22. SAMUEL

I woke on the sofa, cuddling Leo. My hands were in agony from the beating I'd handed out. I was past using my fists. I wasn't some low street gang criminal, recruited to peddle drugs on street corners. I was the head of a family; we dealt in party drugs and smuggling.

Trying my best not to wake Leo, I looked around. The sun was rising. I was still in my clothes from last night. Leo was in a onesie. He must've put the fleecy blanket over us. I hadn't seen it before, so it must have been his. Covered colourful stars.

He rolled back into my spot as I climbed from it.

The blood soaked through the gauze around my hands. I killed the man. His mangled face went lifeless in front of me. It was his fault, of course, he'd attacked me. It was probably a job Preston could've got the security involved with instead of me.

Security eventually got involved to clean the mess. And all for a phone that led us down a dead end.

I went to the bathroom to make less noise as I redressed my wounds. It was painful, but I could handle it. I'd handled much worse growing up, my family had a saying, you had to take a beating to know how to give a beating, maybe not a saying so much as a training motto.

I swallowed a painkiller and examined the rest of my body as I undressed from the shirt. They'd got one shot at me, hitting my ribs. It was bruised and a little tender, but I hadn't even felt that last night. My lip was also sore, prodding it with my tongue, I knew it would take time to heal.

The worst part of last night was how we didn't even find my uncle. We found his phone. They eventually told us it was on the street. It reminded me again, I needed a new phone. But that was fine, Kelly would import everything over from the old one.

Leo was awake when I walked back into the living room in a pair of boxers. His eyes lit up, like he'd just won a golden ticket. His prize, which he knew, was my body. And I knew the regenerative powers of sex. I was already chubbing up a semi in my boxers.

"Are you ok?" He let out a little gasp. "That looks sore."

"I'm fine."

Leo jumped over the sofa, almost slipping as he raced to me. "And your hands?" He took my hand inside the bandage, turning them over as if he knew what to look for. It was endearing.

"You wanna help me?" I whispered, placing a hand at his cheek. "You want to look after Daddy, do you?"

Nodding, he almost had his tongue wagging too. "Anything."

I unzipped his onesie, as it fell from him, revealing him in all his naked glory. "Against the window."

He stepped out of it and walked toward the large glass window. His bum pressed against the glass, I shook my head and gestured for him to turn.

On my knees behind him, I pulled his cheeks apart and licked his hole. He mushed himself against the glass, rubbing his cock on it as he moved back and forth on my face.

In motion, I ate his ass while he left an imprint of his body against my window.

He stayed there until I could get a condom and lube. He hadn't moved a single inch, I would know, his imprint was a memory now turning to condensation from his heavy hot breath.

There was no wasting any time, I went straight inside with my lubed cock, as far as I could before he let out an almighty moan. I reached around his body to grab his cock and with the limit use of my hand, I masturbated him.

"Tell Daddy what you want," I said before nibbling at his earlobe.

"I want you to cum in me," he said. "I want Daddy's dick to cum in me."

I would've preferred to do that without a condom, but this thing was still early. There would be plenty of time to fuck without them in the future. "I'll paint your insides, baby," I said through a shallow breath.

"I want—I want—I want your cum," he said, backing up against me before thrusting himself against on the window. His hole puckered tight around my cock. And I saw the long line of hot cum across the window, like a small hose he'd created a mess.

I rammed my cock against his throbbing warm hole as he leaned against me and begged in his breathless panting. I filled the condom inside him, keeping my cock up there until I felt every drop teased from the tip of my cock.

We both stayed together in that position for a moment. I didn't want to leave him and feel disconnected from his warmth, or the happy hormones he gave me that put a temporary end to all the pain in my body.

Leo was my happy hormone, long before I ever met him. His images on that app kept me feeling something. And I never thought I'd get it in my hands. Previous relationships and flings failed constantly because they couldn't handle the other side to me, the side they feared. But Leo saw that, and me, and he still wanted more of it.

As he showered, I made him breakfast. It was a mess, I tried to make him French toast, something I grew eating. Instead, I burned the bread and filled the kitchen with smoke. I had a good ventilation system so it wasn't much of a problem, but I couldn't feed him burned food.

"Oh my god," he said, appearing in the hallway, freshly dressed in a clean onesie. "I love burned toast!"

"No, no, no," I said, scraping the burnt crisps from the pan. "You don't have to."

"I do," he said. "When I was younger, my mum used to burn the toast like all the time, and so now, I like to make sure my toast is burned."

"This is—" I showed him the charred bread.

"That's incinerated," he chuckled. "Maybe not that burned."

I pulled a bowl from the cupboard. "Safer if I just make you some cereal then."

"Last night, are you ok?"

"I'm great," I told him. "You go sit at the table. I'll make you the chocolate cereal."

He followed my instruction. "What are we going to do today?"

