: Part 1 – Chapter 4

“JASMINE IS HERE, BOSS,” Hector announced from the door to his office, and Alpha nodded to let her in, leaning back in his chair.

Jasmine, one of his newest sentinels and one of his best informers, entered the office with a serious look on her attractive face. He’d found her two years ago on the street outside one of his clubs, unconscious after getting beaten up by her father who’d been pimping her out, and he’d dropped her off at SLF to recover. She’d come to him afterward, wanting to work for him, and he’d taken her up. She was street smart, foxy, and had a non-threatening air about her, all of which made her the perfect set of eyes anywhere he wanted them.

“Boss,” she said in the way of greeting, taking a seat in the chair Zephyr had left. “There’s been another kill.”

Fuck.

“Who?” He couldn’t keep the gruffness out of his voice.

“A new girl, Mandy,” Jasmine informed him quietly. “She’d started working downtown last week. I told her to get in with AV, but she was wary.”

“Anything on her?”

Jasmine hesitated, before opening the bag she carried with her and taking out a black envelope. “I found this on my car outside her crime scene. The cops had arrived and there was a crowd so I don’t know who left it.”

Alpha took the envelope and placed it on the desk, giving her his undivided attention. “What’s the word on the street?”

“Girls are scared,” she admitted. “They all agree it’s a man, with the way they’ve been butchered. Most of the victims have been girls who wanted an out. Some of them had already put measures in place, some were about to quit. It’s keeping them in the profession out of fear, whether they want to be or not.”

He hated that. There was nothing that pissed him off more than someone putting a woman where she didn’t want to be.

“We’re getting flooded with registration requests.”

That was good for business and bad for the city, but he didn’t voice that.

“That’s all I got for now. I’ll check in next week. Hopefully, he doesn’t hit before then. I’ll also get an update from the department, see if the cops have anything new that can help us.”

Alpha gave her a nod. “Tell me if you need one of the guys with you.”

“It’s better if I work alone. Girls won’t talk to me with a guy lingering in the background.”

He understood that. Didn’t mean he had to like it.

She started to get up but hesitated. “The girl who was in here just before me, Zephyr?”

She knew her? He waited for her to continue, his curiosity even more piqued. Jasmine wasn’t one to gaff. If it wasn’t about work, she was usually on her way.

She hesitated again. “She need money?”

“No,” Alpha told her, still waiting for her to get to the point. “How do you know her?”

“I met her at SLF. Her sister works there, and she volunteers. She gave me this,” Jasmine touched her short, styled hair that concealed half of her facial tattoo, swallowing, emotion visible in her dark eyes. “Told me I could be whatever I wanted to be. My pa never let me cut it… it helped with the customers, he always told me. And that day, she just… chopped it. Made me feel beautiful for the first time. Clean. New. She gave me something that day, and I owe her. If she needs money or something, I’d like to help her out.”

Damn. After so many years of seeing the ugliness, nothing really moved him anymore. But listening to the little was his rainbow had changed this woman’s life without possibly even realizing, earning herself an ally who would bat for her with a man like him, he was a bit moved. Alpha sat there, processing everything Jasmine was saying about the woman who had essentially proposed to him, making him even more curious. Would she do that to him too? Change his life, make him feel new about himself, earn his loyalty to the point he would look out for her? Could she? He was intrigued, and nothing really intrigued him anymore.

He contemplated Jasmine’s words, wondering if maybe talking about her asinine idea would make it make more sense, before finally speaking. “She wants to marry me.”

“Oh.” Jasmine’s eyes widened before a little smile curled her lips. “No offense, Alpha, but you need a wife.”

“Excuse me?”

Jasmine leaned back. “If this was a fairytale, you’d have been the beast in the tower all alone, with your staff and your dogs, biting anyone who came close. I’ve seen the worst of people, and I didn’t know men like you existed until you saved me. You deserve something good, not to be alone up in that house of yours.”

Is that what everyone thought?

“I have my bois,” he reminded her. He did, three huge German shepherds that he’d nurtured and trained since the day he saved them. They were his loyal companions. They kept him company. He didn’t need shit.

