Page 140 of A Vicious Love

Normally, Crow cousins sorted out their issues on the island once a year. Crow Island retreat. Family ring. No politics. No women. No guards inside the circle. Just blood, fists, and old grudges getting beaten into something manageable before they turned into expensive problems.

Weston and I had a deal dispute from the last cycle.

St. Cross had wanted a coastal entertainment route I had already claimed through Harlan nightlife. He said the water made it his. I said the money made it mine. He smiled in that polished way and suggested we settle it in the ring.

We were supposed to.

Then scheduling shifted.

Damius moved the family retreat. Harrison had an execution schedule conflict. Marcel refused to leave Emmie during a difficult week. I got buried under Harlan business. Weston and I never fought.

Now here he was. Taking revenge with my fiancée in galleries and bikinis.

Fucker.

I watched the Veil clip twice.

Then a third time because Sienna smiled at a painting in the middle, and I wanted to know what she had said right before it.

I couldn’t hear it properly over the edit music. I threw the remote at the wall. The screen survived…the remote didn’t.

“I don’t care,” I said to the empty office.

No one answered.

“I don’t fucking care.”

By evening, Harlan had taken enough damage for one day.

Two contracts were terminated. One private club lost licensing. A councilman’s son was removed from a table so quietly his friends didn’t notice for six minutes. I approved a port seizure I might have delayed on a better day and refused an investor concession with language that made the man’s lawyer go pale.

Every decision was defensible. Most were even correct. The speed was the issue. My mood had teeth, and Harlan kept putting fingers near its mouth.

At nine, I went home.

The penthouse felt too large when I entered.

I poured whiskey and didn’t drink it. I smoked half a cigarette and let it burn out in the tray. Then I opened the beach cameras again.

Bad idea.

I knew it before the first feed loaded. The St. Cross beach house appeared under moonlight.

Tonight, the lower deck was quiet. Chairs stacked neatly. Towels gone. Floodlights dimmed. No Sienna in a bikini. The absence only let my mind fill in the rest.

Sienna at the beach last night…wearing his hoodie.

Sienna in the gallery today, looking at old paintings and spoke like effort mattered because she had spent her whole life giving effort to people who didn’t deserve it.

Sienna in my lap.

I shut the cameras off. The room went dark. For a while, I stood there with the city behind the glass and my own reflection staring back.

Black shirt.

Tattooed throat.

Scar near my jaw.