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RHAIM

" S he'sbeautiful, isn't she," Nero Ferreo said, like I hadn’t been ignoring that fact about his daughter for the past two months.

We were at his spacious home doing yet another roadshow event for investors, this time a small gathering of the CEOs and CFOs of investment groups we were courting.

Lia was across the room from us in a floor length green dress with a swooping neckline and a matching short coat with long sleeves, like covering her wrists could some how mitigate the devastating damage of her décolletage.

Yes, she was beautiful.

And she had never been less mine.

I’d given her a choice in her apartment, with the scent of her sex still on my hands—to either give herself to me and fully submit, or to choose to take the reins of her Daddy’s kingdom.

She’d chosen the latter—and it was the right choice.

It was the choice we’d both wanted her to make.

But ever since then, she’d been nothing more than cordial.

We’d worked together on Corvo Enterprise’s public offering like demons, getting in early, staying late, and in that entire time there hadn’t been one flirtatious glance or secret smile.

Nothing that let on that we’d ever been carnal with one another, and I was entirely, depressingly certain that she always had her underwear on.

“Rhaim?” Nero said, causing me to look up from the whiskey I’d been contemplating for far too many minutes.

“Sorry,” I apologized. “It’s been a long week.”

His lips puckered as one of his black eyebrows rose. “You’re working too hard.”

I snorted and knocked the brown liquid in my glass back before answering. “Don’t lie. You wouldn’t have it any other way.”

He chuckled wickedly. “Neither would you. Mostly.”

I tilted my faceted glass back and forth, with a lick of whiskey still inside, indicating my current uncertainty.

With Nero beside me it was safe to let my eyes rest on Lia, because I could use my conversation with him as a reasonable distraction.

She was cutting a swath through potential investors like a shark that could speak four languages and do complex economic math on the fly.

Fuck.

Me.

Then she looked up and over and caught my eye. She gave me a tight smile and an acknowledging chin lift, but they were gestures you might take with any colleague across the room who had your back in a business situation.

Nothing more.

Which meant that she—a slip of a girl, who I knew I could pick up with one arm and carry off—was somehow stronger than I was.

“Good thing she knows how to mingle,” Nero said.

“I have other skills,” I muttered—one of which was murder.

But there was no one here to kill, presently.

I was still waiting for Nick to tell me who exactly he wanted dead in exchange for his money for the IPO and then his votes for Lia’s presence on the board.

He was here, and damned if I wasn’t going to corner him for a name later, because if I didn’t blow off some steam shortly I would?—

Nero made a satisfied sound, watching the crowd. “This thing really is going to happen, isn’t it.”

I defused myself, both for his sake, and because I couldn’t deny it. And Lia’s deft ability to handle strangers, making men feel important and women feel comfortable, was a large factor why. “Against my will and better judgement.”

“I told you our books would stand up.”

I resisted glaring at him. “I told you I would bribe the right people,” I muttered.

He chuckled, and I bit back a lopsided grin.

It’d been a long time since I’d heard him laugh, and when he died, I was going to miss it.

He had kidney cancer and he wasn’t interested in treating it anymore.

He hadn’t told anyone but me and his security guard, Rio, who’d been driving him back and forth to chemo appointments, before he’d decided to stop.

It was one of the reasons why this entire IPO had been so rushed, that and the fact that Nero wanted to marry Lia off before he died.

It wasn’t fair—but nothing about the situation was.

It never had been. She'd always been her father's daughter and I'd always been his henchman—even as Corvo’s Chief Financial Officer—the only thing that’d changed had been my designer suits.

I knew by forcing her to work for Corvo, I’d saved her, from herself.

But I'd also saved her from me, and I regretted it every goddamned day.

I watched him fish his phone out of a pocket, and saw a slight tremor in his hand that hadn’t been there before as he read a text—but then his eyes flashed up to meet mine, with dangerously bright intent.

“And I’ve got a surprise on deck for tonight,” he announced, with a glee that made me wince. Nero’s surprises were frequently my irritations—he enjoyed chaos, and he was too used to having his own way.

“What? Your birthday party isn’t for another week,” I said with a grunt.

“No, that’s not it—don’t remind me how old I’m getting,” he said, swiping his hand out. “The work on the pre-nup is through. I can finally announce Lia’s engagement.”

“Ah,” I said, as flatly as I could, so my jaw didn’t clench and give anything away. “Have you finally decided which of the Senator St. Clair’s sons’ she’s headed for?”

I'd spent what little free time I'd had since Corvo's IPO had been announced stalking the two of them. They had piss poor security, and I'd already figured out a hundred different ways to make things look accidental when they died.

The problem was the Ferreo name. Just because we were a decade out from the most egregious of our mafia shit didn’t mean the cops wouldn’t put two and two together.

And also—God help me—part of me didn’t want to make Lia be a cursed bride. What would it look like if the man she was engaged to mysteriously died? Would she ever get a suitor again? Would I condemn her to spinsterhood over my pride?

“Sons?” Nero asked. “Oh, no, Rhaim—whatever gave you that idea?”

One of my eyebrows rose. “Reality.”

Nero waved his free hand between us, as if wiping away my concern. “She wouldn't enjoy that. They'd live too long. No, I've promised her to the senator himself.”

“He’s at least sixty,” I hissed in barely concealed horror.

Nero gave me a dour look. “Which is why he’s wealthy, famous, and powerful, of course.”

I had to draw on every power I possessed to blend in and seem uncaring—every time I’d pretended to be bored in a boardroom, relaxed with a gun in my hand, or a knife at my throat—it was as if all of those prior opportunities to feign nonchalance were all training for this moment here, when the effort to not explode was Herculean.

“Have you told her yet?” The question was my only tell, and I couldn’t help myself from asking. But I already knew what the truth was—if he had, she would’ve shown it. She was strong, but not that strong.

Which begged the question why her father was setting her up to be surprised by her engagement in a public setting. Was it a test?

Of her?

Of me?

“He’ll protect her from the vultures once I die,” he said, rather than answer.

“Because he is one.”

“Because it takes one to know one,” Nero said dryly.

Then he checked his phone again and grunted softly, before craning his head to find his man Rio at a nearby door.

He gave him a meaningful nod, showing off the burn scar on his neck, a souvenir of one of the many times in his life power had come with a price, as he lifted a solitary finger, and Rio nodded back.

Lia’s world was going to implode in one hour—and I had no idea what the fuck I was going to do.

“She’ll never forgive you.”

That earned me a glare from Nero’s deeply hooded eyes. “You think you know my own daughter better than I do?” he asked. “I don’t need her forgiveness—or even her love. I just need her safe.”

And somehow I swallowed down the anger, pride, and desires for violence that were racing through my body like electricity, because as it turned out, I needed that too.

I just didn’t know how many people I was going to have to kill to make it happen.