"Today, I have to get a new phone. I should probably call Kelly before she gets to the office." She could go to the store and buy one with the company card. It was probably better the security cameras see her do it rather than me and my bandaged hands. "Then, I think I've got to go sit with my mum while she calls around about funeral arrangements. My sister will be there as well, so I probably won't stay long, just to show my support."

"Should I come with you?"

I wanted him to come with me, but I didn't want to risk him being seen with me right now. I didn't know if it were the Russians or the Chinese, or one of the smaller gangs who had targeted my family, but I felt like I was being watched now for my next move. "You should go see your friend," he said. "I don't want her to think I kidnapped you, even if that's kinda what I did to you."

He chuckled, although I was unsure if it was a sincere chuckle, or a nervous one.

I didn't want him to leave the flat at all. "Maybe once there's a date set for the funeral, we can get out of the city to one of the houses somewhere," I said. "There's a country house with trees and fields. It's nice."

"I'd like that. I always wanted to travel, and I suppose where better to start than in England." He was enthusiastic and excited about the idea. I liked that about him, switching on his childlike explosion of excitement. It's what I craved, to have someone who could beat down all the stress of what I do. "You know, I think there's a lot we could do in England, because we have beaches too. And I've never really been to the beach before, maybe as a kid, I barely remember it, but what if we see like dolphins and sharks there too."

"I—I don't think we have those," I said, handing him the large bowl of cereal. "But we could go somewhere that did."

His eyes lit up. "Really?"

"Absolutely!"

I left him to eat as I got dressed for my day. I looked pretty patched up, and less like I'd just stepped out an underground fighting ring. My mother and sister would both be obsessing over every little detail for the funeral procession, while I would organise the family meeting afterwards. It was a perfect situation, the family would all be together after the funeral, and we needed to take a vote on who to put in charge. The obvious answer and step would be to place me there.

Another morning at my mother's house smelled like baked goods.

I tried to be present with her and joke about her opening a bakery, but my mind focused on Leo, alone at the flat. I had no way of getting in contact with him until I was back at the office where Kelly was currently swapping over all my phone data.

My younger sister, Belinda, was writing a list. "We've got flowers booked now," she said, ticking the page. "We need to know where you're holding the wake and meeting to organise catering," she said, glaring at me. "So, the sooner you get that done, the better."

Our mother hummed a tune as she opened the oven door to check her cakes. "I heard about last night," she said, without even glancing at me. "Your Uncle Bennett is still missing."

"Uncle Bennett is missing?" Belinda gasped. "I've been here for an hour waiting for Sam to show up and you didn't tell me any of this."

"Relax," I grumbled, sitting at the island counter. I laid my bandaged hands out. "It was nothing. It didn't lead us anywhere. We were tracking his phone. Someone stole it. Or found it. Either way, they'll think twice about picking something off the floor that doesn't belong to them."

I could hear Belinda grind her teeth. "I thought you were both over that," she said. "Violence doesn't solve anything."

Our mother turned, throwing her head back, she cackled. "Don't be silly. Violence solves many things. And it teaches people valuable lessons. There's a—there's a—what do you call it? A law. That's it. There's a law somewhere that's in a foreign country about if you steal, you get your hand chopped off, or fingers."

"Mum, that isn't this country," Belinda argued. "And I don't want to know about chopping fingers or hands off, or anything like that."

Our mother was sweet, but she'd witnessed a lot of dark things. Belinda was guarded from ever having to see any of that. Belinda married a wealthy man, she never had to work.

I grabbed an apple from the fruit basket. "You wouldn't last a day doing what I do."

"You're hardly like dad," she chuckled. "I heard those stories. He had guns."

"We still do," mother chuckled. She placed her hand on mine, holding it. "Of course, they're hidden away now, but you better be thankful. If it wasn't for those guns, we wouldn't be where we are now, in such a beautiful home. And thankful for the homes you both have." She squeezed my hand. "Now, I want to get the matter of your father's death cleared up before we bury him. I won't let him in that grave until we know who killed him."

I agreed with that. I knew he couldn't be put to rest until we figured out who'd killed him. And it was possible the same person who had taken Uncle Bennett.

"Someone knew about dad's condition," I said. "It can't be anyone too far removed from the family."

"And it can't be family," Belinda added. "There's no winning if we're all at war."

Our mother nodded. "It could be any number of people. But we know it's not the Russians, or the Chinese. We all deal in different things. Our territories don't overlap. We've always made sure of that, and I assume it's still the case."

"It is," I said. "Unless they think I'm weak, and it was easy to take over with me in command."

It was a mind fuck of scenarios and situations. But each of them led me back to the same conclusion. It had to be someone who didn't want to leave a mess. No blood. Someone who wanted to make it look like he died from natural causes. I knew the Russians loved to poison and overdose, and the Chinese were very particular in their slices, hitting the main arteries. I didn't know if that was true for all Russian and Chinese mafias around the world, but in this part, that was what I grew to know of them.