Chapter 002

KALON SALVATORE

༻ ─·─·─·─·─ ༺

“B… but I'm your brother, Kalon. A… all I ask for is o… one more chance,” Drake stammered, begging from his knees, his face swollen and bruised from the beating Kalon's men had given him.

Kalon stared down at him without a trace of sympathy. Tears were nothing new to him. His business had forced him to become accustomed to them, but somewhere along the way, he had grown to love them. There was something intoxicating about watching someone helpless before him, knowing that their fate rested entirely in his hands. The sight had become a source of pleasure, a reminder of just how much power he held over the lives of others.

“Oh, brother…” A faint smirk tugged at his lips. “Business first. Power second… family comes ninth.”

Drake's eyes widened. “Kalon, please…”

“I'll make sure your burial is done with the honor you deserve.”

He slowly raised his gun, pointing it directly at Drake's head.

His finger was just about to pull the trigger when his phone suddenly rang. Kalon lowered the gun and glanced at the screen before answering the call.

“Speak.”

He turned his back to Drake and walked a few steps away.

“The police tailed us, but we got rid of them, this clearly shows that the commissioner has gone rogue too.”

“What happened to the package?” he asked.

“It's been delivered, sir. Everything is exactly as you instructed…”

“Good, that's what matters. Make sure…”

“Please, Kalon!” Drake's voice cut through the room. “Please, I'm begging you! I'm your brother!”

Kalon's jaw tightened.

The pleading was becoming irritating.

“Sir?” Donel asked through the phone.

Kalon turned around. BANG!

Drake's body went limp.

There was a brief silence on the other end of the call.

Kalon calmly looked down at the body before bringing the phone back to his ear.

“Where were we?”

Donel hesitated. “The package, sir.”

“Right.”

He listened for a few seconds before ending the call.

Kalon slipped the phone into his pocket and looked at his men.

“Take him outside.”

He paused, glancing once more at Drake's body.

“Feed him to Jasper.” Jasper was his best out of the three wild dogs, or rather beasts Kalon kept in his basement.

His men exchanged a brief look before nodding.

Kalon walked away without another glance at his dead brother.

Kalon Salvatore was the kind of man whose mere presence could silence a room before he ever spoke. Tall and broad-shouldered, with a hard, sharply defined face, dark hair, and cold gray eyes that seemed to strip away every ounce of courage from whoever stood before him, he carried an intimidating stillness that was far more frightening than anger. Black ink covered much of his body, crawling from his shoulders down his arms and disappearing beneath the collar of his shirt, each tattoo marking another chapter of the blood he had spilled. Kalon had a rule of his own: for every ten people he killed, he added a new tattoo to his body. With forty-seven tattoos already etched into his skin, the number of lives he had taken was a secret even among the men who worked for him. Some tattoos were symbols, some were dates, and others were nothing more than dark, meaningless marks known only to him. He wore them all without shame, almost like trophies, because Kalon had long stopped seeing death as something to fear. To him, it was simply another language of power and one he spoke fluently.

“Be at my house now. I need another tattoo,” he said. He was about to say something else when the line suddenly went dead.

Kalon stared at the phone in his hand. “This bastard just wouldn't learn, would he?” He said slowly. No one hung up on him.

A moment later, a knock came at the door.

“Boss, the tattoo artist is here.” Raphael informed from behind the door.

“Let him in,” he instructed.

The tattoo artist carelessly walked into the room and dropped his bags on the floor. Kalon's eyes immediately fell on them. Kalon hated dirt, he hated disorder, he hated anything that was out of place.

“Get me another tattoo done,” he ordered.

“Well, the pleasure is all mine,” the man snorted as he dragged his bag across the floor, leaving a dirty trail across the carpet before tossing it onto a chair.

Kalon's best chair.

His jaw clenched but he said nothing, he simply sat down and allowed the man to begin. Several minutes later, the artist finished and stepped back to admire his work.

“Congratulations on your tenth kill, Boss.”

Kalon slowly shook his head.

“It’s only the ninth.”

The man's brows furrowed. “But you only get a new tattoo after every tenth kill.”

A faint smirk appeared on Kalon's lips. “You're right.”

He reached into the drawer beside him and pulled out his pistol.