“They’re dogs,” she pointed out correctly. “And they’re great dogs. But you need human companionship. And Zephyr is good people. If I were you, I’d marry her. Just food for thought.”

Alpha had never wondered if Jasmine was swung that way. Not his business though. As long as she stayed a good sentinel and never came on to him, she could do whatever she wanted in her private life. He never mixed pleasure with any of the girls under his protection, which also made it tough to find women willing to fuck him. Normal girls took one look at him and ran in the other direction. The rebellious ones wanted a walk on the wild side and risked it, which left him feeling slightly empty. Given his background, paying for sex was something he never did, and taking advantage of the workers who came to him with trust just went against his personal code. There weren’t many things he was righteous about but vulnerable women and kids were it.

Which again begged the question, why would a girl like Zephyr, from a seemingly good family and in complete contrast to his world, run to him, jump him, kiss him, and then get on her knees to pop a crazy question? Why would she be okay with everything he said he’d do to her? She wasn’t a groupie, she wasn’t a rebel. And he doubted she couldn’t find someone else for her scheme. So why him? What was up with her?

As Jasmine left the office, Alpha walked to his windows, mulling over her words.

So, Zephyr helped out battered and abused women at his center. He wasn’t sure why but that did something to his chest. But he still didn’t understand the marriage proposal. What could she possibly know about him? There was nothing.

She was slightly crazy, he decided. But at least she was a distraction.

For the first time in years, Alpha could feel the lull of ennui breaking. Everything had become the same—the underworld remained the same, his empire remained the same, his loneliness remained the same. He realized a while ago that each fight, each fuck, each finale had become the same old shit he lived through.

Some days, he didn’t understand the point. And on those days, he missed his ma. To others, she might have been a sex worker off the streets of Los Fortis, to Alpha she’d been nothing but an amazing mother who had lost too much too early in life. Her parents dead, she had taken care of her younger sister the only way she’d known, going to the streets and selling herself to give her sister a chance at a better life, only to have a monster rip it all away.

Lorenzo Maroni had swept in like a storm in the lives of the Villanova sisters and left behind nothing but debris. He had raped his mother, abducted his aunt, and left her for the dead. And even though Alpha had been the seed of a monster, his mother had decided to not only carry him full-term but raise him to be nothing like his sire.

He grew up on the streets, surrounded by hollow humans who had once had aspirations for themselves and then had none.

And he had built an empire, fist by fist, to escape that.

As he stared out with his limited vision at the expansive jungle beyond the city from his tower, to the compound that he called home, Alpha wondered what the point of it all had been.

And then the rainbow had come barrelling into him, like a burst of color after endless gray, kissing him like he wasn’t a mangled man, looking at him with genuine desire in her eyes like she appreciated all that he was. In his experience, he was either a walk on the wild side for a woman or a scary monster out of her nightmares. But Zephyr, the tiny button of a woman who’d strolled through his testosterone filled foyer like she was a queen, looked at him differently, and he couldn’t put his finger on why.

That baffled him.

“So, should I get my good suit out?” Hector joined him on the side, a grin on his face.

“Eavesdropping. Nice,” Alpha shook his head, knowing Hector had listened in at the door like the nosy bastard he was. Hector and Victor, brothers and sons of the streets like him, had been with Alpha for as long as he could remember. Hector had stuck with Alpha while Victor had joined the military, coming back after an injury to his leg, angrier and darker than the young boy Alpha had remembered protecting. But Hector was the closest thing to a friend Alpha had, and when he’d asked him to give Victor a job in the company, Alpha had. He wasn’t as close to the younger boy, but he wondered what had made him so volatile.

“After the way she jumped you that night,” Hector said interrupting his train of thoughts, stepping into the peripheral vision of his good eye, something Alpha always appreciated him doing. “There was no way I was missing out. Is that why you didn’t get your dick sucked? Because you knew I was listening?”

“You know why,” Alpha gazed out, and heard Hector sigh.

“Your celibacy is wasted, boss. It was an accident.”

