Chapter 7
SEVEN
Conrad
I twirled the wine in my glass and took a sip.
The cabernet slid down my throat and warmed my blood.
I licked a drop from my lip and flicked my gaze to the bar, where I could just make out Nik’s form.
After that, the window drew my attention.
Garden Terrace sat on the twentieth floor of the boutique Howard Hotel, and while it hadn’t been my first choice to meet Devlin for the first time in ten years, I’d let him have the upper hand when he’d suggested it.
I wanted to appear conciliatory. Acquiescent.
I was prepared for this meeting. I’d done nothing but focus on the careful words I wanted to say to the man who’d been terrorizing this city for a decade.
And who remained the major source of my guilt, and the reason I poured so much of myself into Soto and charity work.
Like if I could just do a good deed for every five of Devlin’s evil ones, I could cleanse my soul.
I’d gotten off track for a little bit there.
Just a few months. My mind had been preoccupied by a certain man.
But it had been weeks since he’d shown at my office, since I fucked him like I hated him, and since he’d left without a word when I’d brought down the gavel of an ultimatum.
In the days afterward, I’d wavered on if that was the right thing to do.
He’d seemed almost desperate that day for me to touch him.
What if he needed me, but stayed away because I’d told him to?
But I couldn’t go there. I had to protect myself and I had too many people counting on me.
Tav would never be mine, not like I wanted him to be, and so I had to let him go. I cauterized the open wounds he’d left behind and moved on. It only hurt a little bit now on the rare occasions I let myself think of him. Like now.
My phone chimed. A text message from Nik. One word. Focus
Oh fuck off. I clenched my teeth and continued staring out the window.
I felt Devlin the moment he stepped into the room.
The hair on the back of my neck rose as I turned my head to see him cutting through the tables, eyes homed in on me like I was in a spotlight.
Two of his men were in the room two, fanning out into the corners.
Nik would keep his eye on them. I stood up at the end of the table and waited for him to join me.
I’d seen surveillance pictures of Devlin over the years, but I hadn’t seen him in person since our last conversation.
His auburn hair was carefully combed back from his face in waves.
He filled out his suit better and strode with the purpose of a man who felt like he was owed respect wherever he went.
As he drew closer, I noticed fine lines bracketed the corner of his eyes.
He was only two years past thirty, but his lifestyle had aged him.
I didn’t like the way he took me in, starting from the top of my head down to my feet. His gaze was almost greedy. Predatory. He wasn’t the wild young man who’d tried to kiss me all those years ago, convinced his crush was returned. No, this was someone else, a Devlin I didn’t know.
He stopped at my side and held my gaze. He stood a few inches shorter than me, and his cologne smelled expensive. His chest heaved once before he smiled at me. “Conrad.”
There was some of the old Devlin in his smile, the one that had always been so eager to please, who loved praise. And then I’d twisted it and broke him, and now he was who he was.
“Devlin,” I answered and gestured to the booth seat across from me.
He slid in smoothly and clasped his hands on top of the table. His full wine glass sat untouched. I took a sip of my water, needing the hit of cool liquid.
Focus, Nik had said. Yeah, yeah. I could handle this.
“Are you hungry?” I asked as I pushed a menu toward him. “Their oysters are good here.”
He didn’t look at the menu. His gaze never strayed from my face. “I’m not hungry.”
I leaned back in the plush booth and rested my hands on the table. “All right.”
It had been difficult to get this meeting with Devlin. It wasn’t like I had his phone number. Or that he’d respond if I did. It’d taken weeks and weeks of just being able to get word to one of his officers, and then more time until Devlin agreed on a date, time, and location.
“How’ve you been?” Devlin asked. His hands remained clasped on the table, fingers intertwined.
“We’re not here to talk about me.”
“Well that’s what I want to talk about before you say whatever it is you want to say to me.” For the first time, his gaze dropped to my hands before shifting back to my face. “Are you married?”
I tried to hide my shock. That wasn’t a question I expected. “No.”
The green of his eyes glowed in the candlelight with a manic edge that grated over my nerves. “Come back to me.”
No, no way was he still carrying a torch for me. “Devlin—”
“We’d rule this city, you and me—”
“You know I can’t—”
He was nearly panting. “It’d be so good—”
I gritted my teeth. “I was never yours to begin with.”
He jerked in his seat, a real reaction that made me question how he operated his criminal enterprise when he couldn’t hide his emotions.
He heaved a breath, and his eyes shuttered.
His whole demeanor changed as he leaned back in his seat and unclasped his hands.
One dropped to his lap while the other drummed the tabletop.
His lip curled. His gaze no longer held mine.
In fact, he looked anywhere but me as a disinterested mask slipped over his face.
He’d always been volatile. I had hoped age had tamed him a bit.
Clearly I was wrong. He had always been, however, a great actor.
That hadn’t changed either. It was a tossup whether he wanted me back or just wanted to toy with me.
Either way, he had succeeded already in putting me on my back foot.
That was always the way it was with Devlin.
The drumming of his fingers stopped before he spoke.
“What’s the purpose for this meeting? You have ten minutes. ”
“I’ll have enough time as it takes.”
His jaw worked as he stared at the window. “Nine minutes.”
