Page 108 of Vicious Kingdom

Leo pounced. “You fucking did!”

“I stole from my father foryou,” I shot back. “I’ve been playing on your team this whole time!”

“A likely story,” Leo exploded, but his brother cut him off with a stern bark of command.

“Why, Annaliese?” the don demanded.

Tell them!

But then my secret would be out. They would look at me like the pathetic little love-struck creature that I was.

Better that than a traitor.

“Because I wanted him to blackmail my father,” I breathed.

Silence pulsed in the room.

“I was hoping to be used as collateral.” I lifted my ring. “It worked.”

The confession landed between us like a stone dropped into still water, sending shockwaves that rippled outward with devastating force, shaking the foundation of everything solid we knew. Leo’s face transformed, shock bleeding into something darker, more wounded. His eyes, obsidian pools of disbelief, bore into me, searing through the space between us with a painthat twisted my heart. The granite mask he wore shattered, replaced by a raw, unguarded hurt that made my stomach churn.

I played him.

A man of his caliber would never live this down. Which was exactly why I didn’t want to tell him it was me sending him anonymous information.

Alessandro sat back, his mouth a hard, grim line as if he had just tasted the bitterness of betrayal on his tongue. Beside me, I felt Penelope recoil, her hand flying to her mouth, eyes wide with disbelief. The world I had built around my secret began to crumble, each silent second eroding years of careful deception, until I was standing amidst the ruins, exposed and trembling.

Leo’s dark expression never wavered, but I could see the cracks spidering beneath the surface, the fury brewing beneath his stunned exterior like a storm gathering strength.

“You what?” he whispered, his voice a deadly calm.

I swallowed hard, my throat closing around the words. "I wanted you. From the first moment I decided to make you mine—I’ve never stopped loving you. I twisted fate to my advantage.”

If a man did that exact same thing, if I wrote it in a romance novel, readers would call his gesture romantic.

Reality was anything but.

Alessandro leaned forward, his expression unreadable. “So you manipulated my brother into marriage?”

“Not exactly,” I said, the words tumbling out faster now. “I sent anonymous information, yes. But I never told him anything about Leo; or hinted to use me to sweeten the deal. I just…I wanted him to have leverage. I thought maybe Leo would need my help, and then….”

“And then what?” Leo’s voice cut through me. “I’d fall madly in love with my savior?”

The cruel edge shattered me.

That was exactly the plan. Spoken now in that callous tone, I wanted to curl up in a ball and die.

“I never betrayed your famiglia,” I said to the don.

“No, but you betrayed me,” Leo snapped.

Did I? I could see how he would reach that conclusion. It was the opposite edge of the coin, and Fate was playing a cruel trick on me by flipping it.

“I see.” Alessandro pressed his hands on the desk and rose. “And are you still willing to find whatever dirt your father has on Voss?”

I grasped at the lifeline. “Absolutely!”

“The fact that you sent my brother the tip sheets, the profit shares, the paper trail of money—that proves you can do it. So we have our bargain, and I see no reason for any more of my involvement in this—” the don gestured between his brother and me “—intimate issue.”