COMMAND | MAFIA ROMANCE | SMUT

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Seven tailored men entered Club 11's underground conference room with an array of store-bought coffees, fresh fruit punnets and daily greens juice bottles. They arranged early morning breakfast on the long-stretched table for the brothers, then selected produce and beverages for themselves before lining up against the wall.

I had started to see double of everything half an hour ago.

Call it ennui, but If I do not hit the sack soon, I will burn out and fall asleep on my nose.

Fuck breakfast and caffeinated beverages. The only reprieve I had from lack of sleep was cocaine, and that stimulant drug was currently setting my veins alight.

Yesterday, I thought I might be able to tolerate Vincent Warren. Today, I am not so sure. He's been recalcitrant since Doña Marina—the sobriquet of the club's imposter—purloined riches from under his very nose.

I can handle rude and unapologetic individuals.

Have you met Liam Warren?

But patience only stretched so far, and that pasty, pale-complexioned, short-fused, grouchy son of a bitch was getting on my last nerves. "Will you shut your fucking mouth?" I scolded him for effrontery, and the man, inured to affray and animosity, slowly turned to me. "You are angry. I get it. But this is our world, Vincent. Not yours. Either get with the program or see yourself out."

"You expect me to take shit lying down." His argumentativeness mirrored my own. "Doña did not empty your pockets. She emptied mine. I told them." His hand flicked to the men in the room. "I want everyone on this case. Find her. Bring her to me. Beat her within an inch of her life for all I fucking care, but I want the bitch alive. Did they locate her whereabouts? Did they drag her to our unit?" His pointer finger jabbed the table. "What the fuck is the institution paying them for? These men are not dangerous soldiers. They are unskilled, unqualified, undeserving schmucks who warrant deleterious consequences. They skite top of the range vehicles, designer clothes and twenty-four-carat diamonds, yet they cannot execute the simplicity of hunting down a self-righteous novice."

My glare exhorted the brothers to work harder.

"What is the idiom?" Vincent sent the man standing closest to him a sidelong glance. "It is better to do something yourself than to rely on others to do it well."

"Command." Three-hundred and thirty-two cleared his throat. "Permission to speak."

"Do not shoot." My finger aimed at Vincent. "There are enough dead bodies downstairs to torch a bonfire of corpses." Fixing the knot of my satin tie, I eased back in the leather chair. "Go ahead."

"We tracked Doña's whereabouts until four in the morning." He came forward to slide documents down the table. "She walked through the streets of London, occasionally trekking through parks and gated communities. As you can see in the images, she was cautious and alert. Not one camera caught a glimpse of her profile."