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LEONA

F our days later, Giulio and his men were keeping an eye on Lucia, ensuring she stayed safely tucked away in Makarov’s territory. Obi had notified the Camorra, but he hadn’t heard back yet. Since then, Cas had been keeping updated with our new Italian men, and giving them orders to support Makarov for now, until we could start pushing into Vero territory again.

Until this board meeting was over, we had to play it safe.

Obi and Ryuji were stationed across the street from Trattoria Luminosa, where they could get a view of the table we’d reserved for this meeting. Wynn waited at the back entrance. Cas stood next to me, straightening his tie, and double-checking the twin guns he kept secure underneath his jacket.

Ciel had his hand wrapped in bandages, but he was still here—monitoring the security feeds and protecting our team from the van as we prepared to walk inside.

He seemed okay. The first day after, he was in incredible pain, and he slept most of the day. The third, he started wiggling his fingers again. By today, he hadn’t wanted pain meds, which was a good sign. He told us all to not worry until after this meeting, and the rest of us weren’t sure what to do, so we just nodded. Wynn hovered at his side constantly, doing whatever he could to keep Ciel comfortable, and all it did was make Ciel blush and fuss himself.

He’d protected Wynn—maybe even saved Wynn’s life.

Ciel made me so fucking proud.

All my guys did.

It was them who bolstered my chest. I grabbed hold of Cas’s hand, linking our fingers, and stepped inside the restaurant. I wore a very respectable cream blouse and pencil skirt, paired with a trim and sophisticated blazer. My hair was pinned in a low bun, but I’d also done my makeup to accentuate a sliver of innocence—rather than my recently favored cat eye and red lip.

If I was going to convince these board members to give me my father’s seat, I needed to look the part, and I needed to appeal to the side of them that remembered me and respected my lineage. And right now, I looked every ounce of a young, sleek businesswoman climbing the corporate ladder. At my side, Caspian looked less like my bodyguard and more like my partner, especially with the ring glinting on my finger.

“We’re in,” Cas quietly announced.

“I’ve got eyes on you,” Ciel responded. “Be careful.”

The restaurant was bustling, like it usually was on a weekday for lunch. It was a frequent meeting location for businessmen and women across the city. Plenty of witnesses, in case things went south. The knife Ryuji gave me was slipped into my blazer pocket, and Cas was well armed. I didn’t feel an ounce of fear as I took in the restaurant.

Except for when I saw her.

I sucked in a breath, my hand clawing into the skin of Cas’s arm.

Chiara sat at the bar, one leg crossed over the other as she sipped from a martini. She caught my eye, glass half-frozen to her mouth.

“He’s here,” Cas said at the same time, eyes glinting toward the table.

Max locked on both of us, surprise quickly masked behind his standard passivity. He didn’t know we were coming .

Max’s eyes flicked back to Chiara at the bar and I followed his vision. I opened my mouth to call out to her but her face morphed into a glare. Her eyes flicked to Max.

What was going on here? Had this been a trap the whole time?

My pulse skyrocketed. No .

I looked back to Chiara. Very intentionally, she lifted her pointer finger to scratch her temple.

I let out a breath and relaxed my death grip on Cas’s hand.

“Princess?”

It took every ounce of control in my body not to smile. Instead, wordlessly and without emotion, I faced the table where Max and the members of the Vero Construction Inc. board waited.

Chiara was on my side.

When we were younger, and we needed help, we’d use that same gesture as a signal. It meant play along. Basically, follow my lead.

Once, her father had burst into her room while we were together, demanding an explanation for where she’d been the night before. She’d made up a lie on the spot about how she’d been studying with me at my house and lost track of time, so she decided to spend the night.

At the time, I’d almost given away her lie by the confused look on my face, but afterward, we’d decided that whenever one of us made that gesture, we needed to do everything we could to corroborate each other’s stories.

She used it now to let me know that her glare was an act. She wanted me to play along and stay silent. She told me about this meeting; she wanted me here.

“Chiara is here,” Cas mumbled into the comms that connected all of us. “Be prepared to extract her if necessary.”

“I see her in my scope,” Ryuji replied. “I can see the whole table.”

“Oh, Leona!” My attention was pulled to Victor Sterling, one of the VCI board members, and a man I’d known since childhood. As a close friend of my father’s, they’d built the legitimate side of the business. As far as I knew, he’d never been involved in anything criminal; he was a staple on the board. He pulled me into a hug. “It’s been far too long. What brings you here?”

