“Word is, he’s using someone on the inside,” he added. “New face. Can’t pin down who yet.”
Of course he was.
Sebastian Callahan didn’t play by rules. He wrote his own. And lately, he’d been too loud. Too confident. Like he knew Max couldn’t touch him. Or wouldn’t.
My fingers tightened around the edge of the folder.
It wasn’t just about product. It wasn’t about territory. It was personal now.
Callahan never did anything without intention. He was strategic. The kind of man who didn’t poke unless he already had a plan for how to deal with the reaction.
And the last time he’d gotten involved with someone close to Max, it was Valentina.
Whether she wanted to admit it or not—whether she even realized how deep it went—she’d been a piece on his board once. Maybe still was.
I didn’t like thinking about that. Which meant I’d been thinking about it nonstop.
“I can pressure the docks again,” Jacob offered. “Put someone else on rotation. Start freezing routes.”
I shook my head. “No. That’ll tip our hand.”
“You want me to sit on it?”
“I want you to find out who Callahan’s feeding from.”
Jacob nodded, his face unreadable. “And if we do?”
“We make an example.”
The file sat open in my lap, pages filled with numbers, locations, and grainy surveillance shots.Things that should’ve been the only thing I cared about.
But then there washer.
Valentina.
Mywife.
Not in the file. Not in ink. But in the spaces between words.In the details no one else would notice.
Sebastian Callahan was prying into Max’s shipments. Tracking, digging. He had eyes everywhere.And Valentina used to be one of them.
My fingers pressed harder into the folder.
Had she ever looked at him the way she looked at me—with fire, with challenge, with that maddening little smirkthat made me want to shut her up with my mouth on hers? Had shefoughthim the way she fought me? Had she driven him insane with her backhanded comments, her unpredictable mouth, and the way she turned everything into a battle just for the hell of it?
Had she hated him first,before she wanted him?
The thought curled around my ribs.
She’d been with him. I knew that. I’d known that for a long time. And I’d spent just as long pretendingI didn’t care.
But now? Now I’d had her—now I knewexactly how she sounded when she moaned my name, how she felt when she fell apart around me, how she looked when she was wrecked and dazed and fuckingmine—the thought ofhishands on her made my stomach twist violently.
I didn’t have a right to hate it. I knew that. I wasn’t some lovestruck idiot clenching his jaw over a girl who’d never belonged to him. But it didn’t change the fact that the idea of Callahan knowing what I knew—seeing what I’d seen, feeling what I’d felt—made me want toburn something to the ground. Maybe him.
I tried to push the thought out of my head. Tried to remind myself it didn’t matter.That she was here now. That whatever happened before didn’t change a damn thing.
But it did. Mostly because I didn’t share things well. I’d never had anything that was just mine.
