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It wasn’t like I didn’t know this was coming.

No matter how good things were between us, Mila wasn’t going to forget her family existed.

Especially not when they were basically just up the road.

I hated that she was back to giving me the silent treatment, but I had to put my foot down.

Maybe a good night’s sleep would change her outlook.

I wouldn’t know since I tossed and turned all night.

As soon as dawn crept through the blinds, I gave up completely and sat up. There were too many things to do if I was going to go ahead with the smash-and-grab against the Fokins. Once I had the upper hand, I’d make them see that Mila and I were happy together.

The faint sun hit her brow, furrowed even in sleep, and my hopes dwindled that she’d be in a more reasonable mood when she woke.

I longed to reach out and smooth her ruffled hair down, looking like a halo around her on the pillow.

Getting bit first thing in the morning wasn’t on the agenda, so I kept my hands to myself.

I couldn’t stop looking at her, perhaps trying to emblazon her on my memory in case…

Her eyes snapped open, and the scowl intensified as she scrambled out of bed.

I waited calmly for her to start yelling at me.

It was a miracle she hadn’t gone full force with her anger last night and called me every name she could come up with.

Her mouth dropped open like she meant to, and I held back a smile.

We always had such a good time once we stopped fighting.

Instead of some creative insult, she clamped her lips together. The scowl faded to something much worse. A look of such utter sadness I felt it like a punch. Without saying a single word, not even a sniff, she walked out of the room.

Damn it. This was real and so much worse than I feared. This was going to be the thing that took her away from me, once and for all. And it was my own doing.

Not going to happen. Change of plans. What I had set up to occur over the next few days was so intricate it would be impossible to stop with only a phone call or two.

I had to see my second in command here in LA and tell several others in person, or they’d never believe it, not after how adamant I was about regaining my territory.

I hardly believed it myself, but it had been a stupid idea from the start.

Even one casualty on Mila’s side, and she would never forgive me.

I had zero confidence in the Fokin brothers agreeing to another truce since the first one had ended up with where we were now, but I was going to try it her way first. Anything to get that emptiness out of her eyes.

I whipped on a robe and stormed after her.

I was only a few steps behind and caught up with her as she was about to enter a guest room at the end of the hall.

When I grabbed her hand, she only let it rest limply in mine and gave me a look of exhaustion.

Where was my fiery girl? I couldn’t have broken her, could I?

I was pissed—at myself. Everything was wrong, and I had to make it right.

“Mila,” I snapped, much too harsh. “I told you I need time to take care of some things. Stay put and wait for me. Do you understand?”

Outwardly, I was being a tyrant, at least until I could cancel all the carefully orchestrated attacks I had set up. There was no time for subtlety.

Now, she reacted. Snatching her hand away, she practically leaped away from me, grabbing onto the guest room door handle like it was a weapon she could wield against me. Giving me a death glare, she twisted it and flung open the door.

“Oh, I understand perfectly,” she hissed, stepping inside and slamming it shut in my face.

As much as I didn’t like letting her stew in her renewed hatred of me, I had to move.

With a last, regretful look at the door, I hurried out, already barking orders into my phone to set up a meeting between the team leaders.

By the time I got to the warehouse, almost half of them were already there, grumbling to each other.

Walking in, I clapped my hands once, calling them to order. A few gave me looks I didn’t like. I hadn’t said anything particular over the phone, but they were expecting bad news.

“Change of plans,” I said. “I’m calling everything off.”

Just as I expected, there was a buzz of discontent. A few even questioned why, quite different from only a few months ago when my word would have been law, instantly obeyed.

“Do you know how long it took me to get all those bombs in place?” one of them asked.

I carefully noted who he was, someone I would have trusted with my life not so long ago. Now he looked every bit as pissed off as I felt, and wasn’t making any effort to hide it.

“Then you’ll have to spend some more time getting them all out and dismantling them,” I said coolly, staring at him until he finally looked away. “If I get word that even one Fokin property goes up, you’ll be held directly responsible.”

