Jacob smirked. He probably thought he had me figured out. Probably thought I was doing this because of some misplaced sense of morality.
I grabbed the photo of Valentina before he could and ripped it in half, then in half again. I let the pieces fall into my palm before dropping them into the trash.
Jacob exhaled a quiet laugh, shaking his head. “What’s Max always say? The house always wins.”
The house always wins. Yeah, I’d heard Max say it a thousand times. But Jacob had it wrong. This wasn’t gambling. This wasn’t about odds or luck or even strategy—not when Valentina was involved. If anything, it felt like losing. Like folding before the cards had even been dealt.
And what did that say about me?
Jacob slipped the bills into his pocket, still smirking as if he’d won something bigger than a few hundred dollars. As if he’d caught me slipping. And maybe he had, but fuck it. I was beyond caring tonight.
I shouldn’t have intervened. Should have let Valentina deal with the consequences of her own choices for once. Let her crash and burn, if that was what she wanted, because clearly, she didn’t give a shit about dragging me down with her.
But instead I stood there paying off Jacob, covering tracks that weren’t mine, because letting Max find out meant dealing with the kind of mess I didn’t have the patience for tonight—or maybe ever.
I walked back to the table, taking my seat as Max finally glanced toward Jacob, nodding for him to talk about what he had.
Max wasn’t a fool. He knewexactly where the Callahans were shifting their weight.What Sebastian was planning. What Vasily was looking for.
They were the ones who were responsible for almost all their money problems. They’d even gone as far as draining my account one time. I’d never let Max off the hook for letting that happen.
I hated working for these people. Couldn’t stand them sometimes.
Jacob started talking, rattling off more details, and I forced myself to listen, because this was the shit that mattered.
Not her.
Not Valentina, who never listened, who thought warnings were just invitations to break more rules. Not with the way she looked at men like Sebastian, thinking they were any different from Max. They were all the same, cut from the same cloth, just in different suits. Different ways of dressing up the same brand of control.
She always did this—walked straight into trouble, expecting a different outcome. Like playing with fire was harmless until it inevitably burned her. Then she acted shocked, looking around for someone to blame. Someone to pick up the pieces.
And why the fuck did that someone always have to be me?
Max’s voice broke through my thoughts, pulling me back to the room.
“Something wrong?” he asked, raising an eyebrow in mild annoyance.
“No,” I lied flatly, shaking my head just enough to dismiss his suspicion.
Lies came easy. Always had. But with Valentina, every lie felt heavier, every half-truth harder to manage.
Max studied me for a second and then let it go. “Great. Once we’re done here, I’ll need you at the office to handle things while I meet with Mikhail’s men at the marina.”
“I can head out now,” I said, already grabbing my coat and sliding it over my shoulders. I needed to move—to get away from this room; from Jacob’s knowing smirks and Max’s suspicious glances. Needed to clear my head before Valentina made any more of a mess than she already had.
I didn’t wait for Max’s answer before turning toward the door.
Waiting only gave room for questions I wasn’t ready to answer.
Eventually, when I’d made it to the office, the woman at the front desk shot me an apologetic smile—the kind that said she knew I wouldn’t like whatever was waiting for me.
I wondered why.
And then I saw her.
Valentina.
Standing in the middle of the lobby.
