| BOOK FIVE | THE LONDON CRIME KING | A DARK MAFIA ROMANCE NOVEL |
This book contains adult language and subject matter, including graphic violence, drugs and explicit sex that may be disturbing to some readers.
This series is NOT a typical romance...
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Her pale feet teetered across sacred grounds, the rust-coloured leaves and upturned soil crepitating underneath frenetic footfalls. Mud bespattered her creme floor-length satin dressing gown as she continuously stumbled face-first in the dirt. Oh, how she wept in pathetic gracelessness, her body sprawled between marble and concrete gravestones beneath the full moon, her tears of hopelessness wading through dense, leafless trees, where nocturnal birds of prey hooted. Rime ice glittered her scraggly blonde hair. Frost tinted her lips blue. It was rock-bottom, for her, the lowest, most depressing point in her purposeless existence.
Rubbing begrimed palms across her dirty mouth, she crawled until she stood. Then, like a deer in the headlight, she found my gaze amidst the cemetery's low-hanging fog. Mist formed between us, her warm breath greeting mine. Her glassy green eyes shined like magnificent emeralds. Her porcelain skin and rose-tinted cheeks quaked emotional defeat and heartache. Not acute fear. Not horrible dread.
My head cocked.
Instant acceptance transpired.
Her murmured apologies.
My selective muteness.
When she walked through inscribed headstones, her cracked, bloodied fingernails outlining gilded carvings of the deceased, I shadowed in her footsteps, feeling the tree's rough bark beneath my fingertips. I was cold as ice. Not even the cashmere jacquard scarf and pompom-embellished ribbed wool beanie hat could protect me from the freezing winds of encroaching winter.
Inside the deep pocket of my black trench coat, I extracted bottled Macallan and thumbed the half-torn label. I drink whiskey every night. Sometimes, I take a shot for breakfast or guzzle liquid in between missions. But this bottle, I struggled to pop the cap. The same bottle used to converse with Bossman before his prison sentence. I found it in the Warren Manor's kitchen last Friday, stashed behind unopened bottles of whiskey, gin and vodka as if he'd hidden it from the brothers for one of his late-night musings.
The arteries around my thumping heart tightened.
Christ, I missed him. His incarceration brought tears to my eyes. You would think, because of our criminal lifestyle, I'd have mentally prepared for the possibilities of atonement, whether it be the brothers, the boss, or myself. At some point, one of us had to make amends for incessant wrongdoings. One of us had to answer to the court of law. But it never occurred to me, not once since I signed my life away to Warren Enterprise, to The Brotherhood, the consequences of our unlawfulness.
I thought we were indestructible, indomitable and unconquerable.
I thought Liam Warren was impossible to defeat, to subdue.
I suppose if he took the ones he loved down with him, his wife, his organisation, he'd feel the sun on his face sooner rather than later.
Warren was a true leader until the very end, though.
