Page 48 of Dark Reunion

Dean let the mask slip, just enough. “If you think I’m the leak, then say it. Don’t dance around it like a coward. Take my phone, toss me in solitary, do what you need to.”

For a heartbeat, there was silence. Then Carlos’s voice dropped low, venomous. “You’ve always been a traitor.”

The word hung in the air like stale smoke.

Dean’s jaw tightened. “If I wanted your empire, you’d already be dead. I could kill every guard that protects you and easily slit your throat, but I choose not to. Not out of kindness, but because I’ve decided that you were right. I was wasting my time as a landscaper, and this is my birthright. What you’ve built, what I continue to build should go to my children and keep the Ramírez name going and strong. Now if you choose not to believe me…there is nothing I can fucking do about that, but don’t call me a fucking traitor to our people again,” Dean growled.

Carlos’s laugh was humorless. “There it is. The fire. You’re so much like me, Mercurio. You have spent too much time pretending to be lower class. You’ve pretended to play the part of a dutiful husband, and father—but inside, you burn the same. You think you can hide it, but I see you. Right now…I see it. I built you.”

Dean stepped into his space, close enough their noses nearly touched. “You built nothing other than a terrified child running for his life. Everything I am, I carved out of myself, for myself. The difference between us? You use your strength to destroy. I use mine to build. That is what scares you, because one rules by fear, the other with respect.”

Carlos’s smile sharpened. “You saying I don’t have my men’s respect.”

“I’m saying you like to point fingers at what scares you most, when really, you should be looking in a mirror.”

Dean’s hands itched to wrap around Carlos’s throat, to squeeze until his smile died. Instead, he clenched his fists at his sides, nails biting into his palms.

Carlos studied him for a long, charged moment, then gave a mocking bow. “Be careful, hijo. I would hate for your pretty wife and little bastards to pay for your temper and sharp tongue.”

The threat landed like a knife between Dean’s ribs, but he didn’t flinch. He just stared, eyes flat as steel.

Carlos chuckled, turned on his heel, and swept out of the ruined office. Silence bloomed in the room in his wake.

Dean stood alone in the wreckage, the tick of the grandfather clock the only sound. He bent down, picked up a shard of glass from the floor, and rolled it between his fingers until it bit into his skin. Blood welled, from the tiny cut and he let it drop onto the carpet.

The man was always paranoid, but now he was unhinged and sloppy. His father was slipping.

Dean dropped the glass, straightened, and stared at the desk. Whether half the men were ready or none, it didn’t matter. The move was coming. The boiling point was here. Dean could feel it in the air.

Carlos Ramírez would not see another year.