I pulled back with a large smile plastered on my face. “Checking in on my father’s business, of course!”

“Oh, yes, we were devastated to hear the news of his sudden passing.” His mouth turned down in a frown as defensiveness rolled through my back. Sterling had been there the night of my birthday, but I thought he’d left before all the craziness went down. “When Max told us about his heart attack, we could hardly believe it. And on your birthday, too. I’m so sorry.”

I didn’t look at him, but I felt his eyes blazing into the side of my face. Playing the role of demure and grieving daughter, I let the smile fall from my face. “Yes, it’s been so hard. I’ve been lucky to have Max handling the business until I feel better.” Cas held back a snort beside me. I wrapped my arm around his elbow, showing off the ring on my finger. “You remember Caspian, Mr. Sterling. My fiancé. He’s also been an incredible help.”

“Ah, yes?—”

A glass shattered, and both Sterling and I turned to find Max wiping up the sudden mess of water. His jaw clenched.

“Oh, Max, is everything all right?” I asked sweetly.

“Of course,” he responded, standing, and buttoning his jacket. “Leona, may I speak with you privately for a moment?”

Cas’s hand clenched on mine. “No.”

The room was so tense; it felt like the temperature dropped a few degrees.

I shook my head, answering Max with a smile. “Don’t we need to get started?” I pulled out my chair to sit down, but Max cleared his throat. The rest of the board members turned to him. I recognized them, and I recognized how he still held the vast amount of power in this room.

Sterling responded with a wave of his hand. “It’s fine. We can wait a few more minutes. The restaurant will bring our standard appetizers in a moment.”

“No, no,” I began, but Max’s voice split the air.

“Leona.”

I narrowed my eyes.

“I’m not leaving you two alone,” Cas responded, lips to my ear, voice corded with tension.

“It’s okay,” I whispered back. The other members watched us. The last thing I wanted was for Max to turn them against me before I’d even had a chance to talk to them. “He can’t hurt me here. Don’t make a scene.”

I pulled Cas along with me, following Max down the hallway to the bathrooms.

Max jerked his head to the bar, where Chiara still watched us. “Wait there, Cas.”

“Fuck you,” Cas growled.

Max rolled his eyes. “I could kill you both, or I could have you thrown out of here. If I wanted to, it would be done.”

I didn’t love the idea of talking to Max alone, but what could he really do to me? Nothing. My men were surrounding the restaurant. Cas would be only feet away. A morbidly curious part of me wanted to see what Max could have to say to me.

“Two minutes, Cas.” I nudged Cas with one arm, my fingers curling around the knife tucked in my pocket.

“I’ve got you, baby girl,” Ciel said in my earpiece. “We’re all right here, Cas. We’ll be able to hear everything he says.”

Cas huffed a breath. Without warning, his hand cupped the back of my head, and he pulled me to him in a blistering kiss. A shiver trailed down my spine as I gasped into his mouth.

“ Ti amo ,” he murmured before he gave Max one last glare and walked to the bar.

I smoothed my blazer down, trying to quickly compose myself. Max’s hands clasped tightly in front of him.

“What do you want?” I asked. “If you haven’t noticed, I have a meeting to attend.”

He stepped closer. I tensed. He searched my face, looking for something, but clearly not finding it.

He didn’t reply. I shifted from foot to foot.

“Where’s Lucia?” he finally asked.

I inspected my nails. I needed a new manicure. Maybe Fallon and Willow would go with me. “She’s taking a vacation from her computers.”

“You have no idea what you’re doing,” he hissed. “What you’ve done.”

I rolled my eyes with a sigh. “I think I know enough to know that I’m bleeding you, Max. I’m taking you apart piece by piece, and you can’t stand it.”

He opened his mouth, ready to snap back, but he closed it, and gusted a breath.

“Got anything else to say?” I smirked. He looked like he was about to spontaneously combust, and the joy that gave me went all the way to my toes crammed into these heels. God, I wanted my boots back. “You’ve underestimated me. Again.”

Max glared and stepped a foot closer.

My gut clenched at the fire blazing in his eyes. I stepped back, moving to turn. “I’m going back to the table.”

A hand clamped around my arm. I whirled to come face to face with my archenemy.

“Max,” I hissed, yanking my arm in his grip.

“Don’t move,” he replied, voice low. I felt the prick of a blade against my ribs.

Shit.

“He’s got a knife on her,” Ciel said in the earpiece. “Cas.”

