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I obliged, snatching the whiskey bottle by its neck and pouring myself a drink, too. Graham watched my face intently but didn’t say anything. Fuck. This was bad. Normally, he would’ve given me shit for touching his stuff without asking first. I wondered why he asked me there.
“Tell me, Cole. Do you care about Jade and Dahlia?”
My eyes flew up, and I furrowed my brows. “What the fuck kind of question is that? Of course I care about them. They come first, before everything else.”
Graham gave me a little thoughtful nod, still staring at me in a way that made me want to shift uncomfortably. But I didn’t. It was important to keep a straight face.
“I’m glad you say that, because a man who cared about Jade and Dahlia would do as I tell him to right now. I’m putting together a plan. I call it two birds, one stone. You don’t need to know all the details, but what if I told you we can make a huge buck in a very short time and make the Italian problem go away all at once?”
“I’d tell you to sign me up,” I said without blinking. Because it was the truth. “But what do you mean, make it go away? Are they gonna be our allies now? Because I’m not down with that bullshit. There’s no fucking way—”
Graham flinched and cut me off, “They’re never going to be our allies. We are competing over the same businesses, the same areas in the city, the same shit. To cooperate with them, we’ll need stronger ties—maybe an arranged marriage of some sort. But there’s still time for that. For now, I just want them to be happier with us and for us to be richer than them. We can make it happen now.”
“Tell me how.” I leaned toward him after polishing a whole glass of whiskey. Graham grinned.
“We get you in a cage this weekend, and you’ll lose the fight. Everyone will be betting in your favor. Everyone. You’ll be bigger, fitter, and stronger than the other guy. And still…you’ll lose.”
I watched him through wide eyes, feeling my hold on the whiskey glass tightening until I heard the precious, expensive glass crack in my hand. That was when I put it down and took a deep breath. I told Graham over and over again I wasn’t going to purposely lose fights. It wasn’t the way I rolled. Not only because it was dishonest, but also because I hated losing. At anything.
Especially at what I was so good at.
“What the fuck does it have to do with Jade and the Italians?” I seethed. “They’ll be betting against me on purpose?”
“No,” Graham said simply. “You’ll get in the cage with Stefano. They’ll get their pride back after we slaughtered them. We’ll get the dough.”
I didn’t even realize what I was doing when I got up from my seat and tossed the tray with the whiskey and the glasses across the room. The whole thing smashed against a newly painted wall and crashed to the floor. I heard Dahlia shriek from the living room. She ran into the office a few seconds later, panting, her blue eyes full of horror.
“What’s going on?” she cried out.
“Nothing.” Graham was still seated at his executive chair, perfectly composed and giving zero fucks about the drama and my tantrum. “Get back to the living room, Dolly, and make a note to ask Cecilia to clean up this mess when she comes in tomorrow morning.”
Dahlia flashed me one of her looks that showed me that she didn’t trust us, and I responded with blinking at her twice with a blank face, the international signal of ‘I don’t give a damn about what you think’. When she closed the door, Graham returned his gaze to me. I was standing up, still panting, and the more I thought about his insane proposition, the more I realized that it made sense, even though I didn’t want to do it.
He wanted me to get beaten nearly to death by the man who tortured my girlfriend.
Who did unspeakable things to her.
Who kidnapped her.
Who scarred her beautiful, delicate soul.
Fuck the peace. Fuck the business opportunity and fuck the cash. I still had morals.
“Graham,” I growled. “The answer is no, and next time you ask me, it’ll still be no, but I will take the fight just so I can finish the job and kill him this time. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Cole,” he retorted with the exact same tone I used, “you will take the fight, you will lose, you will get a nice, fat cut of the cash, and you will therefore make sure that Jade, and more important, Dahlia and my girls are safe from the fucking Italians. This isn’t a request. It’s an order. This is my army, boy, and you know full well what happens when a soldier disobeys.”
They got killed. But Graham was full of bullshit if he thought I believed that I was just another one of his soldiers. We shared understanding, history, and mutual respect. He wouldn’t cut me off so suddenly.
“Not taking the fight.” My jaw ticked, and I balled my fists. I prayed he wouldn’t ask me again because I wanted it so bad and wanted to fuck Stefano up. And I knew that doing that would definitely make Graham more than pissed off.
“I’ll schedule it for next week.” Graham got back to the stack of papers underneath him. My mouth fell open.
“Did you not listen to a word I’d just said?”
“Go away, Cole. You’re making me want to fuck someone up, and it can’t be you, seeing as how you’re fighting next week.”
I turned around and walked away, stalking out of his room and not even stopping to say goodbye to Dahlia. However, I did make sure that he heard me call him a ‘fucker’.
