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“Who would head the alliance?” Gavin asks Luca. “Are you nominating yourself?”
“Wait a fucking minute,” Tadesco interrupts, his gaze hard on him. “So you’d run the alliance? You’d appoint yourself king over our families?”
“Who the fuck died and made jou king?” Ruiz chimes in again.
“My brother,” Luca says. “He died trying to save all of your asses. He risked ridicule and even his life to bring you together to fight the threat you refused to see. But I won’t be king. This isn’t the mafia, boys. We will not play by the same rules. And when it’s over, you can all reclaim your empires.”
“Fuck this shit. I’m out.” Jorge Ruiz shoves out of his chair and stalks out.
“Anyone else?” Luca demands.
Two more go, leaving behind only Rowan Kane, Gavin Alexander, and me.
The pocket doors slide open and we all look to where Carina steps in, holding a box. My gaze moves beyond her then, to the stairs in the foyer, where Emily sits, waiting for me. She glances up and smiles before the doors are slammed shut.
She insisted on coming, wanting to meet everyone. To know exactly what kind of world she was living in, because she was stuck in it now. Her words exactly.
“Boys.” Carina gets our attention as she sets the box on the table.
“Is your wife serving as secretary now?” Rowan asks Luca.
Gunn snickers when Luca’s wife glares at him. Then she smiles, a real deadly sort of grin that reminds me of Sylvia when she was pissed. “Rowan Kane, is it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She opens the box and from it takes a razor blade and a paper, then places them in front of him. “You’re a tech wiz.”
He snatches the blade and inspects it. “I am. I… Just what the fuck is this for?”
Ignoring his question, she says, “You’re our new tech.” Then she moves on to Gunn and places a blade and a document in front of him. “Assassin.”
He arches a brow at her. “Of course.”
Coming to me, she asks, “Is it true you’re friendly with Ezra Hunt?”
“I have many friends,” I reply. Some more helpful than others.
She tilts her head as she considers it. “Friends who owe you favors?”
“You could say that.”
“Liaison,” she names me, handing me a blade and a document, then moving down to the next person.
“It’s a fucking contract,” I say, reading it.
She stands behind me. “It is. One you will sign in blood.”
“Blood?”
“To signify your commitment.Ourcommitment.” She goes to her husband, handing him his and taking one for herself, then reads, “‘I swear an oath of loyalty to the Alliance. An oath of protection. Of truth. I will serve those who, like me, sign in blood, until Gideon Black and Scarlet lie dead at our feet.’”
“Oh shit,” Gavin murmurs when she produces a dagger and drags it across the fleshy part of her palm.
Blood instantly pools in her cupped hand. She dips her forefinger into it, then uses the tip to sign her name on the contract for all to see. “There is only one way to break a blood vow. Your blood or theirs.”
Gavin sits back and reads the contract as he plays with the thick gold ring on his right hand. “He’s already interfered with my business enough. I’ve had five of my shipments from Mexico rerouted to Chicago by this asshole. I raided two of his supposed buildings, but they were empty. Wherever he’s positioned himself, it’s not where you think he is.”
“Of course he wouldn’t be where we expect.” She places a copy of the map that shows all of the locations he’s purchased near the men he wants to destroy on the table. “These are all fear tactics. He wants you to feel him breathing down your neck, not tell you where he actually is.”
