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As long as Ciro had me, Nik and Lucian were supposed to spend every fucking day wondering which move might get part of me mailed home.

Ciro lifted the cigar toward the camera.

“Freeze another account, disrupt another shipment, release one more name from Madrid, and your brother pays for it. A finger. An ear. An eye. I have enough of him to make the lessons last a very long time.”

The threat in his face finally matched the one in his voice.

“Attempt to trace this transmission or try to take him from me, and my hospitality becomes considerably less generous.”

He paused.

“Compliance keeps him alive. Defiance takes him apart.”

Behind my right shoulder, the hidden passage remained silent.

Good girl.

Isabella understood that one sound or movement could draw attention, and then every gun in the room would turn toward her.

I fixed my attention on the camera.

“Lucian, stop breaking whatever’s closest.”

Ciro’s mouth tightened.

“Nik, don’t give this prick a fucking thing.”

Ciro leaned closer. “You were not invited to speak.”

“Then you shouldn’t have pointed a camera at me.”

His fist drove into my ribs.

Pain exploded through my side, but the chair held me upright. I dragged in enough air to keep going and looked straight into the lens again.

“No files. No accounts. No favors. Nothing.”

Ciro caught my jaw and turned my face toward him.

I spoke around the pressure of his fingers.

“Go after the trafficking. You don’t buy me with another person’s body.”

I looked back at the camera.

“Keep going. Find every woman. Kill every bastard attached to him. Don’t stop for me.”

Ciro released my face with a shove.

“You believe they will choose nameless whores over their own brother?”

“They already have.”

Ciro went dead still.

“That’s why men follow Nik and betray you,” I snarled.

The cigar stopped halfway to his mouth. His fingers tightened around it until the wrapper split and tobacco crumbled between them.