Page 35 of King of Depravity

I pull a burner from my glove box, which rings almost immediately, but it isn’t Triston, it’s Gris.

“Hey.”

“How messy?” he asks, without even a hello.

“Pretty clean, but I’m working on all the details now. Waiting on Triston to call me back.”

“Patch me in, and Killian…” Gris pauses for a second. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me,” I answer roughly into the phone. “I should have done it sooner. I didn’t get what it meant to have another man…” I clear my throat.

That’s when I get the beep that Triston is calling me back. Merging the calls, I say to Triston. “Gris is here too.”

“So is Mason.”

Mason chimes in. “Do I need security on this call?”

“Yes.”

Thirty seconds later, Jake Kincaid picks up. “It’s three in the morning,” he rumbles into the line.

“We’re all aware of the time,” Gris is going to take points on managing grumpy men, apparently, which is good because the Kincaids are his in-laws. And he’s better at it than me anyway.

“What’s happened?” Jake asks.

It’s Mason who speaks, “We need a cleanup before the morning workers clock in at Chateau Blanc.”

“I could have used some notice,” Jake replies. “Was this a planned thing?”

I grip the steering wheel tight as I arrive at my place, pulling my car into my garage. “He punched my girl in the face tonight,” I spit into the phone. “It was payback.”

Silence meets my words. Is it the vitriol in my voice, or the fact that I have a woman I call my girl?

“Chloe?” Triston asks.

“We can get into the details later if you prefer,” I answer.

“It’s all right, Kill, tell everyone now.”

“She works at the piano bar the Russians frequent. Alexander Ivanov has developed an interest in her and when you interrupted him last night as he was trying to pursue her…”

Triston snarls into the phone. “He was sending a message to me.”

“Chloe’s face looks like ground meat,” I’m not trying to make him feel worse. Just explain. “I could not allow him to hurt another one of our women.”

Jake coughs. “I’ll get it taken care of, don’t worry. I’ll have the body removed?—”

“He was drunk and his head hit the toilet. It’s such an unfortunate accident.” My voice takes on the necessary note of sympathy. I know no one is recording this call on burner phones, and that Jake has taken all the necessary precautions in terms of security, but like I said, I’m thorough.

“And if anything should come back my way,” I blow out a breath through my nose. “I know what my job is. My one request is that Chloe is cared for. She’s interviewing at Temptation tomorrow afternoon. She’s an artist and an art history major and she struggles to make ends meet.”

“Understood,” both Triston and Mason say at the same time. I smile. I’d be fine in prison as long as I knew Chloe was cared for.

I briefly wonder when that happened.

When did I go fromI want to make her dirty, toI care about her feelings, toI’m concerned about her future.

But it doesn’t matter tonight.

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