Page 9 of All’s Fair In Love & War (The Bulgari Cartel #2)

Black Girl Magic

Tatum Genevese-Bulgari

The conference room smelled like money and mistrust—a potent mix I’d grown used to.

Thick ribbons of cigar smoke slithered through the air, settling into the plush leather seats and hanging above the table.

The mahogany gleamed beneath the overhead light, polished to perfection, as if that shine could distract from the fact that every man seated at it had blood on his hands.

I slowly crossed my legs and leaned back just enough to remind them who was at the head of this table now.

My eyes swept across the room, taking inventory of the faces staring back at me.

They’d all once served my father without question.

Now, they called themselves loyal to me, though the doubt in their eyes said otherwise.

Behind me, Naeem stood like a storm waiting to happen. He was silent, watchful, and a little too close. His presence wasn’t just protective. It was strategic. He knew how this looked, and I knew exactly what he was doing.

Uncle Rio was the first to speak, as expected.

His voice carried a particularly smooth threat only age and arrogance could create.

“We got another issue at the Southside clinic,” he said, his voice as slick as the tires on my last car.

“Blood’s missing from the off-books freezer.

Not a full shipment, yet, but enough to notice. What’s your play?”

I’d reviewed the surveillance footage myself that morning and already traced the gap in our route logs back to one of the junior drivers.

The plan I had in place was solid. I knew exactly what needed to happen and how to execute it cleanly, but before I could speak, Naeem lowered his mouth to my ear, his breath brushing the curve of my jaw.

“Say you’ll run an internal audit. Keep it quiet. Then pin it on a smaller crew, send a message.”

His tone was low, confident, and too confident. It was as if he hadn’t even considered that I might already have it handled. I didn’t need him speaking for me, and I damn sure didn’t need him putting words in my mouth in front of my men.

My instinct was to shut it down, correct him, speak my own strategy, and let them hear it from me, the one actually running point, but I hesitated, not because I lacked the nerve, but because I knew the second I checked him in front of them, the spotlight would shift.

It would no longer be about the clinic or the breach; it would be about us, about the cracks in our so-called loving marriage.

So, instead of checking him right then and making it obvious I didn’t agree, I gave a small nod, swallowing my irritation, and repeated his words as if they were mine.

“We’ll audit the clinic quietly. If what we find leads back to one of our own, we’ll deal with it in-house. If not, we bleed someone smaller to remind the city we’re watching.”

Rio grunted in approval, eating up Naeem’s little power play like it was genius. But the truth was that move was surface-level. Any halfway-decent rival crew would spot it and sidestep the hit before we made our move. Quiet wasn’t what we needed. We needed noise.

A beat passed before another voice chimed in from across the table. “What about Monroe’s crew?” Dominic asked, flipping a toothpick between his teeth. “They’ve been running falsified lab referrals through two of our clinics without kickin’ anything back.”

Monroe’s name always left a bitter taste in my mouth.

He and my father used to run together back in the day, but even then, I didn’t trust him.

Something about him always rubbed me the wrong way.

He was too polished, too eager, and way too comfortable speaking when he should’ve been quiet and just listened.

Eventually, he stopped wanting to follow and started itching to lead.

Tried finessing a side deal that cut my father out.

That was the beginning of the end. They fell out.

Bad. And when it was over, blood was shed, and Monroe vanished.

However, now that my father’s no longer in charge, he’s suddenly resurfaced.

Perhaps he had been waiting for the right moment to crawl back out.

I took a breath, ready to cut into it myself this time, but again, Naeem’s shadow moved.

His whisper came before mine, and I watched to scream.

Tension settled at the base of my skull like pressure waiting to snap, and heat bloomed at the base of my neck, an ember of irritation that was already too close to catching flame.

“They’re testing you. Let ’em. We catch them mid-scheme, flip the leverage, then kill the middleman.”

I swallowed my irritation and responded smoothly. “They’re poking the system to see where we’re soft. We’ll let them think they found the cracks. Then we collapse the whole thing on top of them.”

Several of the older men exchanged dark smiles, clearly entertained. The game excited them. The violence, the politics, the illusion of control, it was all they thrived on besides money.

