“I was on the call,” she says.
“On call?” I ask in confusion, thinking about doctors. I take a step toward her, but as soon as I do, she takes a step back again, halfway out the door now.
“No,” she says emphatically. “I was on the phone. My father had it on a conference call.”
We stare at each other, the pain cracking and spreading inside me. Of course. Gianluigi is a snake in the grass. “Cassie, it’s not—” I start.
“No,” she cuts me off, her arm swinging down between us like she’s cutting me off at the knees. “I … I’ve been waiting for you to come back, so I can ask you why you threatened to kill me and Lily, and why you made a deal to trade me to my father like I’m some … like I’m a trafficking victim or some face cream for you to hide cocaine in. Like my worth is only equal to whatever my father will trade you for me.”
I tighten my fist, setting it down on the edge of the desk. “I didn’t threaten to kill Lily. Your father was manipulating what I said.”
“I heard what you said,” she says. “Are you also denying that you threatened to kill me?”
I bite the inside of my lip, grinding the skin between my teeth. “You told me that you didn’t talk to your father.”
“I don’t,” she says. “Is that all you care about?”
“You’re the one attacking me,” I say, irritation starting to turn my vision red. I was so fucking close. “But it sounds like you fucking lied to me. Maybe everything you told me about him was a lie, too.”
She shakes her head at me, her arms folding over her abdomen. I know she didn’t lie about the things her father did, but when she has so much ammunition against me, I need to knock her down before she can tear me to pieces. I need to hate her before she hates me.
“I didn’t talk to my father,” she says. “But he kept calling. I answered to tell him to stop, but he told me that he was going to call both of us and prove that you’ve been using me—that you said that I was your hostage and you were going to give me up in exchange for the Balducci territory. I didn’t believe him. I stayed on that call, so I could laugh in his face when he tried to control me again with his deceit. But you were completely willing to do it. You had the balls to not only threaten my life but use an innocent child as a bargaining chip.”
Her voice has become shaky and tears have gathered in her eyes. She is about to shatter all over my office. It’s a nightmare. The pain my chest is getting wider and deeper. I can’t take it much longer. I need distance.
“You knew what this was from the beginning,” I force myself to say. My voice begins a bit unsteady, but it recovers quickly. “You know what our deal was. You agreed to it. You can’t put all of the blame on me when you were the one who walked into my house and told me that you wanted to partake in the arrangement.”
When she looks at me, it’s almost the same way she looked at me when we first met—the unease, the coldness, the bitterness—but underneath that, there is an immeasurable pain that she barely manages to hide as she wipes away the tears before they come down.
“I sent my story to Tom to publish,” she says. “I sent it right before I came in here. I just thought you should know.”
With a small nod as a goodbye, she walks out of my office. I let her go.
Words are weapons and every word in Cassie’s article is a bullet, gunning down my empire ruthlessly.
The businesses directly mentioned in the article—the Akimov Suites, the shipping dock, the nightclubs, Dunlop’s Bookstore, and a couple of others—are shut down by the NYPD as they investigate Cassie’s claims. I’m fairly certain that I managed to scrub them clean of any evidence before the article reached the public, but the uncertainty nips at my heels. I shut down my other businesses and halt all our operations. It’s necessary, but it deprives the Bratva of any means of bolstering our defenses against our enemies, who have smelled blood and are circling around us. The NYPD is breathing so heavily down my neck, I can feel the condensation on my skin.
Gianluigi, of course, reneges on our deal and his Mafia starts committing more and more emboldened attacks. He knows that I’ll only risk retaliating if it’s absolutely necessary and he knows how to toe that line.
The Bratva is hemorrhaging. Our finances, our morale, our power—all massive losses. It’s a new low, but through it all, I find myself standing in front of my bed, staring at Cassie’s side and recalling the way she slept with her knees tucked up toward her stomach. I remember the way her hand felt on my arm, a subconscious habit while she was sleeping. We made something here, but it wasn’t tangible, so now I have nothing. I lost it all and somehow, a woman is the direst loss.
If I messed up my one shot at true happiness, the bullets aren’t her words—they’re my words.
I leave the bedroom. I keep going downstairs. I pass through the basement, going to a metal door and unlocking it with a key card. When I step in, various screens flash on. Three security cameras are pointing at my front yard, another three pointing at the backyard, several of them showing images of my closed businesses, and one camera I had installed in Cassie’s apartment without her knowledge shows me her kitchen and living room—the blessings of a small apartment.
It was before everything unfolded between us—I placed it there at the same time I put the rose on her kitchen counter. I
