Chapter 2~ Mystery Man

Chapter 2

KEGAN

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"There you are, mystery man." Russel coughed as I rejoined him on the beach. "I was thinking I'd have to call a tow car to come drag your bitchless ass out."

"Fuck off." I settled into my chair, accepting the glass he handed me, already bracing myself for whatever ridiculous line of questioning was about to follow.

"Right." Russel's gaze swept over the scattered groups of women in bikinis dotting the sand. "Christ, look at this place. It's like a buffet, and you're acting like you're on a fucking diet. Seriously, how long ago was it since you got laid?"

I took a long pull of my beer to hide my smirk. "Define 'long.'"

"Longer than two days."

"Then it's been a while."

Russel gasped, then rephrased, "Let's flip that. When was the last time you touched a woman?"

"Define 'touched.'"

"With your cock, genio. Not with your knife."

"Then it's been a while."

"I fucking knew it!" He slapped his thigh dramatically. "You're thirty years old and built like a Greek god. Half the women on this beach have been eye-fucking you since we got here. Pick one. Hell, pick two. Live a little."

"Nay. I'm too picky." I said it flatly, already knowing exactly where this conversation was headed.

"Picky or gay?" His eyebrows waggled, his grin turned wicked. "At this point, I'm wondering if you're saving yourself for the Madonna herself."

I nearly choked on my drink, but on second thoughts, I finished it, leaned over, snatched his own and finished it in a swallow. "If I were gay, Russel, you'd be the first to know. Probably the first to cry about it too, since you're madly in love with me."

"Ewww. Gross." he gagged, but there was a grin pulling at his mouth. "I mean, I could hook you up with Allesia's fashion designer friends."

I glared at him. "Fashion designers?"

"They're very stylish." His expression turned mock-serious. "If you want to explore your sexuality, I support you. We all support you. Hell, Nikolai's been taking bets on whether you're secretly pining for some mysterious woman or if you're just really, really deep in the closet."

"Nikolai needs a hobby."

"Nikolai has several hobbies. Gambling on your sex life just happens to be his favorite now that his wife is heavily pregnant." Russel stretched lazily. "So what's it gonna be? The brunette by the volleyball net, or should I ask Allesia about those parties?"

Before I could answer, a blur of motion caught my eye. Adelio came barreling across the sand, his chubby little legs pumping as fast as they could carry him. At barely three years old, the kid was all determination and zero coordination.

"Uncle Kegan! Uncle Kegan!" He launched himself at me, and I caught him easily, swinging him up into the air. His delighted shriek made several nearby sunbathers smile.

"There's my favorite little man," I said, settling him on my lap. "What's the mission today, soldier?" He beamed up at me like I'd just handed him the keys to the entire island.

"Mama says we go potty." His pronunciation of 'potty' came out more like 'pah-tee,' which only made him more adorable.

Allesia approached more carefully, one hand pressed protectively to her swollen belly. Even heavily pregnant, she moved with the unconscious grace of someone who'd learned early that survival sometimes depended on how quietly you could walk.

"He's appointed himself my personal bathroom attendant," she said, her smile tired but fond. "I swear he thinks I'll vanish if he's not supervising every moment."

Russel was on his feet instantly, his playful mood shifting to protective concern. "You sure you're okay? You look tired."

"I'm pregnant, not dying, Russel." But her smile was fond as she kissed his cheek. "We'll be right back."

"Take your time, mama bear," I said, lifting Adelio up to her. "We'll be right here, judging people's beach bodies and questioning my sexuality."

"Your what now?" Allesia's eyebrows shot up.

"Nothing," Russel and I said in unison, which made her eye us suspiciously.

"You two are ridiculous." She shook her head before taking Adelio's hand. "Come on, baby. Let's leave the children to their games."

Adelio took that as a head start to race his mother to the stall, "Adelio, wait up!" Allesia called, shifting with effort. She was due soon, and it showed in her every movement.

"Let him walk," I said lazily. "If he's Russel's son, he'll have to learn to run from bullets sooner or later."

Russel shot me a glare over his sunglasses. "Say that again and I'll gut you." He said it with the casual ease of a man who'd threatened worse over far less serious matters.

"That's if you make it down here without getting your head blown off," I smirked, already reaching for my drink again, unbothered by the empty threat.

It's always been like that between me and Russel. Opposites attract. Right from high school with Russel, the hot-headed, cold-blooded best friend who would sooner shoot a man dead than apologize for stepping on his shoes, now Don of the biggest, most dangerous mafia outfit in the world.

Region Mafia doesn't just run Italy. We own half of Europe, with fingers in pies from New York to Tokyo. If there's money, blood, or power, we're there. That's us.

Then there was me. His cool-headed funny, smart-ass intelligent consigliere who makes sure Russel doesn't accidentally start World War III before breakfast. You don't survive in this life by being the loudest in the room, you survive by being the smartest. And that's me.

