Chapter 7 #3
“You counted every crate before the shipment left.” It wasn’t a question. “You reported that every order had been fulfilled.”
Keegan didn’t so much as flinch.
“Yes, Boss.”
His expression remained composed, though I caught the subtle tightening of his jaw.
“The shipment left our warehouse complete. I personally supervised the count.”
A brief pause. “Which means someone intercepted it after it left us.”
His voice hardened. “I’ve already begun the investigation.”
Romeo regarded him in silence.
The disappointment in his eyes was far more unsettling than anger.
“You’ve had a head start.” His voice remained level. “And yet you still don’t have a name.”
Keegan lowered his head a fraction.
“No, Boss. I will.”
Romeo’s jaw flexed once.
“I want every man who touched those shipments—from the moment they left our warehouse until they reached this one—standing in front of me before sunrise.”
His words weren’t loud. They didn’t need to be.
“Already in motion, Boss,” Keegan replied immediately.
Only then did Romeo turn his attention back to the older Chicago boss.
“Mr. Zachary.”
His tone was calm, almost courteous.
“It wasn’t my intention for our partnership to begin this way.”
His eyes turned glacial. “Someone stole from both of us.”
“And whoever it is...”
“They’ve just signed their own death warrant.”
A suffocating silence settled over the warehouse.
“In the meantime,” Romeo continued, “you’ll receive a full refund before the sun comes up.”
He paused. “And when I recover what’s yours... It will be delivered personally.”
Zachary let out a harsh, humorless laugh.
“What the hell am I supposed to do with a refund?” His voice dripped with contempt. “Do you honestly think this is about the money?”
The amusement vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
His eyes turned frighteningly still.
“We need those weapons.” Each word landed like a hammer blow. “Not tomorrow. Not next week. Now.”
The room seemed to tighten around the single word.
“If my buyers don’t receive what I promised them, no amount of money will fix what’s coming.” His gaze hardened into something cold and merciless. “And I have very little patience for people who waste my time.”
Then, with nothing more than the lazy lift of two fingers...
Everything changed.
The Chicago men raised their rifles in one smooth motion.
Metal clicked.
Safety catches disengaged.
Across the warehouse, Romeo’s soldiers reacted instantly.
Pistols appeared as though conjured from thin air.
Within a heartbeat, dozens of weapons were aimed across the room.
My pulse hammered painfully inside my ears.
One wrong movement.
One nervous finger.
One misunderstanding.
And this warehouse would become a slaughterhouse.
“This doesn’t benefit either of us,” Romeo said, calm and controlled, like the guns being aimed by the Chicago mafia men at his men and vice versa do not even move him a bit.
His gaze swept lazily across the room before settling back on Zachary.
“Besides, this is Florida. My territory. So think very carefully before you decide to start a war here.”
His emerald eyes darkened.
“Because even if your men somehow manage to walk out of this building alive, they won’t make it out of Florida. I’ll make sure of that.”
“You’re making the mistake of assuming these are the only men I came with,” Zachary said, his expression unreadable.
“This estate is surrounded. Dozens of my men are positioned beyond your perimeter with one instruction only—to reduce this entire property to rubble if I fail to walk out of this building alive... or if I leave Florida without the respect I came here expecting.”
A faint, humorless smile crossed his face.
“You didn’t honestly think I’d walk into the territory of a man the rest of the Mafia has yet to place its trust in without preparing for every possible outcome, did you?”
Romeo regarded him in silence for a moment, his expression betraying nothing.
“There’s no need for this to become a war, Zachary.”
His voice remained calm, carrying the quiet authority of a man accustomed to being obeyed.
“I understand your position,” Romeo said evenly. “And I don’t blame you for being furious over an incomplete shipment. Frankly, I’d be no different—especially considering this is our first transaction.”
Holding Zachary’s gaze without flinching, he clasped his hands behind his back.
“But you also need to understand mine. Someone intercepted the shipment before it reached you. A thousand weapons don’t simply vanish without someone orchestrating it.”
His eyes hardened.
“You’ve made it clear that a refund isn’t what you want. Fine. I’ll identify whoever stole from us, recover every missing weapon, and deliver the complete shipment to you.”
He held Zachary’s gaze without blinking.
“Give me forty-eight hours.”
A brief pause.
“If, after forty-eight hours, I fail to put every one of those weapons in your possession, then you’ll have every reason to consider this a personal betrayal.”
The room fell silent.
For one suspended moment...
It seemed as though Zachary might actually consider it.
