CHAPTER 40
Marcello
Isat beside Ronnie and his fixer, Lin, in a private room tucked deep inside a gentleman’s club in London. Across from us sat Jimmy Yang and another syndicate head, their men stationed behind them like silent reminders of what this room could turn into if things went wrong.
This was meant to be a negotiation—consignment routes through overlapping territories. Instead, it was fracturing into a personal discussion.
Ronnie and Jimmy weren’t discussing business anymore. They were circling each other over something far more volatile.Jimmy’s sister.
Three men spoke over each other in rapid Mandarin and Cantonese, voices layered with accusation and restraint. Territory disputes dressed up as negotiation. Ego masquerading as strategy. Only Ronnie knew I understood every word.
Ronnie and I had never relied on the comfort of inherited alliances, even if our fathers had once stood on the same side of a table like this. I was older, more measured, already shaping empires while he was still proving himself. But Ronnie had never learned to step back from a fight.
I had seen it firsthand years ago, when I crossed into territory I shouldn’t have and found myself at the wrong end of steel.
He hadn’t hesitated. No calculation, no negotiation—just instinct.
He stepped in, not because it benefited him, but because he chose to.
That kind of loyalty is rare. It earns respect.
It also makes men reckless. And currently, Ronnie had been leaning too far into that edge.
There was a time I would have called that confidence. Now it felt closer to carelessness. It was becoming difficult to tell confidence from recklessness.
“Our investors don’t appreciate your interference,” one of them said, his gaze flicking between Ronnie and me.
“Get better investors,” Lin replied lazily.
“If you touch our consignments again, this becomes war.”His fingers tapped once against the table. A tell.
The argument slipped fully into Mandarin now, sharper, faster.
“Pull your consignments off our routes, and we stop interfering,” Lin snapped.
“Deal,” Jimmy said smoothly. “Tell this scum to stay away from my sister.”
His finger pointed at Ronnie.
“What if she’s the one who can’t stay away from me?” Ronnie replied.
He spoke calmly, almost lazily, as if none of this mattered—but I knew better.
Ronnie never raised his voice. Never showed his anger.
He didn’t need to. It lived beneath the surface, controlled and contained, the way fire sits beneath steel.
You didn’t see it until it was too late—and by then, it was already consuming everything in its path.
Like a tiger. Still enough to be mistaken for calm. Until it moved.
Voices overlapped again, tension climbing fast. I exhaled slowly, irritation settling beneath my skin. We had chosen London for a reason. Neutral ground. Quick resolution. Close enough that I could be on a flight before she even knew I was coming.
Roxanne.
The thought lingered longer than it should have. For the first time in three years, silence had settled between us. And I disliked it more than I cared to admit. Unease lingered at the back of my mind, refusing to fully form. I hated uncertainty. Especially when it involved her.
My phone buzzed and I chose to ignore it. Interruptions were constant in my world—calls, updates, shifting alliances that needed to be contained before they became worse. Another vibration and this time I glanced down.
Unknown Number.
I almost ignored it until an image loaded. My brows furrowed slightly, as though the image might explain itself if I stared long enough.
Roxanne walking out of a motel—with Santino. Too close. Too familiar. I stared at the image longer than I should have, not reacting—just taking it in with a stillness I had learned to perfect over years of being watched.
Men like me survive by never reacting too quickly.Emotion made people predictable. And predictable men died early.
The picture wasn’t explicit. There was nothing in it that could be called proof. But familiarity has a language of its own. And I knew both of them too well to miss it. That, more than anything, was what unsettled me.
And I knew it wasn’t random. Men didn’t send things like this unless they believed they were holding the blade and expecting blood. More images followed. Different angles. Same implication. And then a message followed almost immediately.
My jaw tightened, just slightly. The timing was deliberate.
Nothing about this felt accidental. I looked at the man next to Jimmy, looking at me, waiting for my reaction.
My fingers tightened imperceptibly around the glass in my hand, the crystal giving a faint, protesting sound beneath the pressure before I forced my grip to ease.
Control wasn’t something I lost in rooms like these. Not for men like them. And certainly not over whatever game the bastard thought he was playing. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
I set the phone down slowly.
Across the table, the argument had escalated between Ronnie and Jimmy. One of them stood abruptly, chair scraping against the floor. Another leaned forward, voice rising, the conversation slipping past negotiation and into insult.
I stood. The movement alone was enough to shift the room.
“Sit,” I said in Mandarin, not raising my voice.
I gave Ronnie a knowing look, and he sat. Silence followed—not agreement, not respect, but recognition. No one spoke for a while. But they sat. That was enough. For now.
My phone buzzed again. I ignored it. Then again. And again.
When I finally looked down—Roxanne. Calling.
“Amore,” I said, quieter now as I stepped away from the table, turning just enough to carve out space from the noise. “I’m in the middle of something. Can this wait?”
There was a pause—brief, almost imperceptible.
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s fine.” Her voice was too steady, but something felt amiss.
“I just—nothing. I’ll call you later.”
I could have pushed. Could have asked why her voice sounded restrained instead of warm. Why instinct had been clawing at me since the moment I saw the photographs.
Instead—
“I’ll see you soon,” I said.
The line went dead. I stood there a moment longer than necessary, the silence pressing in, in a way I didn’t like. I slipped the phone back into my pocket and returned to the table as though everything was fine.
By the time the meeting ended, hours had passed—enough for tempers to cool, for decisions to take shape, for alliances to settle into a temporary but functional fix. I checked my phone again, expecting something—anything—from her. There was nothing. No missed call. No message.
Just the images, sitting exactly where I had left them, unchanged. I opened them again, slower this time, not looking for confirmation but for contradiction—for anything that told me I was misreading what I saw. A sign that dismissed the feeling settling beneath my ribs. I didn’t find any.
Another message sat beneath them.
My expression didn’t change. But an unease settled into place beneath the surface, quiet and deliberate in a way I recognised too well.
The next day, a message came from her saying she loved me. It wasn’t anything suspicious, but a chill slid down my spine. I called her. Nothing. By the third attempt, her phone was switched off. Roxanne never turned her phone off. Never.
A sharper edge slid beneath my thoughts as I dialled Santino next. If there was anyone who would know where she was—His phone was off too. That was the moment instinct stopped whispering. Every part of me went completely cold.
I was on a flight within the hour. Because whether this was betrayal, manipulation or something far worse—I intended to look it in the eye myself.