Chapter 13 #2
He smiled into her hair. “I know.”
“Boss,” Tomas said from the doorway. “Incoming. Silver sedan. Stellan’s plate.”
Leif let her go and stepped back into the light just far enough that the approaching car would see shape and not features. The sedan rolled to a stop too fast and then braked like the driver remembered he was supposed to look bored.
Stellan De Angelis got out with the swagger of a man born to entitlement, Mariah’s half-brother carrying himself like every street in the city owed him deference. He took in the trucks, the kneeling men, the clipboard propped against a crate, and gave a thin smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
“You could’ve waited,” he said lightly, as if they were discussing a delivery that arrived too soon. “There were… cleaner ways to do this if you wanted my attention.”
Leif’s mouth curved in a cold line. “Well, you’ve got my attention now. What is it you want?”
“I kept reaching out—calls, envoys,” Stellan complained. “I thought we’d talk like men about an arrangement.”
Leif didn’t blink. “What arrangement?”
The man’s smile turned thin. “Mariah, of course. She’s the bridge our families needed. An elegant connection, don’t you think? You take her, we become family. Work together. Work the river together.”
Leif’s eyes went colder. “When you couldn’t get hold of me to make the offer, you thought a bomb would get my attention?”
The surprise that crossed Stellan’s face was genuine, unguarded. “A bomb? Why the hell would I want that? Why would I target you—and risk her, an asset meant to bind our families? That makes no sense.” He shook his head, incredulous. “No. That wasn’t me.”
Leif took this in, eyes narrowing, and when he spoke his voice was quiet. “Then who? Because it was one of your people.”
Stellan hesitated, weighing the cost of the truth, then gave a quick shake of his head.
When he finally spoke, his voice was measured, almost careful.
“My lieutenant—Rocco. He believed Mariah would be his because of his work on the river, and for a time I allowed him that illusion. But then I realized there was a far better option. You. So I corrected my mistake.” His mouth twisted with disdain, but there was also a flicker of unease. “Rocco must have forgotten his place.”
The pieces aligned with a slow inevitability. Rocco, humiliated, cut out, desperate to reclaim honor. Leif could see it now. A man who would light a fuse sooner than a cigarette. A bomb to shame Stellan, and to kill Leif for daring to take Mariah.
Leif stepped closer, closing the space until Stellan had to tip his head back. His voice dropped to a warning growl. “Don’t test me. Not here, and not with her life hanging in the balance.”
Stellan froze. His eyes flicked to Leif’s face, calculation moving, then to the men on their knees, then to the bay beyond. He smiled a narrow, hateful thing. “We could’ve handled this privately. We could have been brothers-in-law.” He offered a hopeful look. “We still could.”
Leif ignored the offer. “You shouldn’t be anywhere near my river.” He stepped in until they shared breath. “You almost killed me at my own table. You almost killed a woman who belongs to me now. Fix your last words.”
Stellan’s forehead began to sheen with sweat, though his smile tried to hold.
“Belongs? You talk like she’s yours now, but she was first promised to my lieutenant, Rocco.
That was the arrangement I set in motion.
She should have been his, until I saw the better path and claimed her future differently.
” His gaze slid over Leif’s shoulder, hunting for Mariah and not finding her.
“Like I said, we could still be brothers. Where is she?”
“No longer your business,” Leif said. He hit him once.
Not a showy punch. Not a brawl maker. A short, savage shot that turned the lights off in Stellan’s eyes and dropped him to his knees.
Leif caught his hair in one hand and brought his head up so they’d look at each other while he learned.
“Who gave you the schedule for my meeting in the conference room?” Leif asked, his tone low and certain.
Stellan hesitated, then shook his head sharply. “I don’t know,” he insisted. “If Rocco acted, it wasn’t on my command.”
Leif’s gaze narrowed, voice cutting low.
“But he’s your lieutenant. Any door he slips through, you already have the keys to.
