Chapter 6 #2
“Leon may not come for them himself,” I say.
Omar’s jaw tightens. “He will care that someone took them, though.”
“He will care enough to rage. Care enough to send men. Care enough to punish the insult if he finds the hand behind it.” I return to my desk and rest one hand on the chair Maya left crooked. “But would he trade his life for them?”
“No.”
“No,” I agree. “He would not.”
That was always the weakness. The twins could pull Leon’s attention. They could anger him. They could force movement. But they could not guarantee proximity. Leon does not love them enough to make stupid choices for them.
Maya does. Omar follows the thought and dislikes it before I say it aloud.
“She gives us a better hook,” he guesses.
“She gives us several, actually.”
“She also gives him a federal agent if this goes wrong.”
“If this goes wrong, Leon will have more urgent problems than bragging rights.”
“Stefano.” There is a warning in his tone now. Concern. I dislike concern. It makes loyal men talk too much.
“She wants him alive,” he continues.
“I know.”
“You told her she could have him.”
“I told her a good many things, Omar.”
He steps farther into the room. “The Bureau will not let this disappear. If Maya survives and returns to them with proof you had her, proof you had the children, proof you used her to reach Leon—”
“She will not return with proof unless I allow it.”
“She is not one of your men. You can’t manipulate her like one.”
“No. She is far more interesting, actually.”
His expression goes flat. “That, that right there, is exactly the problem. You're enjoying this.”
I smile.
Omar does not.
A pity. He has always had a limited sense of humor when the threat is inside the house.
“She has access we don’t,” I say. “To the investigation. To Raven West. To the holes in the case. To Alice O’Reilly before Leon buried her under his name.”
“We have files on all of them.”
“Our files tell us how Leon moves money. They tell us where he launders, who he pays, which ports he touches, and which shell companies breathe differently than they should. They tell us logistics. But they don’t tell us what grief and reflection can.”
Omar studies me. “Grief is not intelligence.”
“No. It is motive.”
“And motive makes people reckless.”
“It also makes them predictable.”
“Not her.”
I look at him. He knows he has said the wrong thing. Or the right one.
Maya is predictable in the ways that matter least. She will run toward the children. She will choose danger if danger puts her closer to Leon. She will insult a man while calculating how to break his wrist. She will take the worst option on the table if it belongs to her instead of someone else.
But beneath that? There is a violence in her patience I do not yet fully grasp. That is part of why I want her close.
“She is more predictable than you think,” I say.
“And less controllable than you think,” he counters, mouth tightening again. “You like that. The challenge she presents you with.”
“Yes.”
I pour a drink because watching him struggle with my choices is becoming tedious, and because the decanter gives my hand something to do besides open Maya’s file again.
Her photograph waits in the top drawer. FBI-issued.
Severe. Dark hair pulled back. Eyes colder than they were tonight when she climbed into my lap and made herself a problem with a pulse.
A limited photograph.
It tells nothing of the way she looked when she fed anger through a smile. Nothing of the heat in her throat when I touched her. Nothing of the reckless control it took to sit on me, demand I feed her, and not flinch when she realized I enjoyed the game more than she expected.
She thinks she is using the role against me.
Good. Let her. She isn’t completely wrong. I was merely curious about her a day ago, now, I know what she felt like against my body, and I liked it. I want to explore it.
“The original plan was simple,” Omar says, dragging us back to the safer subject. “Take the twins. Keep them hidden. Let word reach Leon through channels we control. Force him to bargain.”
“Simple plans are easy to bury.”
“They are also harder to ruin.”
“The plan was already weak.”
“It could have worked,” he argues.
“It would have wasted valuable time.”
“You hate wasting time.”
“I do,” I agree.
“Then why bring in a woman who will slow every step because you’ll have to anticipate whether she is helping or sabotaging you?”
“Because she will make Leon easier to read. And that will make this entire thing go faster.”
Omar’s brow lowers. “How?”
“Leon will believe I bought her. He will believe I kept her. He will believe the auction didn't offend me enough to close the door on future business. That gives him pride to lean on.”
“And Maya?”
“Maya knows what Leon tries to hide. A man behaves differently when faced with a woman who knows his sins, even if he does not know she knows them.”
