Ettore stands near the far wall.
Calm. Completely, infuriatingly calm with a Glock at his side. No soldiers flanking him. No backup positioned in the corners. Just him, alone in the middle of a war zone, like a man who has never once in his life considered the possibility that he could lose.
The bastard genuinely believes he is untouchable.
“Well.” His voice rolls out smooth and unhurried, the voice of a man who has never needed to raise it. “The frightened little girl grew up.”
I raise my Glock and chuckle. “I wasn’t frightened when I killed your brother.”
His cocky grin slips, and anger covers his rugged features.
“I’m going to do much worse to you than I did to Lauro.”
He chuckles, low and unbothered, and reaches up to straighten his suit jacket at the lapels. Slow. Deliberate. Like we are having a conversation over lunch somewhere, like there is not a dead man’s blood drying on the floor two levels below us.
“Still emotional.” His eyes settle on mine with something like pity. “Still weak. The way you crumbled under Chris’s hands at the college party.”
How does he know about that? Aleksandr. Motherfucker.
My jaw clenches.
“Hands where I can see them,” Nico orders, standing at my side aiming his Glock at Ettore’s chest.
Ettore looks at him and laughs. Actually laughs, short and dismissive, the way you laugh at something that doesn’t quite register as a real threat. His hands remain at his sides. He’s still gripping his Glock.
I’m hoping my husband doesn’t lose his shit on Ettore for mentioning Chris. Nico doesn’t play well with other men when it comes to me.
“I did a number on him for touching my woman.” Nico smirks. “He’s also on borrowed time.”
My husband didn’t fall into the trap. This moment reminds me why I love him.
“Let’s get back to your men storming my home while my dad was away. Fucking pussy,” I spit.
His expression doesn’t shift. But his top lip twitches. I got to him.
“Your father had lucrative territory, Aleksandr, and I needed for our partnership. Tizáno’s family was just collateral damage.”
He speaks of us in the third person, like we aren’t flesh and blood.
His words boil the blood under my skin.
“We have your business partner,” Nico says.
Ettore’s eyes move between us slowly, reading the room, running the calculations. Something shifts behind his expression then. Not fear. Not yet. But awareness.
Nico’s mouth curves into a slow, thin smile. “Aleksandr failed.”
Not a question. A statement delivered the way you set something down on a table, with total confidence in its weight.
I say nothing. I let the silence sit between us, and I watch his face.
Ettore exhales through his nose, a short, sharp breath of pure contempt. “That incompetent bastard.”
Good. Let him wonder what failed means. Let him build the picture in his own head: Aleksandr talking, Aleksandr breaking, Aleksandr giving up everything in whatever dark room he ended up in. Let his imagination do the work.
Because right now Aleksandr is exactly where he belongs, locked in a room far from here, waiting for whatever comes next. But Ettore does not need to know the details.
Ettore straightens slightly, lifting his chin with the particular dignity of a man who has decided he is still in controlof this.
