That appeased him. He was smiling as he hooked my pinky finger in his.
Chapter Six
Lucian
“Trenton Alto is here for you,” my secretary said, poking her head around the door.
I waved at her to let him in.
“Not like you to come here,” I grunted as he walked on through and sat himself down across my desk from me.
“Not like you to ask for something so blacklisted.” He leaned back in his seat. “This was expensive. And risky.”
“I’m well aware of both,” I told him. “Is it comprehensive?”
“It’s comprehensive. Changeable, but comprehensive.”
He handed the business card across the desk, and I took it. “This is accurate?”
“From a reputable source.”
“Good.” I stared at the encrypted web address.
“How the hell do you think you’re gonna get into these places? They’ll shoot you dead on sight.”
“I have methods.”
“A method to the madness,” he said.
“Fuck off,” I said without heat. Trenton Alto was useful. Useful enough that I ignored his comments. The risks I took were my own problem.
“Got too much to talk to you about before I fuck off.”
I put a pause on official business to hear him out about the shifting tides of secrets behind the scenes. He was right. He had plenty to be talking to me about. My life was a web of dealings. Veins of darkness running under the surface of the world all around us.
We were into everything. Everywhere.
Every industry, every trade, every corrupt investment scheme.
Still, I was sitting in my tailored suit behind my desk, living out my facade of corporate godliness. People wouldn’t ever dare challenge me.
They may as well carve out their own gravestone if they tried.
Trenton Alto was my right-hand man on the underside of my existence, and had been for years, far more nefarious than even the most thuggish of criminals could ever know. Usually I’d be interested in hearing what he had to say, but I was restless, itching for something I couldn’t scratch. Calls and meetings had felt strangely dull, nothing spiking my interest. The bustling city around me seemed plain and flat.
“What’s going on with you today?” he asked me and raised an eyebrow.
I raised one back. “In what sense?”
He shrugged. “Just seem a bit…distracted. Even for you.”
“I’m doing just fine,” I said with a glare. “Carry on.”
He carried on talking about business. Shipments and payments.
His words didn’t get any more engaging. I was frustrated, bristling with boredom, wishing he’d fuck off and be done with it. My concentration was weak, jaded, and faded until the very second he spoke her name.
“This Elaine Constantine stuff, you gonna use it to fuck around with her?”
Elaine Constantine.
I snapped back to focus. Fast.
The woman’s name should’ve given me rage, not a prickle in my balls. It gave me both.
My eyebrow raised. “Does it matter?”
“Shit’s really gonna hit the fan if you go near her, you know.”
My stare must have been dark. “You aren’t my personal security, Alto, and you sure as fuck aren’t my personal advisor. If I need a fixer, I’ll call Declan. Not you. Get on with your business and stop irritating me.”
He held up his hands. “Sure thing, boss. Just saying. She may be the black sheep of the Constantine family, but it’s still gonna start a war if you hurt her.”
I leaned forward in my seat. “We’ve been at war for decades.”
“Yeah, but not a war like that one would be. Your dad would blow his fuse.”
“Like I said, you aren’t my fucking advisor. Get back to your business.”
He shrugged again, looking at me like I was an idiot. “Sure. No prob. Whatever you want.”
And that’s where the problem was. Despite what every rational part of my head was screaming, I wanted Elaine Constantine. I wanted her pretty wet slit around my fingers, and her sweet little bullet of a clit against my thumb. I wanted her eager wet tongue in my mouth, seeking more. I wanted her curious eyes pulling at mine.
I wanted to fuck her up. Hard.
I wanted to take her virginity and make her beg for more.
It was more than wanting to fuck with my father or fuck with the board. This was personal.
I should have thought about my own calendar and my own social schedule, handshakes and glamor and illusions. Trade deals, and company takeovers and guffawing with the billionaire crew at Regent Country Club. Not about which clubs Elaine Constantine was going to be dancing in over the coming weeks.
Marriage. Sex. Those were on the table. Nothing more. I couldn’t want a single scrap of that woman other than her pain. I could use her, destroy her, and infuriate a whole vein of her family line along with her.
I could be calculated and controlled, making my way in closer and closer. Learning about the woman and who she was, weaknesses on top of weaknesses.
And then, when she was too fucked to fight me, she would become mine.
Time to take the Morelli-Constantine feud to the next level. I was done with the simmering hatred underneath the fake social sheen we’d come to paste on it.
It was time to act.
She could be my road to the action.
She could be the naive young woman to give me my power. It was a beautiful plan. I could use her to satisfy the board’s concerns. No matter her party girl reputation, no one could deny that a Constantine was high society. And as a bonus, it would infuriate my father.
I would have my cake and eat it, too.
I used the business card link to click into the data, and there it was, just as Alto said it would be. Elaine Constantine’s calendar.
Parties, magazine appearances, and family gatherings. Everything. She even had her damn periods mapped out on it. It gave me a strange thrill to think of her inputting her life into the thing, so private, and so out of bounds.
She was at three social events that week. One at Halcyon building—the Constantine’s main NYC business hub. One at Petra Constantine’s dumbass charity fundraiser gig on Thursday, and one listed as Tristan, Blue Hawk show.
I’d never heard of a Tristan or Blue Hawk, but given how casual her listing was, I imagined she knew them pretty well.
I put the search term into my browser and up came some pictures of a rocker with piercings along his cheeks. I wondered if she liked his music or whether she knew him personally.
How close were they?
He’d be suicidal for going anywhere near a Constantine without Caroline’s approval, but even so, the thought of him trying gave me a bizarre territorial feeling right in my gut. I didn’t want him to go near that particular Constantine. I didn’t want anyone to.
I wanted to be the asshole to tear her apart.
I carried on scrolling through the Blue Hawk website until I came to his show listings for the coming weekend. Saturday night. Blue Hawk, live at Cyrus Bar. Meatpacking District.
The times tallied up nicely with Elaine’s calendar entry.
I dialed the number for the Cyrus Bar. “I want tickets for Blue Hawk,” I told him. “Saturday night. The best seats.”
“It’s sold out,” he replied.