An accident where he’d fractured a woman’s hip because he’d been too rough. He liked when his partners screamed but not in that kind of pain. Although he was usually careful because of his size and knew that most women needed adjusting to his dick, his last partner had wanted the beast, and high from a fight, he’d delivered. The sound of her bone breaking still haunted him, made him feel like a fucking monster.

It had shaken him enough to make him celibate for over an entire year.

“Who’s her tail?” he asked, changing the topic.

“Victor.”

Of course, Hector would put the best-looking of their squad on her tail, knowing it would rile him up. He didn’t know why he’d declared she was with him when she’d been talking to Victor earlier, but he’d seen her on the camera for the last two weeks, lingering, watching, essentially stalking the building. She was a curious little creature.

“Any update on why she was here this week?”

“Beside stalking you, you mean?” Hector grinned, his white teeth gleaming against his darker skin. “You must have kissed her real good if she’s proposing so soon.”

Or she had an ulterior motive. There was no other explanation for why someone like her would want to tie herself in matrimony to a man like him. It wasn’t a lust for his money. No, had it been mercenary, she never would’ve suggested a prenup.

Alpha looked down at the busy street below. “Any news on Reyes dealing at the fight?”

Hector’s voice sobered. “Yeah, you were right. He’s gambling his money on fights. Word says he’ll go in debt once the season begins.”

The season of illegal fights where all and anyone important enough in their level of the underworld bet their money. It was an entire industry, of buying boys, training them to fight till death, only the survivors becoming men and making it to the actual circuit, going around to different locations and fighting for either masters or money. Alpha had stumbled upon it accidentally when he’d be fighting his way up the streets, trying to make ends meet after his mother’s death. And once he’d realized the potential of fortune his fists could rake in, he had taken over. The fights had no rules, just two guys in a cage both knowing only one of them could make it out, and every fight Alpha was in, he was the one who got out.

And for that reason, they began calling him The Finisher.

He gave them quick deaths unless they pissed him off. And now he was pissed because the media was calling the killer Fortis Finisher. Oh, he’d not give that butcher a quick death, that was for sure.

“How’s the Syndicate been?” Alpha asked, remembering the request his half-brother Dante Maroni had made a few weeks ago.

“Surprisingly quiet.”

A phantom pain bloomed in his right eye socket. Even after so many years, it took him by surprise sometimes, the sensation of having the eye, of losing it, feeling a hollow ache, one he couldn’t really explain. Alpha shook it off, knowing that rubbing the eye only made it worse.

“There’s a note on the desk Jasmine found on her car,” he told the younger man. Hector moved to the note, tearing the flap open, taking the paper out. Since losing his eye, his other senses had become more acute. He’d trained them to be.

“Ugh,” Hector groaned. “Jasmine is like a sister to me, dude. I don’t want to read what some asshole wants to do to her. I need to bleach my eyes out.”

Alpha shook his head, disappointed. He’d been hoping for some kind of intervention, anything to remove the monster terrifying his streets.

“Cops know anything more?” he asked, focusing on the sunlight falling on the lush green in the distance.

“Not that we know of.”

“Fuck.”

It was a fucked up situation. Alpha had been aware of a serial killer amongst the streets killing off high-risk sex workers for over two years now. None of his girls had been hurt, but word on the street had spread like wildfire. The police hadn’t been able to piece it together much mainly because they didn’t have the time or resources to spend on such victim profiles. The one cop who had wanted to solve it had been transferred to another division last month, the corruption at the seed of the system. It was one of the reasons he had taken power over the city.

“Any word on the Caine’s sister?” Alpha asked, taking another breath as he tried to make sense of everything happening in his world. “The feelers come back?”

“Nothing yet,” Hector told him. “It was such a long time ago, it’s taking a while to trace it back. Most information is either gone or deliberately suppressed. It’s taking time.”

