Chapter 15
Later that day…
The gym still smells like iron, sweat, and old violence.
I need it. The weights. The burn. The punishment my body understands better than thought.
Alessio and I go at it hard—pads first, then sparring—until my muscles scream and my lungs drag fire.
He's good. Always has been. Fast, brutal, smart enough not to get sloppy when emotions are in play.
Doesn't stop him from reading me anyway. He steps back, rolling his shoulders, sweat running down his spine. "So," he says casually. Too casually. "A son?"
I snort, wiping my face with a towel. "Word spreads fast."
He grins. "You run a family. Gossip's part of the benefits package."
I don't bother denying it. There's no point. They'll all know soon enough.
"Yeah," I say. "Amauri."
The name feels strange in my mouth. Heavy. Permanent.
Alessio's expression shifts, not soft, but respectful. "That changes things."
"Everything," I agree.
He nods once. "Damiano find anything yet?"
"Not yet," I fill him in. "If he doesn't by tonight, I'll pay Senator Kingsley a visit myself."
Alessio's jaw tightens. "You want backup? I'm here." No bravado. Just fact.
I nod. "I know."
He said the same thing the first night we ran from cops into a Russian bar that didn't take kindly to boys carrying the wrong last names. We weren't brothers then. Not even close. Just reckless, territorial, and too proud to back down. He didn't owe me anything. He took the first punch anyway.
Outside, several SUVs idle, engines low and patient, waiting for us to step back into our roles. Men straighten when they see us. Doors open. The world slots back into place. I sink into the back seat and lean my head against the soft leather, eyes closing for half a second. Big mistake.
Instantly, I see green eyes. Wide. Shattered. Wanting. Her mouth still parted. The way her breath hitched. The way she melted into me like the last ten years never happened. The kiss. Her soft skin.
Fuck.
My body reacts instantly, traitorous and unforgiving. My cock turns painfully hard, like I'm twenty again instead of a man who should know better. Like she didn't rip something out of me and leave me bleeding in the street.
I exhale through my nose and adjust my hips, irritated beyond reason.
Fuck her. I should be thinking about fentanyl-laced coke.
About betrayals and transport routes and a senator who thinks he's untouchable.
Instead, I'm thinking about the way she felt in my arms. That's a weakness. And weaknesses get you killed.
I open my eyes as the SUV pulls away, the city sliding back into motion outside the window. I'll deal with her later. Right now, I have an empire to protect. And a son to get back. As if on cue, my phone lights up. Enzo.
"I might have a trace," he dives in without preamble.
I straighten slightly. "On who?"
"A guy moving between Pablo's level and street distribution. He's sloppy. Thought himself invisible."
I smile without humor. "No one is invisible."
A pause. Then, "I'll have him ready."
"Take him to the warehouse."
That surprises him, and he goes quiet for half a beat. "The warehouse?" He exhales. "Not the Oven?"
"No." Not today. This needs to be close. Personal. What I don't say is that I need to hit something. Someone. I need to lose myself in the kind of violence that empties the noise out of my head and leaves only breath and bone and consequence.
"Got you. I'll have him there in an hour." If anybody gets me, it's him. He has his own ghosts to contend with.
I end the call and lean back as the SUV eats up the road, the city blurs past tinted glass. An hour. Enough time to get home and take a shower. To scrub her scent off my skin. Or try. I close my eyes for a second too long. Green eyes again.
The kiss.
The way she fit against me like my body remembers something my mind wants to erase.
My jaw tightens. Fuck. I open my eyes and stare straight ahead as the car turns toward the Strip.
Whatever happens in that warehouse will be clean.
Simple. Pain in exchange for answers. Blood for balance.
I can handle that. It's the things waiting back at my penthouse that are going to cost me.
Vegas slides past the windows in neon streaks.
I don't see it. I'm counting seconds instead.
Time wasted. Time stolen. Time my son is somewhere I can't reach yet.
Enzo's last call still sits heavy in my ear.
The SUV slows. Stops. I step out into the valet area, adjust my cuffs, and force my shoulders down.
Don. Emperor. A man who does not unravel. Mask on.
The private elevator waits.
I strip off my jacket as I step inside and drape it over my arm without thinking.
The motion feels wrong halfway through, like some part of me already knows tonight will not be clean.
