Page 44 of Legacy (The Sovereigns #2)

Angelo

I should’ve told her sooner.

Should’ve let her have a real choice.

And now it’s too late… because the Armenians know about her.

Levon told me as much, right before I began to carve him open.

They know she’s my wife.

It doesn’t matter if she leaves me. If we filed annulment papers tomorrow, if she walked away and never said my name again—none of it matters.

They know.

And they’ll hunt her down.

They’ll kill her.

But for now, she’s here, in this kitchen, staring at me like I’ve betrayed everything we could’ve been.

Because I did.

“It’s too late,” I say, voice thick. “They know who you are. So I’m telling you everything. Now. So you know what’s already in motion.”

Her mouth parts then shuts again.

She plants her hands on her hips, a sharp furrow cutting between her brows.

“I need you understand what’s in place,” I continue. “Because I’m going to war. I’m taking the fight to them. ”

I step closer, and her fury cracks, confusion sliding in behind it.

She doesn’t move when I cup her face.

“You’ll have everything,” I murmur. “Your jewels. Your freedom. Everything I own. It’s yours.”

She blinks. Shakes her head slightly. “What are you talking about?”

Her breath catches, her eyes searching mine, as if she already knows what I’m about to say.

I press my forehead to hers. My voice drops.

“They want retribution. An eye for an eye. Blood for blood.”

I pause.

“If I lose, I’ll give them what they want. My life for yours.”

Her breath stutters.

“I started this,” I whisper. “I’ll end it.”

And I mean it. Every goddamn word.

She is the only thing I’ve ever wanted and the only thing I can’t afford to lose.

My eyes hold hers, anchoring her to me.

“I won’t let anything happen to you,” I say. “Nothing.”

“Angelo,” she breathes, tears welling in her eyes. “No.”

She steps back, taking with her a tethered piece of my soul.

“No, Angelo.” She takes a breath. “Damn you, you know that?”

She chuckles humorlessly before pressing the palms of her hands to her eyes.

She goes around me and clicks off the stove. She’s too calm. Too quiet.

“No pasta tonight, we’ll order pizza.”

I watch her.

She’s gone mad.

She’s not yelling she’s sniffling and making pizza requests instead of screaming at me and leaving. Her hand intertwines with mine soft, yet firm. I let her lead me to the bedroom.

“Adriana—” I start and she gives me a sharp look. “ Scarlet, what are we—”

“We’re going to come up with a plan,” she says quietly.

Before I can protest she continues.

“This is what I do. What I’m known for. You think Luciano makes strategic plans all alone with Rafe as his Consejero?” she huffs out a laugh. “ Those two? One who never wants to get his hands dirty, and the other who cleans his gun more than he fires it?”

She opens the curtains in the room letting the afternoon light in. She grabs her bag from the corner and pulls out a marker placing it in my hand before she sits on the edge of the bed.

“It’s a dry erase marker, I always keep one on hand,” she gestures toward the window. “Break it all down for me, where are the Armenian gangs located, their haunts, the hierarchy and their weak points.”

She sits on that bed demanding intel like a the Regina she is. Proud. Gorgeous. and somehow still mine.

Her eyes meet mine fierce. Ready.

“Who do we have, I need to know our alliances, who is good at what and lets devise this plan. We’re going to take them down. Together.”

***

The window is covered in black ink.

Lines like arteries. Circles like wounds. Arrows like war paths.

She’s turned my bedroom into a battlefield, and she’s not blinking.

Scarlet.

Christo.

She caps the marker, tucks it behind her ear, and crosses her arms as she studies the chaos we’ve created. And all I can do is watch her.

Not the window.

Her .

Her brain is moving at a speed I can barely keep up with—sharp, fast, lethal. Every time her eyes narrow, another piece clicks into place, and I swear my heart skips.

She’s breathtaking like this.

Terrifying.

Glorious.

Power incarnate in bare legs and one of my shirts.

And all I can think is how much time I wasted.

How many nights I could’ve had this.

Not just the woman who kissed me in the dark five years ago—

But this woman.

This weapon.

“We need surveillance on every Armenian asset,” she says, voice clear. “Clubs, docks, safehouses. I want eyes on all of it.”

I should answer, but I’m still catching up.

She glances at me swiftly. “We’ll need NovaRael. Fully activated.”

I blink. “That’s Santo’s. It’s not ready for—”

“Then get it ready.” She doesn’t even hesitate. “We don’t need perfect. We need functional.”

She turns toward me. Her hair spills over her shoulders, and for a second, I forget how to breathe.

I missed all of this, I could have has this for years.

The fire in her. The focus. The brilliance.

I let her slip through my fingers once.

Never again.