Then the younger man—who bore an uncanny resemblance to Zachary, perhaps his son—shifted at his father’s side.
It happened without warning.
One moment, he was standing still, almost indistinguishable from the other men in the room. The next, his body moved with sudden, deliberate purpose.
His rifle came up in a swift arc, the barrel snapping toward Romeo.
But I caught it.
The way his shoulders tightened just before he moved. The subtle curl of his finger around the trigger. Even the slight narrowing of his eyes betrayed what he intended to do.
He was going to shoot Romeo.
There was no time to think. No time to weigh the consequences or wonder what would happen next.
My body reacted before my mind could catch up.
I lunged forward with every ounce of strength I had, slamming both hands into Romeo’s chest.
The force sent him stumbling sideways.
A deafening gunshot exploded through the warehouse.
The crack echoed violently off the iron walls.
Momentum carried me with him.
I lost my footing as Romeo went down, and we crashed hard onto the unforgiving concrete.
My body landed across his, the impact knocking the breath from my lungs.
Then the warehouse erupted.
The sharp crack of gunfire tore through the air as several rifles were raised at once.
Men shouted and moved in every direction, the sudden violence transforming what had been a tense exchange into the brink of an all-out bloodbath.
I lifted my head just enough to see it.
Romeo’s men had their weapons trained on Zachary’s men, while Zachary’s men had already raised theirs in return.
Fingers hovered over triggers. Safeties were released.
Every man stood coiled and ready, waiting for the slightest movement, the slightest provocation, to turn the warehouse into a slaughterhouse.
“Wait! Gentlemen, please!”
Keegan’s commanding voice thundered through the chaos.
He stepped forward, his voice cutting through the shouting and the tension with an authority that demanded attention.
“This was supposed to be a trade, not a war!”
He was trying desperately to keep the situation from spiraling beyond control.
One wrong move. One nervous finger tightening around a trigger. One more shot.
And the entire warehouse would erupt in blood.
He stepped between the two factions with both hands raised, his eyes sweeping frantically from one line of armed men to the other.
“Hold your fire!” he barked. “Nobody shoots! We are not starting a war over this!”
The warehouse fell into a tense, fragile silence.
Dozens of fingers remained poised on triggers.
No one lowered a weapon.
No one trusted anyone enough to move first.
Still lying partly beneath me, Romeo looked up.
For the briefest heartbeat, our eyes met.
Something flickered behind his icy green gaze.
Not gratitude. Not warmth. Something I couldn’t name.
It vanished almost as quickly as it appeared.
Realizing I was still sprawled across him, I scrambled backward, my cheeks burning despite everything that had happened.
Keegan reached us first, extending a hand toward Romeo.
Romeo accepted it without a word and pulled himself to his feet.
He calmly dusted the dirt from his immaculate white suit before turning toward the steel beam behind us.
The bullet had buried itself deep inside the metal.
Only then did the reality of what had almost happened hit me.
If I hadn’t pushed him...
That bullet would have struck him square in the center of his chest.
Romeo studied the impact for a long, thoughtful moment before slowly turning toward the young gunman.
Then his gaze shifted to Zachary.
The older man approached at an unhurried pace, his composure almost unnerving—as though his son hadn’t nearly turned the warehouse into a slaughterhouse only moments ago.
Romeo’s expression remained infuriatingly relaxed.
Then his eyes found me.
I instantly wished they hadn’t.
His gaze traveled over me slowly, shamelessly, lingering far longer than it should have.
It was impossible to tell what was going through his mind.
But I knew one thing.
I had saved him again.
For the third time.
The first had been when he was nineteen, at the lake, after his brother pushed him into the water. The second was when my father shot him. And now, once again, I had dragged him back from the edge of death.
If he hadn’t understood the first two times, surely he understood this one.
Yet there was no gratitude in his face.
Not even the faintest trace of warmth.
His expression remained as cold as ever, his emerald eyes fixed on me with an intensity I couldn’t decipher.
I had just saved his life, and he looked at me as though I had done nothing more than fulfill an obligation.
I tried to hold his gaze.
I couldn’t.
My eyes dropped, and I lowered my head, only for a voice to slice through the suffocating silence.
“So...” Zachary began.
I looked up.
Zachary leaned back slightly, a crooked smile spreading across his weathered face.
“This is your new wife, Flynn?”
My gaze shifted to Romeo, expecting to find his attention on Zachary.
It wasn’t.
His eyes were already on me.
Only me.