The doors close. Up. Each floor passes too slowly.
My mind keeps circling back to her—Jenna.
She'll be exhausted. She'll be wrecked. She'll cry.
I can handle that. I expect her to come apart the way people always do when they finally run out of places to hide, out of lies to spin.
To fold inward. To apologize for leaving me the way she did.
For keeping my son from me. I expect tears, shaking hands, and lowered eyes.
Begging, maybe. A quiet kind of repentance dressed up as regret.
I know what to do with that version of her.
I'll let her speak. I'll let the guilt drain out of her until there's nothing left but relief and dependence.
Until she looks at me like I'm the authority in the room.
The man who decides what happens next. I expect her to crawl back to the place I left her, grateful I'm still standing here at all.
Yes. That's the version of her I can live with.
The elevator stops. The doors slide open. I make my way through the antechamber and nod at the security guards. Gabe left five minutes ago after I told him I was on my way. Max opens the door to my penthouse.
She's standing there.
Not asleep.
Not curled up.
Definitely not broken.
Standing barefoot on the marble, eyes blazing, wrapped in my shirt like she chose it on purpose. She's on me, before I can say a word. "Where have you been?"
The sound hits me square in the chest. I barely step out before she's already moving toward me.
"Do you have any idea how long I've been waiting?" she snaps. "Do you think I slept? Do you think I can sleep while my son is missing?"
This is wrong. This is not the version I prepared for. "Jenna—"
"No." She cuts me off, jabbing a finger at my chest. "No. You don't get to say my name like that and expect calm. Where is Amauri?"
Her voice isn't breaking. It's worse. She's close now. Too close. I can smell her, soap, adrenaline, fear. My shirt hangs off her shoulder, collar stretched, sleeves too long.
She needs to be wearing something else. The thought flashes sharp and irrational. I need to fix it. I don't know why. I just do.
"Have you found anything yet?" she demands. "Anything at all? Or did you just disappear again?"
Again?
The word lands harder than a slap.
"I'm working on it," I growl, irritated with her attitude.
Her mouth twists. "Working on it," she repeats, disbelief sharpening every syllable. "That's what this is to you? A delay?"
She shoves my chest. Not hard. Enough.
"You promised me," she nearly shouts, and now her eyes shine, furious and wet. "You looked at me and promised me you would bring him back."
I did no such thing, but I'll entertain her for a moment. Because even I know a mother can be irrational in a situation like this. "I will," I vow instantly, without hesitation.
She laughs, short and bitter. "Then why are you standing here with nothing?"
The jacket slips from my arm and hits the floor. I don't look down.
"I haven't gone after anyone yet," I chose my words carefully, deliberately. "Because I don't know who has them."
I stretch the them because, for some reason, she seems to be forgetting about her husband. I wish I could do the same. Carter fucking Whitford.
Her breath stutters. "So you don't have him," she states flatly.
"No."
The word costs me. Her shoulders rise and fall once. She doesn't scream. She doesn't cry. She just looks at me like I'm something she's deciding whether to trust or break.
"I don't care what you have to do." There is a fire in her eyes I've never seen before, not even after she killed Coach and threatened to kill me next.
"I don't care how ugly it gets." She steps closer, close enough that I feel heat through my shirt, close enough that my body reacts before my mind can stop it, recognition, possession, memory.
The instinct to pull her in hits hard and fast, immediately followed by the urge to shove her away. "Just don't come back without my son."
My son.
The words slam into me, delayed, violent.
My son?
The thought fractures outward, splintering through everything I've been holding together.
How dare she? How fucking dare she stand here—barefoot, in my home, wearing my shirt as if it belonged to her—making demands like I haven't already lost ten years I didn't even know were mine.
She didn't just keep Amauri from me. She erased him.
No, worse. She erased me. I didn't know she was pregnant.
I didn't get a choice. I didn't get a chance to protect him, to claim him, to fail or save him.
She decided all of it for me, and now she's standing here invoking him like a weapon.
My jaw tightens until it aches. She doesn't get to do that.
She doesn't get to withhold my blood from me and then tell me how to bleed.
Anger roars up, fast and vicious, hot enough to scorch everything in its path.
A decade of absence crashes into me all at once, first steps I never saw, nights I never guarded, a childhood lived without my name backing it. And still—
I want her.