Page 56 of Kings of Violence

There could be a baby growing inside her right now. A son for me, to carry onmylegacy. I wouldn’t hide any child of mine, no matter who the mother was.

“Keep it that way,” my father says. “I don’t want any headaches about inheritances or succession.”

Like he hasn’t told me this a million times already. He was happy to create “messes” with his mistress, Roman is spreading his seed, but me? I’m not allowed to follow their examples.

My father hangs up, leaving me sneering.

I’ve never made any demands of him. I work for him, I do what he and my brother ask, but have I ever asked for anything? I wouldn’t ever expect him to care about me and mine.

“Did you enjoy the conversation?” I snap at Sierra in English.

“Nope,” she says breezily, though I can see the way her cheeks heat a little more. “It wasn’t interesting at all. Except for the part where you mentioned my family. I’d love to know what was being said there so I can make my own comments.”

I smirk at her. “I told him about how tight your cunt is. That the Winters’ bunny was more than worth the trouble.”

Sierra looks at me with a horrified expression, but then she scowls. “You’re making that up. Ugh. Why do the three of you have to be such total pricks?”

“I am making it up,” I agree. I force myself to put the talk of children out of my mind. “I would not entice my father or brother to fuck somebody who belongs to me.” I move over to the couch and sit down next to her, placing an arm around her shoulders. “We will devise a plan to approach your fathers’ contacts. Don Marino, you said?”

She’d managed to figure out the code in the notebook within afew hours, though she was still working on decoding the entire thing — or so she’d said. I’m not sure whether she knows more than she’s letting on.

“He was my father’s contact in Benton City,” she says cautiously. “Well. One of them. Don Marino works for Victor Corvi, and I guess that circumvented the usual mafia politics? I’m not really sure.”

“Don Marino does not work for Corvi,” I correct. “He has his own group. They are allied with Corvi, but I suppose the options are limited now.”

There had been a big shoot-out two years ago, which upended a lot of the existing power structure in the Benton City underworld. I’ve done my best to keep track of how things are going there since then.

I know that I can’t afford to piss off Victor Corvi. Don Marino, however, is less insulated. He’s getting old, too, and if he’s been dealing with the Winters Gang, he might have been going around Corvi.

The politics give me a headache, but this is something I can do better than Roman. Roman doesn’t like keeping track of all the alliances and friendships. He expects everybody to act exactly as he dictates—and maybe it works for him, because he has Father backing him directly.

“What deals was your father doing with Don Marino?” I ask Sierra, peering at the notebook.

“A few large shipments over the last six months—er, the last six months from when this was last updated,” she says, flipping the page. “God, this thing was so laughably easy to decode.” She shakes her head. “I think he was working as a go-between, but things get a little muddled. It’s not like Sean wrote essays about the intricacies of their relationships, but yeah. Weapons, it looks like. The usual. I don’t think Marino was doing anything with drugs or human trafficking.” She grimaces.

“Does it mention the shipment they got from us?” I ask. I almost tell her exactly how many guns are involved, before I realize that she isn’t somebody I should be trusting with that information.

Strange, how easy it is to forget that she’s the enemy.

She nods, turning a few more pages. She points to a section of nonsense on the page, rattling off more details of the shipment than Winters should’ve known. She looks up at me, head tilted to the side as she says, “Well, that’s interesting.”

I quirk a brow at her, gesturing for her to continue, and she turns to the very end.

“Apparently, this shipment had been stolen from them,” Sierra says with a small snort. “They got it back, then they intended to sell it to Petrov.” Her smile falters. “But that’s the last entry.”

I frown at that information. “They lost the shipment? But got it back in the end, just in time for the feds to interrupt the deal and arrest your brother and Petrov—the boss.” I shake my head, not sure what to make of that.

None of it makes sense. I have to assume Sean Winters was particularly incompetent in his dealings, and that’s how the feds caught wind of it—and somehow, William Winters died in the process.

“I never did find out how your father died,” I say, rubbing Sierra’s shoulder. “He wasn’t at the meeting with Petrov, or he would have been arrested too. Unless the feds killed him?”

Sierra’s lips thin into a line, and for a moment, she’s silent. She closes the notebook. “I don’t know,” she says tersely. “Kyran only told me that he was dead. He always had some excuse not to tell me, and it’s not like the feds were forthcoming about it.”

“And Sean didn’t say anything?” I press. “He must know something.”

She shakes her head. “They’re probably trying toprotectme.” She tries to pull away from me, but I tighten my grip around her shoulder and pull her closer. “They were always doing that. Still are, like I’m some fragile little doll who can’t ever know the truth about anything.”

“Because they care about you.” I scoff at myself for saying something even resembling comforting, but maybe I can understand this desire to not be on the outside. After all, hadn’t my father sentme here, to America, to keep me away from all of his real business? He hadn’t even put me in charge. No, I’d been underPetrov.

---