11- GRUVV'S POV

I picked up the hammer that was on the floor, held the hammer to a dude's head, and threw it up as high as I could before it hit his head. There was blood splattered on my clothes and face, and it smelled so strong I had to smoke a cigarette. I was sure the man was dead when I did that.

The taste isn't quite right, and there's a little bit of blood from the guy I just killed on the filter tip. I tossed the ciggie. I approached a guy who was coughing up blood and sprawled on the floor. I looked at him and stomped on his face with the army boots I was wearing.

"Skunk! Just answer the question." I spat in his face, and he groaned in pain under my feet.

"Gruvv, no." I turned my head because I heard footsteps behind me.

A guy who looked a lot like me walked in. He seemed uneasy when he saw the room was full of corpses and there was a blood smell everywhere. I let out a sigh, and George came over to me, handing me a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

The guy brought almost ten people, and there were twenty men in the room. The room smelled like pheromones, like the kind you'd get from an Alpha. The smell was definitely unpleasant, just what they said it would be.

I took a seat. Cross, my older brother's sitting over in the other chair in the room. He crossed his legs, his face still looking as haughty as ever.

"Hey, have you found it yet?" I asked while I lit a cigarette.

"No, I've been trying to track down where he is. Folks who work at the airport say no one leaves the country using that name." Cross replied, took out a handkerchief, and covered his nose. He can't stand the smell of blood and pheromones for too long.

He never changes. He's still acting like a noble.

"Fuck! Did he have plastic surgery and change his identity?" I started raving.

"George, what did you find out about the guarantor in the contract?" Cross asked George, who was standing behind me.

My secretary took the file off the table and handed it off to Cross.

"He sold his own son? He asked after getting the file about the Rudapriya family and having a look at it.

"That's the info we have for now. We just found out that Madam Rose bought the boy about a month ago." George explained the situation.

Cross thumbed through the file in his hand. I smoked that cigarette real deep, and from my brother's reaction, it looked like something bad was on its way. I gave my forehead a rub,  damn, my hands are killing me after I spent half the day beating these guys.

They're Gil Rudapriya's underlings, and the guy's been bankrupt for almost two more years, but he's still got underlings. Gil Rudapriya borrowed a lot of money from our company and then just stopped showing up. His mortgage payments stopped after a year. He was such a devoted pet we couldn't find him anywhere, so our people were looking for him.

"We've got to figure out where the man is." Then he passed the file to George.

"How should we deal with this guy?"

Are you seriously considering that? Of course we're going to sell him! And is he also dominant?" I said to George, looking a bit upset, with my eyebrows stuck together and my teeth grinding. "Gil's been tricking us all this time. He started a new business that ended up being a competitor to our company, and he teamed up with a bunch of people and took on a bunch of projects over the past two years!"

Cross nodded, agreeing, "Gruvv is right. That man has already stabbed us in the back. He took out a loan for his new business from us, but it turns out he was working with a different company. If that happens, it's going to be bad news for our main construction business. He's already stolen more than six projects from us in the last two years." After explaining things to George, he took a drag on his cigarette.

Everyone in the room already knew that, but they just kept quiet. This isn't exactly a secret, Gil had been planning to bring down DATTA's company from the start. It felt like a slap in the face.

I told my subordinate to clean up the bodies in the room, except for one guy I let live because he knew Madam Rose's brothel where Gil Rudapriya's son was sold.

I went with Cross to the building's exit. I'd switched into a button-up shirt and tie. Even though my body was clean-shaven, the smell was still strong.

"Hey, you're spreading your pheromone again!" Cross shot me a look, looking a bit annoyed.

I laughed and replied, "You should be used to it by now!" I said as I threw away the cigarette butts.

I could hear Cross's sighs clearly."You're not going to the doctor anymore?"

"Ah, stop! You and Dad are the same, it's all noise!" I groaned while messing with my hair, which was now sticky because of a mix of blood and sweat.

"You need to be checked by the doctor. Dad's going to be concerned if he sees you like this. After all, you should try to tone down the gangster boss vibe and work at headquarters. You have to think about having a family."

I looked at Cross.

Cross quickly covered his nose with a handkerchief and made a disgusted face at me. "Stop it! Your pheromones! Ugh!"

"If I don't work in the field, your headquarters won't work properly," I said with some frustration.

"Joshua can fill in for you. He should be your stand-in already."

"No way, you want to let that kid with a bad attitude be the leader of this underground?" I said, a little annoyed.

Joshua is my younger brother. He just turned twenty years old. He was studying in college and, of course, he was also one of the people working underground. But handing over leadership to a child who's just stepped into adulthood feels like too much of a risk.

"Joshua's not a big fan of physical conflict. He's a smart guy, and he'll be great at the underground work."

I sigh, "If you use your head here, you'll go home with a cold and a dead body! You're just going to turn into a corpse." I said I'd wrap things up with Cross and then I'd jump in the car.

He knocked on my car window again, so I let out another sigh. He's definitely more of a handful as he gets older.

"Leona's birthday is next week, and it would be great if you could come!" He said with a big smile.

I nodded and closed the window. George hit the gas and I saw Cross waving cheerfully from the middle rearview mirror.

Even though he was much more cold-blooded than me, the man still looked so cheerful. He got married really young because of the arranged marriages back then, and it's wild seeing him have a daughter now. He turned down an Omega that his dad had picked out for him, but now he's acting like his whole life revolves around that Omega.

“Moron.” I muttered something to myself as I closed my eyes.

I've got to find Gil Rudapriya's son. I'll sell him to another broker for a great price. I heard he's dominant, if he's actually an Omega Dominant, the price is probably going to be more than I expected. First, I'll go to Madam Rose's place and grab him.