Black Collar Beginnings: New York (Black Collar Syndicate) (6 page)

Rico turns and gives them a sharp nod.

Caleb watches as his crew spills out of the car, unobtrusively taking defensive positions with Emma’s friends, putting Emma and Caleb at the center. The action is so natural they do it without orders. Even here.

Bamboo is different from the last club—from all of the clubs they’ve been to tonight, and as he enters, watching her, it’s like seeing it through new eyes. It’s busy without being crowded, loud without being noisy, sexy without being trashy. The dark interior is warm and mysterious, intimately familiar, and it soothes the last of his rattled nerves. A few of the girls—working girls—give him wide smiles, chattering at him in their liquid language that conjures memories he can’t afford to indulge. He knows enough Thai to know they’re offering, but he gives them a quiet smile and quick shake of his head.

None of that. Not tonight.

“Boss?” Rico, at his elbow.

“Downstairs. Get a couple tables. I need to go clean up before I scare the Asians’ patrons.”

Emma twists, her eyes wide as she stares at him. “You’re leaving?”

“Just for a few minutes, Emma. Stay with Rico. Drink some water. I’ll be right back.”

She looks so worried, he almost doesn’t move away. But a slim, dark-haired figure in the corner of his eye catches his gaze, and he forces himself to put some distance between him and his cousin.

He turns, and black eyes in a tan face stop him. A question quirks there, softly demanding. He clenches his teeth, ignoring the Asian security surrounding them, and strides past the man. He hears the soft order. “Don’t. Leave him. Keep his guests comfortable.” And then, the soft pad of feet as the other man follows him.

Caleb moves through the nightclub with negligent skill, an absentminded awareness of his surroundings that betray how often he’s here.

The VIP section is quiet, long secluded booths, blood-red carpet and polished bamboo tables gleaming under the warm paper lanterns. Caleb ignores it, going directly to the bar. The waitress already has the Scotch out, and slides a glass to him as Caleb reaches the bar and pulls out his Marlboro Reds.

Another body settles against the bar next to Caleb, a warm length of male muscle, sleek silk and black linen pants.

Caleb slides a look to Rama, and feels, as always, the riot of emotions that the Asian syndicate boss always arouses. It’s spiked by the adrenaline from his fight and the coke still pushing his rage and lust, and his eyes narrow. There isn’t time for this tonight.

A worried frown pulls at Rama’s face, so different from his usual calm. “What are you doing, Morgan?”

He shrugs, and tosses back the scotch.

The Asian makes a displeased noise, and reaches out, snatching the drink from Caleb and passing it to the bartender. He snaps a foreign order, too fast for Caleb to follow, and then refocuses on his royal guest. “You look like shit, Caleb.”

A pleased smirk—ruffling Rama is almost fun as baiting Seth and spoiling Emma. “Work keeps me busy.”

Rama’s head tilts slightly. “Aren’t you a bit high in the syndicate for enforcer work?”

Caleb’s eyes go serious, thinking of why he did it. Who it was for. “For some things, I will never be too high.”

Rama sighs, and tugs on his arm. His eyes flicker with hurt as Caleb jerks away, but it’s gone before Caleb can address it. And feelings aren’t his area of expertise—so he changes the subject. “Your office?”

Rama nods, and leads them out of the quiet section to a small, unobtrusive door.

The office is messy, the desk filled with papers and a smoking cone of incense. A small altar is in the corner, an homage to Rama’s home and faith. It smells of male spice and—faintly—cigarette smoke. Caleb smirks, watching as Rama takes a breath, his shoulders relaxing as the big bodyguard closes the door, leaving the two princes alone.

He moves quickly, slamming into Rama and pinning him to the wall. The aggression takes them both by surprise, and he can feel the tense anger in Rama for a second, the urge to fight. Caleb forces himself back, just a little, fitting himself against the other man, bracing his hands on either side of him. Rama’s head turns, a curse on his lips. It dies, suddenly, and Caleb tracks Rama’s gaze to his bloody, torn knuckles.

Rama’s head drops against the wall with a soft thud, all the fight going out of his body, leaving him pliant against Caleb. He hisses a breath as Caleb bites down on his earlobe, aggression still fighting for an out. Rama tips his head slightly and the action soothes Caleb—it’s a wordless trust, baring his neck to another syndicate.

