Page 107 of King Of Order

‘Who the fuck are you?’ Nicco whispered, hands scrabbling at Rio’s foot.

My enforcer kept calm even as his voice dipped to a dangerous timbre. ‘Doesn’t matter who I am. What matters is that you leave and never return.’

The room shrank, the air thick with tension.

Nicco raised an eyebrow, rocked by Rio’s audacity. ‘You think you can talk to me like that? Do you even know who I am?’

‘I know exactly who you are,’ Rio replied. ‘And where I have you. Under my fuckin’ heel.’

His growl was steady and deadly.

My man pressed his foot further and slid it up toward the floored man’s neck and bearing down until Nicco choked. ‘I also know you don’t want to make this worse for yourself.’

Nicco’s breath hitched, his chest rattling with a strangled gasp.

Rio stood there, unyielding, his gaze cold and unblinking as Nicco struggled under his weight.

My assailant’s arrogance slipped, and his eyes fluttered as realization kicked in.

It was faint, a fleeting betrayal of his inner terror, but I saw it.

If pushed, Rio would cut off all his air.

The strength in Rio’s stance, the calm violence simmering beneath his steady expression, commanded a reverence even Nicco’s conceit couldn’t defy.

Unable to tear my eyes away, I kept them on the pair, my pulse hammering in my throat, my fists clenched tight at my sides.

This was Nicco Barbieri, the Roman mobster whispered about in back alleys, who left chaos and scars in his wake.

I’d heard he reduced men to shivering wrecks as they cowered at his cruelty or before they died with a bullet in their spine.

Now, he lay trembling beneath the scourge of Rio’s relentless gaze, stripped of the power he had always wielded so ruthlessly.

Rio eased the pressure enough for Nicco to suck in a lungful of air.

For a moment, a glimmer of Nicco’s old smugness flickered back to life. His lips twisted into a sneer, though it was weak, hollow.

His hands, smeared with blood, lifted in a show of submission he would never live down.

‘Fine,’ he rasped, his voice scraping out, raw and strained. ‘I’ll leave.’

His eyes, dark and seething, found me, and the chill in his inflection carved right through me. ‘This isn’t over, Chiara. You still owe us.’

Rio scoffed. ‘She might, and I’ll need to look into it before I let her give you anything,figlio di puttana. If I find the deal was less than wanting, you won’t get a cent; I’ll deliver the message myself, but in the meantime, never harass my woman ever again. Touch her, and you die,porco giuda. Are we clear?’

Nicco nodded, his face red humiliation as he wriggled under Rio’s heel.

So satisfying.

Rio lifted his leather soles off with a suck of his teeth.

Allowing Nicco to scramble off the floor.

The Roman mobster, rattled, shaking, unwieldy, straightened his Milan-tailored suit, closed off the buttons, and stumbled out.

His hurried footsteps, full of unconcealed rage, faded away as he raced to the front entrance as if some invisible force compelled him against his wishes.

The door swung shut behind him, and the silence that followed was deafening.

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