Page 16 of Legacy

For two days, I’d struggled to stop thinking about Avra. I wasn’t obsessed, far from it. A pair of nice tits and a fine ass were nothing to get crazy about. I had my pick of gorgeous women.

Then why couldn’t I get Avra Vitalis out of my mind?

She’d even crept into my dreams last night. How the fuck had I allowed that to happen?

She was beautiful. That was an undeniable truth—Avrawas stunning, especially when angry. More than once, I envisioned how she’d looked the night we first met. So collected and calm, her chin tipped up as my father tried to dismiss her.

Then there was how her long brown hair cascaded over her shoulders as she verbally sparred with me outside. She wanted to make it clear she wasn’t weak. I understood that from the moment I laid eyes on her. However, my focus returned over and over to her plump lips, firm and begging to be kissed.

On paper, she was an ideal one to call my wife, well pedigreed and beautiful. Only a fool would reject the offer of marriage to her. But that was what she wanted everyone to see.

That was more than the truth when she said I didn’t know her. Soon, I’d know everything about her and her secrets. I planned to learn what she hid under that façade of the strong, cold, unbendable woman.

I’d glimpsed a moment of her fire as she held her own on the patio. I couldn’t wait to spar with her. She waved a red flag to a feral bull, and I wanted to coax out all the passion or anger she locked up inside her.

Maybe I was a sadistic bastard. Then again, my only distractions came in the form of work. This would be a pleasant change to the mundanity of my life.

I gritted my teeth, thinking of what I needed to do today for that aspect of my world. An hour earlier, I’d received information that one of our people had hit a woman on the street, with numerous witnesses. I had my men grab andhold him for me to deal with. This dumbass represented the Xenos name. His behavior reflected on us. To keep a territory, those who lived in it needed to respect us and believe we protected them. We protected the weak, not abused them.

Of course, the fucker worked for Ozias. His people were the ones causing the problems. How many lessons would I need to teach before they learned what I would and wouldn’t tolerate?

Particularly with this grievance. I was a hard man. I killed and beat plenty. But striking a woman would sign a fucker’s death warrant.

Even Ozias knew better than to smack any woman around. And he’d learned that lesson the hard way when I caught him raising his fist at my mother. I was only fourteen then, but I nearly matched his size, rivaling him in strength. The second I saw him strike my mother, I punched him directly in the nose. Our guards had rushed forward but stayed uncertain of what to do, considering the situation.

If my mother hadn’t pleaded for me to stop, I would have punched him over and over until I broke more of his bones. He must have seen something in my eyes that day. Maybe it was the lethal killer I would become, but from that day, he and all those who worked for the Xenos family knew my stance on this wrongdoing. As far as I was concerned, only useless and insecure men hit those who were physically weaker than they were.

“Where is he?” I asked a soldier outside the holding area of the Xenos compound.

“In the cell on the end. He ran as soon as he heard we were looking for him.”

Walking into the cell, I paused and then shook my head. “Marcos, what the hell have you done?”

This made absolutely no sense. Marcos was a loyal member of the family’s operation. His entire family worked for the Xenos enterprise.

“Explain,” I ordered the soldiers, keeping him there. “He has five daughters. This is the last thing he would do.”

“Several witnesses corroborated that it was him,” one replied.

“There’s more to this incident. What are you leaving out?”

“If I may add, sir,” the other soldier said, “his behavior hasn’t been very normal lately.”

I stared at Marcos as he hung his head, not even looking at me. “How so?”

The soldier continued. “After his wife died in the territory hit last year, he lost control. His behavior has been erratic, and our supervisor thinks he’s been struggling with grief. Lashing out and slipping up.”

I sighed, looking back at the defeated man who couldn’t find the courage to face me.

I understood grieving the loss of a loved one, but losing control? Over a woman?

Then again, the one man I respected, Pappous Nikko, once told me real men treasured and protected their wives. Without them, a family cannot continue.

I approached Marcos, hurling him up to look directly into his eyes. “Tell me what happened.”

He hung his head. “I shouldn’t have hit Anna.”

I punched him just for the sheer fact that he’d abused someone weaker than him. His blood splattered onto my shirt, making me shake my head. I had to stop wearing new clothes when I came here.

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