Power Play (Rivals & Vows #1)

Chapter 1 Naomi

NAOMI

The last time I saw Vasso Dillinger, he kissed me like he meant it. Like the world was ending and I was the last taste of everything he craved and hated at once.

Then he condemned me to hell and walked away without looking back.

Now he stands in the doorway of my grandfather’s Manhattan townhouse like a storm in a three-piece suit, here to collect on a debt I never should’ve promised.

“Naomi.” His voice is deeper than I remember, velvet tossed over gravel, hiding all the dangers until it’s too late.

I don’t move from the staircase landing. I clutch the banister like it can anchor me. “You’re early.” It’s been five months, three weeks and three days. I have all of four days left on this shaky deal.

He steps inside without an invitation, bringing his six-foot-three towering figure of masculine perfection, the scent of expensive cologne and a past I failed to bury. “And you’re still playing house in a place that hasn’t belonged to your family in over a year.”

I flinch. He sees it.

Of course he does. Vasso Dillinger always notices the cracks, and then he exploits them.

“We had an agreement,” I say, chin lifting.

“And the terms have expired.”

Behind me, the soft creak of footsteps. My grandfather shuffles into the foyer, cardigan slipping off thin shoulders, eyes clouded but kind. I watch for signs that he recognizes Vasso, then breathe a sigh of relief when he looks at our unwanted guest with no hint of familiarity.

“Naomi, is that your beau? The one who put a ring on your finger and disappeared.”

Vasso’s jaw ticks.

I don’t have to look to feel his disapproval. Our lie started with a cheap, fake ring and a hasty story, a desperate move to appease Grandpa and buy me time.

“Yes, Grandpa,” I say softly. “It’s Vasso.” My fake fiancé. The last man on earth I should’ve gone to for help. But the only one available to grant me this precarious lifeline.

Vasso moves closer and offers his hand and a blinding, practiced smile. “A pleasure to see you again, sir.”

Grandpa clasps it in both of his. “You’re a good man for standing by my Naomi. Not many would stay through what she’s endured. But this long distance thing…” He shakes his head, then shrugs. “I guess you young ones know what you’re doing.”

Irony burns my throat.

Vasso holds his hand a heartbeat longer than necessary, then releases gently. “Family means everything.”

Liar.

As soon as Grandpa disappears down the hall, Vasso’s expression ices over. “You need to pack a bag.”

My heart jumps into my throat. “Excuse me? Why?”

“Because your time is up. And you’re coming with me.”

“Coming with you, where?”

“My island. Dillinger Island.”

I fold my arms to hide the tremor in my fingers. “You mean Kane’s Reach, my family’s island.”

“I’ve changed the name,” he says, stepping closer, voice like thunder before rain.

“And we both know it’s no longer yours. Not after I bought back everything your father recklessly gambled away.

” He shakes his head. “It looks like six months hasn’t done anything to dissolve your illusions.

I own every inch of what you Kanes once possessed. Including this house.”

I hate him. How tall he stands. How sure he is. How he once kissed me like I was everything and now looks at me like I’m a hot inconvenience.

But most of all, I hate that I had no choice but to invent this farce in the first place.

“You said six months,” I bite out. “That I could stay until—”

“Six months are up.” He slides a folded document from his inner pocket and drops it into the art deco bowl on the console. “You’re lucky I didn’t evict you the moment the ink dried.”

I swallow. “So what now? You throw us out?”

His gaze narrows, something dark flickering.

“No. You come with me.” He strolls into the living room that has seen better days, barely holding back his distaste as his gaze skips over the worn furniture.

“I’ve decided the price of extending this farce longer is for me to turn this fake engagement into a real marriage. ”

I ignore the sharp lance of unadulterated sizzle in my belly as a laugh breaks from me, sharp and brittle. “What? You’re insane.”

“You want your grandfather to remain here?” he asks, smooth and deadly. “Then marry me. For a year. Maybe less, if you behave.”

My heart hammers. “You’re doing this for revenge.”

He doesn’t deny it. That’s the worst part.

He steps closer, the heat of him shorting my thoughts. “I’m doing this for many things that are none of your concern. All you should be interested in is that you’ll get what you need. And I’ll get what I want.”

“And what do you want?” I whisper.

His gaze drops to my mouth, lingers. “Everything.”

“Why?” I snap, forcing space between us. “Why now? Why… marriage?” I hate the shaky note in my voice that doesn’t come from horror but from the memory of wanting this…yearning for this when I was too young and foolish to know better.

His answer is pure brisk business. “Because there are three important milestones for Dillinger Enterprises in the next nine months I don’t intend to miss.

The Preservation Trust vote on the island’s conservation lease.

A sovereign wealth fund term sheet that requires ‘stability optics’ in their key-man clause.

The crusty eighty-year-old who runs the private fund I’m courting only backs married businessmen—never mind he’s on wife number seven; and the investors I’m wooing for our stock launch pay more for a reformed sinner than a walking headline.

” His mouth hardens. “A wife weakens questions about stability and leadership. A loving wife ends them permanently.”

My stomach dips. “Optics. That’s all this…my life…means to you.”

“It’s also leverage.” He nods toward the corridor where my grandfather vanished. “For you. Or are you going to tell Theodore about your little lies? Are you going to confess that you assured me he would be with his Maker by now?”

My jaw locks, even as my heart squeezes tight.

“I told the truth. He was supposed to be…gone by now,” I say, the words scraping out of me.

“Three cardiologists gave him four months tops—end-stage heart failure with a calcified aortic valve. Then a fourth opinion offered a transcatheter valve replacement and an aggressive regimen.” My throat burns.

“We…we’d lost hope but it worked. He’s here.

