Stolen Heir: An Enemies To Lovers Mafia Romance (Brutal Birthright Book 2)
Stolen Heir: Chapter 11

MIKO

For five days I watch the Griffins tear the city apart, looking for Nessa. My men report back to me how the Griffins threaten, bribe, and search, without finding a shred of evidence.

Only five people know where Nessa is hidden: Jonas, Andrei, Marcel, Klara, and myself. Out of my dozens of soldiers, only the most trusted have any idea what I’m up to. I’ve warned each of them that if they whisper a word of it, even hint it to a single friend or lover, I’ll put a bullet in the back of their skull.

I’m thrilled to see that the Gallos are equally frantic to find Nessa. Dante, Nero, and Sebastian Gallo are all hunting for her, and Aida Gallo most of all. It’s almost touching, how two families who were mortal enemies just months ago are now united in their desperation to find the youngest of their number.

Or it would be touching, if their alliance wasn’t the exact thing I’m determined to crack.

I drink it all in. I love that they have no idea if she’s alive or dead, or where she might have disappeared. Not knowing is the torture. Death can be accepted. But this . . . it will gnaw at them. Drive them into chaos.

Meanwhile, Nessa Griffin goes mad with boredom. I watch her via the cameras in her room. I see her pacing her cage like an animal in a zoo.

The starvation is a problem. She was already skinny to begin with—she doesn’t have the fat stores to withstand weeks of hunger. I can’t allow her to fuck up my plans with her petulant protests.

So I order Klara to get Nessa dressed for dinner. I intend to tempt her with food, and if that fails, to forcibly stuff it down her throat.

I wanted to see her in person again anyway. As a figure on my phone screen, she amuses me, but that can’t compare to the exquisite bouquet of fear and fury that she can provide in the flesh.

When Jonas drags her into the formal dining room, I see that Klara has done her job a little too well. I’ve only seen Nessa in dance attire or school clothes, hair pulled back and face freshly scrubbed. When dressed to impress, Nessa Griffin is fucking stunning.

A few days without food have made her willowier than ever. The green silk dress clings to her frame, showing her every breath, down to the sudden intake of air when she spots me waiting for her.

Her light-brown hair floats down around her shoulders in waves, longer and thicker than I expected it to be. It reflects the light just like the silk dress, just like her glowing skin and her big green eyes. Every bit of her is luminescent.

But incredibly fragile. The thinness of her neck, her arms and fingers, is frightening. I could snap those bird-like bones without even trying. I can see her collarbones, and her shoulder blades when she turns. The only part of her with curves is those big, soft, trembling lips.

I’m glad to see that while Klara has painted Nessa’s face, she’s left those lips bare. Pale pink like a ballet slipper. A raw and innocent color. I wonder if her nipples are the same shade, underneath that dress.

I can still see the pale brown freckles scattered across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. They’re sweet and childish, in contrast to the surprisingly dark eyebrows that animate her face like punctuation marks. Her eyebrows swoop up like bird’s wings when she’s surprised, and contract plaintively when she’s distressed.

Even dressed like this, at her most mature and glamorous, Nessa looks incredibly young. She’s fresh and youthful, in contrast to this house where everything is old and dusty.

I don’t find her innocence attractive. In fact, I find it infuriating.

How dare she walk through life like a glass sculpture, begging to be smashed? She’s a burden on everyone around her—impossible to protect, impossible to keep intact.

The sooner I start the process of dismantling her, the better off everyone will be.

So I make her sit down. I make her eat.

She tries to strike her ridiculous bargain with me, and I allow it. I don’t care if she wanders around the house. She really can’t escape, not with the monitor around her ankle. It tracks her at all times, everywhere she goes. If she tries to break it, if it stops reading her pulse through her skin for even an instant, I’ll be alerted.

I’m curious to see where she’ll go, what she’ll do. I’ve grown bored of watching her inside her room.

Buoying her up with this tiny victory will only give her further to fall. And if she actually starts to trust me a little, if she thinks I can be reasoned with . . . all the better.

Constant cruelty isn’t how you worm your way inside someone’s head. It’s the mix of good and bad, give and take, that fucks with them. Unpredictability makes them desperate to please.

So after we’ve eaten, I take Nessa into the ballroom. I’ve watched her dance several times now—at Jungle, at Lake City Ballet, and trapped in her room, in the space next to the four-poster bed.

Dancing transforms her. The girl who blushes and can’t meet my eye is not the same one who lets go of herself under the influence of music.

It’s like watching a possession. As soon as I take her in my arms, her stiff and fragile body becomes as loose and liquid as the material of her dress. The music surges through her, until she’s thrumming with too much energy for one tiny frame. She’s vibrating under my hands. Her eyes glaze over and she doesn’t seem to notice me at all anymore, other than as an apparatus to move her across the room.

It makes me almost jealous. She’s disappeared somewhere that I can’t reach her. She’s feeling something that I can’t feel.

I whirl her around faster and faster. I’m good at dancing in the way that I’m good at everything—quick and coordinated. It’s how I work and how I fight. How I fuck, even.

