Page 67 of A Vicious Love

And disrespect required a different language.

I stood in the lower operations room beneath the new casino with a cigarette burning between my fingers and seven screens lit up in front of me.

The west casino ran above us, pretty with polished private tables for idiots. Down here, the building showed its bones. Security feeds. Encrypted calls. Route maps. Asset movement. Cash flow. Men with guns at the doors. Who didn’t see me as dynasty heir.

Good.

I wasn’t in the mood to be anybody’s heir.

I had not slept properly since, Damius visit.

So no.

I did not have patience today.

A man on the nearest screen was lying to me.

I knew before he opened his mouth.

Men lied with their shoulders first. Their mouths only caught up when they realized silence wouldn’t save them.

Gideon a dockmaster of South Harlan’s private corridor six, sat in a cheap chair in one of my warehouse offices with two Crow men behind him. He was fifty, married to a woman who liked emerald necklaces, father to three sons at private schools paid for through access fees he had apparently decided were not generous enough.

“Mr. Crow,” he said, voice breaking around my name, “I swear to you, I didn’t know the codes were active.”

I stared at him through the screen.

Beside me, Reeves shifted his weight.

Reeves was my second. Tall, blond, dead behind the eyes in the useful way. He knew better than to speak when I was quiet.

Gideon didn’t.

“I thought they were old clearance strings,” he rushed on. “Legacy codes. I gave them to Marrow as proof I had access, but I didn’t think⁠—”

“You didn’t think,” I repeated.

The room went colder.

Gideon swallowed hard. “No, sir.”

“No,” I said. “You didn’t.”

On another screen, footage played on repeat from three nights ago.

A service entrance at the burned Crow hotel.

Men in grey coveralls using a valid access code. A fire suppressant system delayed by six minutes. That was long enough to burn a wing.

Long enough to make investors nervous.

Six fucking minutes was all it took to make Damius crawl out of Villain and into my fucking house.

I took a drag of my cigarette until the need to break something passed.

“Do you know what six minutes cost me, Gideon?”

His lips parted.