Page 42 of Devil's Azalea

“Make sure you don’t.” I give him a short, dismissive nod before walking away.

Enzo meets me halfway across the bar floor. “Your next meeting arrived a couple of minutes ago. I directed him to the VIP lounge,” he says.

I check my watch.He’s punctual. I like that.

I head for the VIP steps, brushing aside the red velvet rope that separates the exclusive area from the rest of the club. Then I turn left and climb a few more steps until I’m passing through the sliding glass doors leading into the lounge.

The VIP section is set on a slightly elevated platform above the main floor. From up here, guests can watch everything below without ever having to leave the comfort of their plush seats. The thick tinted glass ensures their privacy—anyone looking up from the main floor only sees their own reflection.

Right now, there’s only one person inside, and I make my way towards him. “Sorry for the delay. My last meeting ran over a little,” I say as I reach his table.

Roan Përmeti looks up with sharp green eyes and rises from his seat to shake my hand. His red hair is cropped close at the sides, a cut similar to Michael’s—but unlike Michael, he’s not fully bald, just clipped down to a rust-colored shadow. And even though he must have shaved earlier today, his jaw is already lined with five-o’clock stubble.

“No problem. Thanks for meeting with me,” he answers, sinking back into his seat.

I slide in across from him and get straight to business. “So, Maximo tells me you can supply arms to us? How many are we talking about?”

His face turns serious as he explains his uncle’s operation in Kosovo—how they can move serious quantities, hundreds of weapons, into the U.S. within a couple of months.

The delivery is faster than the Russians’, though the service comes at a higher price. Normally, I’d be more cautious about entering into business with someone I hardly know, but he’s Maximo’s brother-in-law and essentially family now.

Plus, SP’s dossier on Roan paints him as exactly the kind of ruthless bastard I can work with. The kind of man I know will rule with the same iron hand I do when he takes over leadership of the Albanian syndicate from his father.

“Let’s do this, then,” I say as the meeting wraps up, and we shake hands to seal the deal.

13

EMILIA

Katie’s stare drills a hole into the side of my face. I can practically feel her questions building behind her eyes, but force myself to focus on the task at hand—carefully extracting the note from between the poisonous petals without actually touching a single one. I still don’t know what that man’s obsession is with sending me azaleas.

Sure, it’s a nod to my middle name—the one I specifically told him I didn’t like. And he’s been dead set on changing my mind ever since. Fine, deep in some locked chamber of my heart, I might be developing a grudging appreciation for the name, butfuckhe needs to stop sending me toxic flowers.

My stomach knots as I think about what could have happened if Katie hadn’t known better. What if she’d buried her nose in these beautiful, deadly blooms for a whiff of that deceptively fragrant scent? Then I’d either be rushing her to the ER or dealing with a temporarily paralyzed—or worse, comatose—friend. The thought alone makes my blood run cold.

I break the seal on the envelope and, hyper-aware of Katie’s gaze on me, resist the ridiculous urge to lift the note to my noseand sniff for any lingering trace of his cologne. My brows pinch together as I read the cryptic scrawl in Rafael’s unmistakable handwriting.

Thank you for lending me this. I’ll put the information to good use.

No signature. Of course the man is arrogant enough to assume I’ll justknowit’s from him. My heart stutters as I drop the note and snatch up the small box—dread and fury mingling in my gut because I already know exactly what’s inside.

Sure enough, when I flip open the lid, there it sits: the flash drive he stole from me yesterday. The same damn drive that kicked off all that chaos at his penthouse when I went to get it back.

“Who did you loan your flash drive to?” Katie asks curiously, but I’m already moving, driven by a desperate need to confirm what I already know in my bones.

Heart hammering an unstable staccato against my ribs, I race to my room, boot up my computer, and jam the flash drive into the port. For a moment—just one stupid, hopeful moment—I actually let myself believe maybe Rafael has a conscience buried somewhere under all that expensive tailoring. That maybe, despite everything that happened, he left the files. That maybe he wanted me to find the truth. That maybe this was his way of making it right.

But when I click into it, my shoulders slump in crushing disappointment.

It’s empty.

He’s deleted everything. Every. Single. File.

Of course he did.

That fucking psychopath. My throat closes up with rage,and my ears threaten to pop, but I force myself to stay calm. Getting angry and reckless solves nothing. Last night proved that spectacularly.

I had acted on impulse, convinced I was in control. But all I had done was let him walk away with the upper hand—again.