Mafia King's Contract Breeder

Emmanuel POV

The car sped away from the street corner where Marcus Turdin lay dead. The streets were empty, any other unlucky spectators having fled the scene long ago.

"I thought this kind of thing wouldn’t happen any more after we moved out of East Windlem...I must have the worst kind of luck..." Chloe Brinson muttered restlessly.

She sat in the backseat of the car with her shoulders hunched, clutching onto her floral patterned tote bag for dear life.

Such sweet innocence ought to be impossible in a place like East Windlem, in a family like hers. I knew exactly what, and whose sacrifice it had cost to maintain it.

I wondered what Lara would have done if she was caught in the same situation that Chloe had been. Somehow, I did not think that my little fox would have been so helpless.

"I think you are a very lucky girl indeed," I said quietly.

Chloe glanced at me, and then looked again, as if she was only just taking me in properly. Most women were instantly attracted by my appearance, Lara included.

Chloe Brinson gulped and shrank back slightly, as though she knew instinctively that I was not a man to be crossed.

I gave her my most disarming smile.

"After all, you have just escaped a life threatening situation unscathed."

She nodded hesitantly.

"Listen, miss," Dover said, his voice as soft as I had ever heard it. He met Chloe’s eyes in the rearview mirror. "You need to keep quiet about this."

"Oh! I know!" Chloe nodded fervently. "You are good people...you didn’t give in when he held me hostage...you must be undercover police, right?"

Dover blinked in surprise.

In all his years of working for me, he had heard hardened men beg for mercy before I took their last breath. Never could he have expected the two of us to be identified as good people.

I nodded slightly as our eyes met.

Why not go with it, if it loosened the girl’s tongue?

"Can’t say anything about that." Dover winked. "Strictly secret, you understand."

"Don’t worry, I will keep your secret! I couldn’t thank you enough," said Chloe, with a nervous giggle. "But it’s obvious when you know what to look for."

She pointed a finger in Dover’s direction. "You are the good cop..."

The finger turned to my direction. "Your partner is the bad cop."

"Uh—" Dover coughed, the corner of his lip twitching as he turned the steering wheel.

Of course, even when I happen to be mistaken for undercover police, I am the bad cop.

I rolled my eyes and let the ’good cop’ handle the job of getting information out of the naive girl.

As the car moved, I multi-tasked on my phone, ordering my men to ransack Turdin’s pawn shop for evidence, wipe away traces of our involvement before the police arrived, and capture Drake Turdin from the hospital.

Those pressing matters addressed, I sent a message to Vienna.

ES: All clear at the tower? Any signs of trouble?

—

Lara POV

I dodged. I stumbled. I dodged again, rolling clumsily on the gym’s padded floors.

Vienna’s combat boot filled my vision anyway, the kick coming so decisively I could hear the whistle in the air. Muscle memory brought my arms over my head protectively.

Ding-ring.

The ringtone stopped Vienna in her stride. She pulled her kick and took out her phone at once, her expression changing from bored and contemptuous to soft anticipation so fast it made me marvel.

Hands on my hips, I caught my breath and tied back my sweat-damp hair again where loose strands had escaped from my ponytail.

I knew better than to take my eye off Vienna.

She loved nothing better than attacking me when my guard was down, which she claimed as training for me to ’keep up my vigilance’. Personally, I thought it was plain old sadism.

Not this time.

She only had eyes for her phone, with a look on her face like Candi when that deadbeat boyfriend of hers texted her back.

"That Emmanuel?" I asked.

"Wouldn’t you like to know," Vienna sneered back, which was an affirmative.

"I don’t," I said. "I don’t care nearly as much as you do."

Vienna looked up and glared.

"You don’t care?" she spat. "How dare you! You should be honored, honored that he has chosen you!"

An incredulous scoff escaped my lips.

"Not everyone worships the ground that Emmanuel Sagres walks on, like you," I countered. "I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with your taste, really."

That was the wrong, wrong thing to say.

Vienna grew more furious than I had ever seen her. If she had hated me before, presumably because the man of her dreams was getting it on with me instead of her, now she held the fervent glint in her eye of a religious fanatic when someone questioned their god.

She grabbed my hair and slammed me down, tugging until the roots of my hair screamed with the pressure.

"Ungrateful whore!" She screamed in my face.

My temper flared at the worst moment.

"I didn’t ask for this!" I screamed back. "You can have him if you want him so much!"

Crack.

Pain bloomed across my cheek, snapping my head to the side.

"Shut up! He is not for you to offer up like you have any claim to him," Vienna snarled. "He is a man unlike any other. I have always known it. For twenty years I have been at his side, seen what it took him—"

"Was he hiring child labor?" I muttered in disgust, cringing from Vienna’s breath and spit flying into my face.

Perhaps Vienna did not hear me, that fervent glint in her eye as she went on.

"—I followed him out of the orphanage, from the very first street gang that we took on. He was different from those petty thugs, he had grander ambitions—"

I frowned.

"I knew that I would not be enough for a man like him, but I have always tried to match his footsteps, be strong enough to follow him wherever he wanted to go—"

"Did you just say ’follow him out of the orphanage’?" I said incredulously. "Emmanuel Sagres was in an orphanage?"

Vienna faltered suddenly. The red flush of fervent rage on her face turned pale instead.

She let go of me, pressing her lips together tightly, as though regretting her words.