Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
ANTHONY
The club looks odd, empty, and unlit. It’s a stark difference to its usual party scene, flashing colored lights and blaring music.
Moretti men stand at our backs. The lights above the main table are low, the rest of the room in shadow.
I have sat across from dangerous men my entire life, and I know how to read a room before anyone utters a single word.
This morning, the room feels off. I don’t trust Rodin Dragunovik, and at this point, I’m not sure I can even trust Isabella.
I sit to her left. Lucien to my right. Luca decides to stand. Isabella is still, composed, her hands folded on her lap. I fight the urge to take her hand and comfort her, but resist. I don’t know what the future holds for us. We have to see what the Russians want and go from there.
It wasn’t a given that any of us were leaving here today alive.
The doors open.
Rodin Dragunovik, or Richard as he pretended to be, walks in like he owns the goddamn place. Like he’s not in Moretti territory. He’s, as I remember, tall, well-built, dark-haired, and dressed in a suit that costs more than most people make in a month. Behind him come four men, and behind them…
Alex Romero.
Traitorous cunt.
I feel Isabella go still beside me. I don’t look at her. I keep my eyes on Rodin, and I keep my face completely neutral, and I think, very deliberately, about the specific order of events I intend to work through before this meeting is finished.
Rodin sits across from us. His eyes move around the table, and then they find Isabella, and they stay there.
"Bells." He says her name like they're the only two people in the room. Like this is a dinner reservation, not what it is. A slow, sadistic, knowing look crosses his face. "You look beautiful. Though you always do."
"Richard, or should I call you Rodin?" Her voice is flat and even.
"Ah, you found out?" He glances at me for the first time, and I see the calculation in it. He's measuring what I am to her, seeing what that information is worth to him. I know he’s going to use everything he knows about Isabella and me to his own advantage.
"Richard Keller." He says the name with a slight, almost fond amusement.
"I thought it was a good name. Very banker-like and safe for a city like New York.
He leans back in his chair. "I want you to know that nothing about the last two months was dishonest, Isabella.
I genuinely enjoyed your company. More than enjoyed it.
" His eyes stay on her. "You're remarkable. I think you know that I came to feel —"
"We're not here to discuss your feelings," I say.
He looks at me. "No," he agrees pleasantly. "We're here to discuss the fact that Isabella Romero killed my brother."
The statement is like a punch to my gut. I wish it had been me who’d offed the bastard and not Bells. She would be at least be safe then.
"Igor Dragunovik came into a meeting he wasn’t invited to and pulled his gun first. I merely did what he started, but much faster. You would have acted the same,” she says.
"He was twenty-four years old."
"He was armed. and came looking for trouble,” Lucien interjects.
Rodin is quiet for a moment, his fingers tapping on the table.
Then he looks back at Isabella and something shifts in his expression, something almost genuine underneath the performance.
"I had a plan, you know. Before all of this.
I thought if I could get close enough to you, make you see that an alliance between our families could work, not a hostile one, not what you're imagining, but something built on genuine mutual interest." His eyes flick to me and back to her.
"I was going to suggest we formalize it.
You and I. The Romeros and the Dragunoviks.
Between us, we could have taken everything the Morettis think they run in this city. "
"I'm not a Romero asset to be leveraged into an alliance," Isabella says. “And pulling my brother into your schemes doesn’t win you any favors either.”
"No." His eyes stay on her. "You're considerably more than that.
That's rather the point." He lets that sit for a moment, and then he smiles.
"We had a good time, didn't we? Before all this.
Those Tuesday evening dinners at our favorite restaurant.
The night we stayed up until dawn on your balcony talking about —"
I slam both hands flat on the table to stop the rehashing of memories that mean nothing. I would make sure they faded into Isabella’s past, Rodin right along with them.
Lucien clasps my forearm, keeping me from ripping the bastard's tongue out so he can’t speak ever again. I breathe, but it doesn’t help.
Rodin watches me do it, the twist of his lips confirming he’s enjoying my annoyance.
He opens a folder in front of him and stares at several documents inside.
"Igor is dead. That requires a response.
We want compensation. Something significant enough to communicate that the Romeros understand what taking a Dragunovik life costs. "
Isabella straightens. "I'll offer you my top client, an account worth considerable annual revenue, and five million in cash. Immediate transfer, today."
Rodin considers the offer before waving Isabella’s words aside. “No.”
"It's a serious offer,” she argues.
"It's not enough." He reaches into the folder and slides a photograph across the table.
Isabella gasps and picks up the image; her hands shake as she studies it. The photo is clear. A warehouse of some sort. A woman, I assume to be Maeve, wrists bound, seated against a concrete wall. And beside her, small and dark-haired and unmistakably, devastatingly real—
Ivy.
My daughter.
For the first time, the notion that I’m a father seems real. I fight the urge to pull out my gun and shoot the bastard in the head. Finish this meeting now, but not yet. Ivy isn’t safe, and there would no doubt be a contingency plan should this meeting go pear-shaped.
Ivy looks unharmed but frightened, which is to be expected. She’s only five, after all. The sight of her does something to me that I don’t have words for. It bypasses every layer of training and control I possess and goes straight to my heart.
Isabella moves and is out of her chair and across the table before anyone in the room has fully processed what is happening, her hands destined for Rodin's throat. I reach for her, pull her back as she fights me with everything she has.
“I’m going to fucking kill you, you bastard. How could you do this to a child?”
