I watch her process the number. Watch her hand tighten on the paddle, knuckles going white. The man behind her—her security—puts his hand on her shoulder, trying to talk sense into her.
Smart man.
She doesn’t counter. The auction is mine.
The way she looks at me before she finally glances away, the fury and humiliation and something else I can’t quite name—that’s worth far more than four million euros.
The gavel falls.
“Sold. Lot seventeen to bidder forty-seven for four million euros.”
I should feel satisfaction. I won, she lost, and somewhere in the back of my mind I’m already planning how to use this. The ring connects to the Lawrence family, which means it has sentimental value, which means it’s leverage. Another piece in the long game of dismantling Walter Lawrence’s empire brick by brick.
I’m not thinking about strategy right now.
I’m thinking about the expression on Elena Lawrence’s face. The way she’s trying so hard to maintain composure while her world fractures around her. The defiance that won’t quite die even in defeat.
She stands, movements controlled despite what has to be shaking legs. Her fixer rises with her, protective without being obvious about it. She turns toward the exit, and I track her movement the way I’d track a target.
That’s what she is now. A target.
She challenged me without knowing who I was. Pushed me without understanding the cost. Made herself visible in a world where invisibility is survival.
Now I can’t look away.
Dimitri elbows me as she disappears through the doors. “Are you going to tell me what that was about?”
“Business,” I say, which isn’t entirely a lie.
Walter Lawrence betrayed the Bratva. His family’s European holdings are already on my list of acquisitions, businesses I plan to absorb or destroy depending on their usefulness. The Lawrence name is a ghost waiting to be buried.
Adding his daughter to the equation changes nothing strategically.
The memory of her eyes meeting mine across the auction hall, the way her pulse jumped in her throat when I raised my bid, the stubborn set of her jaw when she refused to fold—
That changes something.
I tell myself it’s just amusement. A minor distraction from the tedium of the evening. She’s nothing more than an unexpected variable in a plan that’s been in motion for months.
When Dimitri starts talking about the next lot, I’m not listening.
I’m thinking about Elena Lawrence walking out those doors, head high despite her defeat.
Chapter Three - Elena
The study door is closed, but the walls in this house have never been thick enough to keep secrets.
I pause in the hallway outside my father’s office, hand hovering over the doorknob, frozen by the tone of his voice. Not angry. Worse than angry. Defeated.
“—don’t care what it takes, Marcus. Liquidate the Warsaw holdings if you have to. We need cash flow, and we need it yesterday.”
Marcus. Our chief financial officer, a man who’s been with the family since before I was born. If my father is having this conversation with him, things are worse than I thought.
I press closer to the door, guilt warring with necessity. Eavesdropping is beneath me. But so is being kept in the dark while our world burns down around us.
“The logistics subsidiaries are frozen,” Marcus says, his voice tinny through the speaker phone. “All three. Regulatory pressure out of nowhere: permits revoked, licenses under review, accounts locked pending investigation. We can’t move shipments, can’t access operating capital. It’s coordinated, Walter. Someone with serious reach is putting pressure on every angle at once.”
“How long do we have?”
