Chapter 2
Jasmina
“JASMINA RUIZ.”
I heard a sigh from him, and it sounded like when I’d left his bed all those months ago. He’d been asleep, but somehow his body knew to protest mine leaving his.
How dumb I’d been to sleep with the enemy. Now I’d have memories like this every time I heard his treacherous voice.
“Or should I call you my little arsonist?”
Shit.
He was really sticking to that theory, then. I’d covered all my tracks. There was nothing that could have given me away. In a complete act of unchecked rage after hearing my uncle had been murdered by Callahan’s brother, I may have drove to his new high-rise in the city and burned it to the ground.
Was it stupid? Yes. But, in my defense, I was pretty damn good at being stupid. I’d covered my face, I knew every security camera there was out there. I’d left my phone behind, used an unmarked vehicle, and got gasoline from one of our warehouses.
No one could have tied me to burning down that building.
Except the demonic god of a man standing behind me.
If I didn’t have to lie for my family’s sake, I might have let curiosity win and turned to ask him how he knew.
Instead, I scoffed as I looked out at the ocean. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’d like some peace before my uncle’s funeral.”
His hum carried through the wind over to me. “I am sorry about him, Jas. I hate to meet again under these circumstances.”
Me too.
“He and Lex shouldn’t have gone after my niece.”
It was true. My uncle had chosen to align with the wrong woman, Lex, and they’d threatened Jameson Knight, a Diamond who never showed mercy. Even worse, Paolo went after his kid.
If he wasn’t dead, I would have killed him myself. But Paolo was always much more selfish than most of us were.
And still, I mourned the loss of a man who’d taught me to hold my head high for my family and never bow, but I knew the time was coming that we would have to.
Paolo had left a mess, and we’d lost ten of our guys.
I’d had to go and ID only the two that were found.
Fitzpatrick had killed them, closing in on our territories and threatening to take over.
Paolo had made promises he hadn’t kept, and now it fell on us.
Really, I shouldn’t have been alone right then. Monte was keeping my cousins at home and told me if I went anywhere, I should take a crew with me.
I still snuck away to Midnight’s Edge, the cliff Paolo always brought me to, to give him one hour of my thoughts, of my grief, of my rage alone.
Because more than Callahan and his brother, I blamed my uncle. I blamed him for never seeing what our family was capable of, what I could have been capable of if he’d let me, and for putting faith in a woman he loved rather than the niece who had sacrificed for him over and over again.
I wanted to hate in freaking peace, though, before I put myself back together and went to the funeral and wake.
There, we’d be a family united and look strong for everyone, including our enemies, to see.
Callahan was supposed to be at the damn funeral home.
Not here with me.
I still didn’t turn around or welcome him in any sort of way. I fisted my hands at my sides and tried my best not to lash out at how condescending his apology was. “If you have advice for our family, you can—”
“I came to see you specifically at the moment. Want to discuss the building?”
“I don’t have anything to say to you, nor do I owe you anything after what you did,” I grumbled softly, but the mist carried my answer to him.
“Not even after burning down one of the largest investment properties we have in New York?” he murmured, closer now than he was before. Somehow, he’d moved so close that I felt the need to grimace as his cold tone hit me.
I glanced over my shoulder to see him standing there in his three-piece suit like the devil in damn black.
He must have seen the sadness on my face, or maybe the anxiety that came with Paolo being gone.
I’d have to shoulder our family’s business now with Monte and Perla.
They were softer, nicer, not made for the life.
There was a flash of a frown across his features, like maybe he could find it in his heart to feel remorse or concern for me, before he shut the emotion away.
“Are you kidding me? Please tell me you’re not actually mourning him,” he growled in what sounded like utter disappointment.
“Fuck off,” I muttered. It wasn’t like I was crying. But even a shred of emotion on my face was bait for him. Callahan had always been good at reading people, and I couldn’t give him a window into my mind.
I never showed that weakness. And it was the worst time to do so. The family was falling apart, and it meant I would have to hold it together.
I crossed my arms and gave him my back, taking a step closer to the cliff.