“I only get one after my tenth.”

The man's expression changed as the sound of the gunshot echoed in the room.

The tattoo artist's body dropped to the floor.

Kalon glanced at the fresh blood staining his carpet, then at the chair the man had dirtied.

“Now it's ten.”

He walked past the body and headed toward the bathroom. A moment later, the cold shower came on, washing the blood from his hands as though nothing had happened.

The bathroom door had not made a sound, yet two soft hands suddenly slid around his waist from behind, fingers splaying possessively across the hard planes of his abdomen.

His jaw tightened. Annoyance flared hot and immediate.

He shut the water off with a sharp twist of the handle and turned.

It was Silver, his fiancée. The one person he had never wanted in his bed, much less in his life. To Kalon, women were little more than desperate, noisy disturbances, useful when needed, disposable the moment they weren’t. Silver was no exception. She was simply the most persistent of them.

Water still dripped from his hair and down the hard lines of his body as he stared at her. Her eyes were not on his face. They were fixed lower, openly, hungrily, on his cock.

“Who,” he said, voice low and lethal, “gave you permission to walk into my room?”

Silver’s lips curved into a slow, practiced smile. She didn’t look away from what she wanted.

“I’m your fiancée, Kalon,” she murmured, her voice dripping with deliberate heat. “I don’t need permission. Besides… every other girl in this city would kill to be standing where I am right now. They fall at your feet the second you look at them. I’m the only one who actually gets to keep you.”

Kalon reached for the black towel hanging nearby and wrapped it around his hips, cutting off her view. He stepped past her without another word and walked out of the bathroom, water still trailing across the marble floor.

“This engagement exists for one reason only,” he said coldly, not bothering to look at her as he crossed the bedroom. “Your father’s shipping routes and the leverage they give me. Nothing more. You are a contract, Silver. Not a wife. Not a partner. A necessary inconvenience.”

She followed him anyway, her heels soft against the carpet. When he stopped near the bed she stepped around him, climbed onto the mattress, and lay back. Her dress rode up as she deliberately opened her legs, bare and inviting.

“I want you in me,” she said, her voice sounding needy. “Right now.”

Kalon’s gaze dropped to her for a long, assessing second. A muscle ticked in his jaw. His cock had already begun to harden beneath the towel, traitorous and indifferent to how little he actually wanted her.

“And when,” he asked quietly, stepping closer, “did you start telling me what to do, Silver?”

She didn’t answer with words. She simply stared up at him, lips parted, waiting.

Kalon reached down, yanked the towel free, and let it drop. His cock sprang free, thick and already half-hard. Silver’s eyes darkened with pure hunger. She scrambled off the bed and dropped to her knees in front of him without being told, hands already reaching.

“Take it in your mouth,” he ordered.

She obeyed at once, crawling the last inch and wrapping her lips around him. She sucked greedily, with her tongue moving, taking him deeper with every bob of her head. Kalon watched her with detached coldness, one hand eventually reaching down to grip her chin and pull her off him with a wet sound.

“On the bed.”

She climbed up immediately, lying back and spreading her legs again. Kalon walked to the nightstand, opened the drawer, and pulled out a condom. He rolled it on with practiced efficiency, then climbed onto the mattress between her thighs. He didn’t kiss her. He didn’t speak. He simply pushed into her in one hard thrust and fucked her with ruthless, using her body the same way he used everything else in his life, without tenderness, and only for as long as it suited him.

When he finished he pulled out, discarded the condom, and stood without a second glance at the woman still lying on his sheets.

“Raphael,” he called, the man by the door immediately opened the door.

Raphael eyes instinctively went to Silver one the bed for two seconds before looking at Kelon whose eyebrow was raised at him.

Kalon didn’t raise his voice. “The next time I find this whore in my room without my express permission,” he said, eyes locked on Raphael's, “your wife and your son will pay for it. Do you understand me?”

Raphael's face was drained of color and he gave a sharp nod. “Yes, Boss.”

Kalon turned away, already walking to the closet. He selected a black three-piece suit, the one he preferred for business that required blood or leverage. Today he was meeting a drug lord, and appearances mattered.

Behind him, Silver remained silent on the bed.

Kalon did not look at her again.