Page 70 of Vow Of Fire

I stared at him, aghast. “I didn’t, but Alberto could have given them the details. He’d be within his rights to do so. I mean, it’s their art.”

He pushed away from the chair. “I knew I couldn’t trust that weasel.”

Picking up his phone, he fired off a text, probably to his brother. A chill settled over me. I didn’t like Alberto’s chances.

Once he was done, he threw the phone down and raised his gaze to mine. “They waited for the container to cross the Atlantic, then sent a team to take it off our hands the second it docked. Six of my men in body bags. Three million in product walking back into their own warehouse like it never left.”

“But why?” My voice came out as a squeak. “If they sold it to you, why steal it back? You already paid them⁠—”

“Because they don’t want our money.” He paced again.

“They don’t?” I ran a hand through my hair. Okay, now I was really confused.

“They want our supply route. By hitting us at the docks, they were sending a message: the Marcellis can’t protect their product coming into New York.” He turned to me. “You make a family look weak in front of its customers, the customers go elsewhere. The distributors go elsewhere. The whole fucking network bleeds out. Then the scum that they are walk in and offer to do it cheaper, cleaner, faster, using a nice little gallery in SoHo as their private port of entry.”

I went cold. “My gallery?”

He dipped his head. “Your gallery.”

“Oh God.” I dropped my face into my hands. This was getting crazier by the second. “I don’t believe this.”

“They want to push you out and use it themselves,” he continued, almost as if he was thinking out loud, piecing it all together. “That’s why they went to your apartment.”

I gasped. “That was them?”

“Probably a hitman hired by them.”

“I think I’m going to throw up.” I put a hand over my mouth.

He looked at me in concern. “Really?”

I nodded.

He strode over to the sink, poured me a cup of water, and set it in front of me on the table. “Drink that.”

I reached for it, my hand trembling so hard I could barely hold the glass.

“I can’t believe I didn’t see this.” I took a desperate sip. It helped ease the bile lodging in my throat.

“You said you picked up several transactions over the last year,” he continued, standing opposite me on the other side of the table. “So they’ve been doing this for some time.”

I took another gulp of water.

“Some of those were Malakov,” I reminded him, once I could trust myself to speak.

He drummed his fingers on the back of the chair. “They knew we’d suspect the Russians. Orlov was also buying up Reyes paintings. Los Santos Rotos knew that. They planned the hit so it would look like Malakov. They wanted us turning our guns on the Bratva while they walked off with our entire route.”

I sank back into the chair and clasped my hands together in my lap. This was a lot. I didn’t know if I could get my head around it. Closing my eyes, I tried to stop the tears. I failed.

I’d worked so hard. I thought about every artist I’d hung, every wall I’d painted, every receipt I’d saved in a shoebox before I could afford a real bookkeeper.

Now men I’d never met had turned it into a drug smuggling operation.

With a sob, I lowered my head as hot tears ran down my face.

I felt his hand before I saw it. Two fingers under my chin, lifting my face up.

“Look at me,” he demanded.