Page 30 of Devil's Azalea

I take out the pen in my breast pocket that doubles as an audio recorder and twirls it between my fingers.

He wants to be a senator? He should worry about staying out of prison first.

“Set up a meeting with Jason tomorrow,” I tell Enzo.

He frowns, shaking his head. “He usually leaves the country two days after his ballet event and doesn’t take any meetings before he travels, using the holidays as an excuse.”

“He’ll meet with me.” The confidence in my voice is absolute as I copy every single video from the flash drive to my laptop. “Tell him I know about his meeting with a certain Russian tonight.”

That little breadcrumb will be enough to hook him. He’ll come, if only to figure out how deep my knowledge runs.

That’s when I’ll strike.

“What?” Enzo asks sharply, his body tensing with surprise. “What meeting?”

I flash him a slow smile. “He’ll understand.”

9

EMILIA

That fucking bastard.

My body shakes furiously as I whirl towards my bed and snatch up a pillow. I bury my face in it and let the scream rip from my throat. It doesn’t help. Not enough. I scream again. And again. I keep going until my voice is rasp and my throat feels like sandpaper.

Still not enough.

I hurl the pillow to the floor and march to my desk, my vision blurring with unshed tears of pure rage. One swipe sends everything crashing to the floor—laptop, files, lamp, coffee mug, all of it. The clatter is loud, but the destruction still doesn’t match the inferno burning in my chest.

I’m going to fucking kill him.

That poor waiter, Ryan Barlowe—a name I’ll never forget. A life sacrificed in my bid for information on Jason Moore. I knelt by his body andpromisedhim his sacrifice wouldn’t be in vain. That I’d make it count. That I’d take Jason down with the evidence I had.

Only now I don’t fucking have it.

Why? Because Rafael fucking Moretti touched me, and I forgot how to use my damn brain.

“Amateur,” I hiss to myself, the taste of self-loathing bitter on my tongue.

My heart splinters at the realization that our kiss, that raw intimacy we shared, wasn’t real—just a calculated ploy to get my flash drive. And that infuriates me twice over. At this point in our twisted history, he should have absolutely no power to hurt me. None at all.

But the brutal truth hammers against my ribs: beneath all this volcanic anger, I’m wounded. Deep.

“Ugh!” I growl, driving my fist into the hard mahogany desk, welcoming the sharp pain that shoots up my arm and bursts across my knuckles. It’s enough to clear my head for a moment.

I need to get back my flash drive from that smug, manipulative asshole.

A soft knock interrupts my plotting. “Hey, Em, are you okay? What happened at the event?” Katie’s concerned voice filters through the door.

When I got home a few minutes ago, I was high off adrenaline, guilt, victory… and yeah, stupid, lingering lust. So I barely registered Katie as I power-walked past her in the living room, laser-focused on transferring the damning evidence from my flash drive to my computer and cloud storage.

But when I reached into my bra where I’d tucked it…nothing. Fuckingnothing.

I tore my bra off in a panic, hoping the drive would just tumble out—maybe it was stuck in a fold or clinging somewhere I couldn’t reach. But no, still nothing. Which left me just standing there in the middle of my bedroom like an idiot, frozen. Shocked. Wondering for one delusional moment if I’d somehow lost the damn thing on the auction floor. But that didn’t make sense—I would have felt it.

That’s when the memory hit me. Rafael’s hand cupping mybare tits. Even as phantom goosebumps prickled across my skin at the remembered pleasure, a light bulb went off in my head.

The bastard saw everything.Saw me transferring files from Jason’s computer onto that drive. Saw me tuck it into my bra for safekeeping. He must have wanted it badly, hence why he initiated sexual contact with me.