“We’ll need someone tailing Arsen,” she continues. “If his last known location was here in the city, we need someone undercover. Do we have anyone?”

“No.”

She sighs, pacing. “Then get someone. Or ask Luciano.”

“He doesn’t want to be involved. ”

She snorts, bitter and elegant. “Too bad. He shipped me off in exchange for ports and an alliance. This is what alliances do.”

I nod slowly, but my stomach tightens.

The deeper she digs, the more beautiful she gets, like she’s building a war and I’m watching her sculpt it bare-handed. But under the awe, a different feeling coils.

Hesitation

Not of her plan.

Of telling my brother.

“I’ll talk to Luciano, but Santo… he’s in the dark about a lot of this,” I say. “I’ll tell him everything, but not before I warn Maksim.”

She frowns. “Why? Santo’s your brother and your underboss, he does what you say. He can be angry or hurt by the whole warehouse fire thing, but this is a war, he has to fall in line.”

I pause.

That one question drops ice straight down my spine. Why?

Because I love my brother, but I also fear Scythe. Because if I don’t handle this right—

“You don’t know him the way I do,” I say quietly.

She watches me. Waiting.

“He seems cold, calculating, but no. Santo is… something else. And I’m not talking about his position.”

“Then what are you talking about?” she asks.

I take a breath.

Here we go.

“He’s not just Santo,” I murmur. “He’s Scythe.”

She stills. “Yeah, so? What the hell does that mean?”

“He split in two when our mom died. Scythe kills, Santo does surveillance. I don’t know if he can control it, we don’t talk about it.”

She pauses for a beat. Then shrugs .

“Not my husband, not my problem. We can set up a dinner, explain it together, united front. Vasilisa will be there. She’ll keep his ass in check. Okay, next.”

I’m stunned.

That’s it?

No fear. No flinching. No hesitation.

She just moves on to planning dinner like we didn’t just crack open my brother’s fractured psyche in the middle of a war map.

Relief rushes in so fast it knocks the air from my lungs.

Relief and something else.

Pride.

Not the shallow kind. Not the ego stroke.

The kind that hurts a little because it’s tangled in regret.

How did I survive all these years without this woman?

How the hell did I walk around like I was whole, when everything I needed was a thousand miles away the entire time?

I almost laugh.

God help the Armenians.

Because they’re not just fighting me anymore.

They’re fighting us.

“We’ll need protection for you and Vasilisa,” I say. My voice is steadier now.

“Add Katya,” she replies immediately pointing at Maksim’s sisters name on the board.

“Katya’s staying in Vancouver,” I tell her. “Then heading to Russia for the next few months.”

Scarlet nods once. “Fine. Then it’s me and Vasilisa. Together . Don’t split us up.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“Good.” She starts uncapping the marker again. “We’ll need a safehouse. Not one of the usual's.”

“Agreed. ”

“Warehouse, industrial zone, off-grid.”

“Only a handful of men know the location,” I add.

She nods. “And not just guards. Men who’d die for you.”

I look at her.

“No,” I say. “I need men who’d die for you. ”

She smirks, her eyes lighting up.

“Then you’ll have to call Luciano, most of his men would die for me whether you like it or not.”

And for once it doesn’t make me jealous. if she’s safe that’s all that matters.

***

She’s in the bathroom, brushing her teeth with the door half open.

Domestic.

Normal.

I’m on the bed, half dressed, pretending to scroll through intel on my phone but really just listening to the sound of her moving.

She spits. Rinses.

“I think we should leave tomorrow,” she says, wiping her mouth with a towel. “Morning or afternoon. Doesn’t matter. The sooner we talk to Maksim and Luciano, the sooner we get Santo on board.”

I sit up, the comforter bunched around my hips.

“You don’t want to finish the week here?”

She shrugs. “We have a war to win, we laid everything on the table. You and I are on the same page. We got what we needed.”

No.

We didn’t get everything.

Not all of it.

Because once we go back to the penthouse, she gets her own room again. That brings distance. The maybe her silence again .

I can’t go back to pretending I’m okay with it.

She shuts off the bathroom light and I expect her to go to the couch while I wait for her to slide in here in the middle of the night, but instead she climbs into the bed, under the comforter and curls herself on to me.

I freeze. “What are you doing?”

She looks up at me eyes amused, but softer than I’ve seen them all day. “I’m hugging you.”

That shouldn’t undo me.

But it fucking does.

And for a second, I just hold her.

Quiet.

Still.

Safe.

And then I tilt her chin, and she doesn’t pull away.

And when I kiss her, she doesn’t hesitate.

And when I slide my hand under her shirt and feel her skin beneath my palm for the first time in five years she arches into me like she never forgot my touch.

I kiss her deeper, slower, like I’m starving but terrified she’ll vanish if I move too fast.