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“They’re planning to take down the Council for their involvement in attacking them.”

“Let them. The old order will die and then I can start a new one from the ashes.”

***

After Cato recovers, I video call them. All four of them sit at a table in a line, changing the triangle shaped table they had to welcome their fourth member and lost brother, Hayden. In a line, they show their unshakable unity. I understand that bond because I share that with Mika. But I need to make sure the deal I made with Kieran still stands.

“I want Luciana Rossi. Alive. It’s non-negotiable.”

“Not any longer. She threatened my wife,” Cato snaps.

What the fuck is wrong with her? She’s become careless, more smug, and that shows she’s desperate, perhaps sensing her end is coming.

“I want her alive or the deal is off. She’s mine to punish.”

I don’t negotiate nor compromise, and they must see that. Her life, her death, is mine.

Cato is about to say something when Kieran says, “No mercy. That’s our final offer.”

Hayden’s stony gaze sets on mine as if searching for the truth.

“Deal.”

“Don’t cross us,” Cameron says, and disconnects from the call.

They’re men of their word, something I am too. Yet I can’t shake the feeling that I lied even though I am determined to make her more miserable than she’s ever imagined being in her entire damn life.

It won’t take much longer and then she’ll be here, and her punishment will begin.

I close my eyes, imagining all the ways I can torture her.

My cock, which has been dormant for the last four months, gets hard.

“You can’t have her,” I say in the empty room.

The night is my only witness that I don’t sound as sure as I’d like to.

When blackmailed, you lose control over your life, spiraling down an endless hole of compromises. Your decisions stop being yours. You simply become a puppet in the hands of someone else. In my case, it’s not just anyone pulling the strings, but fucking Adamo Santino.

Four months later, when I thought all I had to struggle with was my past haunting me, he showed up and basically said kill Cato Moretti or he will expose me.

The Syndicate isn’t on the Council’s list of targets, allowing them to gain enough influence to ensure their cooperation at some point.

In our world, alliances have become the new trade. The time of bloody territorial conquests is long gone. Even criminals want to be legit, stay off the radar and wreak havoc only from the shadows.

Each day has passed without a pause to my ongoing grief.

Time is the biggest sadist—not giving me a smidgen of sympathy for what I lost. I left my heart with him, and I thought I could go on without it, but I was wrong.

I’ve buried myself in work, stayed focused on my tasks to survive the pain I feel with every agonizing intake of air, as if the oxygen itself fills my lungs with misery.

Another kill, another duty fulfilled.

Two more diamonds were added to my necklace. I don’t want this life any longer. I am done. My will to live dims each passing day.

As I look at Adamo and his smug expression, I realize I am completely fucked. I could have had a different life, one where I would have been free to live as I wanted, with the man I loved by my side.

“Why him?” I ask.