Restore scroll position “Mother. Fucker.”Carson swears viciously, peering at his leg in the darkness of the garden outside the house.Still crouched behind a low stone wall, I glance over to him. “What?”“Just ripped my fucking pants on whatever country bullshit is littered about this hillbilly fucking place.”Next to me, Sebastian sighs deeply, rolling his eyes and cracking his knuckles. “So?”“So, these are brand new. And they’re Prada, asshole,” Carson mutters, shooting him a look.Sebastian exhales again and twists to roll his eyes at me. “Why the fuck do we invite Ken to these things?”“Bitch, I will fuck you like Barbie,” Carson hisses in the darkness, which makes Sebastian and me snort quietly.“Dude, Ken doesn’t have a dick, and Barbie doesn’t have any holes at all.”“Then I’ll cut new holes in you and fuck those.”“With what dick, Ken-doll.”I clear my throat. “If you two are done, could we shut up for half a second so as not to fuck this up entirely?”On the one hand, being friends with these two is like living with toddlers on a perpetual sugar high. Or especially manic, leg-humping Jack Russell puppies.On the other, I know I couldn’t survive without them.The four of us—Carson, Sebastian, Gideon, and me—came up through the Syndicate ranks together. We got our start in the same warehouse in Queens, as low-level nothings packaging Syndicate narcotics for sale.The Syndicate has a way…or at least used to…of picking up strays like us at a young age. Technically, I think Seb was the youngest. They found him when he was six after he ran away from some evil fucking uncle he was living with. That’s where his particular brand of malice and brutality comes from.I was seven and, along with my younger brother Val, was also running from a broken home when the Syndicate found us.Carson, manic prince of darkness that he is, came next, maybe a year after Val and me. His parents decided a kid with his “issues” was too much for people of their lofty social stature and had him committed to a mental hospital. He was there nine months before he got tired of getting the shit kicked out of him by sadistic adults and escaped, leaving a trail of blood behind him.Then came Gideon. As close as we are to him, not one of us knows his story.And none of us, not even Carson, is crazy enough to ask.“Okay, then riddle me this,” Carson sighs. “Where do baby Barbies and Kens come from if there are no dicks and pussies in the Barbie-verse?”“Do you ever take a single millisecond to review the shit that pops into your damaged head before letting it fall out of your mouth?” Sebastian grunts.“No, because that would be boring,” Carson shrugs in response.To be clear, Carson is a fucking lunatic. But then, so are the rest of us, at least to varying degrees. It’s probably why we became friends in the first place, and why we still are over ten years later.Ten years from starting at the bottom as damaged goods to being at the very fucking top of the pile.If we’re being honest, the driving factor was me. Maybe it’s something I was born with, but the second I found myself part of the Syndicate and embraced by this strange, shadowy, old-world brotherhood of a family, there was no limit to my ambition.I’ve always been like that. I don’t just dip my toes in. It’s all or nothing.And that’s how a runaway from a broken home in McKeesport, Pennsylvania with drug addict parents went from packing baggies of coke and pills to being an enforcer. To joining the secretive intelligence wing of the Syndicate. To being invited to bigger tables at more important meetings. Until eventually I was second to the Marquis himself, which is the title given to the head of our organization.The problem is, when you’ve spent your whole life in a certain world, with a found family you’ve bled and would die for, the one thing you can’t abide is rot.And Étienne Veyrac, the former Marquis, was rotten to the core.Corrupt. Self-serving. A poison running through the very organization that took me in and gave me a place in this world.Plus, like I said, for better or worse, there is no limit to my ambition.So I just…took it all.A year ago, I had Étienne killed and assumed command of this ancient brotherhood. I brought my motley crew of psychopaths along for the ride to the top with me, and the three of them now act as my close advisors and inner circle.Yes, at times it’s like trying to run an empire alongside leg-humping puppies.I also wouldn’t change a single thing about any of it.“Anyway, I feel the need to voice my displeasure, again, at your lack of concern for my pants.”“For fuck’s sake,” Sebastian rumbles, rolling his broad shoulders as he shoots Carson a look. “Have you forgotten that you’re a multi-millionaire now?”Multi-multi-multi-millionaire, if we’re keeping score.“Just buy some new fucking pants and stop crying like a little bitch about it.”“P-R-A-D-A, you uncultured bag of shit,” Carson grunts.