He leans down, softly brushes his lips against the golden satin skin, his tongue tracing over Rama’s pulse point lightly. The foreign prince sighs, and Caleb smiles against his skin, before pulling away.

He can’t watch Rama, not with his emotions buzzing so high. He needs space to breathe. He moves quickly across the office to crouch next to the bar.

Rama groans and shoves away from the wall, throwing himself into a chair to glare at Caleb. “
Yet mae.”

Mother fucker.
Caleb grins at him, tugging his shirt off to expose a smooth chest rippling with velvety muscle. Rama’s eyes grow lazy and hungry, and Caleb laughs outright.

“No,” he says, shaking his head. He crouches next to the bar, and comes up with a clean button down and some dress pants—too many nights partying with the Asians have taught him to keep clothes on hand. “But if I go back down there like this, I’ll scare her.”

Rama’s eyes narrow. “Who?”

Caleb doesn’t respond as he finishes dressing, doesn’t speak at all until he’s sitting across from Rama in a low chair. The easy company he shares with this man is settling over both of them, and the emotions that run too hot under his icy surface are beginning to cool. He speaks softly, without censoring himself. “I brutalized a guy, tonight.”

“Why?”

“He touched Emma,” he says, shrugging.

Rama frowns, and Caleb can see the questions brewing in his eyes, that he isn’t ready to answer. “When I was twelve, Dad took me on my first run. He picked it. He knew there was a guy being disciplined for stealing from us. And he took me
there.
”

“Why?” Rama asks, again.

“Because it is who we are,” Caleb says, looking at him. “We’re royalty, and raised apart from it. Protected from it. But we all have to face the ugly truth eventually. So we went down and I watched as my father beat a man to within an inch of his life. That’s not the first time I was afraid of my father, but it’s the first time I understood why other people were.”

Rama is quiet, watching. Caleb heaves a sigh, and pulls out his cigarettes. He lights one and takes the first puff, lazily. Staring at the dirty ceiling and wondering if that decision—that introduction to the truth behind the glittering façade of their empire—haunted his father.

Was he wrong, to show Emma? But if he didn’t—who would? Who would teach her what being a Morgan meant, and how to live this crazy, dirty life with honor? Who was left to teach her?

“Did you talk to your king?” Rama asks, carefully, pulling him from his thoughts. Caleb watches him, watches the way he rolls his glass of sake between his hands. He is loose and indolent in his chair, but there is something tense about him that calls to mind a predator.

Rama is Asian civility wrapped in liquid dark good looks, but Caleb has spent time with the man, here and in the dirty streets of Thailand. He knows just what kind of anger lurks under that zen calm—just how savagely the man could act.

And, too, he knows how deeply Rama loves.

“You remind me of Seth,” Caleb says, softly. Black eyes widen, stare at him incredulously. He wonders if Rama knows him enough to know that is a compliment—the highest he can
pay.

No. There is one more. One that is long overdue, and suddenly urgent—Emma has been shown almost everything about his life, and work—but he hasn’t told her about Rama and the deal the kings are working. But he can’t bring himself to cross that line. Because if everything goes to hell and people start dying, he wants Emma safe and far away from it. It’s dangerous enough, bringing her into his inner circle.

Everything is changing, too quickly. The year is winding down, and before it does, something will shift. And the kings—fuck. He doesn’t trust them. He hasn’t for a very long time.

Caleb misses his brother. Misses the way he would turn any dark thought into a joke, the way his anger came in fits and passed as quickly. Missed the way Emma would turn blushing and shy, peeking at Seth when she thought neither would notice, but tartly putting them both in their place when stung.

Mostly, he misses talking to him. He has carried his worry and fear alone, for too long. And this fear—he shakes his head.

“I can’t move forward with the project yet,” he says hoarsely, not the words he expects to say. Rama’s eyes dart to him, startled.

Caleb watches the other man, a younger prince, a foreigner. His sometime lover, and friend.

A dangerous ally.

“I need to find my brother before I commit to this, Rama.”

Understanding flickers in liquid black eyes, and he inclines his head. “We can give you time. A little time.”

