She found him in the living room, standing at the window in jeans and bare feet, staring out at the water.
“You didn’t sleep,” she said softly.
He didn’t turn. “I couldn’t.”
She stepped closer, wrapping her arms around his waist from behind. “You’re mad at me.”
“I am,” he agreed. “I’m also terrified for you.” He turned, his hand curling around her jaw. “You’re in deeper than I expected.”
“You knew this was a risk—”
“I was in denial. That party last night—foreign buyers, the New York Mafia involved—this is bigger than any of us thought. That guy with the lisp wasn’t just a lieutenant. He’s the boss’s son. The de facto new boss while the old man serves a life sentence. They hunted Cari for three years, and probably still are. That’s why Dev keeps her under such heavy watch.”
“Cari mentioned she was a Denali,” Emily breathed. “But I didn’t know all the details.”
“These are bad guys, Em. They shouldn’t know you exist. I’d trade places with you in a heartbeat.”
“I don’t think you’d fit into my skirt.”
She meant it as a joke, but his silence made her wish she’d stayed serious.
His fingers flexed on her jaw. “I couldn’t bear to see you hurt. Or worse.”
Her hands slid up his chest. “I’ve been hurting for eight years, Knight. Since my parents died. Since Ethan. Since I pushed you away. And since I realized girls like Beth Ann were disappearing because of the same evil.” Her voice cracked, and his arms tightened around her. “This is the only way I know to stop the pain. The nightmares. The questions,” she whispered. “Maybe I’m crazy, but I need to make their sacrifice—and yours and mine—mean something.”
He pressed his lips to the top of her head, his voice rough, cracking. “You mean more than something. You mean everything.” He exhaled hard enough to part her hair. “I get why you need this to move on. I feel the guilt, the rage, the frustration of not knowing why, and the need for vengeance. That’s part of the reason I haven’t shut this down.”
“But it’s my choice.”
“Dev would pull you if I insisted. But I don’t want you looking at me and always thinking what-if. And I want you to sleep easy, to live in peace—with me. Which is why you have to come back in one piece.”
She looked up at him through a mist of tears, wishing it could be different. It was in her power to make it so, to walk away from this. But he was right. She would still be stuck in this awful limbo of frustration, rage, and the overpowering need for someone to pay for the lives they’d destroyed.
Her family’s. Hers. And Alec’s.
“You should shower and dress. We’ve got a meeting in an hour.”
She was about to invite him to join her—wanting that closeness—when he stepped back, disengaging. “I’ll make coffee.”
Feeling double the guilt. Emily turned and walked upstairs alone.
***
The conference room at Devlin HQ smelled of caffeine and tension. Emily’s first time here, after what she’d found in her father’s journals, the décor had been the last thing on her mind. Today, her gaze snagged on the huge hardwood table and the high-backed leather chairs that should have looked imposing. Instead, they seemed almost undersized for the men who occupied them—all broad shoulders and long limbs, built like Alec and cut from the same intimidating cloth.
Devil sat at the head of the table, arms folded, eyes sharp. Rhys, Mateo, Leland, Jace, and four other men Emily hadn’t met filled the remaining seats. Callan was there too, hunched over his laptop. On the wall behind him, a monitor glowed with the image of a sprawling estate.
“Coral Gables,” Callan said, tapping the keys. “One of our guys monitoring in the command center caught a conversation between Regina and Benny. He mentioned a private estate—called it ‘the next big one.’”
“The owner is Richard Benson,” Devil added. “Inherited his millions from daddy. Your typical entitled rich asshole.”
Callan brought up Benson’s photo.
Emily studied him—mid-forties, beady eyes, a smarmy grin that made her skin crawl, and a diamond stud glinting in one ear. Her stomach turned. She’d seen that grin before, in nightmares.
“He looks slimy,” she said with a shiver.
“He is,” Dev said. “And so are his associates—Marco Benedetti, and formerly, Vincenzo Denali of Brooklyn.”
