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“Was it nothing?”
Most people cave to my demands when I stare at them this long, but she holds my gaze for five unflinching seconds before she finally blinks.
“It complicates everything.”
“I know.”
“Marco?”
“I know.”
I retreat before the part of me that doesn’t follow rules decides to further test our shared willpower. I slide the shower door mostly closed and hand her a towel through the gap.
“I have a meeting in forty minutes.” Our fingers brush as she takes the towel, and a zap shoots through me. “I’ll leave you with Sophia so you aren’t here alone.”
She shakes her head slowly, her alluring hair bouncing with the motion. “You think I can’t handle being alone?”
“I think I can’t handle you being alone. I’d prefer if you had company.” As I back out of the bathroom, I can almost swear she chuckles.
Later, around a quarter to nine, she enters the main house with her damp hair pulled back into her usual ponytail. Dressed in her own clothes, her professional composure looks fully reconstructed.
Sophia already waits in the kitchen for her. When I reach the door, Padrino’s wife glances at me from over Lucia’s shoulder. She leans against the counter with a cup of herbal tea, the small of her back curved to accommodate the extra weight she’s been carrying. She gives me a serene, unhurried look, the kind only women who’ve seen right through you can manage. However, she doesn’t mutter a single word.
I push the door open and step out into the hallway, then pull it mostly closed behind me.
I’m four paces down the corridor when I hear Lucia laughing. It’s surprisingly not the short, polite laugh I’ve come to know. This is a loud, full, and unguarded sound that carries through the gap in the door, filling me with an urge to go back in just to watch her face light up.
I keep walking until I get to the meeting room, which smells of leather and espresso. Enzo enthrones himself at the head of the table, Tomas sits to his right, and Nico hovers along the wall with his tablet open.
I claim my usual position, locking whatever happened last night into a dark box in my mind. Lingering in that memory will only fuck up my focus, and it’s a dangerous time to allow that to happen. Besides, I’m already realizing that this meeting won’t go as expected.
Tomas’s excited expression and smug smile are easy to read, and that means trouble for me.
He sits two chairs down from Enzo, responding to the unfortunate intelligence like a concerned advisor. He hasn’t called the meeting himself. That would be too obvious. Instead, he’s delivered the information that necessitates the meeting, which is his preferred way of doing things. Be indispensable to the problem, then indispensable to the solution.
“When I took this position, I discussed reducing overall bloodshed. I needed the famiglia to be strong without being ruthless, so we’re to listen to offered alliances and determine whether they’re worth taking. The Volkovs have proposed a direct negotiation.” Enzo speaks calmly as his eyes roam the table. “Territory arrangement. They want to meet a representative at Red Hook.”
Although we haven’t used the Red Hook warehouse in eight months, I’ve successfully run three operations out of that space in the past two years. I know the rust on the loading dock doors, the blind corners, and the way the afternoon light slants through the high windows.
I also know the sight lines from the neighboring structure.
Tomas clears his throat. “We should send Marco.” He says this as if the thought has only just occurred to him. “Sending your main enforcer should represent enough good faith. Besides, there’s no need to expose Padrino personally.”
He frames it as loyalty and goes ahead to compliment my negotiation skills. Ironic, considering that most of my negotiations end with someone bleeding on concrete.
I study him the way I once studied opponents in the ring, tracking weight distribution, breathing patterns, and micro-hesitations before a strike. The best traps always look like opportunities, and the best betrayals feel like favors.
When Tomas finishes, Enzo looks not at him but at me.
“Do you want to go?”
Enzo won’t order me. Instead, he makes his trust in me explicit. Going will be my decision. If things go awry, the cost becomes personal, not procedural.
I nod. “I’ll go.”
Tomas exhales, disguising his satisfaction as relief.
After that, Enzo adjourns the meeting, and Nico stops me in the corridor before I reach the stairs. He treads with purpose, his tablet already in his hand.
