In the car, the silence stretches, thick and heavy, and I try to ignore the awareness prickling beneath my skin. She sits across from me in the back seat, a stack of files balanced neatly on her lap, pretending to read while her fingers tap nervously against the folder’s edge.
“Relax,” I say, my voice lower than intended.
She glances up at me, wide-eyed. “I’m relaxed.”
I rub the stubble on my jaw. “You’re tapping holes into my contracts.”
She flushes and stills her hands, muttering something under her breath I don’t quite catch. It almost makes me smile, which is dangerous. I shouldn’t be watching her. I shouldn’t be noticing the way a loose strand of dark hair brushes her cheek or how soft her lips look in the filtered sunlight through the tinted glass.
My rule is clear. I don’t sleep with staff. Not ever.
And yet, sitting this close, with the steady hum of the city passing by outside, my restraint feels thinner than it should.
She shifts slightly, crossing her legs, and I look away first. Not something I do often. The realization that I have sendsalarms through my mind. She’s dangerous to me, possibly in more ways than I’m aware right at this moment.
I don’t date. Not in my line of work, people always wanting to seek revenge on the late Leo Moretti by taking out his family. Dating puts innocent others before those dangers and that isn’t fair. I need to keep up my normal routine. No strings, no attachment. Simple, easy, not messy and no one ends up dead.
We arrive downtown, the car pulling up in front of the high-rise offices. I step out first and wait while she climbs out after me, keeping her pace quick to match mine as we enter the building.
The lobby is all glass and steel, polished floors reflecting the sunlight streaming in from floor-to-ceiling windows. She walks beside me, her heels tapping on the marble, her gaze fixed straight ahead, but I can feel her nervousness humming under the surface like a live wire.
We take the elevator up to the twenty-second floor, and I rest my hand lightly against her lower back as we step out, guiding her toward the boardroom. She stiffens slightly beneath the touch, and I feel it, that subtle tension that is not fear exactly, but something close to it. Something I shouldn’t want to unravel or learn how to.
Inside, the boardroom hums with quiet anticipation, the low murmur of conversation cutting off as I step inside. My focus locks instantly on the man seated near the far wall, leaning back in his chair like he owns the room.
Matteo Romero.
He looks older than I remember, broader through the shoulders—years in jail clearly spent in the gym. Fresh out on parole and already clawing his way back toward the power and control he once ruled with. His dark hair is threaded with silver above his ears, but his eyes are the same. Sharp. Calculating. Dangerous.
And then Briar sees him. I feel it before I even look at her. The way her breath catches, the sudden tension radiating off her body. When I glance down, her face has gone pale, her fingers tighten around the folder in her hands until the edges bend under the strain.
She knows him.
I keep my expression neutral as I stand behind my seat at the head of the table, motioning for her to sit to my right. She lowers herself carefully into the chair, avoiding looking at me, but she cannot hide the way her hand trembles slightly as she flips open her notebook.
Romero catches my gaze from across the table and smiles like a man playing a long game. I don’t give him the satisfaction of a reaction, but inside, a cold knot tightens in my gut.
Briar’s fear is real. That much is obvious. And fear like that doesn’t come from rumors or gossip. There is something deeper here, something I’m not seeing. Something that I’ve missed. Something that my security has missed.
I’ll find out what it is.
I reach over and shake the hands of my lawyer and brother Stephen who arrived before me before I sit.
“Good afternoon,” my lawyer seated to my left says. “I hope everyone’s here ready to make a good deal today.”
“If the transaction is to our agreement.” Romero sits across the table, his smirk as sharp as a blade, and I know before he opens his mouth that he’s about to be a problem.
“I think the offer is more than generous,” I say, leaning back in my chair like I have all the time in the world. Control is everything. “Prime New York real estate, no financial holds cash up front. Most people would jump.”
“Most people aren’t me,” Matteo says smoothly, resting his arms on the table. His eyes glitter with that smug satisfaction he’s always carried, like he knows something I don’t.
Stephen shifts beside me but stays quiet, jaw tight. Our lawyer clears his throat softly, probably ready to jump in, but I lift a hand without looking at him. Not yet.
“What do you want, Matteo?” I ask. My tone is calm, deliberate.
“The price,” Matteo says easily, “goes up by twenty percent.”
I laugh, low and humorless. “You’re insane.”
