As I approached, I heard Dax say, “They’re beauties. Too bad you don’t have a taste for them.”
“Shut the fuck up. If anyone hears you, Weber won’t think twice about ending us,” Samuel responded.
“The boy needs us. We know all of his father’s secrets. How else is he going to locate him?” The amusement in Dax’s tone said he had no qualms about double-crossing me.
I slowly stepped into the room, my men staying quiet behind me. Neither Dax nor Samuel noticed my entrance.
“You’re too cocky. You saw the way he watched his woman. This isn’t going to be as cut and dry as everyone believes.” Samuel opened another box. “Why the fuck does one man need all this useless shit?”
“That’s not our business. Boss wanted it kept. All you have to do is follow the plan.”
It was time to make my presence known. “Mind sharing this plan? Especially since I’m your boss.”
Both men froze.
I walked up to them. “I gave an order.”
The way their eyes shifted back and forth as if they were looking for an escape had me almost hoping they’d try something. The men were big, but untrained from years of giving orders.
“Not sure what plan you’re talking about.” Dax rose from his perch over a box and came toward me. “We’re just following Flynn’s directive.” There was a sneer in his words that had me holding back the urge to backhand him.
I held out a hand, and immediately, Lucas placed the switchblade Opa had given me before his death into it, the very one he’d used when disciplining his soldiers.
At the sound of the knife opening, Dax made a run for the window, the only way out. Before he could make it a few steps, I grabbed him by the hair, threw him to the ground, and stabbed the knife into the hand he was about to use to leverage himself up.
“What’s gotten into you, boy?” Dax roared.
Pressing a foot to his throat, I leaned over him, pulling my blade free, and almost immediately Dax kicked up, trying to knock me back, but I shifted and stuck him with the blade in the ribs.
“Stop struggling or I’ll make sure with one twist of my wrist, you’ll breathe out of a tube for your short foreseeable future.”
Blood seeped from Dax’s hand and from the wound in his side where my knife sat.
“Listen, dammit!” Samuel shouted. “The money’s not worth your life.”
Dax’s eyes bulged as I pressed the hilt of the knife deeper, but he didn’t move.
“Now I want you to tell us everything. You leave anything out, you’re dead. You hedge, you’re dead. You lie to me, you’re dead. And you,” I said to Samuel, who remained near the boxes he’d been opening. “If he leaves anything out, or prevents me from protecting my bride, you will suffer a slow, torturous death. Make sure no detail is missing.”
Pulling out the knife, I wiped it on Dax’s shirt, handed it to Lucas, and rose.
“You know the drill. Extract every last detail from them and make it painful.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Contact Benz and set up a meeting.” I knew I wouldn’t have to say more than that. Lucas would handle everything.
Now all I had to do was convince my wife to leave the country without letting her know my father had planned to sell her in order to take back his empire.
Chapter Fourteen
Sebastian
I arrived at my penthouse a little before six in the evening to find bags in the foyer. Some were mine and others were the ones Isa had delivered the morning of our wedding.
Why the fuck would Isa have packed for me? Where was she planning for us to go?
Then I stopped. Had someone called and told her I was taking her away? That still didn’t make sense. No one would overstep, especially not Lucas and especially not after word got out that Dax and Samuel were permanently removed from the Weber infrastructure.
“Isa.”
There was no response. I made my way toward our bedroom. Our bedroom. That’s what it was. And I’d be dammed if it wasn’t going to stay ours. If Jonas thought he could double-cross me, take the money Opa allotted for him, and still remain king, then he had another think coming.
As of five minutes after I saw the pictures of him boarding the plane, I’d sent word to every family, ally or not, that any aid or harbor rendered to Jonas Weber meant a declaration of war.
I’d lost my mother and sister to Jonas’s schemes. I was not going to lose Isa.
Hell, to protect her, I’d done the one thing no one would ever expect me to do. I’d gone to Russo Benz.
The man hated me on principle. Knowing I had nothing to do with the deal Opa made with his father didn’t change his anger at losing control of the empire he’d built. I had a great deal of respect for the man—he’d taken the small organization his father had left him and created something ten times bigger.
He was a hard, ruthless man, but there was no doubt in my mind that he loved his daughter and would do everything possible to keep her safe.
When I told him what Jonas was planning, he had nearly lost his mind with the drive to take out Jonas. But he knew the rules and he couldn’t move on Jonas without consequences to the rest of us. Isa now belonged to me. He’d agreed to use his resources to keep an eye on Jonas through his Russian connections as well as my territory while I was away with Isa.
It was a show of trust I’d given Benz that no boss with my sized organization would ever have given. This gesture had shifted something between us, and I knew I had an ally.
As I entered the bedroom, the last words Benz had said before I’d left his house lingered in my
