Page 41 of Vicious Kingdom (Dynasty of Queens #3)

P enelope greeted me at the door. “Hi, thanks for coming over.”

I hurried inside. “Of course! What’s going on?”

It was three in the morning, and while her voice on the phone was laced with a frantic energy that transcended the digital void, Penelope assured me everyone was alright.

“It’s better if Alessio tells you,” she hedged.

“Penny.” I gripped her arm, tugging her close.

Piccolo stepped closer, eyeing me with a clear warning.

“Please,” I whispered. “What am I walking into?”

Penelope bit her lip. “Callahan Voss was at the gambling ring tonight. He knows Leonardo is linked to the ownership.”

Dread knotted in my stomach.

“He knows,” I repeated. “How?”

My friend looked down the hall and then back at me. “Someone told him.”

“My dad,” I guessed.

She shrugged. “Possibly.”

“I swear to you—”

“Just come along,” Penelope urged, leading the way to the don’s office.

I pushed through the door. “I never told my father—or anyone else in my family—that you were organized crime.”

Twin pairs of obsidian eyes turned to me.

I couldn’t look into the one, so I focused on the other. With Alessandro, it was purely business. Things were tumultuous enough with Leo as it was, and this was too huge of a setback.

“How did he know to come to the club right after you came to town?” Alessandro countered.

The knot cinched tighter. I felt sick.

“Dad never talked to me about that,” I insisted.

Leo stood from behind the desk, his movements deliberate and controlled in a way that made my skin prickle with apprehension. The dim lighting cast shadows across his face, highlighting the hard angles of his jaw clenched in silent fury.

Why didn’t you trust me with this? “Leo, you have to believe me.”

But my husband’s dark expression didn’t soften. The granite mask stayed firmly in place, his jaw clenched so tightly I could see the muscle jumping beneath his skin.

“Who else knew about the Coliseum?” Alessandro pressed, his voice deceptively calm.

I shook my head. “I just learned about the gambling ring this week when Penny invited me.”

“It’s true!” Penelope leapt to my aid. “I believe her; she was eager to go.”

Leo finally spoke, his voice cutting through the tension like a blade. “Voss has been targeting my businesses for months. First the investigation, now this. The timing is too convenient.”

“It wasn’t me!” I argued.

Leo’s words were a whip, cracking through the room. “How did he know to look there?”

“I don’t know—”

“How, Anna!”

“I don’t know,” I wailed. “He had to be tipped off.”

“And who better to tip him off than his little girl?” Leo’s tone was scathing.

“Yes,” I growled. “That’s how it fucking looks, doesn’t it?”

The stern voice of authority broke through the heated tension. “You’ve never told your father anything about Leo?”

I faltered.

It was the smallest misstep, a stilted breath, the tickle from my conscience, knowing I couldn’t answer that with absolute finality.

Leo pounced. “You fucking did!”

“I stole from my father for you ,” I shot back. “I’ve been playing on your team this whole time!”

“A likely story,” Leo exploded, but his brother cut him off with a stern bark of command.

“Why, Annaliese?” the don demanded.

Tell them!

But then my secret would be out. They would look at me like the pathetic little love-struck creature that I was.

Better that than a traitor.

“Because I wanted him to blackmail my father,” I breathed.

Silence pulsed in the room.

“I was hoping to be used as collateral.” I lifted my ring. “It worked.”

The confession landed between us like a stone dropped into still water, sending shockwaves that rippled outward with devastating force, shaking the foundation of everything solid we knew.

Leo’s face transformed, shock bleeding into something darker, more wounded.

His eyes, obsidian pools of disbelief, bore into me, searing through the space between us with a pain that twisted my heart.

The granite mask he wore shattered, replaced by a raw, unguarded hurt that made my stomach churn.

I played him.

A man of his caliber would never live this down. Which was exactly why I didn’t want to tell him it was me sending him anonymous information.

Alessandro sat back, his mouth a hard, grim line as if he had just tasted the bitterness of betrayal on his tongue.

Beside me, I felt Penelope recoil, her hand flying to her mouth, eyes wide with disbelief.

The world I had built around my secret began to crumble, each silent second eroding years of careful deception, until I was standing amidst the ruins, exposed and trembling.

Leo’s dark expression never wavered, but I could see the cracks spidering beneath the surface, the fury brewing beneath his stunned exterior like a storm gathering strength.

“You what?” he whispered, his voice a deadly calm.

I swallowed hard, my throat closing around the words. "I wanted you. From the first moment I decided to make you mine—I’ve never stopped loving you. I twisted fate to my advantage.”

If a man did that exact same thing, if I wrote it in a romance novel, readers would call his gesture romantic.

Reality was anything but.

Alessandro leaned forward, his expression unreadable. “So you manipulated my brother into marriage?”

“Not exactly,” I said, the words tumbling out faster now. “I sent anonymous information, yes. But I never told him anything about Leo; or hinted to use me to sweeten the deal. I just…I wanted him to have leverage. I thought maybe Leo would need my help, and then….”

“And then what?” Leo’s voice cut through me. “I’d fall madly in love with my savior?”

The cruel edge shattered me.

That was exactly the plan. Spoken now in that callous tone, I wanted to curl up in a ball and die.

“I never betrayed your famiglia,” I said to the don.

“No, but you betrayed me,” Leo snapped.

Did I? I could see how he would reach that conclusion. It was the opposite edge of the coin, and Fate was playing a cruel trick on me by flipping it.

“I see.” Alessandro pressed his hands on the desk and rose. “And are you still willing to find whatever dirt your father has on Voss?”

I grasped at the lifeline. “Absolutely!”

“The fact that you sent my brother the tip sheets, the profit shares, the paper trail of money—that proves you can do it. So we have our bargain, and I see no reason for any more of my involvement in this—” the don gestured between his brother and me “—intimate issue.”

Without a word, Leonardo stormed from the room. He took a piece of my battered heart with him, and the slam of the door pressed the knife deeper into the wound he’d formed.