Sinful Empire (Mount Trilogy #3)

Except . . .

I press a hand to my lips as I recall that first brutal story Magnolia told me about him. How he forced a woman to dance on broken glass until she slit her own wrists. I can’t reconcile that rumor with the man before me. What’s more, I don’t want to even give voice to the possibility it could be true.

Lachlan must see the confusion on my face as he releases his hold on me. “Ask your question, Keira.” It’s a command.

I heave out a breath, gathering my courage. I don’t know what I’ll do if I’m wrong and it’s true. “Magnolia told me a story about you . . .”

His expression goes blank, and a hardness infiltrates his features. It’s that granite mask I can’t stand to see on his face. It’s like he’s expecting the worst, and maybe he is.

“There are a lot of stories about me. You’ll have to be more specific. Some are fact, and some are rumor and myth.”

I just have to blurt it out. That’s the only way. So I go for it. “The story about the woman being forced to dance on broken glass. Is it true?”

His expression doesn’t change as he shifts away from me, and now the small distance between us feels like the Grand Canyon.

“It’s true.”





Mount





I shut my emotions down, one second at a time, preparing for the inevitable. The moment when Keira says she can’t be with a monster like me. I am the devil himself, and there’s no way she could want to be with someone capable of the things I’ve done.

It will shred everything left of my humanity to let her go, but I won’t keep her trapped against her will. Not now. We’re beyond that. If she says she wants to leave, I won’t stop her.

All remaining color drains from her face, and the glimmer of distress that flashes in her gaze guts me.

I don’t want her fear, but how could a man like me deserve anything else?

Heavy moments of silence hang between us until Keira, the queen I never knew I needed until we were both tricked into something we didn’t see coming, finds her voice.

“Tell me why.”

It’s not a question. It’s a demand, and one I didn’t expect her to make. I didn’t expect her to care about the reason behind it.

“Does it matter?”

Her nod is infinitesimal, but I catch it.

“It matters more than anything I’ve ever asked you. Please tell me why you would do something like that. I have to believe there was a reason.” The threat of tears underlies her tone, and I’d rather take another bullet than hear her sound like that again.

I don’t justify my actions to anyone. Ever. But I know this is one exception I have to make, or I’ll lose her forever.

I look away, not wanting to see her face as I tell the story.

“About ten years ago, there was a boy who tap-danced on street corners of the Quarter, near Jackson Square. I’d see him almost every time I left here. The same boy, day after day after day. People think that when you’re the boss, you don’t notice details, but that’s completely wrong. When you hold power like I do, you know details are the difference between life and death. This wasn’t one of those details. It should’ve meant nothing to me that I saw the same kid every day, but something about it twisted up my gut.”

I pause, remembering the expression on the kid’s face, and I force myself to continue. “Every time I saw him, he was more erratic. He should’ve been in school, or so I assumed. He couldn’t have been older than six or seven. I wasn’t sure. But he was more skin and bones than anything else.”

Keira sucks in a horrified breath at the picture I’ve painted, but I don’t look at her. I’m too lost in the memory.

“One day, I finally stopped and sat on a bench for six hours, watching him with his bucket in front of him where tourists would toss their dollars. Every couple hours, a man or a woman would crawl out of the gutters and empty it, and the kid would keep dancing. I’ve been around long enough to recognize addicts of every kind. Meth addicts aren’t hard to spot.”

“Oh my God,” Keira whispers, because she’s catching on to where this story is headed.

I keep my eyes fixed over her shoulder on the far wall of the room, because the rage that builds inside me when I remember isn’t something I want her to see.

“Please tell me they didn’t . . .” She trails off, and I wish I could tell her that this story isn’t going where she thinks.

“The high from glass, a more potent form of meth, can last for eight to twenty-four hours. When he’d start to slow down, they’d grab the bucket and carry him off for a little while. I followed them that day and watched as the woman, his f*cking mother, would feed it to him.”

A sob tears from Keira’s throat. “No. How could she?”

“There are plenty of parents who do horrible things to their children, and there’s no way to save them all.”

“I can’t even fathom—”

“You shouldn’t have to. That kind of shit shouldn’t f*cking happen, but it does.”

“So, what did you do?”

“I called a few of the crew. We grabbed the kid, the mother, and the ass*ole who was her piece-of-shit boyfriend and dealer.” I drag my gaze from the wall and meet Keira’s horrified expression as I confess just how f*cking brutal I can be without remorse. “She made her kid dance on glass, and that’s what she earned for herself.”

Keira holds a fist to her mouth like she’s struggling not to vomit, and I don’t blame her.

“Street justice isn’t a slap on the wrist or a few days in jail. Street justice is more than an eye for an eye. It’s harsh. It’s brutal. That’s who I am, Keira. Harsh. Brutal. Without remorse.”

The disgust on her face makes me wish for a single moment that I had been born a different man. A man who deserves her. But I wasn’t. I was forged in the fires of the hell I grew up in. I survived the streets the only way I knew how, by climbing the ladder up Johnny Morello’s organization.

I tear my gaze away from her, expecting her to run for the door. Instead, she asks me a quiet and unexpected question.

“What was the boy’s name?”

“Rubio.”

I study the white sheet tangled in my fist, keeping my attention anywhere but on her. Still, she doesn’t run.

“What happened to him?”

I force myself to loosen my grip and keep my tone emotionless. “I made sure he was adopted by a good family. A family that would never hurt him again, because they knew what the penalty would be. I pay for him to go to a private school. He gets straight As. He’s already being scouted by D-1 schools for basketball, but he can go anywhere he wants, and he knows that.”

Keira’s hand covers mine, and I jerk my head up to look at her.

“You saved him,” she whispers.

“I watched his mother slit her own wrists.” My tone is harsh, just like me. “Don’t you dare make me out to be some kind of hero, because that’s the last f*cking thing I am.”