Page 69 of Dangerous King (Savage Kings of New York #2)

One week later…

We have to be careful to plan our meetings without making Edoardo suspicious, and a strip club is just the right place.

Nobody would think twice about why we are in here, even though it's just a front.

The private room we booked is free of strippers.

Toni has the hots for his hostage, I'm about to be married, and Stephano…

well, Stephano is Stephano. If it doesn't have wires, thirty thousand terabytes of storage, and a mouse, he's not interested.

To keep up appearances, the girls are in the anteroom, playing poker with each other. They're being well compensated and won't say a word about what's not happened in here.

The room smells of aged whiskey, sex, and tension.

Stephano leans against the wall, arms crossed, watching the empty pole in the center, while Toni pours himself two fingers of Blue Label.

I'm the only one who took a seat, tired but wired, the weight of the last few weeks pounding in my temples like a war drum.

"But Marcello's stable?" I ask Toni, who went to the hospital this morning to see him.

Toni takes a seat too, leans back in his chair, and shakes his head. "You should've seen him. A head wound so bad they had to remove part of his skull, and a couple of other hits on his hip and leg on top of it. The doctors said it was a miracle he even made it through the night."

My jaw tightens. "Casimo wanted to make sure he didn't."

"Yeah, well, he almost succeeded. They've got him in a medically induced coma for now," Toni continues. "Because of his brain swelling. But the nurse they assigned to him?" He makes a dramatic gesture. "Violet something? She's a looker and is glued to his side."

Stephano arches a brow. "Marcello's still unconscious, and he's already pulling in the hot ones?"

Toni smirks faintly. "Her eyes only track him. And trust me, she's not there for the paycheck."

Silence fills the room for a few beats, as each of us contemplates being shot. I don't think any of us hasn't met lead yet in one part or another of our bodies.

Stephano scoffs under his breath. "Getting pumped full of lead by his own bodyguard in a parking garage. That's our standard now?"

"Calm down," I warn, "We don't need sarcasm. We need answers."

Toni refills our glasses. "I've already doubled the security around the house. Vito," Toni's second-in-command, "is vetting all the guards again."

"Too bad Casimo is dead," Stephano signals to Toni that he wants another drink too.

"Yeah," I agree, closing my eyes for a second to relish the burn of the whiskey down my throat. Casimo was the guard who attacked Marcello after they came back from a meeting.

"Who was Marcello meeting?" Stephano asks.

"The head of the Los Conquistadores, Matías Rivera." Toni fills us in, churning my gut.

"The Venezuelans? Again?" I ask incredulously.

Toni slaps the cigarette-burned counter. "Motherfucker! I didn't make the connection."

Stephano types on his phone, "Making notes to check deeper into Matías." He looks up, "By the way, have either of you paid attention to the news?"

"Only to check on Carlos' trial," Toni admits.

"Too busy with wedding prep." I grin, rubbing my upcoming nuptials into their faces. "My wife?—"

Toni cuts me off, " Future wife."

I glare at him. I like saying my wife. It makes it clear to everyone that she's mine. But I let Toni off the hook.

"Aren't she and your mom doing all the work?" Stephano doesn't miss a beat."

I'd rather go to hell than admit that for the past week, I've used any excuse in the book to see Cat whenever I could, even if it meant having to deal with color coordinating napkins and napkin holders. Or, here I shudder at the memory, studying calligraphy types for the nametags.

"What'd I miss?" I ask, because my lips will remain sealed about all the things I've done and put up with over the past week just to get a glimpse of… my —future —wife!

"Kingsley's bill came through," Stephano fills us in, and I arch an eyebrow.

"Well, I'll be damned," Toni grins, "I bet that doesn't sit well with Roberto."

"Or Ledyanoy Prizrak," I refill our glasses.

"He was supposed to have him killed before the bill went through.

" A bad feeling settles in my stomach. Ledyanoy Prizrak isn't the type of man who'll forgive losing a one-point-five billion dollar contract.

I'm not afraid of him, but I do worry about what kind of revenge he might be planning.

He got to Izzy once. He's resourceful. "Have you found out anything about him? "

Stephano stops typing into his phone and looks up, "We dug into him more. He's not flying completely solo. Ledyanoy Prizrak is one of the top contractors for an outfit called Omertà Infernale—Hellbound Silence."

Toni scoffs, twisting his glass. "Dramatic much?"

