6
ROAN
She’s not immune to my touch.
Good.
I glance down at the cleaning supplies scattered on the floor and smirk as I bend to gather them, placing each item back on the table where she’d grabbed them before fleeing, as if I’d threatened her life rather than just asking a simple question.
The way her pulse hammered beneath my fingers, the way her breath caught, the heat that flooded her cheeks—she can lie about her name, but her body tells me the truth.
With the last item returned, I make my way to my office. Dhimitër is already there, thin-lipped and waiting. Ignoring his disapproving expression, I shrug off my jacket and drape it over the back of my chair as I sit. “What do you have for me?”
“I don’t think trying to get under her skin is a good idea,” he says. “Especially when she’s just as capable of getting under yours.”
I shoot him a withering look that would make most of my men falter. But we’re close enough that he doesn’t even flinch.
Bastard.
“If you’re not going to be useful, then maybe you should go to your own office and actually get some work done.”
He grumbles something unintelligible under his breath and spins towards the door, shutting it behind him with a quiet click that somehow sounds judgmental.
She doesn’t get under my skin.I can control my attraction to her.
That’s what I tell myself as I boot up my laptop and navigate straight to my emails to track the shipment that’s meant to dock this weekend. Satisfied to see it’s right on schedule, I move to the message waiting from Lorik. The reports I requested on Uncle Fabian.
I open the attachment, leaning back in my leather chair, fingers drumming a steady, unconscious rhythm against the polished mahogany of my desk as I read. Lorik has been thorough—too thorough, maybe. Every ugly detail I suspected but hoped I was wrong about is laid out right in front of me in black and white, and I’m not sure how to process any of it.
Fabianisscrewing up. Or rather, he’s screwing us over.
The pattern is clear now that I’m looking at it compiled in one place. Several delayed and canceled shipments over the past few months I’d brushed off as bad luck or poor organization. Payments for my workers on Long Island mysteriously vanishing, with Fabian claiming ignorance about where the money went.
Workers I’d sworn by—loyal men who had been with my father for years before working with me—suddenly going cold, quitting without explanation or warning.
The same men who’d busted their asses to get the bar built in just a few months—the reason I’d been so sure my restaurant would be ready by summer. But after they quit, finding reliable replacements turned into a nightmare. Which means the opening I’ve been counting down to is getting postponed indefinitely until something changes.
I have construction delays piled up. Permits, inspections—everything that could go wrong, had.
And it was all Fabian.
My jaw tightens as I scroll to the next report, scanning the growing list of offenses. Three thousand dollarsAtëpaid for a shipment of imported wine last month that never arrived. He didn’t mention it to me. Was he trying to shield Fabian?
Another five thousand missing from my restaurant’s remodeling fund—money that was supposed to be deposited into the new architect’s account. Except the architect never received it, even though I was assured it had been paid.
Every time, Fabian had reasonable excuses. Every time, he shrugged and swore he didn’t know why things kept going sideways.
Every time, he was lying through his fucking teeth.
I should never have involved him in my projects.
ButAtëwas so firmly against expansion from the start, adamant about leaving things the way they were. ‘If it works, why change it?’ was his mantra. Thought wanting multiple revenue streams—enough to be self–sustainable—was being greedy, reaching too far.
So I had to recruit help in the form of my more progressive uncle. Big fucking mistake, I know now.
Part of me—the one that still mourns my mother and wants to hold onto the last bit of human connection to her—wants to delete the reports. Pretend I never saw them. To tell myself that Fabian is just experiencing a run of bad luck, that the workers are just lazy, that there are perfectly innocent explanations for all of this.
But another part—the part that was raised in the shadows of this family’s business, the part that knows better—sees the situation for exactly what it is. Uncle Fabian is either losing his grip, getting sloppy, or worse…betrayingus.
