There isn’t enough booze in the world to make me consider fucking the girl in my lap.
I sigh and grab my drink, taking as big of a sip of scotch as I possibly can. Not to convince myself to sleep with her—but to make me forget she’s even here.
She’s been trying to worm her way into my bed since the moment my cousin Oleg said “I do” to his new wife. The hours since the wedding ceremony have done little to dull the girl’s enthusiasm.
I should take it as a compliment. She’s not the only bridesmaid here that’s tried to sneak off with me, though she’s damn sure the most persistent. I’m just not in the mood for it. I have more important things to worry about—after all, someone really should be watching the grass grow outside the windows of my mansion, shouldn’t they? Someone ought to make sure the paint dries, right?
Christ. Fucking shoot me.
I’m only tolerating her because I can’t be bothered to devote the energy it would take to drag her off my property. And with my staff mostly preoccupied by clean-up after the wedding festivities—in other words, carting drunk Russians into the waiting taxis—I don’t have anyone around to do it for me, either.
“Matty…” says Daniella—at least, I think that’s her name—as she tries to tilt my chin towards her. “You’re cute when you’re scowling, you know that?”
“Mm.”
She takes my grunt as an “Oh yeah?” which, to be clear, it absolutely was not. I have to hand it to this girl—she does not give up easily.
“I’m serious,” she blathers on. “Has anyone ever told you that you could be a model? You could definitely pull it off.”
I almost laugh at that idea. With all the years of training my father pushed me through to run the Morozov Bratva, modeling would be quite a sudden career change.
“I think I’ll stick with my current profession.”
She purses her lips in a pout. “Actually, I don’t even know what you do, Matty.”
“That’s by design.”
I have half a mind to snap at her and tell her to stop calling me Matty. She hasn’t earned the right to use nicknames, and even if she had, there isn’t a person alive on this planet that I’d let call me “Matty.” The thought alone makes me nauseous.
This girl doesn’t know the first thing about me. That too is by design. I work on a need-to-know basis, and people like Daniella simply don’t need to know. The more of them involved in my business, the more opportunities there are for shit to hit the fan. People are liabilities. Stupid people doubly so.
The only people that I check in with regularly are the ones that work for me. Aside from that, everyone else stays an arm’s length away. Or farther, if I can manage.
Flipping through channels on the television mounted on the wall across from us, I pass the news station. But I turn back to it after catching a glimpse of one word.
“—vigilante.”
It sends a ripple of anger coursing through me. This motherfucker again. I’ve been hearing about him for the past few weeks. He’s been causing trouble, creating panic, and pissing off the city police, who look more and more incompetent with each evening broadcast.
The news anchors, of course, are having a field day with it. They can barely contain their Botox-fused smiles as they breathlessly recount the latest escapades of the lunatic vigilante. They’ve even taken to calling him “The Justice Killer.” Apparently, he paints the scales of justice at each crime scene with the blood of his victims.
Insane and melodramatic. He must have a fucking death wish.
But, whoever the bastard is, I cannot deny that he’s making a name for himself by killing people he deems too corrupt to deserve the comforts of a jail cell. The whole damn city is glued to their screens every time his name comes up. Tonight, that includes me.
I watch the breaking news alert blare on the screen as the female anchor urges women not to wander alone at night.
I wouldn’t give a damn about this ‘Justice Killer’ if it weren’t for the fact that he has begun to intrude in places he ought not to be messing with. Places like my businesses, for starters. A few of my guys have found traces of his activity right on the outer bounds of our turf. It’s beginning to look like he’s stepping into my space.
Which means I may just have to show him how territorial I am.