Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Stefano
Iremain in the dining room after Maya leaves.
Just long enough for the silence to settle where she had been.
Long enough for the candles to burn lower beside the plates and for the room to lose the heat she dragged into it when she decided to climb into my lap and make a weapon of the role I gave her.
A clever little move. Reckless. Yet irritatingly effective. I should dislike how quickly she learns. Instead, I find it enticing.
Finishing the last of my wine, I look toward the door where she disappears, still half-expecting to hear her arguing with Omar in the hall.
She does not disappoint me. Her voice carries faintly for a few seconds, low and sharp, then Omar’s deeper reply follows.
I cannot make out the words, but I know the shape of the exchange well enough.
She provokes. He resists. She provokes again. She seems to enjoy provoking the men in her company. And I know Omar will hate how amusing he finds her. That pleases me more than it should. I set the glass down and stand. The servant waiting near the sideboard straightens immediately.
“Clear the room,” I tell him.
“Yes, sir.”
The hall outside is quiet, but not empty. My men are positioned exactly where they should be, visible enough to remind Maya she is watched and discreet enough not to make her feel caged too tightly. A locked cage teaches nothing. An open one reveals where the prisoner runs first.
Maya has already shown me more of her hand than she meant to. Her soft spots, her desires, her purpose here. The children. Leon. Defiance. Control. Shame beneath desire. Desire beneath hate.
All useful things to note. Some are more dangerous than others.
By the time I reach my study, the house has shifted into evening discipline.
Guards rotate. Staff lower their voices.
Doors close softly. The children’s floor remains protected, with Omar’s men posted near the stairwell and inner corridor.
Maya will notice that by morning, if she has not already, and she will hate me for making the change.
My study still carries traces of her from earlier. The chair angled incorrectly from where she slept. The file she left slightly askew on the desk. A faint smear of blood near the edge where her wrist reopened over Alice’s photograph. One of the staff missed it.
I should have it cleaned. I don’t. The blood is a useful reminder. I am behind the desk less than two minutes before Omar knocks loudly on the door.
That is how I know he is irritated.
Omar doesn’t knock like that when the matter is small.
He enters, reports, and leaves before most men finish deciding whether they have permission to breathe, let alone speak.
But tonight, he knocks because he wants me to understand he is choosing restraint before he walks into my study and questions decisions that would get another man shot.
“Come in,” I say.
The door opens. He steps inside and closes it behind him.
No report in his hand. No phone. No folder.
Just Omar, expression flat, shoulders rigid beneath his black jacket, eyes sharper than they were an hour ago when he escorted Maya to dinner and pretended not to notice every man in the house noticing her.
I lean back in my chair. “What’s on your mind, Omar?”
His jaw works once. “She is FBI.”
“I know.”
“She is emotionally tied to the children. She knows Leon. She has Raven West and the Bureau looking for her. She is trained, angry, reckless when the twins are involved, and far too comfortable testing men who by all rights should scare her.”
“I don’t know that comfortable is the word I would use.”
Omar’s stare hardens. “She’s a loose cannon, and she’s toying with you.”
I smile faintly. “Perhaps.”
His mouth tightens. There it is. The real irritation. Not that Maya touched me. Not even that I allowed it. Omar is angry because he saw the same thing I did. She keeps attempting to gain control. Not in ways blatant enough to be obvious to anyone besides the two of us. Just enough to be dangerous.
“She should be dead,” he says.
I look at him over the peak of my hands, elbows resting on my desk. Omar doesn’t look away. He’s one of the few who will tell me the truth. And truth is only useful when a man has the spine to stand behind it.
“You asked me to say it if I thought it needed to be said,” he adds.
“I did.”
“She should have been dead once you knew she was a federal agent; that would have been the cleanest choice.”
“Clean is for men who require excuses for their actions, Omar.”
“Clean is for men who don’t want unnecessary complications in the middle of an operation like ours. She is a risk you don’t need.”
“Maya is not unnecessary.”
“She was a night ago.”
No.
She was inconvenient a night ago. Unknown. Uninvited. A federal blade hidden beneath auction silk. But unnecessary? No. I knew that the moment she looked at me from the stage.
