For the most part, I pulled my strings from the shadows.

Blackmail. Hidden surveillance. Alliances forged in fire and blood, all of it mine.

I was almost untouchable now, even by law enforcement.

Almost, but not always, and right now that razor edge of possibility had my nerves humming, alive and burning with adrenaline.

The apprehension in my veins was real, raw.

Not fear. A warning from instincts sharpened on the streets of Chicago, where hesitation meant death.

I’d learned to trust my gut above all else. And tonight, my gut screamed danger.

Ares waited at his post, a silent sentinel at the top of the stairs just outside my open door. His presence gave me a thin thread of comfort, but it wasn’t enough, not tonight.

My fingers tightened around the snifter of whiskey, knuckles white, as I scanned the swirling sea of Las Vegas’s elite below me. Faces blurred together, polished and hungry. None of themlooked out of place, but that only made the tension coil tighter inside me.

Maybe it was just Esme winding me up, making me restless. Or maybe, beneath the surface, something darker waited to strike. Either way, I was ready, always ready, to answer violence with violence. No hesitation. Never again.

She was only a few feet away from me, just past the wall in the war room that adjoined my office, and I was still rattled from our last encounter.

Having her leave me raw, nerves exposed, my mind in chaos. Being near her was like injecting poison and adrenaline, a rush of hate, lust, and confusion so sharp it almost took me to my knees.

If I didn't fucking need her as much as I did, maybe I would have regretted ever finding her at all.

The burner phone buzzed in my pocket, insistent. I slid it out. Ares shot me a look, brows raised.

RHEA: You can’t protect what doesn’t belong to you.

I stared down at the screen, turning her words over, trying to pin down what the hell she meant.

There was a lot I was protecting these days, and whether any of it belonged to me was debatable.

It could have been a message about anything.

“What is it, boss?”