Page 20 of Forbidden Empire (Sinful Gods #1)

Eight

A IDON

From the window of my office, I narrowed my eyes into the darkness, gaze trained on my club below. Plumes of cigar smoke curled thick in the air, catching the pulsing, electric flashes of the dance floor and swirling in the sudden bursts of colored light. The effect was disorienting. Ominous.

Something was off.

A cold shiver traced down my spine, the unmistakable sense of trouble stalking the edges of my thoughts. My gaze swept the room, cataloging the faces of those gathered, the regulars, the newcomers, the veterans of The Underworld.

I read every twitch, every sideways glance, the silent language of men who knew how to hide secrets and hold grudges.

Nights like this made me wonder why I’d ever created this place at all.

I knew the reasons, of course, but stress had a way of clouding even the sharpest motivations, of making old certainties dissolve into smoke.

My mind drifted, lost for a moment in those same blue-gray clouds, back through the years and the city streets that led me here.

Chicago seemed like another planet, a different life altogether. I was nothing like the boy I’d been then, though maybe the roots had always been there, waiting.

It made sense now, in a way. Of course, I ended up here.

A sudden rush of memory hit me, sharp and cruel: my parents, flickering through my mind like a reel from an old film.

My mother’s face, barely remembered, brought a familiar ache twisting deep inside me. She’d vanished when I was a kid, leaving behind fragmented moments, impressions that faded every year.

And yet, here I was.

My father was a different story. A different kind of gravity, pulling me off kilter, shaping the man I’d become.

The life he led. The life he surrendered to was etched into me, whether I liked it or not.

Sometimes I wondered who I might have been if he’d been a different man. If he’d wanted more than the next hand of cards, if he’d been stronger, present. If he’d been a father instead of just a man in the same house.

After my mother left, he was a husk. Hollowed out, haunted by memories I was never part of. He fought every day, but not for us, not for family. He fought for escape. For the bottle. For the flash of cash we never had.

For me? Maybe. On the good days, I told myself it was possible. But I couldn’t pretend he’d tried his best. Anyone’s best would have been better than what he gave me.

Gambling was his obsession. Not me, not his family, not even himself. That was obvious. It always had been.

I lost count of the nights he staggered home, bloodied and unsteady, black eyes and broken ribs and a terror in his eyes I’d never seen anywhere else. He was scared of the people he owed, the debts he couldn’t pay, the life he’d dragged us both into.

By the time I hit my teens, he was gone, gone, circling rock bottom and taking me with him into every pit he found.

Raising myself was brutal. But near the end, parenting him, caring for him, left marks on me no one could see. Ones that never faded.

Then, one afternoon, I came home and found him in the garage. Beaten. Bleeding. Almost unrecognizable, except for the shape of his regret.

After he died, nothing was the same. The world quieted, as if it were grieving with me, every echo of him lingering in the hollow of our rooms.

The emptiness was suffocating, but the chaos he’d left behind clung to the walls, a gnawing shadow that never let up.

The path I spiraled down after that felt inevitable. What else was there when you had nothing, when every day was a challenge and survival was a game no one won? I would have done anything in those days. Anything at all.

And I had.

It helped that I’d grown into an imposing force. I was tall, broad-shouldered, a presence that filled every doorway.

I learned how to use it—every inch of muscle, every ounce of strength, every bit of fury that burned through my veins.

Fearless. Dangerous. I wore my anger like armor, and it made me unstoppable.

Turning to crime? It wasn’t a choice.

It was a pull, a gravity I never could have resisted. The first steps were effortless, a couple of jobs for a friend’s uncle, hands dirty before I’d even realized what I was doing.

And then word spread.

People said I could get things done, that I was good at making others see reason, good at putting the right kind of fear in them.

The truth?

I rarely had to do much.

One look at me and they’d shrink, eyes wide, reading the violence I promised. They handed over cash, signed whatever paper my bosses wanted, and begged me not to come back.

Sometimes, breaking bones was necessary. Rare, but not impossible. When I had to do it, I never hesitated.

Pain was a promise, and I kept mine.

After a while, my reputation worked for me.

I’d walk in and see my mark go pale, trembling, scrambling for their wallet without a word from me. That was when I started learning the real game, the way fear worked, the way power meant more than fists.

I had power. Not just brute force, though that was always there, simmering under the surface. But something sharper.

Influence. Reputation. The threat of what I might do was more potent than the memory of what I’d already done.

I watched the true players. The men who never raised their voices, who ran empires from smoke-filled back rooms, settling scores with a look or a whispered word.

I watched their every move, every calculated silence, every glance that meant more than a shout. And I learned. Lesson by lesson. Threat by threat.

That’s how you survive.

It was a game, nothing more.

At first, I was the quiet observer, listening in on those shadowy meetings, absorbing every calculated move and razor-sharp strategy the mafia bosses revealed.

I learned fast.

This was about power, yes, but more than that, it was about secrets.

Leverage.

Blackmail was the currency, and they traded it like kings.

If you had dirt on someone, you owned them.

I watched men sit on secrets for years, never showing their hand until the perfect moment. They collected information like gold coins, stashing it away, hoarding it, biding their time.

When the CEO of the local bank was fucking someone’s wife? One filed it away.

That was leverage when you needed a loan, or a favor, or a little of both. Or if you caught wind of a politician squeezing a developer for cash? You tucked that away, too. That kind of knowledge was dangerous, priceless, and it glimmered in the dark like a sharpened blade.

So I listened. I collected. I waited. And, in time, I became one of them. The kind of man I’d spent my whole life watching from the shadows.

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 them looked 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.