Chapter 25
Raze
Archie was at my door two days later. He didn’t knock lightly. He didn’t send a message ahead. He simply appeared, as he always did when something unpleasant had ripened enough to be delivered in person.
I told him to sit. He didn’t.
Instead, he remained near the edge of my desk, hands loosely clasped in front of him, one palm resting against the head of his cane, posture respectful but carrying an unmistakable tension. He looked like a man about to deliver a verdict rather than conversation.
I didn’t look up straight away.
“I think you’ve mistaken our careful alliance for kinship,” I said dryly, turning a page in the file I wasn’t reading. “You keep dropping in daily, unannounced, and I’m going to have to put a contract out on you.”
Archie let out a laugh. Or tried to. It came out thin. Half-hearted. It was unsteady, and that alone told me everything I needed to know.
Archie was, by nature, an annoyingly cheerful man. Efficient. Capable. Occasionally murderous, yes—but still possessed of a certain lightness when he wasn’t delivering grim intelligence. That lightness was absent now. Which meant he didn’t come bearing good news.
He exhaled once. Long. Resigned.
“I thought it would be prudent to do this in person.”
His voice was cautious, which got my attention. I lifted my gaze then, studying him properly.
“Do what?” I prompted, sitting back in my chair.
He held my stare for a moment, as if gauging how volatile I was likely to be before proceeding.
“That information you needed about Nathan Azzopardi.”
My expression didn’t change.
“I don’t believe he’ll be a problem anymore.”
Archie’s head tilted slightly, curiosity flickering across his features.
“And what makes you say that?”
“The man was at my gate two nights ago,” I answered. “I made my position abundantly clear. He is not welcome in Izzy’s life. Or anywhere near it.”
Silence.
“Izzy,” Archie repeated slowly. “As in Isotta Ferraro?”
Something sharp slid under my skin. It was immediate. Irrational. Precise. The sound of her full name coming out of his mouth grated against my nerves in a way I didn’t like examining too closely.
I didn’t enjoy people saying her name. Didn’t enjoy them knowing it, or the thought of her existing in anyone else’s awareness.
The reaction was disproportionate. I knew that.
And yet, the idea of strangers looking at her, speaking about her, forming opinions about her existence, breathing the same air as her without understanding the weight she carried in my world—it put me on edge in a way that bordered on absurd.
At times, I had even caught myself feeling a mild irritation toward the blanket folded over her when she slept.
Jealousy. Of fabric. I was fully aware of how unreasonable that was.
I was many things. Violent. Possessive. Calculated.
But I was not blind. And my attention toward her was no longer casual interest. It was becoming something far more consuming.
“How,” my voice was lower now, “do you know her name?”
Archie didn’t answer immediately. He shook his head instead, lips pressing into a tight line, and gave me a look that was almost sympathetic.
Sympathetic. From Archie Popovich. I did not like that look.
“Not many people don’t know her name at this point,” he was treading carefully with his words.
The crease in my forehead formed before I could stop it. The room felt colder.
“What the fuck are you saying, Archie?” My tone lost its earlier dryness but there was no denying my impatience. “Just spit it out.”
He adjusted his grip on the cane slightly, shifting his weight like a man preparing to deliver something unpleasant but necessary.
“There’s chatter.”
“From where?”
“People I’ve confirmed have ties to Azzopardi.”
My jaw tightened incrementally as he proceeded. Archie’s gaze remained steady.
“He stole five hundred thousand dollars’ worth of product,” he explained. “From Cenk Chernov’s distribution line. Not cash. Drugs. It was high-grade, controlled inventory.”
I listened without commenting.
“Instead of moving it,” Archie added, “he gambled it away at private tables and casinos. He lost it all.”
Of course he did.
“Chernov gave him seventy-two hours to repay the loss,” Archie added. “Or face consequences. And by consequences, the phrasing circulating is… decapitation.”
The word sat in the room like a loaded weapon.
“And what does this have to do with Izzy?” I enquired.
Archie exhaled again.
“Desperation makes men inventive.” I, for one, did not need the reminder. “Azzopardi began looking for assets he could liquidate quickly.”
My fingers tapped slowly against the armrest.
“He found out,” Archie went on, “through a friend of a friend of a friend, that Izzy was under the protection of a man with resources.”
Silence deepened.
“He began asking questions,” Archie finished.
“And the conclusion he reached was?”
Archie met my eyes directly.
“That retrieving her and selling her on the black market would more than cover a significant portion of the debt.”
The room went very still. Utterly still. For a moment, I didn’t move. I didn’t blink or speak, and wondered if I’d lost the ability to do so.
Then I laughed. Once. Short. Without humour.
“He intended,” I snarled, each word placed with deliberate care, “to traffic a woman who lived under my roof?”
“Yes.”
The confirmation did not come with hesitation. Not with apology. Just fact.
“And he discussed this openly enough,” I carried on, my voice more possessive than it had any right to be, “that her name is circulating in criminal circles.”
Archie’s expression did not soften.
“It’s worse than that.”
My hand lowered to the desk and flattened against the polished surface. Not slammed. Not struck. Just anchored there with precision.
Violence would make noise.
Noise would carry.
And the last thing I needed was her hearing any of this.
“How much worse?” I pressed.
Archie did not flinch under my stare.
“I’m telling you this now, because the chatter escalated after he came here. He confirmed what he’d heard—that she was under your protection. That she lived here. That she was an asset to you.”
