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I gesture to Sam, who immediately leans forward and starts pouring out three glasses.
“Queenie?” I cast her a sideways glance. “I insist you join us.”
She glances up from her Gucci business case in surprise, but accepts with a tight smile as Santiago dismisses everyone else from the room,
I catch my father’s eye again as he passes.Maybe Aiden was right all those years ago.I should have listened harder and talked more. I should have owned my goddamn guilt instead of using it as a battering ram, and then maybe I could have let it go faster.
“To new beginnings.” Santiago raises his glass in toast before leaning back in his chair and crashing his black boots down on the table in front of him.
“To Empires shedding their skin for the good of corruption,” I clip back, making him smirk.
We drink deeply while Queenie sips at her glass delicately.
“How is she?” Santiago’s smirk morphs into the dead expressionless mask he wears when murder is imminent, but he’s not preparedto commit it yet.
“Better,” I say, knowing he’s keeping track of her movements just as closely as I am.
A call to Dr. Bailey this morning assured me that Ella’s chemo is working. Her C3 and C4 markers are rising again. Her new Colombian doctors are working with her New York rheumatologist to give her the best treatment plan available.
“Did it hurt making that choice?”
“Like hell,” I admit, reaching into my jacket and pulling out his hunting knife. Laying it flat on the table between us, I meet his unflinching black gaze head-on. “Do you want it back?”
“Are you done cutting your past free yet?”
“Ask me again next month, but I couldn’t fucking love her any more than I do already.” With this, I give it a flick, the blade glinting in the light as it starts spinning in tight circles. “Sanders accepted the Vegas post. He’s making the move in two months’ time.”
“Which coincides perfectly with the launch of his father’s Presidency campaign.” Santiago knocks the rest of his bourbon back, and chuckles darkly.
Meanwhile, Queenie is rising from her chair, still downing the dregs of her own drink. “Grayson, I have another meeting in an hour. I’ll be heading back to the office—”
“Sit,” I interrupt pleasantly. “We haven’t concluded our business yet.”
She drops back down with a huff, and I choose to ignore her pointed looks.
The knife’s trajectory is beginning to slow. Reaching out, Santiago gives it another hard spin as I swill my glass, contemplating the amber liquid inside.
“How did you know I was with Ella the night of her party?”
“That’s a dangerous subject to bring up in my presence.” He holds his empty glass out to me for a refill. “When you get to my age, observation becomes a form of entertainment. You learn to read inflections, subtle nuances across crowded rooms…” He trails off before adding viciously, “Of course, none of that fucking matters when you happen to be walking underneath your daughter’s open window at two a.m.”
Shit.
His gaze narrows. “For the next three hours, I imagined all the ways I’d be flaying the flesh from your bones, Grayson, then I remembered how she’d engineered the whole party just to speak to you.”
The corners of my mouth twitch.
Only a fool would mistake your sweetness for fragility, Mi Cielo.
“Grayson, I really think—”
“Sit.” We snarl at Queenie in unison, revealing the bite beneath our calm.
This shuts her up immediately.
I wonder if she’s finally realizing she’s never walking out of this room alive?
It’s my turn to spin the blade, but I don’t use as much force this time. The meeting is coming to its natural conclusion, and we have other business to attend to.
