Neither Francis nor Cecelia said a word about my long absence from the dinner table Friday night. Vivian didn’t mention our little chat in the office, and I returned to New York dissatisfied and on edge.
I could’ve burned the Lau mansion to the ground with one flick of my lighter.
Unfortunately, doing so would’ve brought the authorities straight to my doorstep. Arson was bad for business, and I’d never stooped to murder…
yet. But certain people tempted me to cross the line every day, one of whom I happened to share blood with.
“What’s the emergency?” Luca slouched in the chair opposite mine with a yawn. “I just got off the plane. Give a guy time to sleep.”
“According to the society pages, you haven’t slept for the past month.”
Instead, he’d been partying it up around the world. Mykonos one day, Ibiza the next. His last stop had been Monaco, where he’d lost fifty grand at the poker table.
“Exactly.” He yawned again. “That’s why I need sleep.”
My jaw hardened.
Luca was five years younger than me, yet he acted like he was twenty-one instead of thirty-one.
If he weren’t my brother, I would’ve cut him off without hesitation, especially given the shitshow I found myself in thanks to him.
“Aren’t you curious why I called you here?”
Luca shrugged, oblivious to the storm brewing beneath my calm. “You missed your baby bro?”
“Not quite.” I retrieved a manila folder from my drawer and placed it on the desk between us. “Open it.”
He gave me a strange look but obliged. I kept my gaze trained on his face as he flipped through the photos, slowly at first, then faster as the panic set in.
Grim satisfaction passed through me when he finally looked up, his face several shades paler than when he’d entered.
At least he understood what was at stake.
“Do you know who the woman in those photos is?” I asked.
Luca’s throat bobbed with a hard swallow.
“Maria Romano.” I tapped the photo on the top of the pile. “Niece of mafia don Gabriele Romano. Twenty-seven years old, widowed, and the apple of her uncle’s eye. The name should ring a bell, considering you were fucking her before you left for Europe, as evidenced by these photos.”
My brother’s hands fisted. “How did you—”
“That’s not the right question, Luca. The right question is what kind of casket you’d like at your funeral because that’s what I’ll have to fucking plan if Romano ever finds out about this!”
The storm broke halfway through my sentence, fueled by weeks’ worth of pent-up fury and frustration.
Luca shrank back in his chair as I shoved my chair back and stood, my body vibrating at his sheer idiocy.
“A mafia princess? Are you fucking kidding me?” I swept the folder off the desk in one furious motion, taking a glass paperweight out with it. The glass shattered with a deafening crash while the photos fluttered out and onto the ground.
Luca flinched.
“You’ve done some stupid shit in your life, but this has to take the cake,” I seethed. “Do you know what Romano would do to you if he found out? He’d gut you like a fish in the slowest, most painful way possible. No amount of money would save you. He’ll hang your body from a goddamn highway overpass as a warning— if there’s even a body left after he’s done with you!”
The last guy who’d touched a woman in Romano’s family without his permission ended up with his dick cut off and his brains blown out in his bedroom.
The guy had merely kissed Romano’s cousin on the cheek. Rumor had it the mafioso didn’t even like his cousin.
If he found out Luca slept with his beloved niece? My brother would beg for death.
Luca’s skin took on a sickly green tint. “You don’t un—”
“What the hell were you thinking? How the fuck did you even meet her?”
The Romanos were famously insular. Gabriele kept a tight leash on his people, and they rarely ventured outside their family-controlled joints.
“We met at a bar. We didn’t talk long, but we hit it off and exchanged numbers.” Luca spoke fast, like he was afraid I would attack if he stopped.
“She doesn’t have as many eyes on her now that she’s widowed, but I swear, I didn’t know who she was until after we slept together. She told me her father was in construction.”
A vein throbbed in my temple. “He is in construction.”
Along with nightclubs, restaurants, and a dozen other fronts for his dirty business.
If it’d been anyone other than Romano, I would’ve undercut Francis’s threat by paying them off or striking a mutually beneficial deal.
But unlike some businessmen who were short-sighted enough to entangle themselves in the underworld, I didn’t fuck with the mafia. Once you got in, the only way to get out was in a casket, and I would rather set myself on fire than willingly put myself in a position where I had to answer to someone else.
