“So, Mr.  Barlow, I was going to ask you about…”

“Sorry, Kendall, something’s come up, we’re going to have to cut this short.”

My heart sank.  I’d known from the moment I walked in the room that the interview would be a disaster, what with my zero preparation and all, but I was enjoying my little fantasy.

“Oh.  Alright,” I said, packing my pen and pad away.

Barlow stood and I did the same.  Even from across the desk it was impossible to not note the incredible presence he had.  It was more than just how much bigger than me he was, it was like an aura that radiated off of him.

He leaned over and extended his hand in my direction, and I approached his desk to do the same.  It was so surreal, I was about to shake hands with a man who could probably buy my hometown and turn it into a theme park.

My heart fluttered when our hands touched, partly from sheer awe and the rest coming from the same silly parts of my mind the little fantasy had.  What if he brought my hand to his lips and kissed it? I would faint!

“Thank you for coming to see me today.  I’ll want a copy of that article when you publish it.”

You’re so hot!

“You’re so… I mean, you’re welcome.  Yes, of course.  Uh… goodbye then.”

I started to turn away, but his grip on my hand tightened and he pulled me back.  Slowly, I turned back to him, and my eyes travelled from where our hands were still together, up to his eyes, where he was fixing me with a look that made me want to start taking off my clothes.  Was my daydream coming true?

“Tell you what.  We should extend this interview over dinner.  Tonight, at Luc Monette’s.  Be there at seven.”

My jaw dropped in a way I thought only happened in the movies.  Jace Barlow, tall, muscular, multi-millionaire, was asking me, Kendall Brookes, a small-town nobody, out to dinner.  That shiver went down my spine again and settled somewhere around my stomach, a buzzing little ball of excitement, but I did my best to keep a grasp on reality.

“Dinner.  Just for the interview?” I asked.

Jace smiled.  “Of course.”

Chapter 4

Jace

“There was a robbery in China Town, a liquor store.  Owner’s all up to date on their payments, so they gave us a call asking what good our protection was,” said Lorenzo.

“We know who did it yet?” I asked.

Sitting back in my seat, I watched the world go by through the tinted window of the car as my driver drove the two of us back from an afternoon meeting to my office tower.  This was some low-level crap that I was trying to delegate more and more these days, so I wasn’t prepared to give it my full attention.

Of course, like in any job, there were times when shit pissed me off.  Unlike most other jobs for most other people, things could piss me off enough that I let myself get a little bit… hands-on with enforcing my rules.

That’s the thing in this world.  You go for too long without fucking somebody up and some assholes start to get all uppity.  They start losing respect, and that’s a death knell for somebody like me.

It was as true at the top as it ever had been when the Picollis used to send me to be the reminder about their rules.  You knew you fucked up if you had me knocking on your door.

I built up a reputation, almost a legend.  I had to laugh when I heard some of the stories come full-circle and get whispered back to me in hushed tones.  Did you know the Picollis have got a guy who cuts off peoples’ heads and uses their skulls to drink their blood?

What a load of shit.  I used the head to beat the truth out of a second guy, not to drink blood.  That’s just fuckin’ weird.  Not that I ever denied anything.  No.  The smart play was to use that reputation to get what I needed.

“No.  I’ve got a couple of guys putting the word out.  Are you happy for me to give the owner whatever he needs to rebuild? They trashed the place good.”

“Yeah.  You handle it.  When you find the dumb fuck who did this, we’ll see what assets they have that can be appropriated.”

Lorenzo laughed.  “Look at you, Mr.  Businessman with the fancy talk.  You’re really getting used to the high life, aren’t you?”

Once, there was an Emperor who hired a servant to follow him around and, every time the Emperor received a compliment, the servant was supposed to remind him “you’re just a man.” Well, Lorenzo was about as close to that as I had.

The guy was old school, showed me the ropes when I first graduated from running packages to becoming a soldier for the Picollis.  If I had a job that was too much for one person, Lorenzo was the first person I ever went to for backup.

I shrugged.  “Gotta put the degree to use sometime, huh?”

A chuckle made Lorenzo shake a little bit, but the laugh didn’t quite make it all the way out.  He never thought much of my business degree from a correspondence school, but it was certainly helping to keep us afloat with our legitimate fronts.

When I was studying, in between making people disappear or just very sorry, I was amazed at the parallels between business theory and the crime family.  Corporate hierarchy, organizational culture, supply and demand, it was all there.

Of course, not all the rules were the same.  There were family complications, and parts of it were like a cult, but once I grasped the business side of things, that was the first time in my life that I was able to envision the Picollis as a single entity.  That was the first time I had anything more than a vague idea about how to fulfil my destiny.

You can kill a single entity.

“So, we’ve been avoiding something all day,” he said.

“Hmmm?”

“Don’t play dumb.  We’ve got Santino duct-taped to a chair, running his mouth while the guys wait for you to get there.  He’s right fuckin’ here, in Port Magnus.”

“So tape his fuckin’ mouth shut.  We can afford it,” I said.

Santino Son-of-a-bitch Picolli.  When I took over this city, I put the word out that anyone who’d been lucky enough to get away, better stay away.  Port Magnus was off limits to them.

In reality, I had no plans to stop at Port Magnus, it was just easier to consolidate my position if they weren’t around fucking with my business.  The fact that he was here was a real thorn in my side.  It felt like a backwards step.

The car pulled into the underground parking lot and paused while the guard checked the ID of my driver and opened the security doors.  After a moment we continued.

“Well, let’s just go there, work him over and see what we can get out of him.”

“Pick up Roydon and head over there yourself.  I’m going to sit this one out,” I said.

Lorenzo raised an eyebrow.  “You serious? You’re not going to handle this one yourself?”

“What’s the matter, don’t think you can crack him?”

Lorenzo puffed himself up a bit, and I knew already that the argument was over before it had even started.  My empire was built on fear and paying off the right people, but a little manipulation of ego went a long way too.

“You got someplace more important to be?” he asked.

“Dinner with that sexy little journalist that visited this morning,” I said.

Just mentioning her got my blood pumping.  I wondered if she already knew she was getting fucked tonight or not.  I could hardly wait to rip those panties off her, feel my cock sliding in, and watching her squirm.

“That’s an about-face on the media policy,” Lorenzo said.

“She won’t get anything she can use.”

“Well, you’re the boss.  So, boss, how do you want me to play Santino? The reality is that he might not be crackable.”

I brought my hand up and rubbed my jawline as I thought about it.  Lorenzo was right, guys like Santino had been brought up their whole lives being told to shut the fuck up about family business, or else.