My fingers curl slowly around the arm of my chair.
Someone betrayed me.
Chris’s phone rings, and every man in the room freezes.
Chris stares down at the screen, and every bit of color drains from his face.
“It’s him,” he whispers.
“Answer it.”
His eyes lift to mine. “What?”
“Answer it,” I repeat. “Put him on speaker.”
Chris’s hand shakes as he picks up the phone. His thumb hovers over the screen for one second too long.
Stefano leans closer.
“Breathe,” my brother says quietly. “Then answer.”
Chris swallows hard and accepts the call.
“Hello?”
For one second, there’s nothing but silence.
Then a man laughs softly through the speaker.
“Hello, Maverick.”
Chris’s face twists with confusion.
Mine does not.
The voice is older. Smooth. Calm in a way that tells me the man on the other end of this call feels like he’s in control.
“It took you long enough,” he says.
Chris places the phone on the table between us.
“Victor,” I say.
Another soft laugh.
“There he is. The great Maverick Moretti. I was beginning to think you forgot about us.”
“I remember your family.”
“I should hope so. You made certain mine would never be the same.”
Stefano goes still beside me.
It doesn’t matter what he says; I know killing that man changed him. I saw it happen. I saw his eyes lose a little of the light he always carried.
I never asked him to do something like that again. I’ll carry all of the blood on my hands just so his can stay clean.
“Your son betrayed my family,” I say.
