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I did the same.
He eventually crossed his arms over his chest and sank back into the chair.
“We need to bury this,” I said.
“We do?” he asked, cocking his head to the side.
“We do if you want to remain in the Chasseurs.”
“You’re threatening me, Bartholomew?”
“You’ve seen me threaten people, Silas. That’s not what I’m doing—yet.” I knew this fucker hated me. I knew this fucker was the most likely to stage a coup. “Air your grievances so we can move forward.”
“You want to hear my grievances?” he asked with a slight laugh. “You’re a pussy. That’s my grievance.”
I kept up my hard stare.
“We had that asshole by the dick, and you forfeited all of it—to get your dick wet.”
My dick had been bone-dry.
“John and Hector. Dead. Because of you.” He sat forward slightly. “I might be able to tolerate you if you got off your ass and avenged our guys. If you avenged our reputation. But you sit there…like a goddamn pussy.”
“Enough with that word. We both pay good money for pussy, so it’s not a bad thing. It’s a lazy insult.”
His eyebrows furrowed.
“I think we can both agree that pussy is life.”
His gaze remained hard.
“I fucked up, Silas. I’m not going to justify my mistake. I’m not going to pretend it’s okay. I regret what happened, and I wish it had been different. But I’ve led us to countless victories this last decade. The Chasseurs were just a concept before I took over. I’ve turned our hustle into a billion-euro enterprise. I can confidently say I’m the only one who could pull that off. So let’s accept this loss as a wash and move on.”
“You’re the one who said a lifetime of loyalty doesn’t justify a single betrayal.”
“It wasn’t a betrayal.”
“That’s not how we see it.”
We?“An innocent woman would have died—”
“So?” he snapped. “You should have let her die.”
Even if I could go back and do it all again, the outcome would have been exactly the same.
“We should be in Italy right now, guns blazing.”
“I told you we can’t do that—”
“And that’s why you’re going to end up in an oil drum.”
My expression hadn’t changed, but everything in my body contracted with enough tension to launch me onto the roof. My own men had never threatened me, but now the promise of violence was laid out on the table.
He waited for a reaction, but he got nothing out of me. “You can’t kill me, Bartholomew. Because if you do, you know what will happen.”
The men would turn on me. Right now, the atmosphere was mostly civil. People were slowly forgetting what happened in Florence and moving on. But if I killed Silas…one of my own…they wouldn’t trust me. It didn’t matter that he threatened to kill me, not when I deserved it. “Don’t fuck with me, Silas.”
He grinned at me. “You know what? A month ago, I would have taken a bullet for you. I would have gone to any lengths to serve the enigmatic and powerful Bartholomew. But now…I don’t respect you. You have no business leading us. You forfeited that right the second you refused to get your hands dirty. Stepping down would be the honorable thing to do…but you aren’t honorable.”