Francis wanted what my last name could bring him. Romano? He’d want every last dollar and drop of blood, even after he slit my brother’s throat.
“I know it seems bad, but you don’t understand,” Luca said, his expression tortured. “I love her.”
A terrible calm descended upon me. “You love her.”
“Yes.” His face softened. “She’s incredible. Beautiful, smart—”
“You love her, yet you’ve been fucking everything that moves for the past two weeks. ”
“I didn’t.” Luca turned bright red. “It was an act to maintain my reputation, you know? I had to leave for a bit because her cousin ran away and her uncle was cracking down on the whole family, but we were careful.”
I had never been closer to murdering a family member.
“Apparently, not careful enough,” I snarled, earning myself another flinch.
I took a deep breath and waited for the explosive rage to pass before I sat, slowly and deliberately, so I didn’t reach across the desk and strangle my only brother. “Do you want to know how I got those photos, Luca?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it and shook his head.
“Francis Lau walked into my office two weeks ago and tossed them on my desk. Coincidentally, he’d been in town earlier and saw you with Maria.
He recognized the both of you and had you tailed. Once he got what he needed, he came over to cut a deal.” A thin smile touched my lips. “Care to guess what the terms of the deal are?”
Luca shook his head again.
“I marry his daughter, and he’ll keep the evidence to himself. If I don’t, he’ll send the photos to Romano, and you’ll die.”
I had an excellent private security force. They were well-trained, professional, and morally flexible enough to deal with intruders in a way that dissuaded future intruders from crossing me.
However, there was a difference between security and punishment and war with the fucking mafia.
Luca’s eyes widened.
“Shit.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “Dante, I—”
“Don’t say another word. Here’s what you will do.” I pinned him with a hard stare. “You will cut off all contact with Maria, effective immediately. I don’t give a shit if she’s your one true soulmate and you never find love again after her. From this moment on, she doesn’t exist to you. You will not see, speak, or otherwise communicate with her. If you do, I will freeze every damn account you have and blacklist any person who assists you financially.”
Our grandfather had been aware of Luca’s wild spending habits and left me full control of the company and family finances in his will. Being blacklisted by me meant being blacklisted by everyone in our social circle, and even Luca’s idiot friends weren’t stupid enough to risk that.
“I’m also cutting your monthly allowance in half until you prove you’re capable of making better choices.”
“What?” Luca exploded. “You can’t—”
“Interrupt me again, and it’ll be cut to zero,” I said icily. He fell silent, his expression mutinous. “You will earn the remaining half of the money by taking a job at one of our stores, where you’ll be treated like any other employee. No special perks, no drinking or fucking on the job, and no leaving for lunch and rolling back in two hours later. If you slack off, you will be cut off completely. Understand?”
After a long silence, he pressed his lips into a thin line and jerked out a short nod.
“Good. Now get the fuck out of my office.”
If I had to look at him for another minute, I might do something I’d regret.
He must’ve sensed the impending danger because he got up and hightailed it to the exit without another word.
“And Luca?” I stopped him before he opened the door. “If I find out you’ve violated my rules and contacted Maria again, I’ll kill you myself.”
My fist slammed into his stomach, hard and precise. My first hit of the night.
Adrenaline buzzed through me as Kai grunted at the impact. Anyone else would’ve stumbled and gotten the wind knocked out of them, but in true Kai fashion, he only paused for a few seconds before shaking it off.
“You seem upset,” he said as he countered with a left hook. I sidestepped it with millimeters to spare. “Bad day at work?”
A hint of amusement shaded his question despite the direct hit he’d just taken.
“Something like that.”
Sweat dripped down my forehead and coated my back as I worked out my frustrations in the ring.
I’d come straight to the Valhalla Club after work. Most members preferred the on-site spa, restaurants, or upscale gentleman’s club, which meant the boxing gym rarely saw any traffic except for me and Kai.
“Heard the Santeri deal is moving along, so it can’t be that.” Kai was barely out of breath despite the aggressiveness of our opening round.
“Maybe it’s not work. Maybe…” His expression turned speculative. “It has to do with your engagement to a certain jewelry heiress.”
He let out another small grunt when I landed a hit on his lower ribs, but that didn’t stop him from laughing at my scowl.
“You should know better than to try and keep something so big a secret,” he said. “The whole office is buzzing about it.”
