18. Ivy
IVY
I’m dressed and ready before either of them, which I take private satisfaction in, waiting in the kitchen with the espresso already prepared. The machine is a lot like the one I got used to back in Italy. Liam has impressive taste.
I’m frothing milk when Nick joins me, pausing only half a second before joining me at the counter. “How do you take yours?” I ask.
“Just the milk, please.” He’s studying me, maybe amused. If he thinks there’s anything strange about me being fully dressed and ready to go, he doesn’t show it.
Somehow, I get the feeling that won’t be the case for much longer.
We’re both drinking our lattes when Liam comes in, dressed in a dark suit.
The word formidable comes to mind. He’s a formidable person.
Look where he ended up compared to where he started out.
“I’m glad to see you’re making yourself at home,” he offers, and I believe him.
There isn’t so much as a hint of sarcasm in it.
“Thank you for making it so easy to feel at home.” I slide an espresso his way, and he takes it straight, no milk. Interesting. Not surprising, though.
He checks the impressive watch flashing on his wrist. “The car should be ready in the garage. We’re set to meet at eight.”
I set down my cup. “We’re sure about this place? The restaurant?”
He arches an eyebrow but keeps his thoughts to himself, settling on nodding. “It’s where we met with Gabriel the day he gave us the information on you. I’ve already sent a car with three of my guys to make sure everything’s on the up and up. They texted to give me the green light.”
I have to remember this isn’t anything new for either of them. They know what they’re doing. While I was on the other side of the ocean, they were handling meetings like this. It’s not up to me to protect them.
Just like it’s not up to them to protect me, which is what makes Nick’s hesitation so irritating when I follow them to the elevator. “Are you serious?” he murmurs, though he knows better than to get in my way.
“Yes. I am.”
“You know you don’t have to do this. We can handle it.” All it takes is a sharp look for him to close his mouth. He doesn’t know by now that I don’t need to be hovered over? I hope whatever’s happening between us physically doesn’t blur any lines or make him forget who he’s dealing with.
Liam, I notice, doesn’t bother questioning me.
He only gets into the front seat of a black SUV while Nick and I climb into the back.
The driver doesn’t say a word before pulling out from the garage into a brilliantly sunny day.
I watch the city go by and think about Gabriel and what I know of him.
He was always careful and controlled. The kind of man who doesn’t reach for things unless he knows he can take them.
Whatever he has to tell us, he’s had it in his back pocket for a while. He waited until the moment was right.
I find that more unsettling than if he had come to us and offered it. I don’t like the idea of him planning something, knowing we would eventually call on him for help. I keep my thoughts to myself, though, glad the ride is a short one.
The restaurant doesn’t look like much from the outside.
The grates are pulled over the windows at this time of day, the place dark inside.
A pair of men wait near the door, and when we step out of the SUV, they nod in unison.
I clock them in two seconds flat: armed, competent.
Well-dressed, professional. Two of Liam’s men who rode in the first car fall in step beside us as we head inside.
It smells like garlic and old coffee and something that might have been a sauce left simmering all night.
A few dozen empty tables fill the main room, chairs still up on most of them.
We move through all of it without stopping until we reach the back room, where Gabriel is already waiting. Because of course he is.
He’s seated at a table near the far wall with an espresso in front of him.
He’s handsome in the manner of something dangerous, all clean lines and careful stillness.
His eyes move over the three of us when we walk in, and when they reach me, they pause for a fraction of a second. “I see we have an addition.”
“Hello, Gabriel.” Since there are only two chairs set up across from him, I pull up a third and drop into it, crossing my legs, folding my hands in my lap. “It’s nice to see you.”
I can’t read his expression, but he inclines his head, accepting my presence, even though no one asked for his opinion.
Nick takes one of the chairs and places it on my left while Liam sits on my right.
Bracketed between them without any of us discussing it.
Like they decided without checking in with each other to protect me. I’ll let it go for now.