Each word was just another twist of the knife between my ribs. I realized, with an aching clarity, that I had given Nathan Azzopardi precisely what he wanted. Confirmation.
“His desperation increased,” Archie explained. “So did the attention on her.”
Something inside my chest went cold. Something far more corrosive than just pure, unfiltered rage.
Fear.
Not for myself. For Izzy.
“She is being discussed,” Archie added, choosing each word with surgical caution. “As leverage. As currency. As a means of solving a Bratva debt… and destabilizing you.”
For a moment, I forgot how to breathe. Internally, something seized.
“She is being discussed,” I repeated, the words tasting wrong in my mouth. “Like an object. Like a transaction.”
“Yes.”
“Does this fucking punk even understand who he’s dealing with?” I snarled, the volume sharp enough to scrape the walls before I forced it back down.
“It doesn’t matter what he understands,” Archie stated. “He is desperate. Opportunistic. Cornered. And he has shaken hands with men who possess substantial resources.”
My jaw tightened.
“The Chernov outfit wants their money back,” Archie went on. “They know they will not recover it if Azzopardi is dead. A dead debtor pays nothing.”
The implication settled like poison.
“You’re telling me that they are… assisting him.”
“Incentivising him,” Archie clarified. “Indirectly. Strategically. The bottom line is repayment. And dominance.”
I let out a short, hollow breath.
“The dumb fucker stole from them,” I surmized.
“Yes. But he is also useful. A desperate man with access to proximity. To information. To a vulnerability point.”
My stomach turned.
Izzy.
“They see an opening,” Archie informed me. “If you are destabilized, distracted, or removed, Chernov consolidates influence in the region while recovering his loss. Two objectives. One manoeuvre.”
“They are funding his survival.”
“They are preserving his usefulness,” Archie replied. “There is a difference.”
I laughed once under my breath, but there was nothing amused in it.
“He was standing at my gate,” I said, more to myself than to him. “Looking at this house. Breathing the same air as her.”
The image alone made my vision darken. Archie didn’t respond.
“She is a civilian,” I stated, the word full of restrained violence. “She should not even exist in their operational awareness.”
“But she does,” Archie told me in a low voice. “Azzopardi made sure of that.”
Silence stretched. Thick. Oppressive. Calculating.
“You know,” I lifted my gaze back to him, “as well as I do that this ends only one way.”
Archie’s grip tightened slightly on his cane.
“Yes.”
“You also know,” I pointed out, my voice steadier now, colder, “that Chernov overestimates his reach if he believes a two-bit opportunist with a gambling addiction and a death sentence can destabilize this house.”
Archie’s mouth twitched faintly.
“They’re not betting on competence,” he pointed out. “They’re betting on chaos.”
I leaned back slowly, dragging a hand down my face as the full scale of it settled in.
This was no longer just about a debt. Nor was it a desperate ex-boyfriend. It was a whole network. A syndicate planning to destabilize my own. Men who saw the woman upstairs as a viable solution to a financial loss.
“You’re suggesting,” I clarified, each word measured, “that Chernov will give Azzopardi the resources he needs to get close enough to repay his debt.”
“Yes.”
The room felt smaller. Colder. More unforgiving. And I was livid.
“You know as well as I do,” I started, “that won’t fucking happen.”
Archie inclined his head slightly.
“The Cavalho family has ruled this region for over five centuries,” I pressed on, my voice dropping into something ancestral and absolute. “Empires have risen and collapsed in that time. Governments have changed. Borders have been redrawn.”
“There is no scenario,” I looked at him with a calm that was far more destructive than rage, “in which a desperate pawn and a Russian opportunist take control of territory that has been fortified in blood for generations.”
A brief pause.
“No offence, Archie.”
“None taken,” he assured me. “I am well aware of my place.”
My gaze drifted, involuntarily, toward the ceiling.
Toward the floor above.
Toward the room where she existed, unaware that her name was being weighed in criminal circles like a negotiable asset.
And for the first time in a very long time, the emotion sitting in my chest was not fury.
It was something darker.
More primal.
Protective horror.
Not at the threat to my power.
But at the thought that men I had never met were discussing her as a strategic variable.
That they knew her name and knew where she slept. That a man had stood at my gate while being secretly backed by a syndicate that saw her as a solution to their problem. My hand curved slowly into a fist.
Over my dead fucking body.
“They have made,” I whispered softly, “a catastrophic miscalculation.”
Archie did not ask which one. Because the answer was obvious. They did not understand that she was a non-negotiable.
“She does not know,” Archie read my silence.
“She will not,” I fired back instantly.
A beat passed.
“What are you going to do?”
I stood slowly.
My chair slid back with a soft scrape that sounded far louder in the quiet room than it should have.
“What I should have done the moment that fucker turned up at my gate,” I seethed.
Archie’s expression hardened slightly.
“Raze.”
I buttoned my cuffs with measured precision.
“In merely saying her name,” I went on calmly, “Azzopardi and his associates have signed their own death warrants.”
My gaze returned to him. Cold. Clear. Certain.
“A man who attempts to sell what is under my protection does not get the privilege of continued existence as a variable.”
Archie exhaled slowly as I stepped past him, already reaching for my jacket.
Behind me, he spoke one last time.
“He is unpredictable,” he warned. “Cornered. Facing a death penalty from Chernov. Men like that do reckless things.”
I paused at the door and waited for him to catch up to me.
“Yes,” I agreed.
My hand closed around the handle.
“Desperate men do reckless things. And I am one fucking desperate man.”