Any insider he leans on, you can reach. Don’t pretend otherwise.
” Stellan tried to spit. Leif’s hand tightened in his hair and corrected the impulse. “Try again,” he said pleasantly. “Who?”
Stellan’s jaw worked, resisting, but Leif’s grip in his hair tightened until bone creaked. Under that pressure the denial cracked. “Security,” he ground out at last, words thick, grudging. “Your house leaks like the river after rain.”
“Names,” Leif said.
Stellan coughed a laugh and blood. “You kill me, you never know.”
Magnus stepped into the light, shoulders squared, hands buried in his coat pockets like a man out for coffee but eyes sharp as knives. “I know enough without you,” he said. “But thank you for confirming you had help.” He looked down at Stellan as if weighing what cut fit best. “Leif?”
Leif’s fingers tightened. “You lit a timer under my table,” he said. “You talked about my woman like she’s a chair you can move between rooms. The only reason you’re breathing is because I want to make sure we have every bit of information you have.”
“Arrogant,” Stellan said, trying on a smirk that didn’t fit his new face.
“Accurate,” Leif said. He let go. “Take him out of my bay,” he told Magnus. “Lose his phone.”
They dragged Stellan back to his own car and put him in the rear like a child who’d misbehaved at dinner.
Leif stood in the noise that followed while Magnus’s crew finished the tidy part of a messy morning.
Trucks boxed for impound. Men blindfolded and cuffed and sent to different rooms of the city to think about what loyalty felt like when it had a price. The river kept being the river.
He found Mariah again at the edge of the bay, arms folded, eyes on the water.
He slid behind her, wrapped his arms around her waist, and drew her against him.
She let herself fit, her back to his chest, her head tipping to his shoulder like her body remembered something from a different night and wanted it now.
“Your brothers?” she asked softly.
“Running lanes,” he said. “By tonight, Stellan won’t have a crew he trusts.” He kissed the curve where her neck met her shoulder, slow. She shivered and pressed closer. “By tomorrow, your brother won’t have a river he can pretend belongs to him.”
“And after that?” she asked.
“After that, we talk to Cade.” She tensed and he tightened his hold.
“Not to hand you to anyone. To put politics where they belong and blood where it fits. The Dantes need to hear what the Brand has done. I need answers about what it means when a mark crosses houses.” He set his palm over hers, his lion lined up with hers.
Heat pulsed from both. “And I need the ledger to be the beginning of a conversation, not the end.”
She turned in his arms and looked up at him. “You don’t scare me,” she said. “You should. But you don’t.”
“Good,” he said. “I want you to fear everything that isn’t me.” He kissed her again, open, hungry, until Tomas cleared his throat very quietly from too close and Leif lifted his head without letting her go.
“Boss,” Tomas said. “Message came to her phone while you were teaching manners. Unknown number.”
Leif caught the change in Mariah’s body, the way one part of her went cold while the rest stayed pressed warm to him. He took the device from Tomas, looked at the screen, and his smile went thin.
YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE MINE. Below the words, a location pin pulsed. VOSS & VINE. 8:00 PM.
He handed the phone to her. She stared a long second and then looked up. No fear. Just the rage of someone who refuses to be owned.
“He’s not subtle,” she said.
Leif’s gaze sharpened. “He’s not stupid either. A public corner, a wine bar, eight o’clock? That isn’t a meeting. That’s bait. He’s set a stage because he thinks he can draw us out where he has control waiting.”
“Then we spring the trap on him,” she said.
“He won’t be alive after,” Leif promised, and every man who heard it straightened.
He brushed his knuckles down Mariah’s cheek and let his hand settle at her throat for a breath, not squeezing, just sensing the fragile, furious life under his palm. “Together,” he said.
“Together,” she answered.
He dropped his hand, laced their fingers, and turned toward the light. The river slid on, indifferent. Leif wasn’t. He planned to make the water remember a name.