Everyone except Eva left the mansion hours ago. After connecting with Niko and Luca on plans for the week, we retreated to our separate offices. I came here to get some work done, but mainly to make sense of everything I’m feeling.
Today’s meeting went better than expected. A feeling of rightness lingers—the rare sense something aligned as it was supposed to.
I don’t trust things that come too easily. I never have.
Especially not since Ciara.
Theeasiestof relationships. An arrangement between our fathers.Another alliance.
I grew up knowing I’d marry her—or someone like her—forthe mutual interest of our two families. I remember feeling relieved that I never had to worry about dating. Women seemed too complicated. Duty, loyalty, those were things I knew.
Romance, attraction, love all seemed too elusive, too hard to figure out. My father told me when I was seventeen that he had reached an agreement with Micky Donovan. Micky had a daughter one year younger than me, and we would wed when she was twenty. Our union would bring the Irish and Italian syndicates together. Seemed straightforward.
It was anything but.
It never felt right with Ciara. I knew it then, but I was young. Even if I had told my dad something was off, it wouldn’t have mattered. It wasn’t my decision.
She was beautiful. She was kind. I figured we had time to grow into it.
Neither Micky, my father, nor I could have imagined she and Junior Volkov would fall in love. Or that her choosing him would lead to a territory war that resulted in both their fathers’ and my parents’ deaths. It was madness.
The fact that I’m even considering another form of an alliance again ten years later should be a red flag—especially when the catalyst for this union is yet another woman.
I remind myself that today’s meeting was the result of following my instincts several times over. There wasn’t anythingeasyabout this. These women would never allow it to be. Instead it has felt kindred, intended.
That realization settles slowly, like I don’t quite believe it yet. I replay moments of the last week and a half again for the hundredth time. On paper, none of this makes sense.
My encounter with Pippa at that bar. Tailing her on the night she ends up in the warehouse. Barging in without a plan. Luna being with her and Hudson being with me. Their operation flying under the radar all these years. It all feels so unbelievable.
Doesn’t that tell me what I need to know?
We crossed paths for a reason.
I don’t even believe in that shit, but today’s meeting has me reconsidering if fate is real. The pauses, the looks exchanged, the way no one reached for control just to prove they had it.
Instincts matter to me. They always have. They’re the only reason I’m still here, the reason the Luciano family empire survived after our world imploded.
I was twenty-two when I took over the family business. An operation that spanned a dozen states and three countries. Many of my dad’s rivals—and even more of his allies—saw me as weak, inexperienced. Saw my dad’s death as their chance at power.
I had more attempts on my life in those first few years than my dad ever had in his almost-thirty years as the head of the family.
If I didn’t trust my instincts then, I’d be dead. If I didn’t figure out how to lead this empire, Eva could be dead. Or taken and used as leverage.
Eva and Hudson are the reason we survived—that we thrived. Eva brought us into this modern era. Hudson protected us from government forces. He helped me get out of the sex work operations and expand our arms business. Eva learned more effective ways of managing assets and money laundering and helped me grow my crew with new technology.
I owe them everything.
And they seemed just as eager and open today as I felt on the inside.
My mind inevitably drifts back to Pippa. The same way it has since the night I met her. It hasn’t even been two weeks since that night and she occupies more of my thoughts than I’m willing to admit.
I was impressed by her today. I’m not easily impressed by people, not in DC. I had no doubt she would be smart. But seeingher in action, the way she commanded the room, it was a major turn on. That and her black tank that somehow managed to be both simple and criminally distracting. I swear the woman weaponizes her wardrobe.
I brush my fingers over my lips as I feel the memory of her lips on mine. Of my hands on her hips, her ass, tight in her hair.
Fuck!I want her.
Hudson left with everyone else this afternoon, but we’ll talk soon. The way he and Pippa so easily joked about a threesome… I can’t get it out of my head. They said it so casually, like it was no big deal. Like the mere idea of it didn’t make me feel like the ground was shifting beneath me.
