“Maybe they think Romano will lose the war, and they’ll come in to a territory with a built-in high demand, already supplied with the drug?”
Jase nods at my prediction, clucking his tongue and still tapping his finger on the chair. “That’s not a problem for us,” he adds.
“You think they’d stop at the Romanos?” I question him and like the intelligent fucker he is, he shakes his head, the small grin ticking up his lips. Jase loves a challenge. He lives to snuff out those who think they can threaten what we’ve worked so fucking hard to build.
“So, we don’t tell Romano?” he asks me.
“Not a word. He stole from us.” I look him dead in the eye as I come to the conclusion with my brother.
“You still want to do the dinner next week?” he questions me.
Romano thinks it’s a celebratory dinner.
Talvery is weak. It’s almost a letdown at how easily everything is crumbling around him. There’s already a crack within his own factions, or so says the word on the street. Half his crew is taking bribes from Romano. I’m reluctant to let my guard down. Looks from the outside can be deceiving. I know that all too well.
Nonetheless, Romano will come here to this celebratory dinner. And I’ll have the utmost enthusiasm as his host and partner in celebrating the fall of his longtime rival. Long enough to lure him in at least.
“Yes.” I can’t stress my words enough as I stare at the box under the bookshelf on the right side of the room. “Next week he’ll be here, at our table, in our home.”
“It’s not about the war or the drug though, is it?” Jase’s question brings my gaze back to him. “It’s about her?”
His intuition freezes my blood. I have to remind myself that he’s my brother, that he would know because he’s been so close for so long. I have to remind myself that there isn’t a way another soul could even begin to guess the truth.
“Yes,” I reply cautiously as our eyes lock and I wait for his reaction. Once again, I fall prey to the ticking of the clock as he carefully chooses his words. “She’s part of it.”
“We could give her money and let her run,” he offers. And he assumes wrong.
“She’ll run right back to her father, and you know it.”
“Then let her,” Jase says and shrugs as if it’s no concern to us if she were to retreat back to her father.
“And have the Romanos and everyone else think we’re so weak that we just let a girl walk away?”
“Since when did you start caring what they think?” he asks me, still feigning that this conversation is a casual discussion that means nothing.
“They need to think that I don’t care what they think. But how they see us matters more than anything. For us to control what they do, we have to know what they think. We have to be able to manipulate it for us to know what they’ll do next.”
“You can say you grew tired of her.” Jase continues to make suggestions and this time it spikes my anger. I’ve grown tired of him pushing me to let her go, to eliminate her from the equation. She’s too valuable to me.
“Never,” I answer in a single breath without thinking.
“Never?” Jase asks questioningly, only now dropping his guard, his grip tightening on the leather armrest and letting an inkling of anger show.
“I wanted her… before.”
“Before Romano offered her?” Jase’s interest is piqued.
I only nod in response, feeling the confession so close to coming to life.
“Why?” he asks me, and I don’t answer him. I can’t. Instead, I offer him a small truth. “He didn’t offer her. I told him it would be her or no one,” I say softly, to ensure the words will vanish by the time he can hear them.
“What are you going to do to her?” he asks me again. My brothers keep asking me that and it only pisses me off.
“She has to fear me… for a while.” My thumb nervously runs along my bottom lip. “It won’t always be like this.”
“You need to give me more,” he demands, and I quickly spit back, “I don’t need to give you shit.”
A beat passes and the rage slips into my blood. The memories and everything I’ve worked for, everything we’ve become turns to hate and ruin.
“This conversation is over,” I tell him. He only smiles. A coy knowing smile, and nods. The tension evaporates and without another word, he leaves the office. Although I know he’s left with far more than he gave.
As I watch him leave, the ticking of the clock won’t stop. Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock. My gaze moves from the box to the laptop with a black screen staring back at me.