Page 190 of Lethal Obsession

Mak bites his lip in a visible attempt to restrain his amusement. “Respectfully,” he murmurs, mimicking Roman, “I suggest listening to your godson.”

Papa, looking like he might blow a gasket at any moment, sits back in his chair and swallows the rest of his wineglass in one mouthful, then looks around for the bottle. I hand it to him politely, but not until I’ve pointedly filled my own glass.

“Christ.” Dimitry shakes his head. “Family dinners with you lot require dueling swords and fucking armor. Go on,” he says to Mak.

“A long time ago,” Mak says, “a very good friend of Alexei’s, a teenage daughter of the Cardeñas family, was brutally raped by a college kid in Miami on spring break. Knowing her family would likely blame her for the attack if she told them, she came to Alexei instead. And despite being the Orlovs’ captive, and having been tortured by them on an almost daily basis for several years before then, Alexei risked his own life to sneak out of the compound, track down his friend’s attacker—and quietly administer the kind of justice a piece of shit like that deserves.”

He looks around the table. “The kind of justice every man here would administer,” he says quietly, “given the same situation.”

Even my father makes a low noise of assent.

“Unfortunately,” Mak goes on, “it turns out the body Alexei put in the swamp that night just happened to be more than your average privileged piece of shit. Carter Thorne’s daddy is a particularly vile specimen by the name of Silas Thorne—and his friends are even worse.”

He goes on to explain that Silas Thorne operates a digital organization called the Meridian Network, while his other son, Tyler, runs a college campus group called the Compass Initiative. He mentions two other corporations, one a private security company and the other a government advisory, and explains they’re all run by friends of Thorne’s, dating back to some secret college society.

At first it just sounds like a lot of names, which, after the day’s events, run together. But gradually, as he describes the so-called John Owens who met Alexei at the airport, and then the coordination and planning behind the attack in Paris, I become fascinated despite myself. By the time he gets to my own kidnapping in Granada, I’m hanging on his every word.

“Wait,” Papa interrupts at that point, frowning. “So it was this Thorne bastard who let Kiril Novikov off the leash?”

Mak nods. “Quite literally sent him to Miami to kill Alexei’s rivals—and make it look like it was Alexei’s doing. But if they were hoping to use Kiril to set Alexei up, and trust in the Petrovsky bratva to then dispose of him, they picked the wrong man for the job. Kiril knew he was being watched, so he killed the Luccheses himself, then ran back to Atlanta and used Sentinel’s mercenaries to do the rest of the killing for him. Kiril has only ever had one goal, and it’s Alexei’s head, not his business. All the while he was supposedly doing Thorne’s bidding, he was working behind the scenes to find Alexei. Blackmailing his sister, Seline, to help him kidnap Ofelia.”

He grimaces. “And not just kidnap, in my opinion. Kiril is a mad dog. Despite Alexei doing the honorable thing by sparing Kiril’s life after his father sided with the Orlovs, Kiril wouldn’t have returned the courtesy. He’d have killed Ofelia as retribution.” He pauses. “Slowly.”

Papa subsides into his chair, his brow furrowed.

“The point here,” Mak continues, “is that the war Alexei is walking into isn’t just a turf war. The Novikovs are one thing. But if I know Thorne—and I do,” he adds grimly, “the Novikovs will be just one of the tools he is using. Don’t forget that the Petrovsky bratva has been shut down for months now. Miami is in chaos. Deliberate chaos, planned by Zenith and Meridian to ensure Hunter is elected, and executed by Sentinel boots on the ground. Now, of course, the Sentinel operatives are long gone, leaving absolute anarchy in their wake.”

He looks around the table. “Miami is at war,” he says. “The power vacuum has given a license to every lunatic with a gun and ambition to stake their claim. And behind the scenes, these men—Thorne, Calloway, Vane—are busy facilitating the sale of weapons, drugs, and anything else the various contenders might need to get into the fight.”

“So they’re not just players.” Mickey frowns at him. “They’re brokers, too.”

Mak pours himself a cognac and lights a cigar. “Never anywhere you can see them. These men are experts at remaining in the background.”

“What I don’t understand,” I begin—then, catching sight of my father’s face, stop, coloring. I’m not accustomed to being in these rooms, seated at these tables. I’m not entirely sure what my role is. But going by the frown on Papa’s face, it isn’t to speak.

“Speak,” Mak says gently, taking me by surprise. “Please, Ofelia. Ask anything you wish.”

Not daring to look at Papa, I say, “If these men are so good at staying in the background, then who exactly will Alexei fight? And why are you asking Papa for help?” When nobody answers, I go on in a small voice. “That’s what you said you’re asking for, isn’t it? For Papa and Dimitry and anyone else to help Alexei regain power in Miami?”

Papa makes a dismissive noise that clearly communicates his lack of interest in offering any assistance for that particular task. Even Dimitry looks uncharacteristically grim. Mickey is frowning at Mak like there’s something he’s missing.

“Good questions.” Mak smiles at me. “But the answers aren’t quite what you might expect.”

He waits while Papa pours cognac for everyone at the table, except me. Since I still have a full wineglass I can hardly argue, but I glare at Papa anyway, which he ignores.

“Several months ago,” Mak said, “I asked Alexei for a favor: that he disappear for a time and allow me to investigate the man we called John Owens.”

Heads snap up at the word favor. I might not have sat at these tables before, but I know the nature of the men in my world. I know that the asking for, and granting of, favors, is taken extremely seriously.

“Owens has turned out to be a fake identity shielding the group of organizations I’ve just told you about. So Alexei and I came to a new agreement before he left for Cuba.” If Mak noticed my momentary loss of composure, his smooth urbanity gives no sign of it. “I asked to retain the right to deal with Sentinel and Zenith—that is, Reid Calloway and Calder Vane—in my own time. I have reasons for making that request that I’m not able to share.” His jaw tightens briefly, something dangerous flashing in his eyes. “Suffice to say that for the foreseeable future, I guarantee to keep both organizations far too occupied on foreign shores to bother themselves with the outcome of a Miami election and turf war. Alexei agreed to that arrangement, on the condition that he be allowed to take out Silas Thorne, the Novikovs, and Meridian. Luca Bellini, as you might imagine, has already dealt with the assassins Thorne hired to attack the yacht. Given the attack happened in Sicily, I think that is a concession we must all accept.”

Everyone nods. Even me. It feels surreal to be giving my tacit approval to the murder of men I don’t know.

It feels even stranger not to care at all about giving that approval—other than to hope the murders were painful.

Maybe I’m more my father’s daughter than I ever knew, I think, taking in his hard mouth and burning eyes. Something tells me I look much the same right now, contemplating the death of Lars’s assassins.

Mak leans forward and looks around the table. “But Thorne’s grudge against Alexei is personal. He can’t be distracted, and he has invested far too much time and energy into Alexei’s destruction to back down now. He’s going to throw everything he can muster at Alexei. He has both the mayor and law enforcement in his pocket, half a dozen criminal organizations on the payroll, and has made sure the streets are awash with weapons, drugs, and thugs hungry for fame.”