“Which one?” I say, though I already know.
“The one about whether you screwed things up with your wife.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Everything with you is complicated,” he says. “Except your aim. That’s the only simple thing about you.”
Miko laughs. “He’s not wrong.”
I should tell Sandro to drop it. I should tell him it doesn’t matter, because our marriage is fake anyway.
But that’s the one thing I can’t say, and the guilt of keeping something from my brothers is like acid in my throat—just another thing to weigh on my conscience.
The price I’m having to pay to make this alliance work is slowly eating away at me.
Not for the first time, I debate if it wouldn’t be better to just come clean.
To find another way to achieve the vengeance that we’re seeking.
But I don’t know how many more stumbling stones my brothers will be willing to take. I’ve already lost Leo and Gio’s support.
They want nothing to do with our father’s shady business dealings any longer.
Who’s to say that Miko and Sandro might not see the sense in cutting their losses?
Miko has his own empire to run now, after all, and Sandro is so smitten with Evi, I don’t doubt he would abandon everything we’ve fought so hard for if she asked him to.
No, I need to crush the Tanakas while I still have Miko and Sandro at my back.
It needs to happen fast.
And that means I need this alliance with the Murrays, which means sticking to the deal I made with Aisling—no matter the cost.
I agreed to keep our arrangement private, even from my brothers, and it could all fall apart if I don’t hold up my end of the bargain.
I’ve already slipped up once, breaking our no-sex rule.
I can’t afford to make any more missteps.
Sandro nudges me with his elbow. “Is it about Genevieve?” he asks softly.
My stomach drops—because Sandro never brings up my late wife. He knows better.
And the pain that sluices through me is enough to bring me up short.
A slick, unwelcome memory of Genevieve’s smile flickers through me like candlelight, soft, gentle, then gone.
“No,” I say sharply.
“It’s okay if it is.”
My twin and I don’t do deep emotional conversations.
We might know each other better than we know ourselves, but part of that comes with the understanding that reopening old wounds is off limits—because in our world, moving forward is the only way to survive.
So I scowl at him with the silent warning that he’s pushing his luck. “It’s not.”
But Sandro studies me in that way that says he can see straight through my lie. “You just… sometimes, you get that look.”
