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“Promise?” she asks.

I nod and a smile takes up her face.

I press a kiss to the top of her head and walk over to Bella. “I’ll be back.”

Her stance is defensive but she nods. “I didn’t mean what I said.”

“Yeah, you did.”

“Kilian…”

“I love you. Both of you,” I say quietly. “I’ll see you soon.”

25

KILIAN

Ihate leaving Bella and Aria the way I did but business is business. As soon as my plane lands in Montpellier, I am met by Dimitri limping to the stairs of the plane.

“What the fuck happened?”

“We were ambushed,” Dimitri tells me as we crawl in the waiting SUV. “There wasn’t even a trade. We had a shipment of weapons coming in from our supplier. A large one.”

I nod my head. “I know. It was the one to close off on six different deals. How the hell did the Renzettis know what we were doing?”

“I have no idea. Everything was going smooth. We had almost all the weapons loaded into the trucks when it happened. Four men were killed, another two injured.”

“And you?”

He shrugs. “Just a nick in my thigh and a clean shot through my arm.”

“This shouldn’t have happened.”

“No. This was an easy delivery. All that needed to be done was load the crates into the truck. They waited until we were almost done. When one truck was loaded, I was confused why he wasn’t driving off. I found him dead in the driver’s seat. That’s when I got shot in the arm and then chaos happened.”

“Fuck,” I mutter under my breath. “Is anything left?”

“A few million dollars’ worth,” Dimitri says quietly. “There has to be a mole.”

“I need you to get me a list of every person you’ve had working the docks with you over the last six months.” I send a text to Roland, who was supposed to be handling this. “Fuck,” I yell as I slam my hand into the window of the SUV. “Why wasn’t Roland here?”

“He said he had something to take care of. I promised him it would be fine.”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.” I run my hand through my hair. “Why didn’t you call me?”

“Roland said not to get you involved.” Dimitri studies me. “He probably knew you would be pissed.”

“He violated protocol.”

“I know.”

“There will be consequences for you. Your rank will drop. And The Partners will not be happy. Consequences may be worse than your rank. You lost nearly four hundred million dollars in weapons.”

He nods. “I know. I know I fucked up. But things had been fine. Nothing happened in the last month and I figured with Ezio being out of the picture we would be okay.”

I clench my jaw. “It was a foolish mistake.”

“I accept my punishment.”