“We have different definitions of food.” I didn’t really drink beer. The only reason that was in the fridge was because she’d added it to the list. Beer was for pussies, but watching her drink it was a turn-on. I never saw her drink it when we first met, but now that I was getting to know the real her, I realized she preferred it.
“If you’re the kind of man that doesn’t care about anything, then why be so disciplined?” She sat on the couch and crossed her legs.
“Because a man should be disciplined. I put my life on the line every day. Can I do that if I’m not in the best shape I can possibly be? Women like to get under me for a reason, not just because I’m rich.”
“But don’t you pay for sex?”
Sometimes I wondered if she was jealous. She mentioned my other hookups often. “I don’t pay for sex because I have to. I pay for it because it’s easier.”
She took a drink of her beer as she stared at me.
I stood in the entryway and loosened my watch from around my wrist. I pulled my gun from the back of my jeans and tossed it on the counter. The ring on my left hand was heavy, but I never took it off. It was much too valuable to leave lying around. “I’m gonna shower, then I’ll be gone for most of the evening.”
She was about to take a drink, but she lowered the beer back to her thigh. “Where are you going?”
I didn’t bother answering her question. I would come and go all the time, and I refused to explain my whereabouts to someone I owned. She had no rights, no opinion. She was like a dog. Her job was to stay home and wait for me to come home. I walked into the hallway.
“Uh, hello?”
I looked at her over my shoulder.
“Are you going to answer me?”
I hardly gave her a glance before I kept walking. “I don’t answer anyone. That includes you.”
3
Balto
I sat on my throne with a scotch in my hand. The men drank at the tables around the bar, laughing and talking while the strippers danced around on the stage. Music played over the speakers, and the lights were low. We turned our bar into a trafficking auction one minute and then a strip joint the next.
I puffed on my cigar and felt the burn all the way to my lungs. I was happiest when I had a drink in one hand, a cigar in the other, and a woman on my lap. All I had to do was wave euros in the air and a woman would be at my beck and call. But I already had a woman waiting for me at home.
I didn’t owe her anything.
I would never owe her anything.
But after having her bareback, I wanted her even more than before. I didn’t want a different woman to ride my dick with a condom minimizing the sensation. I didn’t want another woman on me at all—even if she was clean.
“What the hell happened to you?” Heath appeared at my side, having just walked in with his team. In a dark blue shirt and black jeans, he looked better with every passing week. The scars of jail slowly started to fade away. Like a weed that hadn’t had rain in so long, he’d finally quenched his thirst and took over the entire garden. The men didn’t struggle to tell us apart, because I had a skull ring and he didn’t. That iconic piece of jewelry set us apart. The ring I wore casually on my hand was worth a billion, at the very least. Only a truly brave man would wear it constantly instead of hiding it away.
“Meaning?” I looked at the stripper closest to me on the stage. In nothing but a little black thong, she danced around because she’d been paid a fortune to do so. Anytime we booked them for a wild night, they called in sick at their other gigs and jumped at the chance to entertain us. They were paid handsomely, enough to buy themselves an apartment in the city.
Heath pulled up a wooden chair and sat beside me. The topless bartender put a drink in his hand without even asking him what he wanted. “Thanks, sweetheart.” He gave her a playful tap on the ass as she walked away.
She turned around and stabbed him with her eyes. “Look, don’t touch. And you better tip me good for that.” She flipped her hair and marched off to help the other guys.
She was surrounded by the coldest criminals in the country, but she wasn’t afraid to hold her ground. That took balls—the kind of balls I admired. I drank from my glass and continued to watch the stripper, staring at her without really looking at her. Once you’d seen as many tits as I had, they all looked the same. But Cassini had a very impressive rack. She had big tits that were so perfectly shaped, they seemed fake. But I’d squeezed them enough times to know they were real.