Dario
I watched the fucking sea and wondered why I didn’t just order the captain to fire up the engines, turn this steel monster around, and plow through every yacht that got in our way.
I was standing on the top deck of my sixty-meter-long black beast of a yacht, leaning against the glass railing. Night was just falling, and the air was heavy, sticky with salt and the smell of my own overpriced cigar. Below me, on the main deck, it was an absolute madhouse. The crew was running around like headless chickens, arranging crystal glasses, polishing black marble bars, and setting the stage for the scum that would swarm here tonight.
I am forty-four years old. I built an empire by stepping over corpses, I broke bones and destroyed lives to stand where I am today. And tonight? Tonight I have to play the fucking host to corrupt politicians, cocky dealers, and slimy businessmen who think they have the world by the balls just because they got an invite to my boat.
I wasn’t in the mood for any of it. Every muscle in my body was tight with an inexplicable, savage edge. I felt like grabbing a gun and shooting people in the kneecaps just to break the boredom.
“I’m about to go blind from that dark glare of yours, brother. Lighten up a bit, you’ll scare my guests.”
I didn’t even have to turn my head to know who it was.
Matteo. My best friend, my right hand in the underworld, and a man who was literal, walking kitsch. When I finally turned around, I got quite the sight. He was wearing a silk shirt where gold, neon pink, and leopard print collided. It was unbuttoned halfway down his hairy chest, revealing a thick gold chain that probably weighed more than his brain. He looked like an eighties pimp, but beneath that clownish facade hid a psychopath who would slit your throat and then complain that you splattered blood on his shoes.
“Do you do that on purpose?” I gritted out, sizing him up with disgust, blowing a thick cloud of cigar smoke right in his direction. “I pay you millions, and you still look like you robbed a circus.”
Matteo let out a loud, raspy laugh, adjusting his diamond watch that glowed in the twilight.
“This is high fashion, neanderthal. You’re the one who always wears black, looking like you’re going to a funeral, not the party of the year,” he said, stepping next to me and leaning on the railing. “Everything is ready downstairs. The guests will be here any minute. That fat pig Rossi is coming. I hear he lost half a million gambling yesterday, tonight he’ll probably be crying drunk in a corner.”
“Let him cry,” I replied coldly. “If he stains my deck with tears or vomit, I’ll throw him over the railing to the sharks.”
“The goods are arriving too,” Matteo continued, ignoring my bad mood, flashing a slimy smile. “Hookers, Dario. The agency sent their best fucking catalog. They say they imported a new batch. All clean, expensive, and ready to do whatever these sick minds want tonight.”
I took another drag, feeling my irritation grow. “I don’t give a fuck about them.”
Matteo looked at me sideways, raising an eyebrow. “Wow. Saint Dario. Since when did you become so proper? As if you’ve never paid for an escort in your life.”
My jaw clenched. I crushed the cigar ash with my fingers and tossed it into the wind, turning to him with a look that would freeze the blood in his veins.
“I’ve paid, Matteo. And I’ll pay whenever I fucking feel like it,” I said in a dangerously quiet, raw tone, getting right in his tacky face. “But tonight, these women were brought here and paid with my money to screw and please those imbeciles downstairs, right? To make the business go smoothly. I don’t eat other people’s leftovers off my own table.”
“Alright, alright, chill,” he raised his hands in surrender, but that irritating smile didn’t leave his lips. “I’m just saying, you’ll probably find one to help you unwind too. You’re so pissed off today that you’ll kill someone before we serve the appetizers.”
“Everything is getting on my fucking nerves today. The air annoys me. You annoy me,” I hissed, turning back to the sea.
Matteo started to reply, to fire off another one of his idiotic jokes, but his voice suddenly died. His gaze fixed on the water below us. The deep, powerful sound of an engine cutting through the waves echoed, and a black speedboat was just pulling up to the lower platform of my yacht.
“Then drink something strong and get ready,” Matteo said, his voice suddenly becoming strangely serious. His smile completely vanished from his face. “Because the goods have just arrived, brother.”
The sound of the engine tore through the night, but when the black, armored speedboat hit the lower platform of my yacht, I realized it wasn’t the goods. It was the guests. The first wave of the worst scum that Paris and the underworld could spit out, packaged in Armani suits and half-million-euro watches.
“We’re going down.”
“I’m going to play the fucking host until someone gets on my nerves.”
Matteo just smirked and followed me down the illuminated glass stairs.
When I stepped onto the main deck, the music was already thumping right in my chest. A heavy, dirty bass shook the teak floors. Waiters circulated with crystal glasses, and champagne and the most expensive whiskey flowed in streams. I watched them board my yacht. Corrupt senators, narco-bosses playing gentlemen, and a few of those stiff, proper businessmen in gray suits standing in the corners, disgusted by what they saw but too greedy for my money to go home. They were the worst. They played moral, but would sell their own mothers for a percentage of my shares.
I took a glass of neat bourbon from a tray and stood by the bar, watching the circus with icy disgust.
Not even five minutes had passed before the air around me reeked of overpriced women’s perfume and cheap intentions.
Valeria, the wife of one of my “business partners”, emerged from the crowd. She wore a red silk dress that barely covered her overpaid silicones, and the slit on her thigh reached almost to her waist. She approached me without any shame, swaying her hips, and literally pressed herself against me. Her breasts rubbed boldly against my forearm.
“Dario,” she purred, looking at me through false eyelashes, as her hand with long red nails slid across my chest, stopping dangerously close to my belt. “You look so tense tonight. This boat of yours is huge. I’m sure your private cabin has a fantastic bed. We could go downstairs. I guarantee I’ll suck all that tension right out of your muscles. I swallow to the last drop.”
She was so sleazy it made my stomach turn. I looked down at her with an empty, cold expression, not moving a millimeter back.
“Tempting offer, Valeria,” I said, my lips stretching into a lazy, arrogant smile. I took a sip of bourbon, never taking my black eyes off her. “But I thought your husband was around here somewhere. There he is, drinking my champagne by the pool.”
She threw her head back and laughed, grinding against me. “Who gives a fuck about him. He hasn’t been able to get it up for years anyway. I want a real man tonight.”
“I give a fuck,” I cut her off. My voice suddenly became sharp as a razor, and that smile evaporated, leaving only a brutal threat. “Not because I respect him, but because it makes me sick to stick my dick where he finishes. My equipment is too expensive for your mouth tonight. Fuck off and find some other toy from security to stretch out those silicones.”
Her face froze instantly. She stared at me in total shock, her face red from unprecedented humiliation. She flinched as if I had slapped her, spun around on her high heels, and disappeared into the crowd.
I just shook my head and downed the rest of my bourbon. These nights were driving me more and more insane. Piles of meat without a shred of brains or dignity.
I set the empty glass on the bar, ready to throw out the next person who approached me. And then I felt a heavy slap on my shoulder.
Matteo stood beside me. He didn’t have his idiotic, clownish smile. In fact, he was breathing a little faster, pushing his way through the crowd, and his eyes burned with a raw, hungry gleam as he looked toward the main entrance of the yacht.
“Get ready, brother,” Matteo grunted, his voice unusually dark and tense. “The hookers just stepped onto the deck. And I swear on my life. Fucking meat like this has never crossed your threshold before.”
