he leaves, they come over—the harem girls. Two of them, one a dark-skinned Sicilian girl and the other a light-skinned Asian woman. Both are attractive enough, but the way they look at me stirs absolutely nothing. It’s like they’re robots preprogrammed to be attracted to me. But really, it’s just my money they desire—my position, my name.
“Where are you tonight, baby?” the Italian purrs. She makes to put her hand on my arm, stopping when I shake my head. “Come back to me. I know how to make you happy, honey, if you just let me.”
I shake my head, sip my whiskey, and nod down at the floor, where some of my soldiers have just entered. “Go,” I say.
They leave. I sit back and watch them go.
But, absurdly, all I see is Hazel.
The light shifts and there she is, dancing for me. But where these women wear vacant expressions or simpering smiles, Hazel scowls at me, goads me, taunts me, tempts me. She thrusts her hips and, in my fantasy, teases the hem of her dress ever higher on her thighs, showing me pale, untouched flesh desperate to be claimed…
This is ridiculous. I should be able to banish this woman, this stranger, from my mind. Nobody has left an impression on me like her, not once, not ever. Not even Jasmine, all those long years ago.
Hazel is different.
I knock back my whiskey, annoyed at myself. No, she’s not different. She’s just a woman and the sex was just sex. Going to the rec center the second time was a mistake—one I will not let myself make again.
But even as I promise myself this, I feel myself weakening. The memory of her body heat under my palms calls to me. The wavy craziness of her red hair, the spark in her green eyes, the tightness of her sex, the way she doesn’t just say what she thinks I want to hear… It’s a siren song, tempting me towards a horrific end.
Fuck that.
I leave the club by the back door. I don’t want anybody to see me go.
I’m glad the mansion is sleeping when I get home. I have never much minded sharing a home with my mother and sister, but a man like me needs a space of his own. Silence. Solitude. These are the things that give a man time to harden, to think, to conquer.
I strip out of my suit and change into my gym gear, and then lock myself away at the rear of the mansion. I punish my body with a grueling workout. Every time I feel my mind straying to Hazel, when it should be fixed on Fergal and the war, I do another set. I do ten sets of bench presses, increasing the weight each time, and then jump straight into a back-shredding pull-up workout. I drop down straight into weighted squats, enjoying the feel of the bar digging into my neck.
I play Vivaldi on the sound system, conjuring memories of when Father used to grin as he slid his records into place. The classical music calms me somewhat.
I work out for hours, far longer than I usually do. I drench my shirt and stare at myself in the wall mirror, the fabric clinging to my chest, so wet that it delineates the muscles in my belly. The veins stand taut on my forearms like steel cables.
But I keep going. Because she’s still there, lingering, a demon who won’t quit, a hellcat I can’t get enough of.
Another hour passes as I blare the music and keep going. It’s almost a relief when the butler buzzes through on the intercom. The music pauses automatically as he announces that Nario is here to see me. I glance at the clock: three in the morning.
I wander over to the intercom button. “Send him in.”
He enters as I’m drying myself off with a towel. My body has that trembly ache that comes with too much exercise. I savor it. What I don’t savor, however, is the look on Nario’s face. He always looks a little pained, being that he’s a natural worrier, but now he looks like he’s been slapped.
“What is it?” I ask coldly.
“That electronics shipment we talked about,” he mutters. “A small deal, nothing too important, but you know my policy, the fewer people who know—”
“The better.” I nod. “Me, you, Maury, Durante, and Santo. So?”
“So, it was hit,” Nario says. “The Irish have seized it. At precisely the right time, at precisely the point where it