The world tilts.
“My girl?” I ask carefully, though I already know the answer.
“Audrey Wolfe. Small, dark hair, big eyes, soft mouth. She asked for you like she owned the place. Ballsy thing. I have to admit, I admire it.”
I’m already moving. Pulling on my jacket. Texting Lev to have the driver pull up and have his gun loaded and ready. The click of my own holster is louder than it should be in the silence.
“What does she want?”
“To find you,” Giuseppe replies lazily. “Says no one will tell her where you’ve been. And considering how hot she looked when she stormed in? Can’t blame her for getting desperate. Hell, if I was a younger man?—”
Some things never change.
“If you touch her, I’ll paint your walls with your blood.”
There’s a pause. Then a low chuckle. “I apologize, Konstantin. I just meant to comment on her beauty. And ferocity. She’s fine, in one piece. The boys know to leave her alone. I’m calling because, despite our truce, you’re not the only one with enemies. You should know where your queen is moving on the board.”
The line goes dead.
Lev is already in the foyer, his eyes and gun glinting in the dark.
“Car. Now.”
We don’t speak on the way. Lev knows better. His silence is a weapon sharper than any blade, but I can feel his tension crackling beside me. He’s the best soldier I have, but that doesn’t change the fact that only weeks ago he was released to get back to his “normal” life. Of course, the doctors didn’t know what he gets up to in his spare time; running down men almost as bad as him, slitting throats. He’s good at what he does, and I’m sure part of the tension in his shoulders comes fromalmostbeing killed.
He knows this could be a setup. That Giuseppe might be luring me in, tired of playing nice.
I don’t care.
I’d walk into a death trap blindfolded if Audrey was inside it.
She came looking for me.
It shouldn’t undo me the way it does, but it does.
She came to them—walked into the lion’s den—because I disappeared. Because I made myself scarce, convinced myself that was what she wanted. That she’d be better off.
Has she really changed her mind?
Hope rises in my chest, unfamiliar and warm.
When we pull up outside the Sartorre compound, Lev’s eyes flick to me. I nod once, and he steps out first. Two guards flank the door—posturing, expensive suits, hands near their guns. They don’t move.
“Tell Giuseppe I’m here,” I growl.
One disappears. The other just looks at me like I’m already dead.
I wait.
Fifteen seconds.
Twenty.
The lock clicks.
They let us in.
I walk through the gilded doors of Giuseppe’s headquarters like I own the place, because fear is a luxury I stopped affording decades ago. The floors are marble, the air tinged with cologne, money, and blood. Lev shadows me like death itself.