“Your staff should spend more time working and less time gossiping.
Perhaps then, circulation wouldn’t be down.”
My engagement announcement wasn’t scheduled to run in Mode de Vie’s coveted online Style section until mid-September, but the luxury fashion and lifestyle outlet was the crown jewel of the Youngs’ media empire. I’d be surprised if Kai didn’t know about the engagement ahead of time.
“Never thought I’d see the day you get married.” He ignored my dig.
“To Vivian Lau, no less. How’d you manage to keep her a secret for so long?”
“We’re not married yet.” I blocked another attempted punch. “And I didn’t keep her a secret. Our engagement is a business arrangement. I didn’t fucking wine and dine her before we closed the deal.”
The word engagement left a bitter taste in my mouth.
The thought of shackling myself to someone for the rest of my life was as appealing as walking into the ocean with concrete blocks strapped to my feet.
I preferred work over people, many of whom didn’t appreciate coming in second place to contracts and meetings. But business was lucrative, practical, and, for the most part, predictable. Relationships were not.
“That makes more sense,” Kai said. “I should’ve known mergers and acquisitions would take over even your personal life.”
His laugh faded when I hit him with an uppercut to the jaw, and he retaliated with a punch that knocked the air from my lungs.
Our conversation tapered off, replaced by grunts and curses as we pummeled the hell out of each other.
Kai was the most mild-mannered person I knew, but he had a vicious competitive streak. We’d started boxing together last year, and he’d become my go-to partner for blowing off steam because he never held back.
Who needed therapy when you could punch your friend in the face every week?
Hit, duck, dodge, hit. Over and over until we ended the night with a tie and significantly more bruises than when we’d entered.
But I’d finally worked off the edge of my anger, and when I met Kai in the locker room after my shower, I’d gained enough clarity not to lose my shit on my brother again.
I’d been this close to cutting him off after our conversation that afternoon, promises and conditions be damned. It would serve him right, but I didn’t have the energy to deal with his inevitable temper tantrum right now.
“Feel better?” Kai was already dressed when I entered.
Button-down shirt, blazer, thin black wire frames.
All traces of the lethal fighter from the ring had vanished, replaced with the epitome of scholarly sophistication.
“Marginally.” I got dressed and rubbed a hand over my sore jaw. “You pack a mean punch.”
“That’s why you called. You’d hate it if I took it easy on you.”
I snorted. “As much as you would hate losing.”
We exited the gym and took the elevator up to the first floor. The Valhalla Club was an exclusive global society for those with a certain net worth, and it had chapters all over the world. However, its New York headquarters were the largest and most opulent, spanning four stories and an entire city block in upper Manhattan.
“I’ve met Vivian a few times,” Kai said casually as the elevator doors dinged open. “She’s beautiful, smart, charming. You could’ve done a lot worse.”
Irritation flickered in my chest. “Perhaps you should marry her instead.”
I didn’t care if Vivian was a supermodel saint who saved puppies from burning buildings in her free time. She was simply someone I had to tolerate until I destroyed all the photos.
Unfortunately, Christian’s latest update confirmed Francis had stored the photos both digitally and physically.
Christian could easily take care of the digital evidence, but destroying physical evidence was trickier when we didn’t know how many backups Francis had. I couldn’t risk making a move until we were one hundred percent certain we’d tracked down his entire stash.
“If I could, I would.” The shadows in Kai’s eyes disappeared as quickly as they’d surfaced.
As the heir to the Young fortune, his future was even more etched in stone than mine.
“All I’m saying is, don’t be an asshole.” Kai nodded in greeting at a passing club member and waited until they were out of earshot before adding, “It’s not her fault she’s stuck with a brute like you.”
If he only knew.
“Worry less about my personal life and more about yours.” I raised an eyebrow at his cufflinks. Gold lions with amethyst eyes—part of the Young family crest. “Leonora Young won’t wait forever for a grandchild.”
“Luckily for her, she already has two, courtesy of my sister. And don’t try to deflect.” We crossed the gleaming black marble entryway to the exit.
“I meant what I said about Vivian. Be nice.”
My back teeth clenched.
Whether I liked her or not, Vivian was my fiancée, and I was getting damn tired of hearing her name leave his mouth.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll treat her exactly the way she deserves.”