Yes, it had been a long time. And if his guess was correct, the girl was either dead or deep in the clutches of the Syndicate. For her sake and Caine’s, he hoped she was in a grave. Growing up the way he had, as the son of a sex worker, living in a dilapidated red light district of the city, he’d grown up seeing what happened to women who sold themselves under a pimp. The Syndicate made it all look like a walk in the park. From what he knew about them, their depravity was much, much worse. Flesh trade was only one arm of the organization. Alpha knew there were countless others. They had their hands in everything—human fights, dog fights, organ black market trade, sick slavery, anything one could and couldn’t fathom. And even after knowing so much, he had no idea who they were, where they operated, and how deep their tentacles went.

‘You think she’s alive?’ Hector questioned, coming to stand at his side again. He was an emotional bastard, and since he’d been leading the investigation into the missing girls, Alpha knew his friend was invested.

‘For her sake,’ Alpha squashed down Hector’s wish. ‘I hope not.’

His entanglement with The Syndicate went way back. Knowing the ways his mother had risked herself for their survival had instilled a sense of responsibility in him at a young age. He’d been twelve the first time he’s used his fists, pummeling the pimp who’d beaten his mother. While the pimp had disappeared, he’d realized he couldn’t just sit and do nothing. So, he had begun fighting on the streets for money, and earning himself a nasty reputation. Most of the scars on his body accounted for such fights when he had been young and stupid, because on the streets there were no rules. And while his mother had died immediately after, his sense of responsibility for those people, his people, had never really left.

Soon after, he had begun offering the workers in his neighborhood the protection of his name, and they had simply begun to give him a little money without him even asking or wanting it since he began making more than enough with his wins. He was a protector, not a pimp. But over time, the word about his pack spread—a pack where only voluntarily sex workers were allowed to work for themselves without anyone breathing down their neck, where they could keep whatever they made, and they themselves began to hand him a cut for his security. Women came looking for protection from clients, and boys came wanting to work. Alpha had given them both. Now, he had over one thousand sex workers in the country who worked under his name on their own terms, completely voluntarily, and hundreds of men protecting them.

And the Syndicate didn’t like that at all. He had been a thorn in their side simply by existing and doing what he could for his people. They’d tried to get him to work for them, but Alpha being who he was, had given them the middle finger. And they couldn’t touch him, not with the empire he’d built, not with the power he now had in their seedy world. It was a part of the underworld that was dirty and dark, and he wondered what he was even thinking entertaining the idea of bringing someone like Zephyr into it. His loneliness was getting to his head, nothing more.

Maybe he needed a good fuck. It had been over a year since he’d been with someone, and maybe he just needed to get his dick wet again just like he liked it.

The only time he had entertained the thought of dating someone in the recent past had been when he’d seen Amara in the city. Given her beauty and her strength, it had been impossible not to be attracted to it all. But she belonged to his brother, and they were going to get married next week. He’d received the invitation but he still didn’t know if he would go, especially with the way everything was going to shit in his city.

He felt Victor enter the office, the youngest of the three, the best-looking, and usually the angriest.

“She quizzed me about you,” Victor reported, his face more relaxed than he’s seen in a while.

Alpha turned around to face the boy he’d seen grow up with them. “What did she ask?”

A frown marred the handsome fucker’s face. “Weird shit. Your favorite color, food, shoe size.”

Hector huffed a laugh at his brother. “You know what they say about a guy’s shoe size. Maybe she was curious since you didn’t whip it out.”

Victor rolled his eyes at his brother’s snark. “She also asked me for your number.”

Alpha sighed. “Did you give it to her?”

“She was… persistent,” Victor replied in a dry tone.

Amusement, as he’d come to expect in the little time he’d spent with her, filled him. He didn’t know what it was, maybe her tiny stature, maybe her ferocity, maybe her utter disregard for predictability. But she broke the ennui, and that was the main reason Alpha was at a loss about what to do with her proposition—accept and see where it led, or refuse and let life go on as it was. For her, the second option was much safer. But he didn’t like the way Victor looked relaxed after spending time with her, and he definitely didn’t like the idea of her considering him as an option.

He was a selfish bastard.

“So, will you say yes to her?” Hector asked the question buzzing in his head.

Fuck if he knew.