Page 174 of Ruin Me With Lies

Until I began having a new dream about the green-eyed wolf.Right around the time I started to get attached.To care.It felt like punishment.Karma.

Because in that dream, a thick fog crept into the villa and cloaked everything and everyone.And when the fog finally cleared…

The wolf was gone.

The meaning was clear as day.She would leave.

I knew it was coming.Expected it.But I wasn’t prepared forthis.This gut-wrenching, soul-hollowing ache.Bereft.Destroyed.Obliterated.

Now I know exactly which version of the dream played out.Because there’s a gaping hole in my chest right now.Raw.Ravaged.The green-eyed wolf ripped my heart out and left me on my knees.Broken and ruined.

And I’llneverbe the same.

~

I GET BACKand find Lorenzo in my office.Again.“Get out.”

“Oh, look, it’s that other dude who looks just like me,” he says.“What’s your name again?”

I dump my travel bag on an armchair and shrug off my overcoat.“Not in the mood, Lo.”

He snorts.“Are you ever these days?”Instead of fucking off, he sets his laptop aside and gets comfortable.“You disappear for weeks at a time, and when youarearound, you lock yourself in this office and ignore everyone.What do you expect me to do?I miss my brother.”

I roll up my sleeves and move around to my desk.

“Cora’s worried,” he adds.“So are your men.”

“Worried about what?”I ask, annoyed.“In spite of everything, we’re having a banging financial year.Their pockets are full, their families safe and comfortable.So what the fuck are they worried about?What, they need me to be here twenty-four seven to—”

“If those men getting down on their knees right along with you, prepared to die with you, isn’t enough to get it through your thick skull that they love, respect, andcareabout you…then I don’t know what the fuck to tell you, Stefano.”He sighs and shakes his head.“Your men are worried aboutyou.As a person.That’s it.Nothing else.”

Maybe.But I hate that I put them in a position where they had to do that in the first place.Did it show loyalty?Yeah.But there’s no honor in kneeling before your enemy.

Still, I can’t deny that the family’s never been more solid and bonded than it is right now.Business, in the aftermath, has never flowed smoother.That night, and everything that led up to it, shook us up.For the better.

At the same time, it feels like I’m on the outside of that bond.On an island by myself.Lost, wounded, exposed.Bare and empty.Like a pirate forced to surrender his ship, loaded with treasure, to a raging sea just to survive.

I had something good.Something that could’ve beengreat.Something that made mefeel, for the first time in a long time.And it was ripped away.Gone.

That’s why I’ll never stop searching for her.Because the thing that’s missing, the only thing that could ever fill the jagged, mangled hole in my chest, is her.Ineedto find her.

“Goodbye, my king.”

Those were her last words to me, the last time I heard her voice before I was shit-kicked into oblivion.And when I came to, she was gone.A trail of bodies left in her wake.

Almost a full day passed before we even began to make sense of what happened.That’s when one of the Pink House girls—Louisa or Linda or whatever the hell her name is—nervously came forward.Said Raya gave her two flash drives to pass on to me only after she was gone.

On one drive was every answer to every question we had.A clear, complete roadmap of everything that led to Vale’s final play.Names.Dates.Plans.Allies.Recordings.Photos.Surveillance logs.Paper trails.Even locations.

Everything, right back to the genesis of the failed coup.

Long story short, there’s an Armenian organization that’s been trying to run a human trafficking operation through Vegas for years.I’ve told them to fuck off in every language and gesture imaginable.Caught them twice when they secretly tried to do it anyway.

Attempt number three was the last straw.I grabbed three of their members, dismembered them into pieces until it was impossible to tell what body part belonged to who, then dumped them in their head honcho’s night club in L.A.to send a clear message.

And then I banned them from the city entirely.

No surprise that they didn’t take lightly to the ban.They rallied every snake and coward with a grudge against me, formed an alliance, and agreed to fund a full-scale takedown.With the agreement that once Luca was in charge, they’d get the green light to run their trafficking operation through the city.