Page 13 of Blind Devotion (Letters of Ruin #1)

I sat up in my chair. “What the hell are you saying? Where’s Persy?”

Erel leaned in at the sound of her name and mouthed it back to me. I waved his irritating reaction away. This wasn’t the time. Thibault tilted his head. The fucker was even more intrigued.

“I…” A beat of silence across the line halted the conversation. “You’re serious?”

“I wasn’t aware I had a sense of humor.”

“You really are a bastard. You know what, it’s none of your fucking business. She’s none of your business. Not after you broke her heart.”

“I’m certain she got over it.”

His tongue clicked repeatedly over the line. “Why were you calling, De Villier?”

“I heard about Elio and Alisea. I wanted to offer my condolences. To Persy, of course.”

“Asshole,” Renzo replied half-heartedly.

“So?” I asked, but the bastard just repeated the word back to me. My teeth ground together, and I considered just hanging up, but I’d come this far. “How is she?”

“She’s not home. I don’t trust you enough to tell you more.”

“The feeling is mutual.” What more was he implying? Was she out with someone? A man? Did I care?

Another beat of silence. “Listen to us. Two young bosses at each other’s throats. And we’ve not even mentioned our respective trades.”

“It’s the way of business.”

“Business.” He scoffed, as expected. Our ill will was not business-related. “You know there was no other way.”

Again, Renzo slipped what happened with Yannick back onto the table.

I tapped my palm against my desk with irritation.

My older brother, Alizé’s twin, had been crazed.

No one survived what he and I had as children without losing a bit of themselves.

That didn’t excuse what happened with Persy, but the murder of a mafia family heir could never be ignored.

In the back of my mind, a little voice whispered, You would have done it yourself one day.

“Family might be everything, but even blood can be polluted,” Renzo added. “Disease always needs to be exterminated.”

I leaned forward, elbows on the desk. “Is that not what you did with your father?”

“No one was more deserving, even your brother.”

I raised an eyebrow at that. In front of me, Erel mirrored the look. “How?”

“He hurt Persetta.”

“Then he deserved everything he received.”

“Yes.” We hung there in silence. “Don’t call again, Adrien.”

The call dropped, and I tossed the phone onto my desk, swiped a hand down my face, and rubbed my eyes. Pointless conversation.

“Did he really do that?” Thibault whispered in feigned awe at Erel.

“Renzo Iannelli?” Erel rested his ankle up against his opposite thigh. “Iannelli, the California don? Persetta’s brother?”

I grunted. “How much of that did you catch?”

“Enough. You’re finally looking in on her? Why the change?”

Wasn’t that the million-euro question. Three years of radio silence broken, for what? I wasn’t even sure what I hoped to achieve. But I knew why. That damn woman upstairs was messing with my head.

“Don’t ask. Why are you here?”

“Me first,” Thibault said with the eagerness of a puppy. “I’m kind of in part of his too, but this, this one’s all me.”

I tossed Erel a wary glance.

“So the staff at headquarters are getting hounded by this reporter who—”

“We don’t give statements.”

“And they haven’t, but this guy’s been calling or visiting once or twice a day for the last week about your girl.”

I glared at him flatly. My little brother raised his hands in surrender, but there was far too much bluster in that smirk of his.

“Hey, until you start carrying another random woman around again, yeah, I’m calling her your girl.”

I rubbed the bridge of my nose and sighed with exasperation. “What’s the point of this?”

“He’s a big guy, skull tattoos, not your usual look for a reporter.

We tried passing his photo about and banning him from the property, but he keeps popping up like a bad wart.

He’s making noise to anyone he thinks will hear him.

Spouting out about how we’ve released nothing to the press since our announcement a week ago. Talking about some damn tattoo.”

I didn’t react as Thibault kept talking. It was all coming back to that damned tattoo. The Barrot runt must have talked since the yacht party. I cut my brother off.

“Have a statement crafted. The woman’s been unwell.” True. “Alizé arranged for a press release, so that should hold him off. However, she’s not in any condition for further interviews, and it’s not clear when or if she will be.” Almost true.

“We’re giving statements now?” Erel questioned, scratching his thumbnail under his chin.

“We’ve been put in this position by Alizé, so we deal with it. We move on. The woman won’t be our problem soon enough.” I knocked against the wood of my desk. “What else?”

“The Serbs aren’t keeping to the terms of the deal,” Erel said, jumping right in.

“Proof?”

“Caught red-handed on camera at the docks. They pirated the ship. I think they need a little incentive to keep to their end of the bargain before the Greeks get a whiff of this.”

“Agreed. And make sure to pin a copy of the contract we brokered to their heads when you send them back. Any chatter about this on Endgame?”

“Not yet.”

“Shut it down if anything shows up.”

“Already on it.”

I nodded in dismissal. My brother was nearly bouncing up and down in his seat beside Erel.

“I want to be the one to do it,” Thibault spat out.

I eyed Erel. He shrugged, a shining endorsement at least on his part.

Was Thibault ready for this? He was not as dark and tortured as we were.

Our father made certain not to repeat the same mistakes with him as he had done with Yannick and me.

If anything, it romanticized our way of life in Thibault’s eyes.

A trip into the dark and serious might be exactly what he needed.

I pointed a finger at him. “You fuck this up, and you’ll be relegated to a desk chair at the DV Banks marketing firm.”

“Chill, Adrien.” Thibault waved me off. “I’ll do great. You need to get laid, man.”

“Get out.”

Thibault chuckled loudly as he left the office.

“He’s not wrong,” Erel said.

I grunted. My sex life was not their concern. “You think he can do it?”

Erel nodded. “He’s good. I think he needs this. He wants to prove his worth. To you. To the Milieu.”

“He’s not like us, Erel.”

Erel and I were practically molded by the darkness. We grew up in it. We lived it permanently. Thibault just cruised on through as though riding in the back of an armored SUV all his life.

“He shouldn’t have to be.” Erel gave his armrest a double tap, then rose. “Heard the girl’s awake, and you spoke. If she’s the reason you called Persetta, then—”

“Don’t.”

“Just saying. It’s more than time to move on.” Over his shoulder on the way out, he said, “Your brother’s right. Maybe you do need a good tug and tumble.”

For good measure, I tossed a paperweight at the closing door. Erel’s resounding chuckle nearly outdid the loud thunk. They weren’t wrong. However, sex was the last thing on my mind these days.