“Don’t give an F-U-C-K, shrimp dick,” Seb shoots back.“Is that a desperate plea to see my hard cock, Seb?” Carson grins maniacally, grabbing his crotch and making a stroking motion.“Try it and see what happens to your face,” Sebastian growls, starting to stand.“You want me to what on your face?”Jesus fuck. Time to cut this bullshit short.I plant a hand on Sebastian’s broad chest and gently push him back down. “You know he feeds off the attention. Just stop giving it to him.”Sebastian’s jaw clenches, and he glares at Carson over my shoulder. “You take your dick out and I’m going to rip it off and beat you with it.”“How about nobody takes his dick out and we stop talking like we’re at a fucking football game.”Christ.The three of us whirl when we hear Gideon’s voice.“Fuck me,” Carson groans, shoving his fingers through his blond hair and glaring at our quiet, eternally broody friend who’s just appeared like a fucking apparition out of nowhere. “Will you stop doing that?”Gideon’s dark brow furrows. “Doing what?”“The fucking jump-scare shit!” Carson hisses. “For once, could you just announce your presence like a normal human being?”“That’s what I did.” Gideon shrugs and then nods his chin at Carson. “Your pants are ripped.”“No shit, Sherlock,” Carson grumbles.“That’s what you get for wearing designer shit in the goddamn countryside,” Seb snickers under his breath.“Fuck this hillbilly place,” Carson mutters, glaring again at the rip in his pants.I glance at Gideon and we both shake our heads wearily. Carson and Sebastian might be city kids, but Gideon and I clearly agree that coastal southern Connecticut, aka The Gold Coast, is hardly “the countryside”. And ten-thousand-square-foot designer homes set on four acres of manicured grounds and gardens are not close to “hillbilly shit”.Carson sighs. “Remind me why we’re here now that you’re the king and all? Don’t you have underlings for shit like this? And, hey, speaking of underlings, when do I get some of my own?”“You’re welcome to go wait in the car whenever you like,” I grunt.“Or just, you know, not come,” Sebastian adds with a grin.Carson flips him off, and Sebastian chuckles as he wraps a muscled arm around our friend’s shoulder and taps his forehead to his.“To remind you, we are doing ‘shit like this’ because it’s fucking fun.”Carson brightens. “Oh yeah, there’s that.”Seb’s right.All four of us are different flavors of fucked up and broken. But one thing that we have in common is a deep appreciation of, and fondness for, blood and violence.Sorry-not-sorry.I glance at Gideon. “Anything?”He shakes his head. “Nah. Just the one security guard at the front gate, like we already knew. And Miss O is going to text when things are set up there. No surprises.”No surprises is always my preference.My mind has started to wander when Gideon quietly clears his throat.“Speaking of surprises…”I glance at him. “Yes?”A faint smirk hovers in the shadows of his mouth, his stormy blue eyes glinting in the moonlight as he pushes his dark hair away from his face.“Are we going to talk about the surprise attendee at the party the other night?”Yeah, go ahead and add that to the list of reasons why Gideon, much as I love him, can creep me the fuck out. It’s like the motherfucker can read your goddamn mind sometimes. Because yes, that’s precisely what…or should I say who…my thoughts had been wandering to just now.“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re⁠—”“Vaughn.”I exhale as he looks at me impassively. “What.”“I know you’re the king, and believe me, I have no interest in your throne. And these two…” He nods his chin past me to Carson and Seb, arguing about how exactly it is that babies come into existence in the Barbie-verse, pointing out that Barbie’s little sister, Skipper, actually comes with a baby to look after.Like, this is an actual conversation two grown men are having out loud.“I think they’re just happy to be here,” Gideon murmurs quietly. He cocks a brow at me. “But who the fuck was she?”“Who was who?”“The girl King V. here had his hands on at the party the other night,” Seb grunts. I glance over to see that he and Carson are now finished their deep philosophical discussion concerning procreation in the Barbie-verse.“Hi, yes, I have a question,” Carson says, raising his hand before turning to Sebastian. “Why in fuck where you looking at Bancroft during an orgy?” He smirks. “Shit, is this a love that dare not speak its name situation?”Sebastian rolls his eyes and flips Carson off, then glances back at me. “I’m curious, too. Spill. I didn’t recognize her at all.”“That’s because she’s not Syndicate,” Gideon adds slowly, his voice low and laced with suspicion.“Oh shit, the plot thickens,” Carson growls, his eyes narrowing.I shake my head. “She’s…no one of consequence.”“Yeah, but how’d she even get in the room?” Sebastian scowls.