But I don’t get pleasure out of it like Nessa does. Her eyes close and her lips part. Her face bears an expression usually reserved for sexual climax. Her body presses against mine, hot and damp with sweat. I can feel her heartbeat through the thin silk; I feel her nipples stiffen against my chest.

I dip her backward, exposing the delicate column of her throat. I don’t know if I want to kiss her or bite her—or wrap my hands around her neck and squeeze. I want to do something to yank her back from wherever she’s gone. I want to force her attention back to me.

It’s odd. I usually feel irritated by women’s attention. I hate their neediness, their clinging hands. I use them for release, but I make it very clear there will be no conversation, no affection, and definitely no love.

I haven’t kissed a woman in years.

Yet here I am, looking down at Nessa’s closed eyes and her parted lips, thinking how easily I could crush that delicate mouth under mine and force my tongue between those lips, tasting her sweetness like the nectar of a flower.

Instead, I touch the ivory column of her throat. I run my fingertips down her breastbone, feeling skin so soft it might have been born yesterday.

Her eyes snap open and she tears herself away from me, an expression of horror on her face.

Now she’s looking at me. Now she’s seeing me—with complete revulsion.

“Don’t touch me!” she cries.

I feel a bitter stab of satisfaction, seeing her wrenched back down so abruptly. She thinks she can float up to heaven whenever she likes? Well, I’ll drag her all the way down to hell with me.

“Go back to your room,” I tell her, taking pleasure in dismissing her at my will. She’s my prisoner, and she better not forget it. I might give her the run of the house, but that doesn’t change our dynamic. She eats when I say. She wears what I say. She comes when I say. And she goes when I say.

She’s only too happy to leave. She runs away, the hem of the green silk dress flowing behind her like a cape.

Once she’s gone, I expect to return to my usual state of apathy. Nessa is just a blip on my radar—a momentary jolt that disappears again just as quickly.

But not tonight. Her scent lingers in my nostrils—sweet almond and red wine. My fingertips can still feel the softness of her skin.

Even after I pour myself a drink and gulp it down, I still feel agitated and aroused. My cock is uncomfortably stiff against my leg, remembering the feeling of Nessa’s slim thigh pressed against it, with only my trousers and a very small amount of silk between us.

I leave the house, and I drive over to Jungle, weaving through the nighttime traffic. I drive a Tesla because it’s the perfect stealth wealth car. It looks like just another black sedan and draws no attention from the cops, despite costing me $168,000 fully loaded. The acceleration is like a drop off a roller coaster. My stomach lurches as I whip around the corner, utterly silent.

I park behind the club and enter through the back door, nodding to the bouncer as I pass.

I head straight for the main bar, pushing through the crush of drunken patrons. Petra is slammed with drink orders. She abandons them when I jerk my head toward my office, telling her to follow me.

She’s wearing a bikini-style top that barely contains her tits, and cutoff shorts that expose the bottom half of her ass. She’s got that septum piercing I detest, as well as the ones in her ears, eyebrow, and bellybutton. I couldn’t give a shit about any of it. She could be wearing a gorilla suit and I wouldn’t care, as long as it provided access to the part of her I need.

“I didn’t think you were coming in tonight,” she purrs, following me into the office.

“I wasn’t,” I say shortly.

I close the door behind us and yank down the front of her top, making her tits spill out. Usually I like watching them bounce around while I fuck her, but tonight the sight of all that flesh just seems . . . excessive.

I flip her around and bend her over the desk instead. The backside isn’t any better. Her big, round ass is turning me off in a way it didn’t before, the same with the gamey scent of her sweat and her heavy perfume, which doesn’t cover up the fact that she’s been smoking. None of that bothered me. Now all of a sudden it does.

My cock hasn’t caught up with my brain, however. It’s still raging from earlier, springing free of my pants and jabbing between Petra’s asscheeks.

“You’re ready to go,” she remarks in a pleased tone.

Sometimes it takes a while for her to get me “ready to go.” Sometimes I’m not ready at all, even after thirty minutes of her sucking my cock, and I send her away without finishing.

Tonight, I’ve got enough pent-up aggression to fuck the entire lineup of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. Without any foreplay, I slide on a condom and I ram my cock into Petra from behind, fucking her into the desk. Every thrust makes the desk jolt against the floor. It sends ripples across the flesh of Petra’s ample ass.

She’s moaning and urging me on, as vocal as a porn star. About as creative as one too—her cries of “Oh! Oh! That’s it! Harder!” sound scripted. Plus, they’re getting louder by the minute.

“Shut up,” I growl, gripping her hips and trying to focus.

Petra sinks into sullen silence.

I close my eyes, trying to recapture that sense of anxious arousal that brought me over here, that desperate need for release.

Instead, I remember the feeling of my hand on Nessa’s bare back, sandwiched between her warm skin and her cool, silky hair. I remember how gracefully she moved across the floor, as if her feet weren’t even touching the ground. I picture the pleasure on her face, eyes closed, and lips parted . . .

