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June seventh.
Katia had kept me from breaking my word again, leaving me with gratitude and the feeling of failure. But why did I care? Why did my body sink deeper and my head fall onto my hands? Why did I feel so conflicted?
The yellow folder mocked me, urging me to peek inside and look through what she had put together for me. The chance I hadn’t even given her as I’d focused on destroying the conversation before it even had the chance to begin.
I picked it up, opened it, and did what I shouldn’t have done. Because as I took note of her previous financials, her intricate designs, drawings, deals, and paperwork to launch her business in the States, I was dumbfounded by the extent of her career and the length she’d gone to prove to me the part of her she desperately needed back.
Stunned by the might it took to get there, the business and financial mind it required.
Fuck, her family had been quick to hide the power she held, and I had done the same. But a part of me knew that even if I didn’t want a partner, I would be a fool to ignore it.
And I was no fool.
The crowd was fueledwith alcohol and sex drive as bodies piled in the middle of the club. Lights flickered in various colors as the ground vibrated with the beat of the music. As I waited for Ilias to get here, I pulled away from the glass that overlooked the sweating bodies below and faced Arlo and Viktor.
“Want to tell us why we are meeting in Malvagio’s?” Arlo leaned his weight on the wall by the corner and yawned.
Arlo spent most of his time running the streets and businesses we owned. However, I hadn’t missed the way he always finished his day here, looking over a certain curly dark-haired aerial dancer until close. He was careful and distanced himself from whispers about his inclination to this club. To many, it looked as if he was in charge of the safety of all our workers that spiraled high in the sky. Our biggest attraction as it added a unique danger and sense of eroticism from any other nightclub. I knew better. Arlo’s interest was in only one dancer in particular, and even if I didn’t care who he fucked, I feared for the young and sweet girl who’d caught my brother’s twisted mind.
If I’d learned something from my brothers, it was how their dicks blinded them into danger.
As I thought of Katia, they weren’t the only ones.
Hell, I started a war.
I ignored Arlo’s question and turned to Viktor, who was sitting across from us on the black leather couch.
“I need you to look over something for me before I make a decision,” I said, with Katia’s proposal outstretched for him.
Viktor straightened, taking the folder from my hands. His posture changed the longer his attention looked through its contents.
Music slipped inside the room as the door opened, revealing Ilias’s somber appearance. He wore all black and a cap over his head. A look he and Viktor were accustomed to as they worked for the law. But even after Ilias left the force, his cap came out every night. Tonight, it was backward, and before I looked down at his knuckles, I knew I would find them battered.
“You good?” I asked.
The door shut, and Ilias nodded as he stood next to Arlo in the darkness.
I tried not to dwell on the changes and darkness that had changed him in the short months after vowing his life to thefamiglia. Something I had tried to keep him away from and failed after Davina arrived in Miami. Now, it was too late. The more he followed Arlo’s and my steps, the more his morals were corrupted.
The change had already started, and eventually, his heart would become stone and his mind unemotional to the cries. Cold-hearted and unfeeling, like us.
“This is…” Viktor paused, and I met his rounded ice blue gaze. “Impressive.”
“I’m aware.”
“What do you need from me?” Viktor asked.
“I need all her accounts secured, her paperwork and any credentials passed as KatiaMoretti, and to start the website with no trace of IP addresses, locations and such. It needs to be impenetrable, all of it.” I took a deep breath and asked, “Can it be done?”
Viktor nodded and said, “It’s going to take some time—”
“Take however long it needs.”
She didn’t even know what I was doing. I wanted to keep it that way until the war settled.
“Okay, but first, I need her to talk and—”
“No.” I cut him off. “Figure it out. She’s not to be aware.”