Caleb’s shirt sleeves are unbuttoned, and rolled up, and he can feel Rama’s gaze on the ink, a flower that means so much to the other man’s family. His phone buzzes in his pocket, and he jerks, realizing suddenly how long he’s been gone. He stands, and Rama rises lithely with him.

Caleb kisses him, a quick hard kiss. Rama’s hand is in his hair, his nails digging into the tattoo on his forearm. Just as abruptly, Caleb jerks away. “I’ll have an answer about the proposition by the first of the year.”

Rama nods, and Caleb leaves him there, and goes to find Emma.

Read an excerpt from
Black Collar Empire
out now!!

Woodlawn Cemetery, New York City. October 16, 2011

Rain pounds on the tops of two huge black umbrellas, one slightly higher than the other. Two brothers stand as the remnants of a long and winding funeral party that has already departed to seek shelter at a reception organized for the mourners. The brothers have been silent since well before the line of tossed roses ended. Their uncle had stood beside them for some time, wearing heartbreak on his face, watching the men in parkas doing their ghastly work. Even he had turned away when the casket began to lower.

The world around them is a dreary, soggy weight, but the faces beneath the umbrellas are dry. The taller takes a long pull on a cigarette, hand moving mechanically. Mirrored shades set the scenery at an acceptable visibility, dimming the details. The pole of his umbrella rests against his other shoulder. His knuckles are white against the handle. The shorter, darker brother holds his umbrella in his right hand, abandoned in front of him as if it were some sort of lifeline. His suit jacket rests on his shoulders, covering the sling that will confine his left arm for some time. His deep brown eyes are heavy, with dark pools beneath them. The roots of his teeth are numb. Their shoulders are touching. They ignore the cautious glances from the men who start the machinery that will cover their dead father with the earth from whence he came. Ashes to ashes, or something like that.

The Marzetti clan has been mercilessly slaughtered, wiped from the city's books in a series of well-disguised and strategic hits. Anyone with a direct tie to that family's fronts is as good as dead. Retribution seems little more than routine on a day like this.

“He didn't talk to me,” says Caleb, the taller, older brother who has no regard for the serenity of silence he destroys. The younger, Seth, looks questioningly to him, searching Caleb's blank mask for some explanation. He can't tell where his brother is looking and, for some reason, it makes him angry. “He didn't have any last words of wisdom for me,” Caleb says, face front, voice carefully neutral. He introspectively hits his cigarette.

Seth gasps, unable to hide his raw emotions from his family after upholding his charade of
'dealing with it'
all day. He had presumed, after the way they had woken him from dead sleep the night his dad died, and rushed him upstairs to speak to his father alone, that Caleb had already had his time with their dad. What Seth's brother is telling him now is that the scene didn't play out that way. His dad's last words play so differently with that change in perspective.

Caleb watches the mud dripping from the mouth of the backhoe as it struggles against the waterlogged ground. He imagines the grave filling with rain before they can cover it, and all Gabe’s transgressions and guilt float to the surface. How many skeletons would that flood unearth? Mud to mud, that is all it comes down to in the end. “He didn't talk to Mikie, either,” he continues, battling against an irrational aggravation at his brother's innocence and surprise.

Seth looks away, eyes unwittingly falling on the same sullied scene as Caleb's. What a fittingly messy tribute to a gruesomely mucked up circumstance. Slowly, deliberately, he answers, “He said that if you find yourself cold inside, you're not fit to be a king.”

Seth can sense the tension take hold of Caleb. He can feel muscles pull and tighten beside him, though Caleb never moves. Seth recognizes the storm that takes his brother, he has seen it a thousand times. Caleb has always been chillingly good at hiding his feelings, but Seth knows them all as well as his own. Caleb is partly jealous, partly crushed that a birthright that should fall to the eldest son has instead gone to the younger. Seth looks back to the other, knowing without a doubt that Caleb can feel the attention. The cigarette burns unheeded. “Family is most important—”

“Don't mock me!” Caleb cries. What is left of his cigarette snaps in his fingers. Ash scatters into the rain as he flings the pieces at the ground.

Seth sighs. Maybe it is too soon to talk about it. Caleb only ever works at his own pace, and he hardly lets anyone in on his progress. Seth looks to his mud-covered shoes. “I love you, Caleb,” he says, voice barely audible over the hum of the heavy equipment.