“Wait,” I said to them. Confusion passed over Max’s face before he tilted his head and caught a glimpse of the transmitter in my ear. I narrowed my eyes at him, making sure he could feel the full force of my threat. “You kill me, and you’ll be dead within a minute. My men will skin you alive. Trust me, I know.”

He huffed. “I heard you were there when Kofler was killed.”

“ I killed him,” I replied, voice level. “I’ll take you down, piece by piece, Max. That’s a promise.” My arm stung where his fingers dug into the skin. “Let go of me.”

“No.”

“Fine, look down.” His eyes flicked down and then widened when they saw my blade—Ryuji’s blade—ready to plunge into his stomach. “You stab me, I stab you. We’ll kill each other and this twisted game will finally come to an end.”

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Ryuji growled in my ear.

Cas, Wynn, and Obi’s voices overlapped in disagreement until Ciel cut them off and demanded they stay quiet.

“What the fuck do you want? Why are you here?”

“You know why I’m here,” I snapped at Max. “I want my place on the board.”

He jostled my arm. Our blades threatened to dig into one another, but they kept us both locked together. “ Why , Leona? Why are you doing this?”

“Why am I doing this?” I said through gritted teeth. “You! You made me do this!”

How dare he ask me why, after everything he’d done, everything we’d been through. I had a list a thousand miles long. I dug the point of the knife closer to his stomach. I could kill him right now. He might get the blade deep into my ribs too, but there was also a chance he’d hit the bone. Was it worth the risk? Could the guys stop the bleeding in time?

“Don’t,” he murmured, glancing over my shoulder, back to where Chiara waited as a hostage. Cas stood beside her, both of them staring at us like we were a spectacle. They whispered to each other, unmoving, and without looking away from us. Cas’s hand death-gripped the counter, but the other was already inside his jacket, gripping his gun. “You don’t want to hurt Chiara.”

“Fight your own damn battles and leave my best friend out of it.” I pulled back from him. “Fucking asshole. Why are you doing this? Why her?”

“I’m fighting more battles than you could count, Leona.” His eyes glinted, and with the tilt of his head, I caught the shadow of dark circles under his eyes. Sleepless Max, aw, my heart broke at the sight . “I need allies. You have no idea what this world is really like. What your father was trying to shield you from.”

“Oh, please,” I snapped, rolling my eyes. “I’m so tired of that excuse. You know what I could have done if my father would have let me? Run this company. Bring us into the future. You asked what I’m doing, Max? Why I’m doing it? Because motherfuckers like you and my father taint the world and make it worse. I’m fixing it. That is what I’m doing.”

His grip loosened on my arm. “You took out Lucia, and you removed our only defense from the Albanians.”

The Albanians? What was he talking about?

My eyes narrowed. “What?”

He stepped backward, running a hand through his hair. “You have no fucking clue. Walk away and leave this to me. Stop playing a game you know nothing about. I’ll even let you and your men leave the city. Unharmed.”

Whatever he was talking about was a ruse to get me to back off. No fucking way.

We’d taken out his little hacker, his only way to get the upper hand on us. And now he was afraid. It was about time.

He flinched when my hand reached up to brush my fingers across his jawline. I lowered my voice. “My men and I will grow our empire from your rotting corpse, Max. And there’s nothing you can do to stop us.”

He closed his eyes, only for a moment, before they blazed into me. “Leave. Before this gets messy. Before you get yourself and Chiara hurt. You don’t want her blood on your hands, do you?”

“Max, sweetheart, I want your blood on my hands. But I’m not leaving. You brought your own insurance? Well, I brought mine.” I straightened my shirt and carefully slid the knife back inside my pocket. “You do anything to me, and emails go out to every member of the board, including one copy to the police, and one copy to every major news station, informing them how I feared for my life after you threatened me at this meeting.” I glanced up and over his shoulder. “And this footage is exactly what I need to prove my point.”

He stepped back like I’d burned him, but his glare only intensified.

“I will never forget what you did to Cas, Max,” I added. “We’ll repay the pain back on you tenfold. By the way, how’s your thigh? My knife didn’t cause any long-term damage, did it?”

“No,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Shame. Next time, I’ll be sure to aim a little better. Now, if you’ll excuse me, we have a meeting to attend.”

“You have no idea what you’re getting into, Leona. What we all tried to protect you from. What’s at stake.”

I rolled my eyes. He was full of shit. “I guess I’ll find out.”

I returned to the table, blowing a kiss to Cas as I passed, a giant smile on my face as I sat down in front of the board members of Vero Construction, Inc.