“What the fuck is going on, boss?” someone else whined, genuinely upset he didn’t get to cause some mayhem and get revenge.

I got it, I really did, but Mila was more important to me now than any of that. Not many of them would truly understand, though, and I didn’t feel the need to explain.

“This is what we’re doing now,” I shouted, so every last one of them could hear.

“Nothing?” a man who had been a trusted advisor to me while I was in exile groaned.

“For now,” I said, appeasing his disappointment. “I never said we weren’t going to regain what’s rightfully ours. We’re just not doing it this way anymore. Does everyone understand?”

The look they knew all too well made them agree before I started handing out punishments for insubordination. I headed out to the next meeting further north to inform another group, though I was fairly certain they were going to get a heads’ from these guys.

They were so begrudging in their agreement that I worried they might not carry out my new orders. I had left them on their own too long, and while they did a great job of putting the pieces back together after the fallout, they had grown a bit too independent for my taste.

The sour taste of my uncle’s betrayal still lingered in my mouth, so it wasn’t going to be easy to trust anyone fully for a while. Another thing I’d have to contend with when this was over. If it ever ended.

The next meeting went a little bit better, but there were still rumblings. I wasn’t quite so patient and laid down the hammer. If even one of the attacks continued ahead as planned, the people involved were done. I left what that might mean to their imaginations.

Now that the first round of calling off the attacks was taken care of, I couldn’t wait to get home and try to patch over the cracks that appeared between us when I put my foot down about her brothers.

I just needed a little more time before I could figure out a way to enable a meeting between them.

Two days tops, because I still had to fly to San Francisco to make sure they understood the plan was off up there, too.

I already had the jet scheduled for first thing in the morning, and I probably could have flown up later tonight, but I needed to be with my wife. To make things perfect between us again. Or at least better, which was all I could hope for at the moment.

However, before I could make it onto the freeway toward home, I got word from my second in command that the guy in charge of the soon-to-be-canceled operation in San Francisco was making noises about jumping the gun.

With a sigh, I pulled over into a rest area so I could deal with it immediately and not end up wrapped around a safety barrier.

I found his number and called, waiting to hear what he had to say before jumping down his throat.

He had proven to be smart in the past and wasn’t usually a loose cannon.

I respected him as much as I did my number two man, and he’d never gone against me before.

“You aren’t going to like what I have to say,” I told him as soon as he answered. “No one else has.”

“Yeah, I heard,” he said. “But hear me out first. This is big and might change your mind.”

As it turned out, he did have a solid argument for going ahead with the San Francisco plan, albeit with a few changes. A series of warehouses that were important to Lev Fokin, the brother in charge of their operations up there, were currently being fumigated. That meant no one would be in them.

“Wasn’t one of your main directives not to hurt anyone if at all possible?” he reminded me. “Here’s our chance. I can have those buildings and all their contents under our control in no time.”

It was tempting, very tempting. Should I go for it?

Since there was no way I would ever use Mila as a bargaining chip now, this might be a way to show the Fokins that I was willing to be reasonable and give as well as take.

Send the message that I meant business, but in a way that wouldn’t cause any lasting harm.

The only thing keeping me from giving the go-ahead right away was the very real notion that Mila might still perceive it as a betrayal, even if no lives were lost. She’d see soon enough that I was going to return the property as soon as we all came to an amicable agreement.

“Hang tight until tomorrow,” I told him. “Let me get up there.”

“The window for this is small, boss,” he said. “We gotta make a decision.”

With a sigh, I started the engine and pulled out of the rest area, no longer heading for home, but toward the airport. “I’ll be up there in a couple of hours. Nothing happens until I’m there, got it?”

He got it. This wasn’t in the plan, and I still would have much rather been on my way home to Mila, but I owed it to the men who’d sacrificed so much to check it out first and then decide if all our well-laid plans were off.

I could whip up there and be home later on tonight, and then fill Mila in on everything.

No more secrets.