Liam doesn’t waste time. “You said you had something.” He’s sitting completely straight in his chair, taking command of the meeting the way some people have the power to do without much effort. Men like Vincenzo practically shout, all volume and bluster. Other men don’t need it.
“I do,” Gabriel confirms before lifting his espresso and taking a measured sip. He sets it back down carefully in the saucer. “As you probably know, my father is a man who has spent his life constructing a particular image. Traditional. Principled. A patriarch in the old sense.”
I nod slowly. The men follow suit.
“His image is the foundation of everything he is,” Gabriel continues, speaking slowly, almost like the words are coming to him on the fly, unrehearsed.
I know that can’t be true. This is not a man who makes a move without preparing first, something his father always praised him for.
“It’s the foundation of his standing, his alliances.
The loyalty he commands. He would do anything to protect it. ”
I know where this is headed. “You’re saying the image isn’t real?”
“I’m saying it’s incomplete.” His gaze lands on me and stays there without drifting to either my right or my left.
Like there’s something connecting us, which I suppose there is.
A shared experience. “My father has a secret. Every Thursday evening, without exception, he travels to a private establishment in Milan. He’s familiar enough there that the staff know him and know his…
preferences. He has specific arrangements. ”
The word arrangements pairs up with the word establishment and starts painting a picture while we sit in silence for a second or two.
It’s Nick who gives in to curiosity first. “What kind of arrangements?”
Gabriel gives his espresso cup a quarter turn in its saucer. For the first time, there’s something in his expression that costs him something to show. It’s not embarrassment. It’s something colder than that. “I think it’s better you see for yourselves.”
“That’s not an answer,” I tell him.
“No,” he agrees lightly. “It isn’t. I’m giving it to you for a reason.
” He looks at each of us in turn before settling on me again.
“If I describe it, you’ll form a picture.
That picture will be wrong, or it will be incomplete, or it will be close enough to the truth that you’ll think you understand it before you actually do. What my father does in that room—”
Whatever he’s seeing behind his eyes, it isn’t pleasant. “It would be better to witness it without expectation. You’ll understand why when you see it.”
The table goes quiet. Nick drums his fingers once along the edge, lightly. He’s arriving at the same conclusion I’ve already reached because he’s good at this. As good as I am.
Liam speaks before either of us can. “We’re supposed to walk into a situation blind on your word alone?”
“You’re supposed to walk in knowing everything except one detail,” Gabriel corrects him.
“I’ll give you the location, the layout, the schedule—everything I have.
The only thing I won’t give you in advance is the specifics of what you’ll find.
That part you’ll see with your own eyes, and it will be enough. ”
The three of us go tense, along with the guards standing behind us, when he reaches inside his jacket.
All he pulls out is a folded piece of paper, which he sets on the table in front of the three of us.
“The address. Membership only, no walk-ins, private security at the entrance and at least two more checkpoints inside. My father arrives at nine in the evening. The same room every time. He’s gone by midnight. ”
Liam unfolds the paper. His face reveals nothing.
“There’s a staff entrance at the rear,” Gabriel continues. “Less traffic, no guest security checkpoint. Getting footage of my father would require someone already inside the building.”
He pauses again before adding, “Inside as an employee.”
I know exactly what he’s saying. Considering the way the men to my left and right sit up straighter and barely stop short of growling, they understand, too. There’s a solid chance this will end up being a battle, but it’s not a battle we’re going to fight here.
Gabriel waits, letting all of this sink in.
When the silence has gone on long enough, he continues.
“Leverage. It’s the only currency that works against a man like my father.
Money won’t move him. He’s heard threats before.
His network is too deep to dismantle piece by piece—you could spend years pulling at loose threads, and he would rebuild faster than you could work. But this?”
He taps the folded paper in front of Liam. “This would cost him everything he’s spent his life protecting. His allies would step back. His standing in the family would collapse. Men who deferred to him out of respect would find their respect suddenly very difficult to locate.”
