Page 60 of Deviant Knight

Seeing her eyes round and her face pale when she saw her uncle from the window of her hospital room, it was clear he terrifies her.

And now I want to know why.

She wasn’t a virgin, that much I knew from reading her medical record and after being inside her silken walls, I know it for a fact.

I also know that Liam O’Donovan is a sick motherfucker who sells pleasure and allows other like-minded rich fucks like himself to abuse women for his entertainment and theirs.

A year ago, my father received a video I planted on his computer. When I began digging into the police commissioner’s background, I found it among other deleted files on his personal computer.

I don’t know when the recording was taken or even who the teenage girl is. It was the sound of her screams, her pleading to the New York Albanian boss to stop raping her that gave away her youth. I knew she was young and the greasy dirtbag hurting her was not anywhere close to the same age.

Admir Kovaçi has been the reigning American-Albanian boss in New York City since he was twenty-two. That was nine years ago, making him thirty-one at the present time. I know the clip is at least a few years old. Two years ago, he had the Albanian coat of arms tattooed across the top of his right hand. In the video, that tattoo wasn’t inked on his hand.

When I found the recording, I figured Owen was using it as evidence to bring a case against Kovaçi, but as I dug deeper, I discovered the third voice on the video belonged to his brother Liam.

His image, nor the girl’s face were ever shown, but he was in the background like a director on a movie set and they were his actors.

I thought sending it anonymously to my father would spur him to let me take out the Albanians, rid our city of their kind, or at least do it himself. But he never mentioned the video to me; the only other person who knows about it is Krishna.

We’d planned to figure out who the girl was, but then Dad went and killed the southern boss and his son, leaving Ren and me to go to New Orleans to take over and set up a new crew. We were lucky when the former Pittsburg captain approached me, asking for the job.

Things didn’t slow down after we all returned. Within a two-week span, Lorenzo was kidnapped and beaten to the brink of death but survived when his wife rescued him.

My sister married her childhood crush, becoming a wife and a stepmother the same day my father dropped a bomb on me that I was to marry the only daughter of Cormac Fitzgerald six days after my sister’s wedding.

And we all know how that fucking turned out. I gained a wife and lost my father on the same night.

As much as I wanted to blame Ciera by placing the onus on her, it’s my fault Antonio Caputo lost his life. I’m responsible for my dad being killed. I know that as sure as I know my own goddamn name.

And as much as I would like to take that knowledge to my grave, I wouldn’t be the man my father raised if I didn’t own up to it. If I didn’t tell Ren and Si the truth of my failure as a son, as the boss’s second in command.

“She has more than a good pussy,” K says, shutting my inner thoughts out as he steals my attention, forcing my eyes back to his. “But you can’t fall for her any more than I can, Dom. We’ll never be able to eliminate every threat in order to give her what she deserves.”

He’s right. I know it in my bones that I can’t fall in love with Ciera or him. It would be a disaster, and I’ve caused enough of those to last two lifetimes.

The real problem is that I’m starting to think I’m nowhere close to as strong as I once believed. Ciera isn’t the only one burrowed deep within my chest. He fucking is too.

And if I allow either of them to see it, I’m fucked.

“I’m not the one you should be worried about catching feelings,” I say in a bored tone. “You need to carve her out of your own chest. Mine is fucking empty.”

Shoving him off me, I hit the stairs and quicken my pace, creating as much distance between him as I possibly can. Ciera hasn’t learned how to read me when I lie, but Krishna has known me for too long not to be able to see through me when looking me in the eyes.

That’s a problem I created and one I need to solve before I get someone else killed because my heart isn’t as solid black as I like to pretend it is.

CHAPTER 32

CIERA

Ididn’t know how much I needed a hot shower until I was done scrubbing my skin with Krishna’s soap and washcloth. The bar didn’t have a masculine or feminine smell. In fact, I didn’t smell anything from the soap block, but it did make me feel clean.

I lucked out when I found a razor and unopened blades in a drawer in his bathroom. I mean, I did snoop around hoping to find one, so I guess it wasn’t exactly heaven-sent, but I’m once again hairless on my legs and underarms again.

For a minute, I contemplated shaving my mound, but neither seemed put off by the hair down there, so I left it intact.

Washing my hair did pose a bit of a problem. I have so much hair that it almost reaches the top of my butt when it’s wet.

I could have asked Dom to help. He offered, after all, but I’m still having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that he hasn’t killed me, let alone stop to analyze what took place inside and outside of Krishna’s SUV.

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