Chapter 16 Nico
The door closes behind me and the quiet hits hard. For a second, I just stand there in the hallway outside my own penthouse, palms braced on the cool wood of the door, heart punching against my ribs like it’s trying to get back to her.
Mine now.
The words came out of my mouth before I could stop them.
The worst part is I meant them.
I push off the doors, rolling the tension out of my shoulders as I walk toward the private lift that takes me down to the garage. Rossi falls into step beside me, a dark shadow in an expensive suit.
“She all right?” he asks.
I nod once. “She’s fine.” Fine is a fucking lie. She’s bruised, homeless, and just propositioned me with a no-strings fling like it wouldn’t cost her anything. Like it won’t cost me everything. “She’s scared,” I add. “But she’s trying not to be.”
Rossi gives a grunt that might be agreement. “She’s tougher than she looks.”
You have no idea.
The doors open, and we step into the underground garage. The air down here smells of concrete and gasoline and old money. My driver waits by the car, holding the rear door open; I wave him off and slide behind the wheel myself.
Rossi raises a brow but doesn’t comment, he just takes the passenger seat.
I need control of something I can actually steer.
The engine purrs to life. I pull out, the city swallowing us whole as we move into traffic.
For a few blocks, neither of us speaks. My head is too full with the last ten minutes: the wall at her back, her chin tipped up, the way she said I’m in like she was stepping off a cliff and hoping I’d catch her.
Fucking reckless woman.
Reckless man.
“What’s the meeting, exactly?” Rossi asks, breaking the silence.
“Adi wants an update on Orlov’s financials. Matteo’s bringing gossip from the clubs. We see if anything intersects.” I tap the steering wheel with my thumb. “And we make sure no one has a gun pointed at my uncle’s head before we put one there ourselves.”
“You think Domenico knows how deep he’s in?”
“He’s not stupid.” My jaw tightens. “He knows.”
Rossi nods once. “Then he made his choice.”
Yeah.
And I made mine.
Because somewhere between Isabella’s first scream and her asking me to fuck her without strings, I went from seeing her as a problem to seeing her as a line I won’t let anyone cross.
Including the men who share my blood.
The ISM building is all glass and steel and old power, set back from the street behind polished stone planters and discrete security. I park in the private underground bay and let Rossi take the lead through the secure entrance, biometric scanners humming quietly as they accept us.
Upstairs, Adi is already in the conference room when we step in, suit jacket off, sleeves rolled, tie loosened but still precise. A laptop is open in front of him, several files spread in neat lines.
He looks up, eyes sharp. “You’re late,” he says.
“You’re annoying,” I reply, closing the door behind me.
Matteo lounges at the far end of the table, black shirt open at the throat, ankle kicked over his knee, scrolling on his phone. He glances up, grin flashing. “Look who returned from playing house,” he drawls. “How’s our little journalist guest? Still breathing? Still gorgeous?”
“Watch it,” I say mildly.
The warning lands anyway.
Matteo’s grin tilts. “Relax, Nic. I’m just appreciating the scenery from afar. You, on the other hand…” He whistles under his breath. “You look like a man who didn’t sleep.”
I think of her soft weight in my arms last night, the heat of her pressed against my side, the way every muscle in my body locked when she whispered, I feel safe when you’re close.
“I slept enough,” I say.
Adi eyes me over the rim of his glasses. “What happened?”
“Nothing that concerns this meeting,” I deflect, dropping into the chair opposite him. “Talk.”
He lets it go for now, and clicks a few keys.
The screen shifts to a chart of connections, companies, shell corporations, arrows tying them together in a web.
“This,” he says, “is the last five years of Orlov’s legitimate holdings.
Shipping, real estate, a couple of nightclubs, three casinos in Eastern Europe. Nothing surprising.”
He hits another key. “And this is what happens when you compare those holdings to the accounts our father froze him out of when he converted the docks.”
The chart expands, new lines spidering outward—charities, LLCs, consulting firms that don’t consult a single thing.
Matteo straightens. “Jesus.”
“Yeah.” Adi taps an innocuous-looking name halfway down the screen.
“This shell, Nova Horizon Group, has been dormant for six years. No movement. No deposits. Then, seven months ago, there’s been a sudden influx of capital from three different sources.
Two we can tie back to Orlov’s side businesses.
The third is an anonymous donor funneled through an old contact at the docks.
Guess who that contact used to report to. ”
My teeth grind. “Domenico.”
