Chapter 5
The restaurant sits on the edge of Nob Hill, all glass, dark oak and quiet money. Crystal stemware catches the low light. Every table is spaced just far enough apart for secrets to feel safe, whether it's cheating men or cheating daughters.
I couldn't have Delilah back in the office. I can’t signal anything to Enzo.
As if it wouldn’t upset him as it is, he’s also planning a wedding right now.
I have David in my pocket. It's not easy to move up in GhostEye ranks these days. This is David's opportunity to seize, and I made it abundantly clear that privacy is as much a key performance indicator as digging up the dirt. I don't need her noteworthy face and body back in the office.
I replay the new information in my mind. Delilah is engaged. A future is something you can threaten. Something I can hold over her head.
But finding out about the engagement also made me wonder about the deadlines she's put in place.
She wanted me to find these women in two weeks.
First, she clearly has no idea what it takes to bring down a criminal operation these days, certainly if you want an airtight conviction, but two weeks is an urgency I can't understand.
She and Luther need Marcus behind bars in two weeks? I need to find out what happens then.
I lift my heavy crystal glass to take another sip of my top-shelf reposado, but the warmth isn't relaxing in my chest; it only makes it burn hotter. Delilah isn't going to like me putting her in check tonight.
She might have another move up her sleeve. She could have stories passed down from Ray. Maybe the whole damn club is talking about Jackal now. My nose isn't clean. The gambling and loans in particular were a low point. We weren't ordered to hurt anyone when we collected, but it still happened.
I run my thumb along the smooth glass. I sit in the corner with a vantage point of the entire dining room so I don't miss it when Delilah walks in.
Her dark jeans are fitted around those full hips and thighs.
She wears a black leather jacket that probably costs more than the average rent in this city, but it still doesn't belong here in this room.
Her boots are heavy enough to kick down a door.
I have to admit, her I-don't-give-a-fuck energy is magnetic, and when she strides toward me, dark hair long and wild, flowing in her untamed wake, she heats the room several degrees.
Heads turn as she makes her way through the restaurant.
She's beautiful in a way that makes men uneasy. Tan skin. Predatory green eyes. The kind that don't blink first. She walks toward me as if I'm not the only enemy here. I bet Delilah has slapped grown men across the face in a bar just for saying hello.
I don't stand. Let her come to me.
Did she really think I was stupid enough not to find out she was marrying Luther?
She stops at the table. "Nice place," her gaze sweeps the room. "Trying to prove something?"
I keep my features steady, but I have to admit that kind of comment hits a nerve. It's ironic, no matter how much you bathe in money, if you were born poor, you never wash off the feeling of scarcity. You'll always wonder when it will all be taken away. If you deserve it. If it's enough.
Delilah wouldn't know anything about that. Her dad has been a wealthy man since back in my MC days. Though her taste isn't caviar, it isn't cheap. I'm sure she takes it for granted. And clearly, being daddy's spoiled princess wasn't enough. She wants more. She wants power.
She leans back in her chair, eyeing me up. She's either incredibly good at pretending to be confident, or her spine is made of steel.
There's that damn heat under my ribs again, annoyance at how infuriatingly attractive she is. Of course, I'd be attracted to someone dangerous. Someone wrong. Bad. It just affirms I'm all those things, too.
I lift my glass. "Would you like something to drink?"
She arches her eyebrow. "I doubt we'll be here long."
I smile sharply. "But we should be celebrating, yeah?" I tap my glass with my index finger. "I hear congratulations are in order."
Her eyes flash. "For what?"
"Your engagement?" I tilt my head. "To Luther Vaughn."
She stills and words flash like code behind her eyes so quickly I can't read her. she's momentarily thrown, but pulls herself together like a pro. Her eyes could cut diamonds. And then she claps.
Slow. Flat. Mocking.
"Well done," she says sarcastically. "Is that you or one of your minions who pulled the public filings?"
I don't react.
"Yes. I'm engaged to Luther Vaughn. Dick of the century. Congratulations on your investigative excellence." There's acid in her tone.
"Interesting choice of fiancé.”
"You think I chose him?"
"Didn't you?"
Her eyes narrow, considering me more closely than even a moment ago, choosing her next words carefully. They mean a lot. They mean taking advantage or losing it.
"That has nothing to do with why I came to you," she says.
"That," I say calmly, "is where we disagree."
She leans forward slightly. "You think I'm building a throne?"
"I think you're consolidating power. Your father steps down. Luther steps up with you beside him. And suddenly you're no longer the princess but the queen of two kingdoms."
Her jaw tightens. "I don't want Iron Covenant."
I scoff. "Of course you don't."
Her stare turns lethal.
"You come into my office," I continue, "with blackmail in one hand and you expect me to believe you're trying to find these women out of the goodness of your heart?"
"You think I had any choice about coming to you?" She fires back. "I don't want to work with you or be near you any more than I want to bear the name Cross. But you know what this world is. And you understand why I can't go to the cops."
"I do. What I don't understand is why you're trying to burn your father while marrying his enemy — unless this is about succession."
I hold her gaze even though she's trying to rip me apart with her stare.
I offer her a cruel smirk. "That's the part that makes me question helping you."
She narrows her mesmerizing green eyes. "Since when do you need a clean motive to stop something like human trafficking?"
"I left that world, and you're dragging me back into it. If I take down Iron Covenant, you better believe they'll have a price on my head." I keep my expression cold despite the burning heat between us. "What's your endgame, Princess?"
Her jaw drops at my audacity.
Good.
Nothing about Delilah is clear right now except that she's withholding a hell of a lot from me. And I don't jump just because someone tells me to.
"You don't trust me," she says finally.
"No."
"Good. You shouldn't." Her honesty throws me half a degree off center. "But you should care about them." Her voice thins, almost a plea. "More women are coming."
