My phone buzzes with a text from Luca:
Quick preliminary: Katriana Bellrose, 24. Works at a bookstore called Stacked Pages. Father died five years ago, left massive debt to a Victor Kedrov. She's been paying it off ever since. The bruises match Kedrov's MO. More details coming.
Victor Kedrov.
I fucking knew it. My gut never lies to me. The sleazy Russian money lender is a rat, but he has connections to the darker corners of the underworld. He’s the kind of man who makes his living off other people's desperation. He’s a bottom feeder. He's not Bratva, not formally, but he's connected enough to make him dangerous and disconnected enough to make him expendable.
If he's the one who put those bruises on Katriana's face, he's going to regret ever being born.
I drain my whiskey and set the glass down with more force than necessary. The burn of alcohol does nothing to cool the cold rage building in my chest.
Tomorrow, I'll read the wishes collected from Scarlet Thorn. Tomorrow, I'll find Katriana's red envelope among the pile. And when I do, I'm going to claim it before any of my brothers can reach for it.
Whatever she asked for, I will grant.
I can do that. I can do that and so much more.
The price I'll ask in return, well. That's between me and her.
Four
Drake
The next evening the boardroom smells like old money and fresh tension when I push through the glass doors.
Cigar smoke curls toward the ceiling in lazy spirals, mingling with the sharper bite of expensive scotch and the particular musk of men who have spent too many hours in the same room making decisions that reshape the city below. The overhead lights cast everything in warm amber, softening the hard edges of the mahogany table and the harder edges of the men seated around it.
Konstantin Vetrov sits at the far end with one massive leg crossed over the other, a silver flask balanced on his knee like an extension of his hand. The thing is engraved with Cyrillic script. I’ve never asked him to translate. Some secrets are not mine to know. But knowing Kon, it probably says something poetic about death.
Kon’s dark hair is pulled back in its usual leather cord, a few strands escaping to frame a face that has seen more violence than most men could survive. He lifts the flask in greeting whenhe sees me, and the gesture carries the weight of a decade of brotherhood forged in blood and bad decisions.
Rowan Volkov occupies his usual corner, positioned where he can see every entrance and exit without appearing to watch anything at all. His ice-colored eyes track my movement across the room with the quiet intensity of a man who is always cataloguing, always calculating, always three moves ahead of whatever game is being played. He does not speak. Rowan rarely does. But the slight incline of his head tells me everything I need to know about his awareness of the tension coiling through my shoulders.
Massimo Santoro has papers spread in front of him, legal documents that probably cost someone their freedom or their fortune or both. His whiskey-colored eyes scan the dense text with the efficiency of a man who has spent his entire career turning sins into contracts and contracts into survival. A pen taps against the mahogany in an absent rhythm, the only tell that his mind is working through problems none of us have been briefed on yet.
I drop the bundle of wishes I picked up from Damaris on my way in onto the center of the table with more force than necessary. The red envelopes scatter across the polished wood like drops of blood on marble, their wax seals catching the light.
"Where's Luca?"
Kon takes a pull from his flask before answering. "Surveillance room. Said he had something that couldn't wait." His Russian accent wraps around the words, thicker tonight than usual. "You know how he gets when he's hunting."
I know exactly how he gets. I am the one who put him on the hunt and for a reason. He’s good behind a keyboard.
The chair at the head of the table remains empty, and I settle into my usual spot to Rafael's right, rolling my sleeves to the elbow as I catalogue the familiar weight of my mother's watch against my wrist. I can’t help but think about how right she was in saying how fast time runs by us.
Eighteen years since cancer took her.
Eighteen years of carrying this watch and the promises that came with it.
I wonder what she would think of me now, sitting in a boardroom that costs more to outfit than she made in a lifetime, surrounded by men who would kill for me and women who want nothing but my money. I wonder if she would be proud of the empire I built or heartbroken by the loneliness I have never managed to fill.
The door opens and Rafael walks in carrying the particular glow of a man who just held his daughter in his arms and kissed his wife goodbye.
Fucker. I love the man and at the same time the lucky bastard looks content in a way that makes something twist beneath my ribs. I swallow the feeling with a mouthful of scotch that burns clean and sharp down my throat.
"Sorry I'm late."
Ha. He does not sound sorry. He sounds like a man who has everything he ever wanted and knows exactly how lucky he is. "Sofia had opinions about bedtime."