Rodin throws back his head and laughs. The unhinged prick.
"Isabella." My voice is low and hard in her ear. "Stop. Stop right now. This is what he wants."
"Let me go—"
"If you continue, they’ll kill you and Ivy. Do you hear me?" I pull her back into her chair and keep both hands on her shoulders. "Sit down."
She shakes beneath my touch. Her composure gone, stripped away, and underneath it is something raw, maternal, and ferocious.
She’s fought for years to protect Ivy from situations such as these.
Her whole plan to leave her family behind was coming undone before her, making that possibility, that dream, elusive.
I straighten up and look at Rodin across the table. "Name your price."
Rodin smooths his jacket calmly. "Everything," he says. "The full Romero client network. Every contact, every account, every relationship the family has built in this city. Transferred to us. And twenty million in cash."
The room is quiet.
Isabella looks up from the photographs. She swallows, and I see the moment her face hardens into a Romero.
A family legacy much darker than our own, but one I know she’s ready to let go.
The panic is gone, overridden by the colder and more functional Isabella.
"Done," she says. “You can have it all. Just give me back Ivy and Maeve.”
"And one more thing." Rodin's eyes find Isabella again, and the way he looks at her makes every muscle in my body contract. "One goodbye. You and I. Before we conclude."
The table is silent.
"The fuck you will," I say.
"Anthony —" Lucien starts.
"No." I look at Rodin. "That is not on the table."
Rodin spreads his hands with the air of a reasonable man. "One kiss. In the scheme of twenty million dollars and an entire family's network—" His eyes don't leave Isabella. "It's nothing. It costs nothing for us to part on good terms."
"It's fine," Isabella says.
I turn to look at her.
"It's fine," she repeats, and her voice is void of emotion.
"But I have conditions." She looks at Rodin directly.
"You make the call right now. I want Maeve and my daughter released before I come anywhere near you.
I want proof. Not your word, not a photograph.
I want a message from Maeve herself, with a confirmation I can verify.
Then we conclude the financial transfer.
Then and only then do we discuss anything else. "
Rodin studies her for a long moment. Then he reaches for his phone.
The next thirty minutes are the longest of my life.
We sit in the club, and we wait. I don’t speak, and I don’t look at Isabella because I can’t.
The fury that’s bubbling up inside me is but a word away from unleashing itself on those around me.
I glance at Alex Romero, who sits at the far end of the table, examining his fingernails like a man at a spa.
The little bastard who started all this trouble to begin with.
Stole five years of my life from my family.
Isabella's phone vibrates on the table.
She reads it, then she looks up, and the hardness around her eyes and mouth has eased. "That's the code," she says quietly. "They're out."
She dials her banker without being asked. The transfer is scheduled for four minutes. She looks at Rodin. "I'll contact the clients directly. They'll be told you're the new point of contact."
Rodin nods. Then he stands. Isabella follows his lead.
She walks around the table, and I feel Lucien’s hand on my arm once again. I feel as though my body is going to burst out of my skin.
She's mine…
Rodin reaches up and pushes her hair back from her face reverently.
And that is what does it.
Not the two months of memories. The Tuesday dinners or nights out on the balcony until dawn. The gentleness of the Russians' touch on Isabella cuts the thin cord of control within me. He cups her face, looks at her with such affection that the room turns red.
The fucker is in love with her. It’s clear as day.
And I’m up, flipping the table out of the way before anyone can stop me.
What follows is not elegant.
I take Rodin by the collar, and the room explodes.
His men come off the wall, our men come forward, and Isabella is shoved sideways as bodies collide around her.
Rodin is better than I expect. He gets his hands up fast, and he knows how to use them, and we tumble to the floor, breaking several chairs on the way down.
Lucien has Alex by the shirt across the room.
Luca handles two of Rodin's men simultaneously with the focused efficiency of a man who was raised doing exactly this.
Somewhere behind me, a gun goes off. One shot, then two.
Rodin shoves me off and looks at his men.
Something passes between them. A decision made in under a second.
He looks at me, then at Isabella, and something like regret moves across his features.
Then he goes for the door, and his men follow, and the room is suddenly, eerily still.
I take in the scene around me. Alex Romero is dead. The way he’s positioned, the dark pool of blood spreading beneath his head, the vacant, staring eyes tell me all I need to know. One of the bullets must have hit him.
I don’t give a fuck.
Then I hear it…wheezing.
I turn, and my heart jumps into my throat.
Isabella is on the floor. She’s on her side, one hand pressed to her stomach, and there is blood, too much of it, spreading alarmingly fast through the fabric of her shirt.
Her eyes are open, and she finds my face across the room, and gives me the smallest, most exhausted smile I’ve ever seen on another person.
I’m across the room in seconds, on my knees beside her, my hands going to hers over the wound. "No. No, Bells, stay with me. Stay right here."
"Anthony." Her voice is very quiet, raspy, and breathless.
"No, no, don't." I look up. "Lucien. Call 9-1-1 now."
Her hand touches my face. Her fingers are cold, and I press my jaw against her palm and hold it there. Her eyes stay on mine for another moment, steady, almost calm, and then they flutter closed and her hand drops to her side.
"Isabella." I press harder against the wound and check her pulse. She’s alive, but barely. My hands are shaking. "Lucien —"
"I’m giving them the details." He's already beside me. "They're coming, Anthony. It’ll be okay."
I look down at her, and I do the only thing left available to me. I pray he’s right. I can’t lose her again.
I won’t.