Adi nods. “We don’t have him on paper yet, but the pattern is there. Money leaves an account owned by one of his old companies, filters through three intermediaries, then lands here. From there, it pays out to a handful of entities, including one that matches the club Rossi tracked the call to.”
“So, Orlov’s bankrolling his comeback with help from the uncle,” Matteo says. “How cute. Getting the band back together.”
Rossi folds his arms. “He’s keeping it just clean enough to argue plausible deniability if anyone goes digging. But he miscalculated one thing.”
“What’s that?” Matteo asks.
“Isabella,” Rossi says simply. “Her article forced movement. You don’t start shoving pawns around the board until you’re ready to risk some pieces. Orlov and Domenico were ready. They just didn’t expect you to move this fast.”
I lean back in my chair, exhaling slowly. “She thinks she was the one poking the beast,” I murmur. “But someone pointed her right at it.”
Matteo frowns. “You think the original tip came from Domenico?”
“It fits,” I say. “He feeds her enough breadcrumbs to get our name in the papers, taint the company, make us look dirty, weaken our position. Orlov takes the opportunity to come at us sideways while we’re busy doing damage control. When she doesn’t back down, they escalate. Car, apartment, fire.”
“And now?” Adi asks.
“Now the girl is in our house,” Matteo says.
“Protected. And for the first time, they’re on the back foot.
They don’t know what you know.” Matteo clears his throat, unusually hesitant, fingers drumming against the table instead of spinning the chair like he usually does.
“There’s something else. I, uh… found something at Dad’s place,” he says finally.
I look up sharply. Matteo only hesitates like that when something is seriously wrong.
Adi stills too. “Found what?”
Matteo reaches into his jacket and pulls out a small, folded square of yellowed newsprint. He places it on the table. Even from across the counter, I recognize the brittle edges, the way time has browned it.
Adi leans forward first. “Is this…”
“An obituary,” Matteo says quietly, gaze flicking to me. “For Marcus Romano.”
Isabella’s father. My stomach drops. “Where did you get this?” I ask, voice low.
Matteo swallows. “In Dad’s study. Back behind the old cigar humidor, where he kept the stuff he didn’t want us or Mom to find.” He hesitates again. “It wasn’t filed with business things. It was separate. Hidden.”
Adi frowns, pulling the paper closer. “Why would Dad keep this?”
Matteo shakes his head. “I don’t know. But it bothered me. Dad didn’t keep clippings unless something about them mattered.”
My jaw tightens. Hard. “And you’re sure he didn’t know the Romanos personally?”
“Not that I ever heard,” Matteo says. “But look,” he taps the top edge of the clipping, “this was trimmed down. The corners cut. Like someone saved just the part they cared about.”
A thread pulls tight in my chest.
Adi exhales, brows furrowed. “Romano died in what, some kind of unsolved mugging? Wrong place, wrong time?”
“That’s what the reports said,” Matteo mutters. “But Dad didn’t collect strangers’ obituaries.”
The silence stretches.
Charged. Sharp. A crack in the foundation.
I fight to keep my voice even. “You think there’s a connection.”
Matteo doesn’t flinch. “I think it’s strange timing that Isabella’s being targeted, that someone fed her a story about us, and suddenly her family name is showing up in our father’s hidden files.”
Adi closes the clipping gently, like it’s something alive. “It could be nothing. Or it could be the start of something we don’t want to look at.”
I stare at the brittle square of paper.
If this clipping has anything to do with why she’s in danger now…
If her father’s death wasn’t random… If this goes deeper, then how can I start something with her, even if it’s just a fling?
Am I being selfish here, keeping this from her?
Or am I protecting her from something which might be nothing?
A cold, sharp certainty slices through me. “We keep this between us,” I say quietly. “Isabella doesn’t hear a word.”
My brothers nod immediately.
“Not until we know what the hell it means,” Matteo adds.
“And not until we know why Dad kept it,” Adi finishes.
I fold the clipping once more, jaw tight.
And a new thought forms, dark, unwelcome, unavoidable: Someone connected her father’s death to our family long before she ever printed that article.
Silence settles over the table. I tap my fingers against the wood, thinking. “Isabella continues digging,” I say finally. “But she does it with blinders. We feed her parts of this. Enough to keep her busy and productive, not enough to put additional targets on her back.”
Matteo grins. “So, she becomes our in-house bloodhound?”
“Don’t call her that,” I snap.
His brows shoot up. “Jesus, you’ve got it bad.”
Adi looks between us, lips twitching once before smoothing out. “Does she know you’re planning to use her work to trap the men trying to kill her?”
