Page 46 of Ruthless Claim

She’s reading her laptop, seemingly moved on from the conversation.

Or at least wants me to think she has.

I put on my jacket and leave before I say something I’ll spend the drive over thinking about.

I spend the drive over thinking about it anyway.

Connor’s office is on the forty-second floor of a building in midtown that has never once felt welcoming to me in twenty plus years of walking into it.

The lobby is covered in marble, the kind of space designed to communicate that whatever you’ve come for the building has seen more important things.

I’ve been coming here since I was fourteen, since Connor started bringing me along to understand how the business worked, and it has never felt like anything except what it is: a place where Connor Brennan does his business and you are part of the business.

He’s at his desk when I come in and he doesn’t look up. But then again, he never looks up right away.

It’s not oversight.

Connor doesn’t do oversight.

It’s the calibration thing he does, measuring how a person handles being made to wait.

I know this. I sit and I wait, because I have been sitting and waiting in this chair for twenty plus years and I am very good at it.

Eventually, he caps his pen and looks at me with those pale eyes that have never had warmth in them but have always had intelligence.

I’m a bit startled when I realize just how old Connor looks.

There’s a heaviness to him that wasn’t there nearly a year ago and I know the estrangement with Emma has a lot to do with it.

But he still takes up a room the way he always has, still carries himself like a man who has never once been uncertain about his place in it.

“Marchetti’s people are talking,” he says. “Word getting back to me is that the alliance is looking like paper. That you and the Santoro girl are living separate lives in the same apartment and calling it a marriage.”

“We’re adjusting,” I respond, a bit irritated that Valentina is known as “the Santoro girl.” “It takes time.”

“Time is not available.” He puts his pen down. A decision has been made before I arrived, and this is why I’ve been summoned. “I’m hosting a family dinner this Friday. You’ll bring your wife. You’ll make it convincing. People need to leave that table with no questions about whether this alliance is real.” He picks the pen back up, which means the meeting is over. “Brief her properly beforehand.”

A lick of irritation courses through me. I stamp it down. “Understood,” I say.

“And Cillian.” He says it without looking up, but I’m immediately on edge. “Make sure she understands how this works. I don’t need complications.”

I look at the top of his head and the hand already moving the pen. “I’ll handle it,” I tell him, which I have been saying my entire adult life, before I leave.

In the elevator I lean against the back wall.

Connor’s words make sure she understands how this works runs through my head and I think about Valentina standing in our kitchen telling me I’ve been making coffee wrong my whole life and looking at me like it’s the most obvious thing anyone has ever said, and something almost like a laugh moves through my chest.

Connor genuinely has no idea.

I’m also not looking forward to telling her we have a dinner on Friday.

She’s still at her desk when I get home, those damned glasses on, pen tapping her lip.

She’s frowning at her screen but looks up when I come in.

“How was the summons?” she asks.

I fight the scowl. “It was a meeting.”