Good.
Let him stay with Vasilisa. She needs him there more than I need another pair of hands in this room.
Angelo’s gaze flicks to Gabriel in the chair, takes in the damage, then lands on me.
He doesn’t ask how bad it is. He can see it.
“What’s he got?” he asks.
My eyes stay on Gabriel. “A location.”
Angelo steps further into the room. “Then why are we still standing here?”
My laugh comes out low and sharp. “Because he wants something for it.”
That gets his attention. His expression doesn’t change, but I know him well enough to see the shift in his eyes.
“What.”
“A truce.”
Silence.
Gabriel tips his head back against the chair like he’s already tired of repeating himself. “Yourmen stay out of my territory. Off my routes. Off my product.Minewill stay the fuck away from yours. No more games. No more bleed. No more back-and-forth.”
I look at Angelo then. His face gives me nothing. Stone. Calculation.
Gabriel keeps talking, because he still thinks he’s in control of this.
“You want Arsen, youneedme. You need to know where he’s holding her, how many men he has there, what kind of place it is, how close you can get before they smell something wrong. I give you that. I help you get her back clean.” His gaze cuts to mine. “And in return, this ends.”
I say nothing.
Because the truth is there, waiting.
We can’t storm a place blind in broad daylight without turning it into a fucking spectacle. Not with city eyes everywhere. Not with police response times. Not with Arsen being exactly the kind of bastard who’d use chaos to move her, kill her, or make her disappear before I ever got inside.
Every hour matters. Every bad move matters more.
Angelo looks at Gabriel for one hard second, then back at me.
“Give it to him.”
I stare at him. He stares right back. The room seems to narrow around the three of us.
“That easy?” I ask.
“Yes.”
The word drops flat and final.
Something hot and fast moves under my skin.
“A fucking truce,” I say, like the words taste rotten. “Because he finally got desperate enough to walk into my house with his tail between his legs?”
Angelo doesn’t blink. “Because Ayla is in Arsen Sarkisian’s hands.”
The room goes quieter somehow. My chest rises once. Falls. He steps closer, voice still calm. Still even. That almost makes it worse.
