“Eva.” Brie’s voice is smooth but sharp, all business. “Some of my associates have suggested that we need further assurances from you.” The Styx Syndicate, I assume. They are very suspicious of me, though I suppose I can’t blame them. “We need more than just your word that you won’t re-arm the Gattos on a whim. We want a contract stating it—a no-competition clause, if you will.”
“Are you questioning my word?” I ask coolly.
“No,” Brie says, and I can hear the smile in her voice. “Just your pragmatism. You’re the one who always says, ‘It’s just business.’“
How many times have I used those words to justify betrayals, to excuse cruelty, to maintain the cold distance that keeps me safe? But sitting in my study with Robin curled in the chair across from me, a book in her lap and firelight turning her skin golden, the idea of reducing everything to mere business seems…insufficient.
“This isn’t business,” I hear myself say. “It’s personal. The Gattos need to go.”
Robin glances up at the mention of the Gattos, and there’s a pause on the other end of the line. “Personal? That’s not like you, Eva.”
She’s right. The old Eva Novak didn’t do personal. The old Eva treated every decision as a move on an endless chessboard. ButRobin has changed something fundamental in me, shifted my perspective.
“They overstepped,” I say simply. “I won’t allow them to do it again. Draw up your contract, and I’ll have my team look over it.”
Contracts between people like us are completely unenforceable in a court of law, of course. But we respond to a higher power: the power of reputation. Dominika Kusek probably suggested the idea. She knows better than most that I won’t allow the Consortium’s reputation to be sullied, and obtaining a written agreement between us gives them leverage.
But I want the Gattos destroyed more than I care about giving another organization even a slight advantage in a deal.
After I hang up, Robin looks at me. “Everything alright?”
“Just business,” I say automatically, then catch myself. The phrase feels wrong now, reductive. “Actually, no. It’s more than that. I decided after the auction where I acquired you that the Gatto Family in Las Vegas should not be allowed to run such a business.”
Robin looks troubled for a moment. But she doesn’t push for details, doesn’t demand explanations. She just goes back to her reading.
I’m not sure what I expected. Gratitude? I tamp down my ego and remind myself that I’m trying to do better.
Bebetter.
Robin has no reason to believe it yet. But she will. I’ll make sure of it.
But over the following days, I find myself watching Robin more carefully. Not with the obsessive assessment I once used, but with genuine attention to her moods and needs. And what I see troubles me.
While she still smiles and laughs, there’s a quietness about her that wasn’t there before. She’ll stare out windows with a distant expression, lost in thoughts I can’t access. I catch her sometimes with worry creasing her brow, her phone pressed to her ear as she speaks to her brother Adrian daily—sometimes twice a day.
“How is Maisie feeling?” she asks during one of these calls, and something twists in my stomach at the anxiety in her voice. “Are you sure? Did you remember to schedule her follow-up appointment?”
The conversation continues with questions about homework and chores and a dozen small details that make up a family’s daily life. Robin’s family—the people who matter most to her, who shaped her into the woman sitting across from me, who receive her love without question or condition.
I have no equivalent. Stefan is gone, driven away by my own cold words. My father is dead. Dimitri is always off chasing tail. The Consortium is filled with people who serve me out of fear or profit, not love. Leon alone might be the closest thing to a friend, but even he is really more of an employee.
I am alone in a way that Robin, for all her physical isolation in my castle, will never be.
The crisis comes on a Thursday afternoon. Robin bursts into my study without knocking, her face pale and her hands shaking.
“Adrian says there’s a man sitting in a car outside their building,” she says, the words tumbling over each other in her haste. “But it’s not the usual guy. Adrian doesn’t recognize him. Did you change the security detail? After what you said about the Gattos—Eva, I’m worried. If they hurt my family to get back at you, I—” She cuts herself off, trembling and anxious.
Of course she’s worried about the Gattos. Of course she worries that they might hurt her loved ones. How did I not see that before?
I fire off a text to Leon, who appears a few minutes later in the doorway. “Did you change the men guarding Robin’s family?” I ask him in Russian, not wanting Robin to hear and understand—just in case.
Leon raises his brows in surprise. “Yes. Ivan needed a break, so?—”
I hold up a hand and turn to Robin, ready to explain, but she’s still in conversation with her brother on her own phone.
I turn back to Leon. “Get the guard on the phone. Now.”
Within moments, I have my man on the line, giving him rapid-fire instructions. Then I turn to Robin and interrupt her conversation. “Tell your brother to go down and confront the man,” I say calmly.