Not because of her face, though she is beautiful enough to make weaker men stupid.
Not because of the dress they put her in or the performance of fear she wore for the room.
It was the contempt beneath it. Controlled.
Buried. Sharp enough that I saw it from the back of the hall while every other man mistook her lowered eyes for surrender.
She was lying better than anyone else in that room. Then she saw me, and for one second, the lie broke. I wanted her before she became useful. Now, I just want her.
“She is useful.”
“All the same,” Omar exhales through his nose. “That doesn’t mean this is wise.”
“Explain.”
He hates when I do that. When I invite the argument and make him build the gallows for himself.
“She knows too much already. She will learn more. She will test every door, every guard, every gap in the plan. She will look for the twins. She will look for a phone. She will try to reach her people the first second she thinks she can do it without costing those children's safety.”
“Probably.”
“And you are giving her access.”
“Theoretically, you and Dolores are supposed to be controlling her access.”
“You are letting her believe that she has freedom, choices, some control over the situation.”
I smile faintly. “Yes.”
Omar’s eyes narrow. “This is not a game, Stefano.”
“Everything is a game. Some games just end with bodies buried six feet under.”
“This one may end with yours if you're not careful.”
I let the room go quiet. Not long. But long enough to let Omar know how close he stepped to the line. He is not afraid of me in the way other men are. That is part of why he has survived this long. But he knows what my silence means, and he knows better than to confuse loyalty with immunity.
“My body?” I ask, eyebrows raised.
His throat moves once. “Your plan.”
“That’s better.”
He lowers his gaze by a fraction. Not submission.
Discipline. I taught him that. My father tried to teach obedience through fear, but fear creates weak men who lie in the shadows waiting to betray you.
Discipline makes useful men. Omar is useful because he can tell me the truth and stop before the truth becomes vanity.
I stand, walking to the window. The glass reflects my study behind me, Omar near the door, the clean lines of the desk, the chair Maya slept in earlier with her file in her lap, and my letter opener beneath her thigh.
“She will ruin the plan if you keep underestimating what she is,” Omar presses.
“I am not underestimating her.”
“Then you are overestimating your ability to control her.”
That almost makes me laugh. Control is such a pretty word for men who have never owned anything difficult.
My father worshipped it. He controlled doors, women, money, silence.
He controlled the rooms I entered, the books I read, the men who trained me, the hours I slept, the food on my plate.
He controlled my mother out of my life when I was five years old and called the absence discipline.
For years, I believed control meant nothing moved unless I allowed it. Then I learned better. Real control is not stillness. Real control is knowing how something will move when you let it loose.
“Maya will try to take the children,” I say. “She will try to contact the FBI. She will threaten me again.”
“Repeatedly, I imagine.”
“She will look for Leon with or without me.”
“Definitely.”
I turn from the window. “Then the smarter choice is to decide where she does it from.”
Omar says nothing, his expression pinched. Good. He is listening now.
“Before Maya,” I say, “the children were the plan.
Leon was moving them out of Miami before the raid landed.
He didn't bring them to the auction because he loved them. He brought them because they were inconvenient and valuable enough to sell, hide, or send away, depending on which choice made his night easier.”
Omar’s face gives nothing away, but his eyes harden. He was the one who intercepted the transfer. He saw the children before Maya did. He knows exactly how little Leon valued them as children and how much he valued them as property.
“You took them easily enough,” I continue. “The pilot was already preparing to leave. Leon’s men were focused on the raid. The children were supposed to disappear before anyone connected them to the rest of the operation.”
“They almost did,” Omar says.
“But they didn’t.”
“Does Leon know we have them?”
“Not yet.”
“Does he know someone took them?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Will he care?”
I hesitate. There it is. That had been the problem with the original plan.
Leon O’Reilly is a vain man. A cruel one.
Vicious when crossed. But cruelty is not the same as attachment.
He didn't keep Erin and Heath close because they were his children. He kept them because Alice was dead, and children make useful locks on dead women’s secrets.
If he planned to send them away, he had already decided their presence mattered less than what they might cost him.
The twins were leverage, yes. But leverage only works if the other man cannot afford to lose what you hold.