Page 83 of Wicked Mafia Sinner

Rowan's hand presses the small of my back. The warmth is steady and I lean into it.

Rafael scans the contents and his expression doesn't change. He passes it to Luca without a word. Luca reads, dark eyes narrowing.

"How long have you had this?" Rafael's voice is measured and calm, steel underneath, bad news absorbed and already being processed.

"Since the night of the murder."

"These shipping routes match our intelligence. Names, dates, the pipeline we've been tracking for months. This fills some very important gaps we had."

I twine my fingers together and I can’t keep the failure I feel deep in my heart from coloring my tone. “I'm sorry it took so long. Maybe had I been faster at reading it it could have saved some lives.”

"Not likely, sweetheart."

The voice comes from the stairwell.

Every head in the lobby turns at once. My blood runs cold from the top of my head all the way to my soles.

Nikolai steps out of the stairwell door dressed in a charcoal suit that screams money and not a hair out of place. Eyes the color of Rowan’s sweep the lobby with leisurely precision, a rehearsed entrance timed to the second.

To the side of Nikolai, the elevator dings. The doors slide open and four men in black suits step out with guns raised, fanning into the lobby with the coordinated efficiency of a unit that has rehearsed this exact formation. Two more emerge from a side corridor. The click of safeties releasing echoes off the marble ceiling in a sharp, percussive rhythm.

Nikolai's gaze finds mine. He smiles, and it’s the same one I remember from the alley. Cold, calculating and murderous. All signs of warmth have been stripped out and what remains is nothing more than a man masking his animalistic nature.

"Hi, Cora." His voice is polished yet there’s an invisible edge to his tone that cuts to the core. "Nice to see you again. I see you've been keeping it in the family." His eyes slide to Rowan. "Father. I didn’t realize you liked sloppy seconds. How disappointing.”

As he speaks, his eyes laser on me. Chills erupt over my skin and my stomach clenches from the cold touch of death his attention brings.

“Did he tell you that all the women he hooks up with end up dead? You should ask him about that, sweetheart. It's a heartwarming story."

"Don't call me sweetheart," I correct him with a bitter grit to my tone. I mentally latch onto the steady hand on my back to keep myself grounded.

"Why not? I called you sweetheart first. Before he did. Before any of this." His hand gestures at the lobby, at Rowan. "You were mine before you were his."

"I was never yours."

“Don’t let him pull you into his game,” Rowan urges in a quiet tone I have to strain to hear.

"No." Nikolai's smile doesn't waver. "I suppose not. You didn't give me what you gave him, did you? My father always did take things that didn't belong to him."

My hands curl into fists at my sides. Rowan's body shifts behind me, every muscle locking into the stillness I've learned to read as the moment before he moves, the glacier deciding to shift. His voice comes out low, rough, and stripped of everything except the warning underneath it.

"Walk away, Nikolai."

"Or what, dear old Dad? You'll abandon me again? You're twenty years too late for that threat."

Raine grabs my arm. Soren steps in front of her with a movement so fluid and instinctive that it registers in my mind as muscle memory for him rather than a conscious decision.

Rafael, dry as bone, glances from Nikolai to the armed men to the elevator and back. "Looks like I'm going to have a long talk with security after this."

Nikolai laughs. Brief. Sharp. No joy in it. "Security let me in, Milano. Money talks louder than loyalty in this building. You should know that. You built this empire on exactly that principle."

"I built this empire on brotherhood," Rafael counters, almost like he’s bored by all this exchange. "Something you wouldn't recognize."

Nikolai's jaw tightens. The mask slips for a fraction of a second, and underneath it I catch the flash of a wound so deep it predates me, predates Chicago, predates everything except a ten-year-old boy in a boarding school waiting for a father who never came. Then the mask is back and the smile is back and he raises one hand. The men with guns tighten their formation.

"I came to take what belongs to me." His eyes find Rafael's hand, where the folded page still rests between his fingers. "And for a conversation with my father that's been twenty years overdue."

Nikolai looks at me. Then at Rowan. "Family reunion," he says. He spreads his hands. "How touching. Shall we begin?"