I explode inside of Petra, filling the condom with an excessive load of cum. I grip the base of it as I withdraw, not wanting to risk spilling a single drop of it inside of her. I’ve seen the way Petra drains men dry of tips—I don’t even want to know the price she’d demand for an abortion.

Petra stands up and pulls up her shorts, a smug smile on her face. That’s the fastest she’s ever made me cum, so she’s feeling pretty proud of herself.

“You must have been missing me,” she says, playfully drumming her fingers on my chest.

I step out of her reach, dropping the condom in the trash.

“Not even a little bit,” I reply.

Her smile falls off her face and she scowls at me, one tit still hanging out of her top. It looks lopsided and udderish, and makes me feel queasy.

“You know, you should be nicer to me,” she says angrily. “I get plenty of offers from other guys. And from other bars, too.”

I should never have fucked her more than once. It gives women the wrong idea. Makes them think you came back to them out of something more than convenience.

“This is over,” I tell her. “You can keep working here or not.”

She stares at me in shock, mouth hanging open.

“What!?”

“You heard me. If you want to stay, get back behind the bar. And fix your top.”

I hold open the door for her, not out of chivalry, but to get her to leave faster.

I can tell she wants to scream at me, but she’s not stupid enough to do it. Instead she storms out, without putting her breast back where it belongs. Oh, well. The customers will enjoy it.

I sink down in my chair, feeling moody and discontent.

Fucking Petra didn’t give me the release I craved. In fact, I feel worse than ever—stressed and unsatisfied.

I head back out into the club, kicking a group of obnoxious finance types out of one of the VIP booths so I can sit there myself. I have the waitress bring me a bottle of Magnum Gray Goose, chilled, and I slug down a triple shot.

Not ten minutes later, something fantastic happens. Callum Griffin walks through my door. He’s dressed in a stylish dark suit as per usual. But he’s not looking nearly as well-groomed. His face is unshaven, his hair in need of a cut. Dark bags hang under his eyes.

The last time I saw him up close, he was strung up from a meat hook while Zajac went to work on him. He doesn’t look much better tonight. Torture of the mind is as effective as torture of the body.

I know he doesn’t have a weapon on him, having come through the metal detectors at the door. Still, I hope he’s stupid enough to attack me. I’d love to show him that his escape from the slaughterhouse was nothing more than a fluke.

His eyes sweep around the room, searching. As soon as they land on me, he strides toward me, knocking several people out of his path with his shoulders.

He towers over me, his hands clenched into fists. I stay right where I am, not giving him the courtesy of standing up to meet him face-to-face.

“Where is she?” he demands.

I take a long sip of my drink.

“Where is who?” I say blandly.

Callum’s face is rigid with rage, his shoulders like stone. I can tell he wants to jump on me. He may only be held back by the fact that Simon has just appeared at my side, drawn by the clear signs of impending confrontation. Simon raises an eyebrow, asking if he should intercede. I lift an index finger off my glass, telling him to wait.

Spitting out each word as if it’s painful, Callum says, “I know you have Nessa. I want her back—NOW.”

I lazily swirl the ice cubes around in my glass. The music is too loud to hear the sound they make, chinking together.

Keeping the bored expression fixed on my face, I say, “I really have no idea what you’re talking about.”

The club is dark, but not too dark to see the pulse jumping in the corner of Callum’s jaw. I know he wants to hit me more than he’s ever wanted anything in his life. His struggle to deny that impulse is beautiful to behold.

“If you hurt her,” he hisses, “if you so much as break one of her nails . . .”

“Now, now, Alderman,” I say. “Threatening one of your constituents in a public place can’t be good for your approval rating. You don’t want a scandal so soon after your election.”

I can tell he wants to rage, and threaten, and try to break my neck.

But none of that will help him.

So, with Herculean effort, he regains his control. He even tries to humble himself. Of course, for an arrogant prick like Callum Griffin, his humility is shallow and short.

“What do you want?” he growls. “What will it take to get her back?”

There are so many answers I could give him.

Your empire.

Your money.

Your life.

He’ll pay it all, and he still won’t get Nessa back.

She’s mine now. Why should I ever let her go?

“I wish I could help you,” I tell him, taking a last sip of my drink. I set down the glass and get to my feet, so Callum and I are exactly eye to eye. He has a little weight on me, but I’m faster. I could cut his throat right now, quicker than blinking.

But that would be too easy, and too unsatisfying.

“There was a time when we could have helped each other,” I tell him. “My father came to you, like you’re coming to me now. Do you remember what you said to him?”

Callum’s jaw jerks again as he grinds his teeth together, biting back everything he wants to say.

“I turned down his bid for a property,” he says.

“Not quite. You said, ‘What could you possibly offer me?’ I’m afraid we’re on the other side of the coin, now. What do you have to offer me, Griffin? Nothing. Nothing at all. So, get the fuck out of my club.”

Callum lunges at me, wrenched back by Simon and Olie, my two biggest bouncers. Watching Callum Griffin be dragged out of Jungle and tossed out on the street, while dozens of club-goers gawk and record the whole thing on their phones, is one of the most delicious moments of my life.

I sit back down in the booth, finally feeling that sense of catharsis I’ve been looking for.

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