I sipped the coffee. “Sounds like you’re jealous. Not a good look.”
Trina blinked, stiffening. “No, sir. Just…she doesn’t know how to act around the Cipher crowd yet. Case in point…yesterday.”
“She’s not allowed to serve me anymore?”
“Carmine made that clear.” Trina hesitated, lowering her voice. “She’s lucky he didn’t fire her. She’s naïve, Mr. Volkov. Sweet, but green as hell. That smile lets her get away with murder. Plus, she hasn’t been trained to take care of our…more exclusive clientele.”
“Hmm.”
She fidgeted, then stepped back. “Let me know if you need anything else.”
I nodded once, and she vanished.
Lyla disappeared into the back as well, so I turned my focus back to the screen, but my thoughts kept straying.
Everything I touched lately turned to blood or stress. My mother was fucking the man trying to dismantle what remained of my father’s legacy—Alexey Melnichenko. He was like a goddamn vulture, circling what was left of the Volkovi Notchi. And while she played matriarch to our enemies, I was here in Manhattan trying to resurrect fractured ties on the West Coast and hold the line between old alliances and newer syndicates that barely tolerated each other on the East Coast. All of them were watching me like they expected me to slip up at any moment, like they wanted to see if I’d fail harder than my father had.
Luca Genovese was keeping them off my back, for now. The man was as cunning as he was brutal—he’d consolidated the Genovese, Moretti, and Byrnes families under one East Coast umbrella. What had once been separate factions were now functioning as one brutal syndicate, and I needed their loyalty and respect if Luca and I were going to hold this new syndicatetogether. I needed a power structure here in the US to help ensure those from the Volkovi Notchi had reason to stay loyal to me. They had to be given financial incentives to resist being swayed into switching sides and aligning with Melnichenko.
Not for personal power. Not for ego.
But for Anastasia. My sister. The only person in this life I loved without condition. She was pregnant and living a safe, normal life far away in Tacoma, Washington, hidden away from the mafia world, as long as I could keep it that way. But peace never came free. We’d spilled so much blood to buy her freedom at that fucking wedding. Frankie Moretti’s skull had been blown open, my Aunt Elena had been shot dead in her seat, and many high-ranking men had been cut down just to make a statement.
That was the cost of her freedom.
And I’d keep paying it to keep her safe.
I wasn’t trying to rule the underworld; I was just trying to clean it out—strip the rot, purge the men who trafficked women and funneled fentanyl into high schools. Luca and I had aligned on that mission: dismantle the Central American gangs who were poisoning this country with blood money and American corpses. The worst of these groups—MS-13—was from El Salvador, headed up by Ciro Delgado, one of those cartel-backed fuckers who smiled like a politician and murdered like a butcher. He had several notable US politicians in his pocket. Government contracts. Distribution routes disguised as charities.
And he was crawling through this city like a roach.
But even with all the chaos and challenges I was currently facing, my eyes kept drifting back to the little blonde in the pink sweater.
She leaned in close to her customers when she laughed. Her hand amicably brushed people’s shoulders and arms with practiced ease. Southern charm, warm and casual. Perhaps she was angling for tips—or maybe it was just her nature. Sheseemed like the sort of girl who smiled because she wanted to, not because she had to.
I couldn’t tell. She didn’t move like someone who carried secrets—but then again, everyone had secrets.
Just then, one of the regulars—some midlevel finance prick in an expensive coat—reached out like he owned her and tried to squeeze her ass.
She pivoted fast, dodging the touch with a quick, agile spin that turned into a laugh and some joke that defused the moment. Professional. Perfectly executed. She made sure he didn’t feel slighted. Kept him smiling. But my stomach seized up as if I’d just swallowed glass.
Heat surged behind my ribs—something possessive, ugly, and unfamiliar. It was a dangerous spike of jealousy I didn’t fucking appreciate. I didn’t do jealousy. I didn’t give a damn who a woman talked to or slept with.
I clenched my jaw as my fingers flew across the keyboard.
Back toThe Sacrifice.
I needed to know what the hell she was doing there. Was she a bartender, bookkeeper, stripper?
The more I dug, the worse it looked. The password-protected site was just a curtain. Behind it? Layers of digital armor—proxy reroutes, rotating IP cloaks, and a firewall architecture that pulsed like a living thing. Military-level countersurveillance to monitor anyone pinging the site while it was cloaked in strip-club branding. It was the kind of infrastructure I usually only saw on black-market exchanges and offshore weapons caches. This wasn’t some cash-only grindhouse on the edge of Midtown. Whoever ran The Sacrifice had serious reach and no intention of being found.
Which meant they were protecting something—or someone.
I’d been involved in the underworld long enough to know what this level of security usually hid—and it sure as hell wasn’t lap dances. My guess—drugs, trafficking, high-roller blackmail.
Maybe mafia. But my instincts said worse—Mara Salvatrucha.
Andsheworked there?
