It takes everything in me not to launch across the table, wrap my hands around his throat, and kill him in broad daylight.
I can’t.
With three dozen men between us, it would put more blood on my hands than I’m comfortable with.
Hinto saunters to the stairway, doubtless seeing my restraint as weakness.
But my mind is whirring. Figuring out the next move.
Calculating.
I won’t let this man bring drugs into my city and my ports. I won’t compromise my operations just because he wants to make money off of death and addiction.
And I won’t let him touch Alyona.
Not as long as I’m breathing. And even then, I’d tear my way back from the dead to save her.
“What the fuck was that?”
Liev’s voice is flat as I pace the hidden room at my home, two stories underground and known only to a handful of my men.
Nika stands stock-still near the door, gaze ping-ponging between us.
They both know it was no accident that I cut the feed. They both know that there’s something I didn’t want them to hear.
The pressure builds in my body until I feel choked, until the muscles in my shoulders are ropes of steel. I can’t do this without them; withouthim.
“It’s Aly.”
I stop and turn and face my best friend.
My brother.
“He threatened Aly.”
Liev’s face drains of color. He stares at me across the room, chest slowly heaving under the t-shirt he’s wearing. Despite his age—our age, as he’s only a handful of years younger than I am—the muscles in his arm bunch, veins popping as he barely contains himself.
“Chto za khuinya,Kaz?”
What the fuck?It’s a valid question. I’m still reeling from Hinto’s threat, caught off guard by him knowing my secret.
Seven years I’ve kept it close.
“I don’t know,” I grit out. “But he’s found out that she’s connected to us somehow.” I avoid looking at Nika, worried that they’ll both be able to see it in my eyes; that Liev will sense the betrayal and kill me right here.
“Maybe the night at the restaurant,” Nika steps in quickly.
Some of the pressure lifts. Briefly.
“That was less than a week ago,” Lev says. “Less than a week ago, this man decided on a whim to hope that a young woman we were with would be enough of a bargaining chip for you togive up territory,Kaz?”
We stare at one another, neither willing to back down. Decades lie between us—bodies we’ve buried, crimes we’ve committed, an empire we built on blood and charred bones.
“It doesn’t matter.”
When I say the words, I don’t say them as his brother.
I don’t say them as his friend.