“She used a guest password.”I’d like to say I pushed all thoughts of Evelina Nikitin out of my head the very second I scared her off the other night before proceeding to lose myself in a harem of pussy.But I did not.Any of it.Instead, I questioned the men at the door about the woman who’d just left. That’s how I found out she used the guest password, arcana sub silentio, not the Syndicate members password. Which also means I figured out how the fuck she got that password, thank you very much Val for not locking your fucking phone.So yeah, that’s how she knew about the party to begin with. But it still leaves one mystery:Why the hell did she come to me?I mean, yes, I know her basic reason. It would have been easy enough to deduce even if she hadn’t told me. Six months ago, after Pavel Nikitin tried to kill his own son and my brother, Roman took the throne and had Pavel banished to Russia. If it were me, I would have simply cut off his fucking head, but I can appreciate complicated relationships with one’s father.So that’s why she ostensibly needs help: because Pavel is walking around Moscow without power or money, with a gigantic target on his back.That still doesn’t explain why his princess ballerina of a daughter is sneaking into Syndicate parties at members-only kink clubs to ask yours truly for help, though.My jaw tightens and my eyes narrow as I replay the feel of her pulse twitching under my fingertips. The softness of her skin. The delicious tremble of her fear. The faint scent of lilac and vanilla when I leaned close to her ear.“Vaughn.”I drag myself away from that particularly distracting train of thought and glance at Gideon. He’s holding up his phone, showing a text that’s just come in:Miss OAll set up here. Don’t fucking burn me.Dark hunger flexes and cracks its neck inside me, and I turn to grin at my friends. “Go time.”“Fuck yes,” Sebastian groans with a genuine undertone of sexual excitement in his voice.“Think I just came,” Carson grins in the darkness.The four of us make our way silently past the garden wall, through the rose bushes, around the pool, and finally into the huge house via the back door that Miss O was kind enough to leave open for us.“Who wants to do improv with Miss O?” I hiss as we pause at the bottom of the grand staircase.“Not it,” Carson mutters, touching his nose. Gideon shakes his head quickly.“Fuck, I’ll do it,” Sebastian grunts. “She doesn’t scare me.”“That’s because you weren’t there the night she helped us set up that Swedish diplomat,” Carson spits, making a face. “You missed the horror show of watching her stomp on the poor dude’s nuts.” He gulps. “In fucking stilettos.”We creep single file up the stairs, pausing in the hallway outside a bedroom where we can hear a wooden paddle slapping against bare skin, followed by the giddy groans of a man.I glance at Seb and nod.Showtime.Sebastian bursts through the door first, yelling like a fucking madman. The man chained to an iron Saint Andrew’s cross on the wall immediately shits himself, screaming in terror around the ball-gag stuffed into his mouth. Miss O, true professional that she is, makes a great show of dropping her sadistic Hard Domme facade and screaming in what truly sounds like fear when Sebastian grabs her around the waist and starts bellowing about “burying her in the woods” as he drags her from the room. She does manage to sneak in a quick wink at me on the way out.That leaves Carson, Gideon, and me alone with one Cyril Weathers.Wearing a cock cage.“My my my,” I sigh, rolling my neck and slowly pulling a gleaming knife out of my coat. “This, Cyril, is what they call being up a shit creek without a paddle.”“But literally,” Carson says, his nose wrinkling as he waves a hand in front of his face and nods at the actual shit Cyril just deposited on the floor beneath his spread and bound legs.I walk over to the chained man. He whimpers pathetically as I slide the tip of my knife up his cheek, slipping it under the leather strap of the ball gag. With a flick of my wrist, the strap is severed, letting the gag and a mouthful of Cyril’s spit dribble down his bare chest.“Bancroft!” Cyril squeaks, his initial terror subsiding a little. I watch as it slowly morphs into a delightful mix of shame, a different kind of fear, and a horrified realization of what’s unfolding around him.“Wh-what’s the meaning of this!?” he blurts, desperately trying to appear angry…which, let’s be real, is pretty hard to do when your dick is locked in a cage and there’s shit running down your legs.“This, Cyril, is your official notice.” I smile. “If you recall, the last time we spoke, you were not very nice when it came to sharing your views about me joining the board of directors of Knightsblood.”Cyril sits as treasurer on the board of directors for Knightsblood University, one of the mafia world’s greatest little secrets.Knightsblood, barely ten miles from where we are right now, is basically the mafia version of Harvard, Yale and Princeton all rolled into one. A very old-school, old-money, exclusive-as-fuck “ivy league for the underworld”, where the heirs and offspring of Russian pakhans, mafia dons, kingpins, Yakuza oyabuns, and more come to get a world-class education.