I resisted rolling my eyes. “I’d like to offer you an opportunity.”
His eyes glinted with a slight bit of eagerness that he tried to hide. And maybe he could with others who didn’t know him well. Not like I did.
I just barely stopped myself from fidgeting with my wine glass. I had to appear confident and in control. “Position in my company. COO. You’d oversee employees, company strategies, and be a partner of mine.”
Devlin’s face was blank now. He had himself under control. He stared at me for a long moment before he said slowly and carefully, “I have a job already, Conrad.”
“You’re expanding too big and too fast.” Here was the part where I had to tread a fine line.
Devlin never took well to criticism. “You still rule your empire, but you have too many people under you who aren’t as smart.
They’re going to cost you, Devlin.” I made sure to say his name to make this as personal as possible.
“This is the beginning of the end. You’re on the precipice of the fall of Rome, and the Germanic tribes are already nipping at your borders.
It’s only a matter of time before they begin taking whole territories and fracturing what you’ve built. ”
His fingers had begun drumming again as I spoke, and there was something about the quivering of his nostrils that sent alarm bells ringing in my head. “Is this a history lesson or is this—”
“I’m talking about Soto.”
Devlin’s fingers faltered in their rhythm before he quickly recovered. “And I care because…?”
My hackles were rising. Did he have no sense of self-preservation? “Don’t act stupid.”
His palm flattened on the table with an audible smack as he leaned forward, face no longer blank as his lip curled.
“You think I give a shit if Rome falls? Because I don’t.
Soto can do what he wants. I’ll watch Rome burn around me.
I’ll burn with it. I thought you knew me better than this.
” My gut churned as his sneer morphed into a leer.
His tongue snaked out to poke at the corner of his mouth.
“But good to know you’re watching me. I like the attention. ”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” I did my best to look down my nose at him. “My attention isn’t on you. It’s on the blood trail you leave in your wake.”
He didn’t like that. His eyes flared hot.
“I care about chaos. Not power. And I haven’t even reached my peak.
So fuck your company, your COO position, whatever the fuck that stands for, and fuck you.
” He drained his wine glass. “So keep your attention on my trail. Because it’s only going to get worse.
” He leaned in even further then, tone low, and his voice shook with what could have been rage or regret or sorrow.
“You could have stopped me ten years ago. You could have collared me, and I would have been brought to heel like a dog. But you didn’t, did you?
So watch me burn this entire city down around us. I’ll dance in the flames.”
He stood up and strode out. His men followed. And I didn’t move, staring at the red wine in my glass while it turned to poison in my gut. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed when a body slid into the seat across from me.
I lifted my gaze to find Nik watching me. He sat at rest, hands below the table, but I knew him enough to know he practically bled tension and anger right now. “That didn’t go well.”
No, no it hadn’t. I’d recorded the whole thing, and Nik had been listening. Guilt tore at my insides, shredding at my lungs as the air around me seemed to thin. I couldn’t breathe. “I made everything worse. I made him worse—”
“His actions are not your fault.”
“How so?” I spat. “He said so himself. I could have prevented all of this. Every person he took advantage of, all the victims he tortured. Killed. All the drugs and the crime—”
“If it wasn’t him, someone else would have taken his place.”
“But it’s not someone else.” I pounded a fist on the table. “It’s Devlin.”
Nik shook his head. “He never would have come to heel, no matter what he says. He would have always been this, Conrad. Always. This was what he was always meant to be, whether it happened ten years ago, or ten years from now.”
“I don’t believe that.”
He cocked his head. “You don’t? You think you’re that powerful that you could have kept him in check?”
I glared. “Fuck you.”
“No, fuck you.”
“Getting a little tired of people saying that to me—”
“Then quit being a bitch.”
I almost punched him. “You don’t didn’t know him back then, Nik. I did. He could have—”
“Ask Ben.” Nik’s jaw ticked. “Ask him if he thinks you’re to blame for what Devlin is.”
I remained silent, and my gaze returned to my wine glass. I wouldn’t bring Ben into this. He didn’t know how just how far Devlin had fallen in the last few years.
Nik snorted, and I refused to look at him. “Fine,” he spat, clearly done with me. “Then keep flogging yourself. But at least multi-task, because we have a lot of work to do for Soto. If you want to live your life feeling like you need to make up for Devlin’s sins, at least be productive about it.”
He stood up with a swish of his long coat and a scent cloud of his heavy cologne.
He didn’t go far, only to the door of the restaurant where he took out his phone and pointedly ignored me.
That was Nik, letting me know he was pissed at me, but not pissed enough to risk leaving me alone and vulnerable.
I wasn’t blameless in this, and I wouldn’t involve Ben. He knew a lot, more than most, but I’d never let him see the files I’d compiled on Devlin, all the evidence of who he’d stepped on and killed to get the top of a seedy empire.
I rubbed at my forehead as a headache bloomed there.
Nik was right about one thing—I had to get my head out of my ass and do something.
Soto’s men had begun small raids on Devlin’s properties, anything to disrupt his supply chain of drugs and guns.
But that was only a part of what Devlin did, and while the damage had annoyed him, it hadn’t hurt him enough.
It was time to escalate.