Chapter Nine
Raya
I WAKE TO A chill in the room.
Groaning, I tug the sheets up to my neck and burrow deeper.
“Luca,” I mumble sleepily. “Close the balcony doors. It’s chilly.”
He was dead to the world when I crawled into bed earlier, but it seems he’s up now, no doubt smoking his nightly Malbaro on the balcony before heading out to Black Gold.
When the chill persists, I groan louder, “Lucaaa.”
Silence.
Did that bastard seriously leave the balcony doors open on me? I swear, I’m going to punch him in the freaking throat.
Annoyed, I grumpily kick off the covers, get out of bed and shuffle toward the balcony, sleep still heavy in my limbs.
The sheer curtains billow inward as I reach for the brass handle…then I pause.
There’s a man outside.
And it’s not Luca.
He sits at the rattan table, bathed in moonlight, watching me. Wearing a well-fitted pinstripe suit. Legs crossed like a man accustomed to wealth and power. Cruelly handsome face half-shadowed under the crescent moonlight.
“I—uh, what—” I stutter.
His gaze drags over me, lingering on my cotton shorts and lace-trimmed camisole. “Hm. How comfortably you sleep,” he muses, voice smooth, almost amused. “Safe and sound within the protection of my walls.”
He dips a tiny spoon into a small jar. His favorite snack.
I fold my arms. “So, you dropped in to remind me how cold and unsafe it could be?”
His answering smile is full-fledged, dazzling under the night sky. “I heard you were quick. Looks like the rumors are true.”
He motions to the empty chair across the table. “Sit.”
When I do, he nudges a Tupperware container toward me. “Pasticcini. From Cora.”
Ooh, yay!
Giddy for treats, I pull the container closer and pop the lid. The pastries look and smell divine, scrumptious. But my excitement sours when I notice each one has a bite taken out of it.
Rude.
I shoot a glare across the table. “Looks like you helped yourself.”
“I christened them for you.”
“Cookie monster,” I murmur.
Unbelievable. Is he seriously this petty?
“You should be honored.” He gestures to himself with a flourish. “Look at me. I’m magnificence personified.”
And there it is. The self-absorbed narcissist in full form.
“Merci beaucoup, Mr. Magnificent.” I pluck up one of the mauled pastries and take a bite. Little does he know, for me, this is akin to kissing him. “So… are you here to torment me, teach me a lesson, or kill me?”
He licks dark chocolate from his golden spoon, slow and deliberate.
“Do you think I just spend my days in some dark lair, twirling my mustache and plotting ways to kill you?” His voice drips with mockery.
“Hate to break it to you, little liar, but you’re not that important.
In my sight, you’re nobody. Just a needy leech. ”
“Yet here you are,” I counter, “in my room. At three in the morning.”
“My room,” he corrects. “I go where the fuck I please. You own nothing here but the skin on your bones.”
“Nice.” I nod, unfazed. “Very convincing.”
A flicker of irritation crosses his face before he reins it in.
We hold each other’s gaze across the table, snacking in silence, tension thick, edged.
Stefano has always been my blind spot. Reading him is a challenging feat.
With most people, I can assess them in seconds, finding the exact angle to work my way in and win them over.
But Stefano’s a brick wall. Whether it’s my own bias clouding my perception, or him being deliberately guarded and misleading, I can’t tell.
Either way, he throws me off, leaving me no choice but to wing it and see where I land.
I break first. “What’s that you’re eating?”
His eyes narrow slightly, as though he doesn’t trust the question. “Dark chocolate almond butter.”
“Homemade?”
“Cora spoils me.”
I pick up another half-eaten pastry and hold it out. “Can I?”
I’m expecting a smirk, a taunt, a flat-out no. Instead, he dips the spoon, scoops up a generous dollop, and slathers it over my pastry.
See? He throws me. Every damn time.
As I take a bite, mumbling how rich and chocolatey the almond butter is, Stefano pulls out his phone. A few swipes later, he slides it across the table.
A video.
I shove the rest of the pastry into my mouth, dust off my fingers, and hit play.
The bartender from Liquid Blue is tied to a chair, her face streaked with tears. Across from her, Lorenzo looms, his voice low but firm as he questions her.
Between choked sobs, she confesses: A month ago, someone slipped an envelope under her door. Inside were photos of her eight-year-old son back in Santo Domingo, taken as he walked to and from school. Along with them, a note telling her to follow instructions, or he disappears.