“Want to repeat that?” he asked, giving me an out.
The cool air whipped through my hair, making the blonde and deep-blue highlights dance around my face, reminding me that most people might have thought I was losing it.
“Fuck off and fuck you,” I emphasized this time.
Yeah, okay, maybe I was losing it.
My aunt had cursed under her breath when I’d come home just a day ago with my hair streaked with colors much lighter than my signature brown.
She said I’d lose everyone’s respect during a pivotal time when they’d all be seeing me.
The fact that she was concerned about our appearance at the funeral rather than her brother-in-law’s murderers coming to scope us out proved she was further from reality than I was.
And maybe it didn’t matter, because maybe this would just be my last moment. Callahan wanted us all dead, and what better opportunity did he have than to meet me at Midnight’s Edge? I liked to think it was my cliff because it was pretty private. No one came out this far normally.
“So, you’re either baiting me to kill you or fuck you here, then?
” This time, his voice was softer, and his mouth was on the shell of my ear.
His warm breath was such a contrast to the misty fog caressing my skin that I shivered.
It wasn’t the closeness of him, wasn’t the way his voice reminded me of what we’d once shared.
“That why you came here without your men and your brother?” It was odd that his men weren’t with him now. We weren’t friends or fuck buddies. The one time we’d been together had been a mistake, even if I thought about it more than I should have.
It should have been a time I completely and utterly regretted. I did feel guilty for it—I also felt guilty that I still got off on the memory of it when his family had been the ones to gut my uncle.
When I didn’t answer his question directly, he growled low, and the sound vibrated all the way down to my bones. “I came alone because I figured we owed each other honesty so we don’t start a war before the end of the day. Apologize for burning down the building, Jasmina.”
“Honesty?” I shook my head and turned on my heel to glare up at him.
With my back to the sea, I was in a better position to protect myself from him stabbing me in the back.
Yet, seeing him this close felt even deadlier, like a punch to the gut, like he’d stolen all my breath with just the way his eyes met mine.
They held fire and fury. They weren’t really blue; they were almost a green so alive with emotion that I couldn’t look away.
I remembered how deep they got the time he’d taken me against the brick wall that night, how his tattooed hands had been rough and how they’d touched me in all the right ways.
Those same hands would probably be the ones to kill me now. “Honesty between us, Callahan, would have been a heads-up about Paolo.”
“Paolo was—”
“Don’t you dare say his name.” Fury whipped through me— not because I wanted to honor my uncle, though. Truly, he deserved the grave, but I found I was furious instead at how Callahan had the audacity to do what he’d done without so much as a call.
“Fine.” He held up his hands as if surrendering. “I’ll give you grace today, Viper. But giving someone a heads-up is expecting to be killed rather than doing the killing yourself.”
I knew he was right. I just didn’t care.
“There will be no apology, Callahan. Even if I was sorry, I wouldn’t say it to you.” I said it with conviction and took a step to the side as I saw how his gaze hardened, how the charming mask he usually wore seemed to fall away.
“How about some information, then?” I knew this man. He was the same man who could fuck me without mercy in a hotel room without restraint, the same man I’d once ordered to lose control and give me all of him.
Under the facade, Callahan was more ruthless than he let people believe. I’d seen it, felt it, and now I dreamt about it in a way I shouldn’t. So I knew the information would come at a price. “What is it you need to know?”
“Is there really a trust left to you and your cousins?”
Oh, Jesus Christ. I turned to stare out at the waves again, wondering how far I could make it in a backstroke.
It was the only way I’d ever be free of them now.
If he believed what my uncles had believed for years and years, I could only imagine how his mind was turning.
People believed in a tall tale, something my father must have told others before he died.
I knew better. There was no trust. There was no extra hidden money somewhere.
“Did Paolo tell you that?” I asked him.
“Doesn’t matter who told me. Just matters if it’s true.”
I’d had nothing to do with my uncle’s transgressions. He liked me around because I was pretty, smart, and good with a knife. He’d had me help him launder money here and there too. But not billions. Nowhere near that.