One could say that without my brains, Russel would probably be dead and the entire Italian crime organizations would have gone to shit. The good thing about that analogy is that without Russel's gun and his hot-headedness, I'd be dust in the wind as well. It was a partnership built on complementary flaws, the kind that shouldn't have worked on paper but somehow kept an entire empire standing for over a decade.

We'd built something out of nothing together, the two of us, back when we were young enough to believe we were invincible and stupid enough to test that theory more times than either of us cared to admit. Every scar I carried had a story attached to it, and Russel featured in most of them, usually as the reason I'd needed stitches in the first place.

"Now," Russel settled back into his chair, "while my wife's not here to judge me, tell me honestly, are you ever planning to settle down? Give me a godson?"

"Are you volunteering to carry them?"

"Smart ass." He flicked water at me from his bottle. "I'm serious, though. You'd make a good father. You're great with Adelio."

"I'm the fun uncle. That's different from being responsible for someone's entire existence."

"Not that different. You already worry about him like he's yours."

He wasn't wrong, but I wasn't about to admit that. "Someone has to keep you from screwing him up."

"Harsh but fair."

I took a long pull of beer, letting the conversation drift back to safer territory, business, mutual acquaintances, whether the new security protocols were worth the expense. Easy things. Things that didn't require examining why the idea of fatherhood made me think about all the ways I could fail someone completely innocent. It was easier to talk numbers and logistics than to sit with the particular ache that question always stirred up, the one I'd spent years training myself not to look at too directly.

Twenty minutes passed. Then thirty.

The beach was starting to thin as the afternoon heat peaked, families retreating to air-conditioned rooms and afternoon siestas. A few die-hard sun worshippers remained, along with a few others who only emerged when the temperature became genuinely dangerous.

People like us. Men who'd learned a long time ago that safety was an illusion best maintained by never fully relaxing, no matter how paradise-adjacent the surroundings appeared to be.

"Where the hell are they?" Russel was checking his Rolex with increasing frequency, his casual demeanor beginning to crack. "How long does it take to—?"

Allesia appeared at the resort's entrance.

Alone.

Even from fifty meters away, I could see something was catastrophically wrong. Her face was paper-white, her movements unsteady, and she was scanning the beach with the kind of desperate intensity that made Russel and I instinctively reach for our guns and look around to be sure she wasn't getting chased.

"Russel." Her voice carried across the sand, cracked and hollow. "Russel, I can't find him."

My chair hit the sand as I lunged to my feet, but Russel was faster, catching his wife as her knees buckled.

"What do you mean you can't find him?" His voice was deadly calm in the way that meant people were about to start dying.

"He was right there." The words came out broken, between sobs that seemed to tear from somewhere deep in her chest. "Right beside me, talking about the seagulls, and then I turned around for one second, one second, and he was gone. My baby is gone."

The world sharpened into crystal clarity, the way it always did when everything went to hell. I'd felt this exact sensation before, on nights when Russel and I were younger and stupider and closer to death than either of us realized at the time. Everything slowed down and sped up simultaneously, every detail suddenly critical, every second suddenly precious in a way it hadn't been moments before.

I had my phone out before conscious thought kicked in, speed-dialing Marco, my head of security. "Lock down the resort. Now. No one in, no one out. I want every inch of this place searched, every camera reviewed, every guest and employee accounted for. Move."

"Kegan—"

"Move, Marco. Someone just made the worst mistake of their very short life." I ended the call before he could respond, already moving toward the resort's main building with Russel a half-step behind me, both of us shedding every trace of the lazy afternoon we'd been enjoying just minutes before.

The next six hours went by in a haze of controlled violence barely held in check, the kind that simmered just beneath the surface of every question we asked, every threat we implied, every door we kicked open without waiting for an answer.

Security footage revealed nothing useful, strategic blind spots, convenient malfunctions, professional gaps that told me this was an inside job. Guest lists, staff interviews, background checks on everyone who'd so much as delivered towels to the pool.

Nothing.

By the time the sun painted the sea the color of old blood, we had exhausted every lead, every contact, every favor owed across three countries.

Adelio had simply vanished like smoke, and with him went every ounce of the easy, sun-drunk contentment we'd all been floating in just hours earlier. The beach that had felt like paradise that morning now felt like a crime scene, every umbrella and lounger a potential clue we'd already picked clean.

I watched Russel pace the length of the security office we'd commandeered, his phone pressed so hard against his ear I half expected it to crack. Allesia sat curled in a chair in the corner, her hands wrapped around her belly like she could physically shield the child inside from whatever had just torn her family apart.

Nikolai had flown in within the hour, his usual smug composure replaced by something colder, sharper, the version of him that only came out when someone threatened family.

None of us said it out loud, but we were all thinking the same thing. Someone had gotten past every layer of security we'd built specifically to prevent exactly this. Someone had known Adelio would be here, had known the exact window of opportunity, had planned this with a precision that suggested inside knowledge.

Which meant somewhere in our carefully vetted, thoroughly trusted circle, there was a traitor.

And I intended to find them before the night was through.