Page 37 of Rise of Temptation

Sal and I quickly look, and, sure enough, he’s walking through the room like he owns the place. “That motherfucker,” I curse. “Does he have a death wish?”

“Don’t pretend you’re not excited,” Sal teases. He knows my penchant for spilling blood. Everyone does.

“I’d be more excited if I knew I could kill him.” I look at Enzo, and I know there’s a hopeful look on my face.

“No,” he says, his voice stern and his answer final.

“But I can hurt him, right?”

He nods, then says, “Maybe a few teeth would teach him his lesson. Or a couple of toes.”

I smirk. Poor Emilio… The cocky ones never have the mental fortitude to back up their tough-guy attitudes.

As a group, we greet him in the middle of the lounge. He didn’t bring anyone with him, which works out great for us. His expression when he sees us makes me want to just shoot him and get it over with. The guy is a weasel and an asshole, and the world would be better off without him. What all his rich, well-connected friends see in him, I’ll never understand.

“I wouldn’t look so confident, if I were you,” I advise.

Sal adds, “You really are a dipshit.”

Enzo is—as always—the picture of professionalism. “Would you like to join us upstairs for a drink?” he asks. “We have some things to discuss in private regarding your brief hiatus from the club.”

Emilio accepts the invitation. On his way past us, he turns his poisonous smirk on Sal and me, as if he thinks that Enzo isn’t in agreement with us. I turn to Sal, and he returns my smile. “That asshole thinks Enzo’s about to beg for his business, doesn’t he?”I muse.

“Looks like it,” he says with a laugh. “Come on, I don’t want to miss all the fun.”

We hurry up the stairs after them and arrive in the office just in time to see Enzo open the door that leads down to the basement. My basement. Sal may technically own the club, but everyone knows the basement is my domain. And he only owns it on paper; it’s a Family business.

Emilio looks through the doorway, realizes there are just stairs leading down, and panics.

“You motherfucker,” he shouts at Enzo as he turns and tries to make a break for it. Unfortunately, he didn’t realize that Sal and I joined them and are standing in his way. I grab his left arm, Sal grabs his right, and we turn him around before shoving him towards the open door and the dark stairs that probably look eerie to someone being forced down them.

The entire way down, we hear endless variations of “You can’t do this to me!” and “Do you know who I am?” and “You’ll never get away with this!”

I roll my eyes and glance over at Enzo. “How many redundant cliches can spew out of one mouth?”

“I think he watched too much Scooby-Doo as a kid.”

When we reach the basement, Sal kicks Emilio in the shin and pushes him towards the chair in the middle of the room. “Relax, dumbass. Despite my best intentions, you’re not going to die. We just need to talk.”

Emilio looks like he wants to believe what Sal is telling him, but he’s also familiar with the reality of a secret torture chamber in the basement of a mafia-owned club. His panic ramps back up when Sal starts tying him to the chair, and I step in to start the conversation before he makes himself pass out.

“The reason you’re here, Emilio, is you broke the rules. Several of them, actually. First, you asked for a specific girl—knowing what her boundaries were—and took things too far, ignoring her safeword.”

“That slut was asking for it,” Emilio sneers through his panicked breathing.

Sal chuckles, then turns to Emilio with insincere sympathy in his eyes. “You poor, stupid man.”

“Second, you were told to leave and stay gone until you were asked to return. Yet here you are, uninvited.”

“I can go wherever I damn well please! You think your little group of criminals scares me? Have you met my friends?”

Enzo huffs a laugh. “You can keep your friends. People like that will turn on you at the faintest whiff of a scandal. And you know what causes a really good scandal?” He waits for an answer, but Emilio just glares at him. “A grown-ass man who likes to wear diapers while a paid escort fucks him in the mouth with a giant tentacle dildo. No one in a position of power wants to be associated with that.”

Emilio’s fear and anger turn to bewilderment. “What the fuck? I don’t—”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s true. That’s the nice thing about a scandal. A rumor will do all the damage I need it to do. I wonder where you’ll be once your so-called friends abandon you?”

“You think you’re so fucking—”

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