He looks at me directly before adding, “You want to stop looking over your shoulder? This is how.”
“I need everything you have on the staff entrance,” I announce, without checking in with either Liam or Nick. “The timing, the shift rotations, uniform. How they handle new hires.”
Nick turns to look at me. It isn’t a sharp look. It’s worse than that. The long, searching kind, the one that goes somewhere I don’t always know how to meet. “Ivy.”
“I need this to be over,” I murmur. “You know that.”
I watch as he swallows whatever he was going to say. I turn to Liam, whose jaw is clenched tight enough to make the muscle jump in his cheek. “I know what I’m doing,” I insist.
“I know you do.” He doesn’t say it easily, but it sounds like he means it. That matters more.
Gabriel finishes his espresso and sets the cup aside before standing and buttoning his jacket.
“I’ll send everything I have before the end of the day,” he promises.
“Schedule, layout, personnel. Get in, get the footage, get out clean. If this goes the way it should, he’ll have no choice.
Men like my father don’t fight battles they know they can’t survive. ”
His men fall in around him without a word. In under a minute, the room holds only the three of us and the guards Liam brought along.
Nobody speaks right away. I look at the piece of paper still sitting in front of Liam and think about this so-called establishment in Milan. No doubt it’s a brothel of some sort, somewhere flesh is sold. All I can do is wonder what goes on in there that could be so damning to a powerful man.
“I want a team on the ground before we land,” Liam decides, looking at Nick. “Armed, mobile, no traceable connection to us. I want three extraction routes mapped in advance and eyes on the building for at least forty-eight hours before anyone goes near it.”
“Not my first rodeo,” Nick reminds him, already typing something into his phone.
“I want a safe house within ten minutes of the location.”
“That, I can take care of,” I announce. They both swivel to look at me. “I have a safe house in Milan. Work took me there often enough that it only made sense.”
“A safe house Vincenzo would know about,” Liam points out, and a shudder of revulsion runs through me. Of course. I never gave out the address, but Vincenzo would be aware of it. Thanks to the tracker.
“He wouldn’t think to watch that location,” I decide, and I mean it. “I have safe houses all over Europe, for one thing. For another, he won’t expect me to come back now that I’m in the States. I have resources there that will come in handy.”
Liam exchanges a look with Nick before sighing like he hates the idea but knows better than to think he can stop me. “Whatever you say.” He picks up the piece of paper and folds it again along the existing crease, then slides it into his jacket pocket.
We ride back to the penthouse in silence. The city looks the same as it did on the way over, but I watch it anyway, because it gives me something to do that isn’t thinking too hard about Milan or the expression on Nick’s face when he understood I fully intend on going in there.
When we get back to the penthouse, Aurora is in the living room, curled into the corner of the sofa with a book in her lap. She looks up when we come in, and whatever she sees on Liam’s face makes her close the book without marking her page. She’s good at reading him.
He goes to her and says something low that I don’t catch. She listens, nods, then looks past his shoulder to me. Her steady gaze is probably meant to be reassuring, and somehow it is.
Then she looks back at Liam. “Do you want to go?” she asks him quietly. “You can tell me the truth.”
He hesitates, then nods. “Yes.”
“Then you should go.”
“No.” He says it the same way. Quiet, certain. Taking her hand, he turns it over in his, looking at it like there’s something important in the lines of her palm. “You’re here. My place is with you. Nick will keep them safe.”
She holds his hand with both of hers and doesn’t argue.
Something tells me she knows better than to argue with a decision that was never really up for debate in the first place.
He made it before she asked. He made it the moment she told him she was pregnant, probably, and every day since has only confirmed it.
The moment feels private, so I look away. Something aches in my chest, quietly, persistently.
Nick appears at my elbow. He says nothing. He only hands me a fresh latte from the kitchen, and when I take it, we exchange a look that contains more than I think either of us could ever put into words.