Silence.
Dominic shifts, hands buried in his pockets, gaze flicking anywhere but at me. I already know the answer. I just want to hear him say it.
But before he can open his mouth, I unholster my gun and put a bullet between his eyes.
The crack of the shot barely registers over the roaring in my head.
He’s fucked up too many times, and I’ve been patient long enough. But this? This was the final straw. And he didn’t even know that the real reason I shot him wasn’t just because he hurt her.
Thoughright now, that’s the only reason that fucking matters.
I glance down at her again and immediately regret not making him suffer first.
His body sags, but my men on either side of him move fast, catching him before he can collapse forward—before his worthless corpse can so much as graze her. They grip him by the elbows, drag him out of the room without a word.
The silence left behind is thick.
Heavy.
Suffocating.
This entire ordeal is like watching a car crash in slow motion, and I’m the idiot left laying in the road.
I expect her to scream, or freak the fuck out in some way, but the biggest reaction wrung from her was a slight jump at the sound of the gunshot and a subsequent look of disgust at the flecks of blood that landed in her hair and sprayed across her shoulders.
I place my gun back in its holster, finally pulling my gaze away from her as I turn to pace across the room, contemplating what my next move needs to be.
I trusted Sylas, he’s been our CPA for years. But in the last few, my guy seems to have gotten greedy, skimming money off the top of our accounts for some time now.
I recently discovered the financial discrepancies and decided to handle it quietly by targeting his wife.
I planned to use her as leverage to get him to return the stolen funds and keep his mouth shut about Assembly business, and figured doing so over the holidays would make him more likely to act faster.
I was sure his kids asking where mommy was would spur him into action. I was nice enough to wait until after Christmas, at least.
Threatening Ari would have been more effective than confronting her husband directly, but here we fucking are; a dark-haired beauty sitting battered on the floor in front of me.
She looks nothing like the description of the woman I told Dominic to grab—andnothurt before bringing her back to me.
I don’t know how the fuck he made this mistake or what the fuck I’m going to do with her, but I do know that it won’t be as simple as telling my men we have the wrong person.
Especially not with the plans I have in the works.
If they find out I know her—and care about her—they wouldn’t think twice about using her against me. The men I’ve surrounded myself with aren't loyal because they admire me; they’re loyal because they fear me. But loyalty is a fragile thing, built on the right combination of threat and manipulation.
Most of these men? They’d sell their mothers if the price was right. They’d turn on me in a heartbeat if they thought it meant they could climb a rung higher on the ladder, secure their position, or put a bullet in the back of someone else’s head to take their place. I’ve worked with them long enough to know that’s the reality of this life—the moment you think they’re your allies is the moment you’ve lost.
That’s why I can’t let them know about her. Why I can’t let them see the way she’s crawled under my skin and lives there.
The Assembly thrives on secrets, on leverage, on using the things you care about against you. If they learn how much I care about her, how much she means to me, they’ll use her. They’ll threaten her, hurt her, maybe worse, just to see what I’ll do to protect her. What they can do to unhinge me, screw by screw.
I’ve spent so long keeping her at arm’s length, not letting myself get too close, and it’s worked—so far. But there are moments when the world goes quiet and my guard slips, that I can almost forget all the reasons why I can’t have her in the way we both so desperately need.
Yet.
The sex was never all I wanted.
I want every fucking part of her.