"It's smart branding," Stephano says, not rising to the bait. "The name plays on Omertà, the code we were all raised on. Silence. Loyalty. But Infernale? That implies they punish anyone who breaks the code. Traitors. Whistleblowers. Anyone who talks."

"Never heard of them," Toni mutters, cracking his neck.

"That's the point," Stephano says. "They're not street level.

They're high-end, like Ledyanoy Prizrak.

" He taps a few times on his phone and turns the screen toward us.

"They scrub digital records. Bribe therapists.

Erase court files. They make scandals vanish—for a price.

And they don't just clean messes. They remove problems."

"Like?" Marcello asks.

"Inconvenient exes. Leaky executives. Viral videos.

They even wiped out a senator's affair trail with enough finesse to make the FBI look like amateurs.

" Stephano exhales, clearly impressed. "They recruit the kind of soldiers no one else will touch—ex-military, dishonorably discharged, some with serious PTSD.

Their founder's a fucking cyber genius. Built the network himself.

He stays totally anonymous. No face. No real name.

But his code leaves fingerprints, and I've been tracking them. "

I lift a brow. "You admire him."

"I respect the architecture," Stephano admits. "It's efficient, decentralized. Brilliant, really." He pauses before looking at Toni, "That's not all. They don't only make inconvenient cyber scandals disappear."

"Oh?" He has Toni's interest.

"He also makes inconvenient people disappear," Stephano finishes, drinking up the rest of his Blue Label.

Toni only shrugs. "Different angle. Grigori and I are above board.

Private protection, elite assignments. This guy deals in shadows.

" Or whatever Toni considers above board , because the company Grigori and he are opening is not only about protection from problems. Underhandedly, they will eliminate… problems.

Stephano is caught up in his phone, shaking his head. "Still…" he grins, all teeth, "I'd kill to know how he built his encryption."

"Let's hope we don't have to kill him," I mutter. "Because if Ledyanoy Prizrak is planning payback for that lost contract, we need to be ready."

Toni warns, "He got to Izzy once."

"And he won't get near her again," I say. My voice is final. "Next time he tries? He doesn't walk away."

"Shit," Stephano exclaims.

"What now?" Toni leans back.

"Matías Rivera? I was about to have Leandro pick him up; the coward is already back in LA."

"That's okay. I have my men pick him up," Toni shrugs. "About time we had a word with him about his and Edoardo's entanglements."

I nod approvingly. "Sounds like a plan."

Stephano pushes off the wall, finally stepping forward. "So what's the play? We know Marcello was set up. We know it wasn't random."

"No," I say, voice turning cold. "It was a message. One meant for all of us."

"And what's the response?"

I look both of them dead in the eye.

"We send a louder one."

A week later…

This is absolute torture. I haven't seen Cat since midnight last night, and it's now three o'clock in the afternoon. That makes it fifteen hours since I kissed her sweet lips or touched her soft skin.

"Quit fidgeting," Toni, my best man, orders.

"I can't help it," I bite back.

He grins, "Should have called the officiate to your office like I did. No fuss, no muss."

I'm about ready to swing at him when the band begins to play the wedding march.

Loud enough to overpower the chirping of the birds and the low mumbling from the hundreds of wedding guests seated in our backyard.

I stand up straighter, eyes leveled down to the flower petals strewn in the aisle between the myriad of chairs.

A white arch, filled with lilies and red roses, as per Cat's request, catches my focus, and I look up. Movement to the right gives me a glimpse of white lace as Cat arrives, arm in arm with her father. From that second on, I only have eyes for her.

Fuck, she's stunning. My breath catches like a punch to the ribs.

Cat steps into full view beneath the arch, her hand resting on her father's arm, and the sunlight catches in the jeweled combs tucked into her dark brown hair.

It's pinned half-up, soft curls spilling down her back in a way that looks effortlessly elegant but probably took hours.

Her dress clings to her upper body like a lover's hands, delicate lace over satin, every inch of it designed to tease and torment.

The bodice is embroidered with fine, almost translucent thread that shimmers when she moves, drawing the eye to the curve of her waist, the swell of her hips.

The skirt flows like liquid light, layer upon layer of silk and tulle that whisper across the grass with every step she takes.

Her veil trails behind her like a blessing, sheer and weightless, edged in the same lace that hugs her skin.

And her eyes—Christ, those eyes. Amber like aged whiskey, burning with nerves and joy and something fierce that makes my chest feel like it's about to crack open.

She's not just beautiful.

She's mine.