Page 39 of Sweet Ruin

Just off the kitchen, there’s a pantry door with good sightlines into the rest of the house. I snatch up the entire bottle of whiskey to bring it with me for safekeeping.

Then I duck inside.

It’s dark and quiet in here, with an L-shaped bend in the floor plan that gives me a place to duck further out of sight if the need arises.

For a while, I sit, drink, and muse about something that’s been bothering me.

It’s not a concrete sort of something. Nothing I can kill with my bare hands.

More of a gnawing, indistinct sense of dissatisfaction in my gut.

It’s something like this, more or less:

I haven’t felt alive in far too fucking long.

Over the last decade, my territory has quadrupled, my revenue has multiplied by millions on millions, and my enemies have tucked tail and run to greener pastures.

I’ve acquired almost all of the building blocks of what will be the next phase of my empire, a strip of waterfront property along the harbor. As soon as I complete the last of my purchases, I’ll own the most valuable square mile in Brooklyn.

If Forbes kept track of the wealth of men like me, they’d have to make a whole new list just to keep up.

So with all that under my belt and the future as bright as it can fucking get… why am I not satisfied?

Fuck knows I’ve tried all the other normal ways.

I’d never snort or smoke or inject anything—those were my father’s vices, not mine—but I’ve drank myself stupid. I’ve gambled. I’ve fought bare-knuckled in poorly lit arenas that have no name. I’ve taken woman after woman to bed in search of someone who doesn’t meekly kneel or bend over at the snap of my fingers, fawning to please me.

None of it worked.

Especially not the last one.

Half of those women got kicked out of my penthouse before I ever removed a stitch of clothing.

How am I supposed to get hard for the human equivalent of a doormat? I want someone with fire.

True fire.

Not an influencer with daddy issues or a desperate actress looking for a leg up.

I want a taste of the kind of sweetness no money can buy.

I’m lost in thought, wondering where the hell I can find that, when the door opens again.

Somebody comes in and shuts it, but does not turn on the light.

I quickly step back behind the bend to stay hidden.

I can tell by the breathing and the scent that it’s a woman. She rests her back against the shelves on the other side, just a few feet from me, and lets out a ragged, nervous breath.

“Okay,” she whispers. “From the top.”

And then she starts to talk.

Instantly, I’m fucking mesmerized.

It’s clear that I’m hearing something I’m not supposed to hear. But it’s the most captivating shit I’ve heard in a long time.

The anger in her voice—the fire—grows and grows the longer she talks.