Naeem’s hand brushed the back of my chair, his thumb dragging slowly along the wood grain. I wanted to push him away, even punch him in the face. Nothing he was doing was slick, and the gesture damn sure wasn’t affectionate.

It was territorial and possessive, making it look as if I, Tatum, The Don, needed her husband standing over her shoulder, pulling the strings like a puppeteer.”

Highly irritated, I kept my face still, but if I recognized it, I knew someone else would too, and they’d call it out eventually.

And that they did.

“How we supposed to know who’s really makin’ the calls now?” Jax asked, tapping his ring on the wooden table, his tone bold enough to silence the room. “The Don we knew didn’t need nobody whisperin’ in his ear.”

Jax had served as my father’s senior advisor for over two decades.

He was a relic of the old world—respected, ruthless, and impossible to intimidate.

While the others adjusted to my reign, he tolerated it.

Barely. The only reason he wasn’t sitting at the head of this table was because he never wanted the crown… just the ear of whoever wore it.

Inside, I cringed but kept my face still, the weight of Jax’s words pressing on my chest like heavy stones.

What Jax asked wasn’t curiosity; it was a calculated blow aimed directly at my authority—more of a challenge than a question, demanding a reaction rather than an answer.

He wanted to see if I’d crack. If I’d fold.

Whether the crown I wore was truly mine or just borrowed.

I had never been allowed at that table, not as a daughter, not as a messenger, not even as a silent observer. The men in this family had made it clear from the beginning that this space wasn’t built for women. So, when I sat at the head of it now, I felt every set of eyes digging into my skin.

I could almost hear the unspoken questions circling the room like vultures. How long before she folds? How long before her husband has to step in? How long before this whole thing collapses because of her inferior gender?

I wasn’t na?ve. I knew they didn’t see me as a real Don, at least not yet.

To them, I was a walking vagina, a woman who got the seat because of bloodlines, and not backbone, and that’s what made it worse, because I had the backbone.

What I didn’t have was experience with them.

I’d never worked side-by-side with any of these men.

I hadn’t been invited to the late-night strategy meetings, the off-book negotiations, or the quiet decisions made over cigars and scotch.

I wasn’t one of them, and they made sure I felt it.

My nerves had been raw from the moment I walked in.

It was in the way my hands gripped the armrests too tightly.

In the dryness of my throat when I opened my mouth to speak.

I hated how unfamiliar the room felt, how unnatural it was to command attention in a space that had been built to exclude me.

There was no blueprint for how to lead men who believed they were born better than you.

And Naeem didn’t help my cause each time he leaned in behind me, whispering suggestions like I hadn’t already thought ten steps ahead.

Maybe he thought he was protecting me. Maybe he didn’t trust me to handle it.

Either way, it chipped away at everything I was trying to prove, and made me feel small in the one place I couldn’t afford to be.

However, even with the weight of their stares and the simmering heat of Naeem’s presence behind me, something inside me started to harden.

I wasn’t here because I was incapable of leading.

I was here because I had put in as much work as these men and had lost so many pieces of myself to keep this family afloat.

If they weren’t going to show me the respect I deserved, I was going to make them.

By the time I’m done with them, every man in this room will understand that the world has changed, and they could either fall in line or be buried beneath it.

I would not let anyone ever bully me into silence again.

Not them.

Not Naeem.

Not anyone.

They didn’t have to respect me today, but by the time I was finished with what I had to say, they’d never question me again.

Naeem moved behind me, ready to respond, but I raised my hand before he could open his mouth. My palm was steady, my fingers still, the diamond on my ring finger catching the light and casting it straight across the table.

“I’ll handle this,” I said, voice low but infused with enough heat to melt steel.

He hesitated for half a second before stepping back, but the heat rolling off him was impossible to ignore, like standing under the sun in a New Mexico summer heatwave. Naeem hated being silenced, especially in public, but that wasn’t my problem. He chose to be here. My table, my rules.

I stood, my heels clicking against the floor as I stepped away from my seat, letting silence stretch thin between us, every eye following me.