Page 23 of Corrupted Heir (Mafia Kings: Corrupted 1)

I walked up to his desk, the glass crushing beneath my Cordovan shoes. I stopped just short of his desk. He probably had an interior designer who’d told him the glass would make the room feel bigger. It was smudged with fingerprints.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” I said. “I don’t think you’re in the position to be asking me any questions right now.”

“What do you want? Money? I can get you money!” he whimpered. The buttons of his shirt looked like it was just about ready to pop off, while the loose skin of his turkey neck draped above his yellowed collar. If I didn’t have a stomach of steel, it would have made me gag.

I laughed, the sound so loud and boisterous it filled the room. Over the years, I had learned that it was one hell of a tactic to make people uncomfortable. Miller slicked back his graying hair with sweaty palms.

I wiped a fake tear from my eye when I stopped laughing. “Money? You think I want your filthy money, you piece of shit?”

My men walked up on either side of him while two stayed behind. Marco, my baseball bat boy, eyed the glass desk with such ferocity like it was a piece of meat dangling over a lion’s head. He really liked smashing things, and that’s why I’d gotten him that baseball bat with his name embossed on its sweet spot. It read “Marco” in cursive, and it was the last thing many men saw before it connected with their faces and knocked their lights out.

“Then what is it?” Miller mumbled. He was terrified, like a little Chihuahua, I would have said, but that would have been a disservice to Bullet’s recent bravery.

“You’ve been a bad, bad boy, old man. Word around town spreads fast,” I said.

“W-what? Is this about that incident with the waitress? I already handled that with HR!”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. How long was his list of sins, really? “Our women talk. And they’ve had a lot to say about you.”

His eyes widened as reality set in.

“Good boy. It’s finally clicking, isn’t it?” I said.

He nodded his head limply.

“How many women have you beaten since you started using our services?”

“Your services?” Bradley said. “Fuck. You own the brothels, don’t you? Look, man, I can pay you for the damage. How much? Ten thousand? Twenty? Fifty? Whatever you want, I just need this to be kept silent.”

He thought he could buy me? What a fool. Nevertheless, I nodded to Marco to stand down just to see what Miller would do.

He stumbled across the room and yanked a painting off the wall. His fingers shook as he fiddled with the combination on the cheap-as-shit safe concealed there. His password was one-two-three-five-four. Dumbass.

Miller desperately pulled out stacks and stacks of hundreds. I could see the sweat that had beaded up across his forehead drip down his temples and over his bushy eyebrows. He tried to wipe the sweat away with one hand while he fumbled to gather the stacks of Benjamins in his arms. Some fell to the floor as he made his way back to us and dropped it onto the desk.

“H-here. Is this good?” he asked.

I picked up one of the stacks tied together with a rubber band. My fingers felt slimy just touching his dirty cash, and I couldn’t help but wonder how many women he’d exploited to get it?

I titled my head left to right, though I’d never had any intention of taking his filthy money. “No.”

Bradley visited our brothels many times, beating and torturing our women, but he spaced it out, rotating between dozens of brothels all over Queens, thinking he could disappear and never get caught. But I did.

The women who worked at our brothels deserved respect. The work was tough enough, and having the likes of Miller hurting our women wouldn’t stand. We didn’t operate our brothels like others did. We took a cut of the money, of course, but we paid for the women’s healthcare and taxes. In the eyes of the law, our girls were formally employed, and they would never be thrown in a cell because our grounds were heavily protected—thanks to Douglas.

I nodded at Marco to give him the go-ahead. I appreciated men like Marco who could understand what it was I wanted without having to say a word.

With a sinister smile, he raised his bat above his head and smashed it down into the desk. Miller backed off from the glass, his eyes wide with fear. If he didn’t want this to happen, he shouldn’t have been such a depraved piece of shit.

“Bad deeds don’t go unpunished in this town,” I said. “You’ve done too many wrongs for us to turn a blind eye. A fistful of dollars won’t fix the sick shit you did.”

“Please, man! I-it’s just my wife and I h-have been having p-problems for years… and I-I need something for… my needs. Y-you can understand that as a… man, right?” Miller said.

How dare he compare himself to me? Miller wasn’t a man; he was an animal, and rabid animals needed to be put down.

Two of my men pinned him against the window that overlooked the club. He tried to fight it, but they were far too strong for him.

“The only way to make this right is to get rid of disgusting vermin like you. Repeat offenders don’t get cured overnight.” I paused, looking him over. “I don’t care that your wife doesn’t want to screw you. She has good reason not to, considering the shit you’re into. I’m just glad you don’t have any daughters.”

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