If that's true, the timeline just shortened. I still haven't found the others. David is still trying to trace that vehicle.
I sit back in my chair. “How do you know you're not complicit?"
It's an accusation that hits her like acid to the face. A spark of white-hot anger flares in her eyes.
"How fucking dare you…" She reins herself in despite her fingers now being wrapped around a butter knife. "Rio, I live there. I know things," she says through her teeth. "And my marriage to Luther isn't about a takeover." Her jaw tightens. "It's an alliance."
Trust is something I can't give her. She burned that the second she locked my door and dropped blackmail on my desk. Every answer she gives me has to be verified. Nothing she says stands on its own. Anything less than the truth puts my family at risk.
"If you stop trying to find those women," she threatens, "if you decide this is club business and beneath you now… then whatever happens next is on you."
That very thought has been sitting dark in my heart since the minute I heard from David that those women got into an unmarked vehicle.
Still, I remain neutral. "You think you can hang that on me?"
"I know I can." She's betting I won't walk away from this. She's daring me to pretend I don't care.
"I don't want what you think I want, Rio. And you don't know me. Nobody does." Her last two words land quieter. She frowns, but there's no sadness, just a dead serious woman in front of me.
"You think I'm playing you. Fine. Think it. But if even one of those women gets hurt? That's on you."
I'm not about to lie to myself. I agree with her. I'd never forgive myself if this is all true and I left victims out there to suffer. But she doesn't need to know that.
"I'll always do what's necessary to operate with a clear conscience." My voice is low. "I suggest you do the same."
She surveys me intensely, then a wicked smirk plays on her mouth. "You're bluffing. You're already searching for them."
I don't confirm it. She takes my silence as an answer anyway, and a relief washes over her, a surrender she hasn't shown before.
She tilts her head. "You need more time."
"You're the only one with deadlines, Princess. Why's that, by the way? What happens in nine days? You gave me two weeks to find Beatriz and Isabel. What triggers then?"
She crosses her arms defiantly. She won't tell me.
I prod. "My guess is your father gets something he wants. Something you and Luther don't want him to have."
She leans forward sharply. "I fucking told you I'm not in on anything with Luther."
She doesn't seem like the type to be pushed around and used as a bartering chip. But then again, I'm not what I seem either.
She sighs as if exasperated. "I clearly overestimated your abilities. If you need more time, Rio, just ask for it."
This woman is infuriating. Nobody outside my family has ever spoken to me like this.
"I think what you overestimated," I say the words slowly and carefully so expletives don't come out between each one of them, "is what our tech can actually do."
"Did I?" The sass comes out in a head wobble. "Then why is GhostEye always in the press like some sort of miracle maker?"
Miracles happen at GhostEye because there are two people who can turn water into wine at our company.
But I'm not one of them. David isn't Ava.
He isn't Enzo. He's careful. Slow. Legal.
And because I don't want his supervisor looped in, every access request passes through me, and my schedule isn't exactly light.
He moves when no one's watching. That takes time.
I still haven't found the women. There are too many angles here, too many moving parts, but none of that changes the only assumption I can afford to make.
Whether she's telling the truth or not is almost irrelevant.
The safest position — the only position that protects my family — is to assume she's trying to bury me.
I don't gamble with my family.
"Look," she considers me, brow furrowed in fierce concentration, "let's meet again in five days. I'll see if I can get any more leads on my end and you… just, do something." She says it like I'm a petulant, disobedient child and my veins fill with a surge of hot blood again.
Delilah sure knows how to get my temperature up.
But five days gives me time to verify where the women are, time to see what Iron Covenant is actually moving, time to confirm what she's playing at before I make a decision I can't undo. I thought about ending this tonight.
I've recorded every second of this conversation.
One anonymous message to Marcus Cross, letting him know his daughter has been talking would ruin her instantly.
If she wants his power, that move protects me.
If not, I hand her over to a man who could make an example out of his own blood.
That's irreversible. I don't pull triggers I can't take back, even when the stakes are this high.
Five days buys me proof. Proof keeps control where it belongs — with me.
"Five days," I agree.
She simply nods, then rises with effortless grace, as if the fight never touched her.
"One more thing," I sit back in my chair and steeple my fingers. "This conversation was recorded,” I tell her for good measure.
My leverage.
There's but a flicker of anger in her gaze before she composes herself again. "I'd expect nothing less."
From this angle, she's even more striking. Under different circumstances, I might find myself on my knees for a woman like this. She doesn't look back at me as she slides into her jacket and starts to walk away before turning one last time when she's right next to me.
I can smell that pretty perfume of hers.
"Oh, one more thing," she mocks my words, "if you're the only man I get to bury for trying to get away with shit, that's what I'll do. Don't leave that as my only option."
She stands back up, tall and proud, and saunters away like a goddamn she-wolf. My gaze tracks her, denim stretched tight over those round hips, swaying with a confidence I don't think I've ever dealt with in my life.
There's an uncomfortable amount of respect curling under my ribs as I watch her go. For her nerve. Her restraint. For how she's managed to stay upright while standing between men who would happily crush her if it served them. For standing up to me. That's not typical. Especially in that world.
If she's lying, she's a formidable opponent. If she's telling the truth, she's an extraordinary woman.
Either way, it's going to be hard to destroy her.
But I have to, because she knows too much and she thinks I'm no better than her dad.
And in some ways, I'm not. I did the wrong thing and I know it.
But if our board knows it too, how can the government and multinational corporations keep contracts with us?
With an ex-criminal at the helm? She can't be allowed to hold that file over my head.
The door closes behind her, and the echo of her presence leaves a lingering heat in my blood.
Five days.
And then one of us makes a move that changes everything.