“She knows she’s helping us,” I say. “She asked for something real. This is it. I’m not going to lie about that part.”
“And the part about her father somehow being linked to us stays between us,” Adi says quietly. “You sit on that until we’re sure.”
My jaw locks as I nod.
Images flash: Isabella’s voice breaking when she talked about her dad, the way she looked at the charred mess of her apartment building, like someone had burned the last pieces of him she had left.
“She’s barely holding it together as it is,” I say.
“Telling her now, when all we have is a theory and a cut-out old obituary, is cruel. And if it turns out to be wrong…” I shake my head.
“No. She gets that truth when I can put the men responsible in front of her in handcuffs or a body bag. Not before.”
Adi studies me for a long beat. “Dad would agree with you,” he says finally.
Maybe.
Or maybe he’d tell me to keep my distance from the woman who makes my heart pound like it’s twenty again and my head too fuzzy to be useful. Especially when she’s somehow linked to a historical threat that’s rearing its head now my father is dead.
Matteo sighs, dropping his phone on the table. “Okay, enough doom and gloom. Tell us what’s really eating you, Nic. Because this isn’t just business making you twitch.”
He’s not wrong. He’s never as oblivious as he pretends. “She asked for a fling,” I say flatly.
Adi blinks. “I’m sorry?”
“She asked for a no-strings arrangement,” I clarify, jaw tight. “Her words. Just sex. No future, no expectations.”
Matteo lets out a delighted bark of laughter. “Holy shit. I love her.”
“Shut up,” I growl.
He lifts his hands. “I mean that in a completely respectful, non-threatening, please-don’t-kill-me way, but come on, that’s hot.”
Adi rubs his forehead. “And you said…?”
“Yes,” I admit.
A beat of stunned silence.
Adi is the one who breaks it. “You trust yourself with that?”
Do I?
I picture her backed against the wall, pupils blown, breathing fast, telling me she’s tired of pretending there’s nothing between us. I remember the way my body reacted, the way my self-control frayed when she said I’m in.
“I trust that keeping her at arm’s length isn’t working,” I say. “She’s in my space. In my head.” In my arms last night, even if it was just holding her while she slept. “Pushing this away doesn’t make it disappear. It just makes me worse at pretending.”
Adi leans back, thoughtful. “So you’d rather… lean into it?”
“I’d rather know where she is and how she feels,” I say. “If she’s in my bed, I can keep her safe. If she thinks I don’t want her, she’ll keep trying to push me away, and that will make her unpredictable.”
Matteo snorts. “You’re rationalizing wanting to fuck her six ways from Sunday as a security strategy.”
“I’m multitasking,” I snap.
He laughs, delighted.
Adi’s expression softens just a fraction. “Be careful, Nic,” he says quietly. “You’ve always taken care of everyone else. If you’re going to let someone get close enough to matter, make sure she’s not just another weight you’re adding to your shoulders.”
“She’s not a weight,” I say before I can stop myself.
And there it is.
The truth.
She’s the first thing in a long time that feels like something for me.
“I’ll handle it,” I add, because that’s what I always say.
Adi nods once, accepting that for now. “Then let’s focus on what we can control today.
We keep following the money. Matteo keeps listening for Orlov’s name in the wrong mouths.
You keep Isabella close and start feeding her the threads we want pulled.
And we move slowly. No big moves until we’re sure which way this is going to break. ”
“Got it,” Matteo says. “I’ll head to the club after dinner. Word is, Orlov’s people like to drink where the women are pretty and the music’s loud. I’ll make sure the right questions get floated.”
We wrap the meeting with the usual efficiency, assignments, timelines, contingencies. Rossi peels off to coordinate with security, Adi disappears back into his office, and Matteo walks me to the elevator.
He waits until the doors are closed before speaking. “You’re in deep, huh?” he says quietly.
I stare as the floor numbers tick down. “Deeper than I planned.”
He bumps his shoulder lightly against mine. “For what it’s worth? She seems like the first woman you’ve brought home who might actually like the man, not the name.”
“Don’t get poetic on me,” I mutter.
He grins. “Who said I was talking about you?”
I flip him off.
He laughs as the doors open, then claps my shoulder once. “Go home, big brother. Try not to scare her off before I get to officially charm her.”
“She’s not interested,” I lie.
“In me? I know.” He winks. “That’s what makes it fun.”
I shake my head, but there’s no real heat in it. This is us. Bickering on the edge of a knife, always circling the same core: family first.
Us three against the world.
Only now, there’s a fourth name in the equation.