The Fausti family’s traditions of loyalty and honor might have been rooted in history, but when it came to security, they moved on to fit the times. A knife won’t work in a gunfight sort of mentality.
We’d cut off any dealings he had with anyone interested in doing business with him. Weapons were his specialty, and he made a ton of money dealing them. But it wasn’t enough. Not in this war.
Lev came with the news that another player had joined the game. Bykov was getting support from the source of the new Russian drug. The one they had injected into my wife that made her hallucinate—when she’d begged me to kill her.
The Nemours were deep into illegal drugs, and they had connections. They reached out to the maker of the drug on behalf of Bykov. The terms had been set and agreed upon. That only meant that this game was getting bigger. And when it did, things snowballed. Battles grew into epic bloody wars. People lost their lives and sanity—all sense of security was shattered.
Lev gave us all the information, along with inside intel on some of their secret places. He also gave his word that he would be of assistance when the time came to act. Whoever he worked for didn’t like the drug on the streets. Too many people were dying from it. Hallucinations were also a side effect that was causing trouble.
That was why Bykov and his drug investor decided to move their operations from Russia to New York.
Once they did that, it would start to hit the streets everywhere. A fucking needle in the arm of society.
Since my family had a place in New York where my wife would be safe, I would start intercepting goods coming in through the port. We were told we would find shipments that were full of computers and electronics—underneath, drugs and weapons. While we had teams fighting the bloodier wars, I’d oversee destroying them from the inside out.
The heart of the operations was what I wanted to rip from the body.
Mia sighed and I glanced at her.
In the darkness, her eyes were like emeralds in a cave. Her hair a halo. Her lips pink and soft. The scent of her lingered.
She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. Something growled in the pit of my stomach. The starving sound of want.
When I picked up speed, she looked over at me. I felt her eyes on my profile as we pulled up in front of the building.
Some of our men were already inside. Cars were parked sporadically on the street, so they didn’t draw attention.
“This entire building belongs to your family?” she asked.
I nodded. “My old man had it redone years ago.”
He also had the property listed under Luca Fausti’s name. But after I was born, he put it under a bogus name. He was always ten steps ahead of everyone else. If he had kept it under the Fausti name, we wouldn’t be using it as a safe house.
She narrowed her eyes. “Is that an old fire house?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Is it still active?” She paused, narrowing her eyes even further. “Looks abandoned.”
My watch lit up when I pulled up to the garage. The doors opened automatically and shut behind us as soon as the edge of the bumper was through.
“This is so cloak and dagger,” she said, laughing a little. Quietly. Like she didn’t want anyone to hear.
It lightened the mood some.
I could tell she liked the feel of the place. She was curious to see more.
This was just the beginning.
After opening her door and taking her hand, I led her inside. Men milled around the humungous space, including Vincenzo. Guido was coming with her parents and mine later.
I nodded to him and then gave her the tour. The space was vast and almost cold, which didn’t fit with her. She was warm. Like lavender under the sun. We ended the tour in the closet of the master suite.
She looked around, her hand hovering over a line of dresses. “These are gorgeous,” she said.
“Classic,” I said, raising my eyebrow at her.
“Definitely classic.” She sighed. “If I needed to hide from the world, this would be the place. It’s humungous and not what it seems from outside.”
