Page 107 of Raphael (Belles & Mobsters 5)

Message received, motherfucker.

It was a message by Santiago Tijuana. He came after me for taking something he considered his. And now that he actually met Sailor, he wanted her even more. He was the type that fucking thrived on getting the unobtainable.

Motherfucker.

He was trying to draw me out by striking my favorite club.

“I’m sorry.” Sailor’s hand came to rest on my bicep. “Did anyone get hurt?”

I clenched my teeth. “Yes, two men and a woman.”

It fucking killed me to know innocent people lost their lives on my account. I should have had better security on the place. Better guards. Better fucking something.

“Can I do something?” she offered.

“Yes, stay here. On the island.”

She stayed with me as I got dressed, then slipped on her own dress. Then she walked me down to the helicopter pad and I couldn’t help but feel my chest warm. She wouldn’t know that my mother always tried to see her husband out, and wished him a safe day.

He’d laugh at her face and send her back in. Until one day she stopped seeing him off.

I stopped and turned her to face me, then cupped her cheeks and brought my face close to hers.

“Be safe, okay?” she murmured, brushing her nose against mine.

I brought my lips to hers and kissed her hard. She tasted so fucking sweet. It was like giving water to a man dying of thirst.

“I’ll be safe.”

Diego and Caine approached us, and the pilot already powered up the helicopter, the powerful engine roaring it to life. “I have to make sure their families are taken care of.” And hunt down the Tijuana scum.

In less than thirty minutes, I was in Miami. Just as I landed, another one of my casinos went up in smoke. Yeah, the fucking heat was on me.

“Order all my businesses to shut down,” I gritted the order. “We can anticipate there will be more bombings, and I don’t want men and women dying on my account.”

Tijuana was a fucking idiot if he thought I’d take it lying down. It took me one hour, two phone calls and three men to get the location of Santiago’s drug shipment details. And looky, looky, it was happening today.

So as another building of mine, empty, went up in smoke, so did the motherfucker’s ten million dollars’ worth of drugs.

Payback was a bitch, and I’d gladly lose a hundred million over again just to see that Santiago bitch cry. I had never seen a man cry so many fucking tears.

Waaa. Waaa. Waaa. Motherfucker.

Diego, Caine, and I watched from the top of the next door building pulling his hair and cursing at the sky.

“You can dish it out but you can’t take it, can you bitch?” I murmured, watching him from my tower.

It was time I took the motherfucker down. Maybe his brother would be a better leader.

It worked for the Santos Cartel, didn’t it?I thought with a sardonic smile.

ChapterForty-Six

SAILOR

Tension crept through every cell of my being. Ever since Raphael and his men left expeditiously, I had been on edge. I roamed the mansion, from room to room, desperate to distract myself. Gabriel was fully engrossed in his game and I didn’t want to distract him. The last thing I wanted to do was pass my panic on to him.

I attempted to work on the editorial I needed to do, but I couldn’t concentrate enough to even finish a sentence, never mind a paragraph. I wished Raphael had told me everything he knew. I wished he was here. With us. I always felt we were safer with him here.

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