He’s better. And your countdown didn’t account for a miracle. ”

Something resembling surprise flashes in his eyes, then something softer he strangles fast. “I’m glad he’s improving.”

I almost laugh. “Are you? But let me guess, our agreement has suddenly gotten complicated with hidden small print all in your favor?”

“I don’t need your grandfather to force your hand, Naomi.

” His voice drops. “I need a wife to close what I’ve built for ten years.

And the trust board prefers a couple stewarding the island, not a bachelor with headlines.

You know every family on Dillinger Island.

They don’t vote facts, they vote feelings. ”

“So you want me to stand beside you and play adoring,” I say, the word curdling, “so your deals don’t wobble.”

His teeth flash in a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “They won’t,” he says. “I intend to win regardless of obstacles. This way grants me the quickest and smoothest route.”

Silence swells, thick with old ghosts. He reaches into his pocket again, not for papers this time, I realize.

For a ring box.

My lungs stop as he opens it.

The diamond is an emerald-cut monolith, five carats at least, set east-west on a knife-edge platinum band, a hidden halo catching light like trapped lightning. It’s obscene and exquisite and cold as the man holding it.

“I designed it myself,” he says, softer. “Clean lines. No filigree.”

“Because sentiment is messy?”

“Because you hate fuss,” he counters, like he still knows me. “And because this looks good in photographs.” His gaze lifts. “They’ll study your hands. They always do.”

Anger surges hot and useless. “You think a rock makes us credible?”

“I think we make us credible,” he says. “But the ring helps.” He doesn’t come closer.

He simply holds it between us like a contract I can’t unread.

“We’ll need to be convincing. Hand at your back.

You looking at me like you chose this. Small touches that say we’re not counting minutes until we’re alone, we’re counting memories we’ll make when we get there.

That’s how you win rooms like the trust. That’s how you shut down gossip on a roadshow floor. ”

“You want me to act like I love you.”

He stares at me with simmering gray fire for a moment before he shrugs. “I want you to act like you don’t hate me.” Dry. “Start there.”

I stare at the diamond until my vision sparkles. “And if I say no?”

“Then you pack your grandfather tonight,” he says evenly. “My ownership is clean; your tenancy is not. I will fund his care elsewhere, but he won’t stay here.” A beat. “Or you say yes, and I guarantee everything—staff, medical, whatever he needs—until he dies in his bed, in his home, as he wants.”

I feel the trap close and still I look for a loose brick. But there isn’t one. I can’t risk my grandfather’s health. Not when he’s been through so much.

The first time Theodore Kane’s heart stuttered into sirens and white hallways is the year my father, Harrison, turned our last name into headline fodder.

Irrational boardroom rants, gambling markers stacked like kindling, public affairs splashed across society pages, my mother smiling through it until she couldn’t.

Until the shame and stress caused her to miscarry my brother and my father’s infidelities and grief finished what the tabloids started.

And as if one tragedy wasn’t bad enough, I watched my grandfather age a decade in a year with two more heart attacks that came like aftershocks when his other son, my Uncle Ellis was tragically killed in a car accident.

Loss, arriving like macabre dominoes, collapsed the spaces where laughter used to live; the house grew larger and colder, and now Grandpa moves through it like a man mapping the ruins of his own empire.

He always regretted handing the reins to Harrison, but by the time the truth was undeniable, the hooks were too deep with board votes already captured, debts pledged against futures, the island leveraged like a pawn. Theodore couldn’t wrest back control until Harrison ran it all into the ground.

He doesn’t speak to my father now, and in between rehab and bouncing around Europe living on the fumes of our surname and the tatters of our trust, I haven’t seen or spoken to my father in years.

I push away acrid memory and focus on the man in front of me. Watching me with piercing gray eyes. “You keep saying we’ll be convincing, but that’s a two-sided performance, Vasso. You’re not exactly cuddly.”

“Then I’ll adjust.” He steps in, not touching, close enough that I feel the heat rolling off him.

“I’ll put my hand at your back and mean it.

I’ll look at you like I never stopped. I’ll kiss you in public when it serves us and stop when you breathe that way that says you’re done.

” His voice roughens. “I know the choreography.”

The banister digs into my palm. “This is revenge dressed as romance.”

“It’s strategy dressed as mercy.”

“For who?”

“For both of us.”

I hate that the ring looks right when he slides it onto my finger. The platinum is cool, then warm, the hidden halo catching the foyer’s anemic light and throwing it back in sparks. It feels like a shackle. It looks like a cruel promise.

I lift my hand and the emerald facets cut me into a version of myself I don’t recognize. “How long?” I ask, just to be sure I heard him right the first time. Hoping I didn’t.

“A year,” he confirms to my heart’s horror. “Less if the optics hold.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Then we hold harder.”

My laugh is a crack. “You’re a bastard.”

His gaze drops to my mouth and stays. “And you’ll be the brave wife who withstands it all with charm and poise.”

For one wild second I want to throw the ring at his head and kiss him in the same motion. Instead, I draw a breath that tastes like dust and old money and new mistakes.

“Fine,” I say. “You get your wife. I get my grandfather in his home for as long as he needs it. But hear me, Vasso—if you lie to me, if there’s anything about this agreement and I find out?

The performance ends. No smiles. No hand on my back.

You want a loving couple?” I lean in until our breaths tangle. “You’ll only get it with honesty.”

A muscle jumps in his cheek but I catch the glint of victory in his eyes. “Understood.”

“Good.” I drop my hand. The diamond throws another cruel starburst against the ceiling. “Then let’s go tell a dying town we’re in love.”

“Let’s start with your grandfather,” Vasso says, almost gentle. But there’s more than a hint of relish in his eyes.

And I know it’s because the day has finally come.

The one he swore when he walked away ten years ago.

He’s brought this last Kane to her knees.