…And also make the connections they’ll need later when they eventually ascend their respective thrones back home.I never went to college. Neither did Sebastian, Carson, or Gideon. So my desire to join the board of directors has nothing to do with ‘revisiting my youth’ or ‘giving back to the college’ or any of that bullshit.Like everything I do, it comes from a place of ambition.Soon, one of the current board members, Andrés Torvallés, heir to the hugely powerful Torvallés family in Spain, is going to be…resigning. I already have the rest of the members in my pocket, who will gladly vote me onto the board, Then it’s just a short step to becoming chairman of that board. But a vote for chairman has to be unanimous.And I am going to be chairman.Again, this isn’t because I secretly harbor a deep love of meetings and paperwork. It’s because when I see Knightsblood, I see opportunity.The most powerful criminal organizations on earth are not the ones you’ve heard of, or who get turned into movie tropes. The Comorra. The Bratva. The Cartel. These are obviously powerful, insanely well financed groups.But the real power is bigger than petty crime, trafficking, and getting muddied in the street-level dramas of organized crime. Entities like the Torvallés or d’Auvrelle families have been around for centuries and influence global politics and history.That is real power. But getting there means evolving.That’s where inserting myself into position of power within Knightsblood comes into play.If I control the board, it means I control the university. It means that I can influence the future of the underworld on a global scale. It gives me a monopoly on information, with access to all sorts of normally confidential information regarding some of the most powerful mafia families on the planet.It means I become a powerbroker on a scale almost never before seen in the criminal underworld.So that’s why I need onto the board of directors for Knightsblood. And right now, it’s only Cyril standing in my way.Killing him would be far easier. But given that Andrés will be…departing the board very shortly, very abruptly, another member doing the same would start to raise questions I don’t need asked.So we’re doing it this way.Cyril’s face pales. “Look, Vaughn, I’m sorry, okay?! It wasn’t a personal attack, I just don’t feel that the college needs to entangle itself with⁠—”“Oh, you’ve made your thoughts on the matter crystal clear,” I say, smiling icily at him. I turn to Carson. “Mr. Photographer, I believe our model is ready for his close-up.”Carson makes a face. “Fuck that, I don’t want this shit on my phone.”“As if that would be the worst thing your phone ever saw,” Gideon grunts. “Fine, I’ll do it.”He pulls his phone out and starts snapping pictures of a naked, shit-streaked, cock-caged Cyril, bound to a BDSM cross.“Jesus Christ,” Cyril chokes as he starts to cry.“I sincerely doubt the Father, The Son, or The Hole Spirit wants to be involved in any of this,” I say with a wry smile. “Now, you know what this means, right?” I step closer. “In case you’re unclear, the answer is, it means you’re fucking mine now.”Cyril looks pathetic and broken as he lifts his eyes to mine. “Or…or you’ll tell my wife?”I smile and shake my head. Then I sigh, reaching out and patting his cheek patronizingly. “You think my threat is ending your marriage? No, Cyril.” I shake my head again and then bring my knife up. Cyril whimpers as I lift his chin with the tip of the blade. “If you step out of line, I won’t tell your wife about your kinky proclivities and your night with a Dominatrix.”I lean closer, letting him inhale my darkness as I loom right in his face.“I’ll cut your wife into little pieces in front of you and feed her to you one bite at a time.”It’s not until we’re heading back to the city that I allow myself to admit that as much fun as that was, there’s been something else taking up massive amounts of real estate in my head.Someone else.Someone who never should have come to that party the other night with her pathetic request for help, and thereby gotten my attention.Evelina Nikitin might think I’m a monster. And she’d be right.But she doesn’t know the fucking half of it. Share to your friends Enjoying this site? Support us via PayPal, Visa, MasterCard or Crypto. Your donations help cover site maintenance and hosting costs! Dance of Monsters: Chapter 3 Tip: You can use left, right keyboard keys to browse between chapters.Tap the middle of the screen to reveal Reading Options. If you find any errors (non-standard content, ads redirect, broken links, etc..), Please let us know so we can fix it as soon as possible.Report