Her hands are clenched tightly around the scarf, shoulders hunched forward like she's trying to take up less space. She stares at the floor like it holds all the answers, or like she's afraid to look up and find something worse.
I guide her quickly but silently down the corridor with a firm hand between her shoulder blades, feeling how rigid she is beneath my palm. Instinctively my fingers knead gently, trying to ease it even a fraction. The food bags swing and crackle softly at my side with each measured step.
Every second feels like it ticks too fast.
We need to scrub the security footage. We need to pull the building feeds, override the camera logs, and get the fuck out before someone puts two and two together. But there isn't enough time. We don't know how much they already have. If they were watching us before, then they might already be in the building. If we stall, we're dead.
As we round the hallway I see the conference room has emptied in the last half an hour. Nikolai and Nadia are hunched over the table together deep in discussion while the rest of the room is left in an obscene disarray with the chairs around the massive blackmarble table being pulled out and left scattered across the room, accompanied by half drunken cups of cappuccino and espresso respectively.
The Polish mafia must have left in a hurry—clearing out the moment they realized what they had done, that their unanimous decision to turn over Jakub, formerly known as Officer Lyon, wasn't just a betrayal of blood but a death sentence for all of us.
For four years, a fucking cop had sat at their table, listened to their secrets, and worn their crest. A decade-long operation, hidden under the guise of loyalty and family, unraveled in the span of one night.
The late Tomasz, their former head, must have thought finding his long-lost nephew was a miracle—his dying wish fulfilled, a bloodline preserved—but all of that faith led to this humiliation. The kind of shame they won't recover from, not once word spreads through the city's underground. Their reputation is finished.
And the Italians? They vanished just as fast. Dante Romano, the smug bastard, has always had a sixth sense for impending disaster and decided to disappear before the storm hit.
From the look on Nadia's exhausted face, it's obvious this meeting was already a disaster long before I walked in with Jakub's real identity. The original purpose—solidifying new allies for the Bratva—had already begun to unravel.
Ever since the Yakuza publicly denounced us and others followed suit, threatening our existence, we've been spiraling. The shift in leadership from a man—Nikolai—to a woman—Nadia—has unsettled more than just our enemies. No newalliances have formed. No one wants to back a syndicate that looks unstable from the outside.
And now, after tonight, that talking point has all but been abandoned.
Which means this meeting wasn't just unproductive. It was a fucking failure. And we are in deeper shit than we can afford to be right now.
Only Nikolai and Nadia remain in the conference room, speaking in low, tense voices at the head of the table. Nadia leans against the glass wall, arms crossed tightly over her chest, her brows drawn into a sharp line of frustration. Nikolai sits in a chair across from her, elbows on his knees, rubbing a hand over his face like it's the only thing keeping him from exploding.
He mutters something under his breath—too quiet for me to hear—but whatever it is, it makes Nadia shake her head slowly.
I stop just before opening the door, my hand still on the keypad. Behind me, Lily walks straight into my back and lets out a soft, startled "Ow."
I glance back at her, my jaw tightening. "I need you to clear out your desk like you weren't here," I direct.
She rubs her nose. Her hair is frizzy and a little messy at the top from when she took off my hat, and her glasses are still foggy around the edges, as she squeaks out a response.
"They already know I am here. That doesn't make much of a--"
"Lily," I snap, my eyes narrowing on the pink flush of her nose. "You need to listen, not argue right now."
"I am not," She huffs, pulling her glasses off of her face and avoiding her hazel gaze from mine. "I'm just-"
"You are giving me a lot of back talk when I need you to move." I shift the bags in my hands, and nod my head towards her desk. "Now, pack up your desk."
I don't give her any chance to further argue as I push the conference doors open and immediately place the food on the table. Nadia and Nikolia's heads both snap to me when I enter, but Nadia's eyes follow Lily outside the conference room. Watching as Lily insistently mutters to herself and quickly packs up her desk.
"You sent Lily home?" Nadia questions, her eyes narrowing on me, because the one thing my sister hates more than anything is her brother's controlling anything, but especially Lily.
"We have a problem," I say, clearing my throat as I rip open the take out bag, the smell of Miss Ming's food invades the space so deliciously my mouth waters in hunger I didn't realize I had.
Nadia's eyes flick immediately to Lily again. She straightens, kicking herself off the wall. "What happened?"
"I have solved the Jakub problem," I announce, taking out a container of Lo mein and sliding it to Nadia. "Lily was approached. By a woman asking questions. Claimed her name was Dahlia."
Nikolai's expression hardens, as he leans forward and I slide the container of orange chicken towards him. "Who the hell is Dahlia?"
"A friend of Jakub," I answer curtly, moving to the next bag filled with pork dumpling and beef chow fun. "But Lily also saw an idle ice cream truck across the street."
"Fuck," Nikolai snaps, stuffing a mouth full of white rice in his mouth.
