The sound of the pounding surf was relaxing Jerome Rhodes as he got a massage on the balcony of his room. He’d escaped the tourists overrunning Cabo San Lucas in search of warm weather and had come to Malibu to find some quiet. He’d brought only a few men and his new bedmate, Daniela Navarro. Once Gustavo—formerly Juan Luis—and his mother, Gracelia, were dead, he’d returned to the house Gracelia had owned and taken over. No one had questioned him, and the number of men he now had meant no one ever would.

Unlike the Luis family and the rest of the thugs like them, he was taking it slow and building his business so it’d be impossible to penetrate. The first part of his methodical plan to not only start his own operation but to be the biggest distributor in the United States was to get rid of the competition without firing a shot. That was the most important lesson he’d learned watching people from small shitty vans. Cain Casey ruled an empire, and the bitch used her brain more than her muscle.

Casey would be no competition, though. Drugs weren’t her game. No, the current king, Hector Delarosa, had gotten soft with his move to New Orleans. All he’d done from his arrival in the city was chase Casey like a lovestruck teen, but nothing he did got Casey to bend. It was like he kept trying new ways to change her mind and couldn’t accept Casey wasn’t into drugs. It was rather pathetic.

No, Casey had grown fat and rich off liquor and cigarettes, but she didn’t have the stomach for where the real money was. Casey was a wannabe in a man’s world, and when the time came, he’d pay her back for the loss of his life and name. He’d gone to Rodolpho Luis, then his nephew Juan, as a last resort to bring the smug Casey down, but the only thing he’d accomplished was to lose everything that had defined him. He’d screwed up so badly, there was no going back. Anthony Curtis was dead, and he’d be Jerome Rhodes to the grave.

“Señor,” his right-hand man, Pablo Castillo, said softly. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I have news.”

“Take a break,” he told the masseuse. The woman they’d sent up had good hands and was beautiful. After he dealt with Castillo, he was going to offer her enough to spend the rest of the afternoon massaging something else for him. It didn’t matter that he had Daniela with him. When you were the boss, you could indulge in whatever you wanted.

“The men call me—” Castillo started, but Jerome lifted his hand to shut him up.