Rogue (Real #4) by Katy Evans
ONE
* * *
ZERO
Greyson
I’ve got my dick buried inches deep in a mewling woman’s cunt when I first become aware of the click of my front door. I pull out and grab a handful of bedsheets, toss them over to her, and she moans in protest over being without my dick anymore.
“Cover up, sugar, you have three seconds . . .”
Two.
One.
The first to materialize in my door is Derek. “Your father wants you.” Next to him is my * half brother, Wyatt, and he looks none too pleased to see me. What can I say? It’s mutual. I jump into my jeans. “He sent two of you?” I ask, almost laughing. “If I were a girl, I guess this would be the part where my feelings get hurt.”
Both men walk into the room, checking out the territory with quick flicks of their eyes. They don’t see me coming. In less than a second, I’ve got Derek pinned up against the wall and I’ve got Wyatt in a choke hold. I spin them to face the door as I watch the rest of the men shuffle in. Seven of them, plus the two squirming in my hold. The nine-member squad composes the Underground enforcing committee led by my father—every man here with a different level of skills. None, not a single one of them, as skilled as I.
“You know damn well if it involved you, it’d be a nine-man mission,” Eric Slater, my father’s brother and right hand, says as he steps inside. Eric is stern, silent, and dangerous. He’s my uncle and the closest thing to a dad I had growing up. He taught me to live among my father’s private little mob—no, not live. He taught me to survive. To take my circumstances and thrive. Because of him, I grew smarter, stronger, meaner. I learned whatever there was to learn, multiplied by the billionth power. The power of kill or be killed. Doesn’t matter if you’ll use the skill, it’s an insurance. Ever heard of insurances, boy? People who have insurances rarely use them. It’s those who don’t have shit who end up needing one. See that arrow? Use it. See that knife? Wield it, fling it, learn how to use the least amount of effort to do the most amount of damage. . . .
I’ve got all kinds of insurances. My entire mind is a computer programmed to think the worst of a situation, all in less than a second. Right now, I know for a fact all these men are armed. Some of them carry two weapons, under their socks, at the small of their backs, or in the front flaps of their jackets. Eric watches my eyes scan each and every one of them, and he smiles, clearly proud of me. He opens his jacket and looks down at the gun on his hip. “You want to touch my piece? Here you go, Grey.” He pulls it out and extends it, the barrel in his hand.
I let go of the two men in my grasp when I sense Wyatt is about two seconds from passing out. I pull them back, then with a shove send them smashing against the wall. “I don’t give a shit what he wants to say to me,” I state.
Eric looks around my bedroom. My apartment is perfectly clean. I don’t do mess. I have a reputation and I like hearing a pin drop . . . the reason I heard these *s enter my studio loft in the first place. “Still banging these whores? With that f*cking face, you can get a goddess, Grey.”
He eyes the woman in my bed. She’s no masterpiece, true, but she looks just fine pressed down against the mattress with her ass in the air, and she expects absolutely nothing of me except money. Money I can give. Money and cock, both of which I have in abundance.
I grab the dress on the floor and toss it to the whore. “Time to get out and go home, sweetheart.” Then to Eric: “My answer is no.”
I peel off a couple of bills from a stack on my nightstand and push them into the whore’s extended hand. She makes a big show out of rolling them into her bra, and the men part to let her pass, some of them whistling while she flips them off.
Eric comes closer to me and lowers his voice. “He’s got leukemia, Greyson. He needs to pass on the reins to his son.”
“Don’t look at me like I can feel pity anymore.”
“He’s got the act cleaned up. No more killing. All the businesses are strictly financial now. We’ve no more open enemies. The Underground is quite a successful enterprise, and he wants to officially pass it on to his son. Are you that cold blooded you’d deny him his last request?”
“What can I say, his blood runs through my veins.” I grab a black T-shirt and jerk it on, not out of modesty, but so that I can start loading up my babies. My Glock, a Ka-Bar, two smaller knives, two silver stars.
“Boy . . .” He steps to me, and I meet his lone dark eye—not the fake one. I haven’t seen him in several years. He’s the one who taught me how to use a .38 Special. “He’s dying,” he stresses meaningfully, curling his hand over my shoulder. “It won’t be long. He’s got six months, if not less.”
“I’m surprised he thought I’d care.”
“Maybe when you’re done womanizing, you’ll start to care. We”—he points at the men in the room—“want you to be the one who takes control. We’ll be loyal to you.”
I cross my arms and look at my half brother, Wyatt, the “Whiz”—my father’s pet. “As long as I’m his lapdog and do as he says? No thanks.”
“We’ll be loyal to you,” he stresses. “Only you.”