Page 48 of Knot Their Safe Haven

Dad.

I set the phone aside, not wanting to think about what my father would say about this situation.

Salvatore Devereaux had built his empire on calculated decisions and strategic alliances. Claiming an unclaimed Omega who was actively involved with three other Alphas wasn't exactly strategic.

But then again, he'd also taught me that sometimes you had to take what you wanted before someone else did.

"Hesitation is death in business and in life, figlio. When you see your opportunity, you take it. Let others worry about consequences while you're already three moves ahead."

I'd been three moves ahead for seventeen years.

The first move had been those tutoring sessions, sitting across from Velvet in her cramped apartment while she drilled me on conjugations I'd mastered at age ten. My family had insisted on perfect fluency in six languages—it was expected when your business dealings crossed that many borders and twice as many legal jurisdictions.

But I'd played dumb, stumbling over pronunciations and mixing up masculine and feminine articles, just to watch her purple-painted lips purse in frustration.

"Alessandro, we've been over this. 'La femme' is feminine. Always. How do you keep forgetting?"

"Maybe I need more practice,"I'd replied in perfect French, then pretended not to notice her sharp intake of breath when she realized I'd been playing her.

She'd thrown a textbook at my head and threatened to quit. I'd offered to double her rate. We'd settled on one and a half times, plus coffee.

Those Tuesday and Thursday evenings had been the highlight of my week for six months. Watching her work through her own textbooks while I pretended to study, memorizing the way she bit her lip when concentrating, cataloguing every shift in her scent when I got too close.

She'd smelled like rebellion even then—black orchids and bitter wine, with an underlying sweetness that made my eighteen-year-old body respond in ways that required strategic textbook placement.

"You're going to be dangerous when you're older,"she'd said once, catching me staring.

"I'm dangerous now,"I'd replied, all teenage bravado and inherited arrogance.

She'd laughed, but there'd been something in her eyes—recognition, maybe, or warning—that suggested she knew I wasn't entirely wrong.

The second move had been disappearing.

University in London, then Harvard Business School, then the slow, methodical process of building something worthy of her. Because even at eighteen, I'd known she wouldn't accept anything less than an equal.

She needed someone who could match her power, passion, and absolute refusal to submit to anyone's expectations.

The boy whose family name opened doors wasn't enough.

I needed to become the man who built his own doors and then burned them down just to prove he could.

It had taken fifteen years.

Fifteen years of hostile takeovers and strategic partnerships, of learning which hands to shake and which to break, of buildingthe Noctuary from an idea Alexia had drunkenly suggested into an empire that spanned continents.

The third move had been the donations.

Fifty million here, thirty million there, all routed through shell companies and anonymous transfers that even her best forensic accountants couldn't trace. I'd been funding her revolution for three years, watching from a distance as she built her Haven, saved her Omegas, became the Rebel Queen that made powerful men nervous.

She'd never suspected.Why would she?The boy she'd tutored had vanished into the ether of European high society. She probably assumed I was just another rich heir, managing a hedge fund or sitting on boards, contributing nothing but taking everything.

She had no idea I'd been watching.

Waiting.

Planning.

Until now.