“Maybe,” Kol replied.“Or your girl’s boss was smarter than he looked.”
Mateo snorted.“Nobody that sloppy is smart.Fucker’s just got money.”
Luca leaned back, one arm braced against the door.From this angle, he could see her more clearly.She was younger than him, probably by a lot, and she wasn’t small or stick thin.Not fragile in the way fashion magazines liked to imagine women should be.
She had curves—real ones.Strong thighs beneath her skirt.Hips that flared softly where her jacket fell open.A belly that wasn’t flat and sharp, but smooth, faintly rounded, the kind a man could grip without fear of breaking something delicate.
There was substance to her.
Something solid.
His gut tightened unexpectedly.
He looked away before the thought went anywhere dangerous.
“Why take me with you?”she asked suddenly.“Why not call the cops?”
Luca huffed a quiet laugh.“Because your boss owns a bunch of them.”
That landed.He saw it in the way her shoulders tensed.
“You knew I thought he was up to something,” she said.
“I suspected,” he corrected.“Didn’t know what your involvement was or wasn’t until you pulled that drive and ran.”
Silence stretched.
Her voice came softer this time.“I didn’t know it was ...that.”
“I know.”
She looked down at her hands.Blood had dried beneath her nails.“I thought it was fraud.Bribes.Accounting tricks.”
“Everyone does,” Luca said.“That’s why it works.”
The car slowed at a red light.Luca’s reflection stared back at him in the glass, older than his years, scars faintly visible along his knuckles.
For a split second, the present peeled away.
He smelled bleach.
Blood.
Concrete under his boots.
He remembered sitting cuffed to a chair, ribs broken, mouth full of iron, wondering if this was the night his luck finally ran out.
Say the words.
My word is iron.
If I give it, it doesn’t break.
The man across from him—calm, watchful, ruthless in his restraint.
Welcome to the Iron Covenant.
The light turned green.
