His Ecstasy

⌁⌁⌁ 𝙉𝙤 ⌁⌁⌁

╰───◤✦𝙋𝙖𝙮 𝙖𝙩𝙩𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙩𝙤 𝙝𝙤𝙬 𝙝𝙚 𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙙𝙡𝙚𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙬𝙤𝙧𝙙 𝙣𝙤.✦◥───╯

『☠︎ＭＡＸ☠︎』

If a glance is all it takes to lose control, then I've already made a mistake.

A flash of honey legs in stilettoes catches my attention.

Not due to perversion, but because of the predatory wall of muscle surrounding them.

The game plan in front of me is one I recognize immediately.

Surround and trap to intimidate and coerce.

What's unusual is that it's not a punter being cornered by made men.

It's one of their own women.

I lean back into the shadows of the SUV, narrowing my eyes.

It's Gia Rinaldi, and she's caught in a fucked up family dynamic.

With a nod I have Maurice slow the vehicle to a crawl.

Reina had gutted their own empire, handing over two major shipping routes and a key port I'd been eyeing for years, just to keep this one girl "off the table."

At the time, I thought it was just maternal sentimentality. A weakness to be exploited.

Now, watching the scene in the parking lot, I was starting to see a different truth.

​"Should we move in, Boss?" Maurice asked, his eyes on the side-mirror.

It's not my place to intervene. They could be containing her from a threat.

Then a phone screen illuminates her face.

I see the fear in her eyes, and reach for the Sig at my hip.

It's the second time I have seen her. Both instances she's been on edge, and I couldn't shake off the urge to somehow ease her.

Which is completely insane, since I don't even know the girl.

I tried not to think of her anxious eyes at the Gala, but I can't ignore her now. I eye the man behind her with an overwhelming impulse to empty a round into his smirking face.

But then, Gia moved.

​She didn't scream for help. She didn't look for a way around them. She looked through them.

​The man behind her leaned in, to whisper whatever and shifted her weight.

A subtle lowering of her center of gravity that I recognized from a hundred gym sessions, and then she drove her elbow back.

​The strike was clean.

Precise.

It buried itself into his solar plexus with a sickening thud that I could almost feel in my own ribs.

​He folded like a house of cards, the air leaving his lungs in a ragged wheeze.

Before Ricky could even register that his "little sister" had teeth, Gia grabbed a heavy, wrought-iron valet sign-stand.

She didn't try to swing it.

Smart girl.

She shoved the base of it directly into Ricky's path.

​It was a brilliant piece of improvisation. The heavy metal barrier forced Ricky to stumble back, his hand instinctively going to the gun at his hip, but the moment was gone.