Page 3 of The Kingpin's Call Girl

Chapter Two

LUKA

Is that scorn I detect? This is something new.

Who looks at me like that?

It gets my blood racing.

This girl—it’s like somebody snatched her from a quaint farmhouse, poured her into a garishly tight red dress, plastered makeup all over her fresh-scrubbed cheeks, and styled her light brown hair like a doll.

The look is perverse in a way I can’t tear my attention away from.

I want to peel everything away from her and get to the heart of her and the heat of that scorn.

And then there’s her glittering gaze. That gaze is the key thing about her. Incandescent. Silently raging at us. At me.

She thinks people won’t notice.

But I see everything. I always have.

Also, ‘greetings? ’

But what am I doing? This outraged little whore in this completely wrong outfit is not where I need my attention. A king doesn’t lower himself to notice every trembling peasant in his kingdom.

I settle back into my chair and put my attention on the situation at hand .

The men are nervous. They have questions. Why did the new boss—the kyre— come down the mountain with his attack dogs to sit with the low-level guys? And most importantly, who will I kill next?

I like nervous people. Nervous people are stupid people, and stupid people show me things they shouldn’t. I like to see those things.

I swirl my drink, getting a sense of the men as they bluster on.

I took over a month ago, and I’m still no closer to finding out who carried out the killings all those years ago down in South America. But I will. There’s nowhere in this world they can hide from me.

Dardan says something, and Orton and I exchange glances, having both come to the same conclusion: Dardan doesn’t have the information we need. He’s the kind of man you send for a threat, not the kind my brother would’ve trusted with secrets. A sledgehammer, not a lockpick.

I turn to Gianni and ask him about the coke delivery. He gives me just enough information to be useful and not waste my time, so he could be somebody to pull out and question.

And then there’s the girl.

The harder she rages, the hotter her gaze grows. Is it possible this is her act? A lot of the whores adopt a persona for the job, and she could be going for the angry ingénue. Then again, it really does seem like she’s trying to keep her face blank and simply failing.

Which makes her all the more fascinating.

Compelling.

I want to unwrap her. Provoke her. Mark her as mine.

She’s all wrong. And she’s fucking riveting.

She could be up to something, of course. People who seem wrong usually are. She could be a plant from a rival clan, a snitch, a girl desperate for money, or a newbie drug addict.

But it doesn’t matter what she is. Nobody touches this organization, and nobody touches me—not anymore .

I focus back on the chat about the uptown crew—not easy with her blazing so hard with... what? Judgment? Anger? What is it about this girl on her high horse, so fucking above it all? Well, that’ll change at the hands of a guy like Dardan.

Something unpleasant churns in my gut.

And really—the outfit. Good god.

So wrong. So fucked up.

Though sometimes a man wants fucked-up things. And I always take what I want.