“You’re gambling heavily.”
“Don’t worry so much. I’ll win the game.”
Merda, Omar curses under his breath in Italian. Which amuses me.
I have known him since he was twenty and stupid enough to think loyalty meant dying quickly.
I taught him better. Loyalty means living long enough to be useful.
It means speaking when every coward in the room nods.
It means standing close to the line without stepping over it.
Tonight, he is considering stepping over it for the first time.
I let him.
“She is not some stray thing you can keep because she entertains you,” he says. “She is not going to soften to you just because you let her see the children. She will turn every kindness into leverage and every insult into a weapon. And you still want her here.”
It is not a question, but I answer anyway.
“Yes.”
Omar looks at me as if he is seeing the first crack in something he believed was stone. He should be careful with that. Cracks only matter if they continue. I decide what continues in my house.
Usually.
The memory comes without permission. Maya in the hallway mirror after dinner, still enough that anyone else might have missed the fracture.
Red dress. Bare feet. Bruised wrist. Mouth too soft from the bite of chocolate I fed her because she had the nerve to demand it.
She looked at herself like she had found evidence of a crime.
She sat in my lap to regain power.
She did regain some.
That was what made it worth letting her.
“You are thinking like a man,” Omar says carefully, “not like the Don of Miami.”
That earns him a cold look. Omar does not step back, but his throat moves once. He knows he has walked close enough to feel the temperature drop.
“My father used to say that.”
The color shifts in his face.
“My father believed men were divided into parts,” I continue. “The man who wanted, the man who ruled, the man who bled, the man who killed. He thought the trick was choosing which part survived.”
Omar’s voice is quiet. “Was he wrong?”
“Yes.” I set the glass down. “A Don does not stop being a man. He becomes one who can afford what he wants.”
“And if what he wants costs more than expected?”
“Then he pays or takes a better deal.”
Omar holds my gaze. “Maya Reeves may be too expensive, even for you.”
“Then I will have to enjoy the purchase while I have it.”
He looks away, frustrated. I let him keep the dignity of it. The silence holds for several seconds before his phone vibrates. He checks the screen, and whatever he sees sharpens him back into the man who handles problems before they bleed onto my floor.
“We should relocate the children. Leon’s on the prowl,” he says, tucking the device back into his pocket.
“We will.”
“And Maya?”
“She stays close.”
I open the top drawer and take out Maya’s file.
Not because I need to read it. I know the contents well enough.
FBI record. Undercover assignments. Smotrov connections.
Alice. Photographs. Dates. The hard proof of a woman reduced to paper by men who thought information was the same as understanding.
They were wrong.
I know her measurements because someone wrote them down. I know her aliases, her disciplinary notes, the path she took away from the Smotrov name, the year her sister’s death turned patience into a weapon. None of it explains how she looked at me when I touched her throat.
None of it explains why I wanted to do it again.
Omar sighs.
“Don’t say it,” I tell him.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Good.”
“I was thinking it loudly.”
“That is safer, for you anyway.”
He almost smiles. Then the moment passes.
“Have extra men assigned to the east gate by morning,” I say. “Rotate the children’s guards every four hours. Quietly. Maya will notice any obvious change.”
“She will notice anyway.”
“Yes. But make her work for it.”
“And her room?”
“Leave it unlocked.”
Omar’s eyes lift. “Still?”
“Especially now.”
“She’ll test it again.”
“I know.”
“She may get farther.”
“I know.”
“You want her to try.”
“Yes, Omar.” I set the file down, frustration rising. “I want to see where she goes when she thinks she has a choice.”
Omar shakes his head once. “Unadvisable.”
“Practical.”
“Those aren’t synonyms.”
“They are in my house.”
He has no answer for that. I dismiss him with a nod, and this time he takes it. At the door, he pauses.
“Stefano.”
I look up.
“What do you actually plan to give her?”
I say nothing, and his face tightens. “You told her you’d give her the children and Leon.”
“I did.”
“She wants him alive.”
“I know.”
“Are you planning to give him to her alive?”
I don’t answer, a sly smile crossing my face, and the color drains from his by a fraction. “Christ. This is going to get ugly.”