Concede (The Diamond Empire Book 1) by Kathy Coopmans (bts book recommendations .TXT) 📕

know what you thought you’d accomplish by coming here with a chip on your shoulder other than turning me against you. By sitting in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. For drugs, no less. In case you’ve forgotten.”

I won’t ever turn my back on her. She’s suffering, bruised and scarred, and I understand. That doesn’t mean I’ll be the go-between.

“I haven’t forgotten anything, and how dare you throw drugs in my face. Look at us, we’re arguing. That’s the last thing I wanted.”

Me too, but I’m not about to tell her that. At least not when I’m angry.

“Take it and leave.”

She snatches it out of my hand, sticks it back in her purse, and fixes steady, challenging eyes on me when she straightens to stand.

“You tell Diesel to stay away from me when he gets out, or our families will be at war.”

I suck in a breath, her threat squeezing at my throat.

It’s idle.

Empty and futile.

At least, I hope.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Seth

New York Harbor is at the mouth of The Hudson River, where it empties into New York Bay and then into The Atlantic Ocean. The building I’m standing in happens to be right along the Harbor, making it easy to attach an anchor to a corpse and roll it into the water. It’s also one of five buildings in the city the Empire uses as a front to cover the boxing arenas underneath.

It’s a particular talent I’ve enjoyed watching as well as winning and losing a shit ton of money over the years. Nothing more exciting in the sports world than watching two men beat the fuck out of one another.

It’s an adrenaline rush.

It’s Diesel’s stomping ground. He’s damn good in that ring. About had a heart attack when I flew up for a weekend several years back, and Victoria sat in the row in front of me next to Amber. Victoria kept her head down during rounds, hands gripping the armrest. Her entire body was shaking like a leaf. I couldn’t help to glue my eyes to her ass when she stood in between rounds. The sexiest dress I’d ever seen sculpting her body like she’d dipped herself in hot liquid gold.

Biting back those thoughts, I shift to how perfect this place is to kill two men. One for his betrayal to Roan, and the other, I need a goddamn minute to dissect who he is and calm my inner demon. Because the man below me is an easy kill, and my beast is currently throwing a temper tantrum over comparing how both will die.

Unfortunately for me, it’s not my honor to kill the other man.

It’s Aidan’s.

And fuck all, does it make me a jealous man.

“Do you know the difference between loyalty and betrayal?” I stare down at Samuel Martin, a soldier I’m going to murder. He’s currently on the cement floor, with my booted foot pressing against the back of his neck. The pitiful asshole looks like a roped cow with all four limbs bent and tucked against his back.

He’s lucky I’m not imagining him as the other man, or I’d beat the fuck out of him before cutting him into tiny bite-size shark bait pieces.

The filthy traitor.

Like half of the lower ranks led by Micah Levy and Jonathon Bexley, Sam was given orders from Roan two days ago to hunt. He never showed, and after what went down several hours ago, I now know why I’ve spent the past two days trying and failing to track the piece of shit down.

The bastard had his hands in killing seven of Roan’s men tonight. Ambushing them while they unloaded a shipping container full of weapons.

His double-crossing traitorous dealings had me crawling out of bed and leaving the warmth of Victoria’s body wrapped around me. That right there put me in a foul mood.

Patience nowhere to be found.

By the time Dominic and I got here after Roan called me, telling me to get my ass to one of his docs, the guns were gone, and every man was dead except Sam and another. A man I’ve never seen before in my life. The man Aidan gets to kill.

He happened to be sitting across the street in a two-hundred-thousand-dollar Maserati Levante SUV. I would have walked right by without a second glance if I didn’t find it odd for a car that expensive to be parked there at four in the morning.

I snuck up and snatched that prick out of his car so fast I’d been sure he wouldn’t have time to react. Surprisingly he did. He came close to stabbing me in the neck. It took every bit of strength I had to keep a chokehold on him while trying to get the knife out of his hand. Once I did, he rattled off a bunch of foreign shit in what I recognized as Slavic before passing out from lack of oxygen from the tight hold I had around his neck.

Of course, I added enough pressure to his throat to keep him from waking while I tossed him into the back of my vehicle and tied him up so I could find out who he was.

He wasn’t carrying any identification, no phone, nothing to give way to who he is. The only thing on him was a knife. Which now belongs to me. And an ivory-handled gun strapped to his ankle, another in his coat. I think I’ll keep those too as a reminder.

It’s a good thing Roan knew who he was the minute he saw his face. I haven’t had the privilege of checking him out all that much. There wasn’t time.

Mikhail Kozlov.

Younger brother to Maxim. They started a small mafia about a year ago and have since grown and started bedeviling most of Russia and Japan’s poverty regions. Taking them over with forced extortion and slaughtering of innocent children and women.

Leaving the fathers, husbands, brothers to work in eternal suffering for next to nothing while they reap the rewards.

Mikhail is the danger I’ve been feeling, and