I unfold it. The font is typed and the message is short.
The Red Tribunal has summoned you. Do not speak of this meeting to anyone or face the consequences. You’ll receive the address via text message tomorrow, one hour in advance.
My stomach knots.
I’ve just been exiled from Kingston’s side by his father. Branded as a threat. And now the most dangerous shadow organization in the mafia world wants tospeak to me.
Alone.
Tomorrow.
My fingers close around the paper, heart thudding.
I don’t know if this is a warning or an opportunity.
But either way… it could change everything.
20
KINGSTON
I scroll through my texts the next morning, swiping past the ones from my father. My lips twist at the memory of our terse conversation in the hospital. At least he’d waited until I was somewhat fucking lucid before the verbal lashing began.
He went on a tirade, pacing the length of the hospital bed as he berated me for trusting my wife.
“You’re too focused on screwing that girl. You need to get your head in the game,” he growled right as I was coming off the pain meds. “She obviously set you up outside that club and committed the worst betrayal. Do you realize how fucking weak you looked?”
“She didn’t know where we were going,” I remember saying. "There'd have been no way she could have orchestrated that attack.”
Although, a little seed of doubt sprouted in the depths of my drug-clouded mind.
Could she have sent a text when I wasn’t paying attention? I’d been plenty distracted by her lips on my cock whilewe were at Lincoln Center. Maybe she palmed her phone then and put someone in position to follow us.
My father glares at me. “You’re my underboss, the man who is the future of the Viacava family. And yet you let that whore jeopardize your future. I didn’t realize how easily you’d be led around by your dick,” he scoffs.
A roar rumbles in the back of my throat and I hurl my phone against the wall, wincing because the action pulls at my injured one. It lands on the floor with a loud clatter and I drop my head back against the couch cushion, huffing out a deep sigh.
“Son of a bitch,” I mutter, flinging a hand over my forehead. The drugs are starting to wear off and my temples pound so hard, I can barely think straight at this point.
The penthouse is quiet. Deafeningly quiet.
Not the peaceful kind of quiet, either. It’s more like the calm before the storm.
Almost on cue, bare feet pad against the tile floor behind me, getting louder as Livvie approaches the living room. I’d slept out here last night since I couldn’t get comfortable in the bed and I only sleep on my injured side.
Fucking figures.
She walks into the room and stops at the window overlooking the skyline, a glass of water in her hand. I stare at her back, her body swallowed by one of my T-shirts. Her shoulders are squared, forearms tense as she clutches the glass. Her long hair tumbles down the slope of her spine in loose waves and those legs… fuck. Creamy toned thighs that I can?—
Fuck.
I tear my eyes away from her, swallowing a grunt. This iswhy I got into trouble in the first fucking place. Because I got caught up in whatever I stupidly believed was happening between us.
“You’re up,” I say finally, because I can’t take the silence anymore. I need answers. I need her fire. I need to know I wasn’t wrong about her. About us.
I shift on the couch and curse under my breath, the motion sending pain spiraling down my side. She doesn’t turn around.
“They kicked me out of the hospital,” she says, her voice flat. “Like I was a guilty, untrustworthy criminal. A stranger. A fucking threat.”