The instructions were simple. Every Thursday, a package would be left in her locker at work.
Her job was to make the exchange. She swears she never asked questions.
Never looked inside. Never knew who was pulling the strings.
All she knows is that every morning, another envelope arrives.
New photos. Fresh threats. A silent warning of what would happen if she spoke.
“What do you think?” Stefano asks when the video ends. “Is she lying?”
“You want my opinion now?” I raise a brow. “From this little ‘nobody?’”
“I heard you’re good at reading people.” His stare drills into me. “So, tell me, is she lying?”
Ah. That means he’s actively blocking me out. Probably throwing me on purpose.
“Does she have a son in Santo Domingo?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“And you’re sure of that because you run deep background checks on all your employees,” I state. “So you know she’s not lying about that.”
He tilts his head. “You don’t think she’s lying about anything?”
“I didn’t say that.” I pick up another pastry and take a slow bite. “She’s telling the truth about why she did it. But she’s definitely lying about not knowing what’s in those packages.”
His expression doesn’t change, but I know he’s listening.
“As women, we’re wired to be inquisitive. To seek answers to questions we don’t even realize we have. And if those packages were in the privacy of her locker, that gave her plenty of alone time to peek.”
“Hm.” He taps the spoon against the rim of his jar. “How much peeking do you do when you’re at my house?”
“You’re not interesting enough to tempt me to peek.”
His scowl is immediate. Fragile ego, noted. “Swipe to the next video.”
I do.
This time, her lip’s busted and bleeding, and there’s a knot on her forehead.
It looks like they had to rough her up to get her talking, because she confesses that after the first couple of times, curiosity got the best of her.
She started snooping. Opening the envelopes, snapping pictures.
Sometimes it was a thumb drive. Other times, printouts—reports, coded letters.
But the most recent? A photocopied blueprint of Black Gold, along with what looks like a drawn-up plan and strategy sheet for an attack.
Feeling an unusual sting of pity, I hit pause. “So…someone in your camp is working with outside forces to hit Black Gold. And they’re using this poor girl to cover their tracks.”
“Poor girl?” He drags out the words as if they’re the most preposterous combination he’s ever heard.
“She’s a mother who left her son behind to work in a foreign country, to provide for her family. But now, because some of your men have issues with you, she’s been dragged into a mess she never asked for. And now her life is on the line.”
With unreadable eyes, he studies me for several beats. “What do you think we should do with her?”
I lift a brow. “I thought you didn’t like me telling you how to run your business.”
“Yet you’re full of fucking opinions anyway,” he bites out. “Go on. Speak up.”
I’m not trying to aggravate him, but somehow, I keep doing exactly that. And for the life of me, I don’t know why.
Expelling a slow, quiet breath, I choose my words carefully. “Cancel her work permit and send her back home. That will do more than enough damage. A little boy shouldn’t have to lose his mother just because your empire is falling apart.”
He slams his fist on the table, rattling everything on it. “You’ve got so much fucking shit to say about my empire and my men. Why the fuck are you still here then?”
I lift my hands in surrender. “Stating the obvious is not the same as criticizing.”
He works his jaw back and forth, staring me down. Then, “All right. Her survival is on you.”
“What does that mean?”
“Get me a name. The person who ‘dragged her into this mess.’ Do that, and I’ll spare her life.”
“How am I supposed to do that? I barely even kno—”
“You know enough to be running your damn mouth all the time, don’t you?”
What the hell’s going on with him? From everything I know about him, “temperamental” is not one of his traits. He’s Mr. Calm, Collected, and Calculated. Not whatever this is.
“You asked me a question, and I answered,” I say evenly. “If you recall, I was here sleeping, minding my own dreamy business.”
“You have until six this evening,” he says, completely unreasonable. “If I don’t have a name by then, the girl dies. And you get the fuck out of my villa.”
He stands, straightening his jacket. “You have full access to our systems. I don’t care if you have to sit in front of a screen for fifteen hours with no piss breaks, get me a name. Or that ‘poor girl’ is dead.”
With confident ease, he rounds the table and plants one hand flat on the surface, the other gripping the back of my chair as he leans in. His delicious scent of chocolate and whiskey floods my senses.
His breath caresses my skin as he whispers darkly at my ear, “Just so you know, I want you to fail. So don’t try too hard.”
I hold my breath just to hear his. Beautiful.
He lingers, waiting. As if daring me to talk back, to give him a reason to be even more unreasonable.
But I say nothing.
Because I can’t .