Page 28 of King of Malice
“Triston?” Killian asks and Mason stares across the island at the head of the Smith family.
“I’ve always wondered at the dichotomy in your businesses. There is a kindness in the way you run the sex clubs. You protect the women, it’s quiet, controlled. They are valued.”
“Shit.” Mason mutters next to me and the tension leaves my shoulders. They understand. “He bombed my club, not you.”
“He’s sabotaging my success so that he can control me. Without allies, I am far weaker.”
“And the casino you sold me in exchange for the marriage between Katarina and Ryker?” Triston asks.
“It was his. And he agreed because he wants the connection to your family. But I implied I’d wash his money in the other three establishments, and I don’t intend to follow through with my promise. Once he learns the truth, our cold war will get red hot.” I don’t say the last part. That I’d remove my father from this earth if I could. All he does is sow pain and suffering wherever he goes.
He destroyed my mother, he is attempting to do the same to my sisters.
Triston draws in a deep breath. “We understand bad fathers. Trust me on that.” Gris and Killian both nod. “But if all you say is true, how much danger will there be when your sister is a member of our family and you cut him from the business?”
“A lot.”
“Forgive me, but I’m not sure I’m ready to believe all that Dimitri has said,” Jake Kincaid cuts in. “Has anyone else remembered that he was meeting with the Italians? He tried to make a dealbehind our back even when he’d agreed to tie his business with ours.”
I grimace. “I was meeting with the Italians. I won’t lie to you. But I was neither going to sell them one of the casinos, nor was I breaching any part of our contract.” I blow out a breath. “I was hiring them to do a job that I can’t.”
“What job is that?” Mason asks quietly.
This information does not strengthen my position as an honorable man. “He has my sisters in a prison. He’s a threat to my daughter and the woman…” I stop before I say Ava’s name.
“The nanny?” Killian asks. Fucking Killian. He can move through shadows like no man I’ve ever met, and he knows all sorts of secrets, including my feelings about Ava.
“You want to take out your father?” Gris asks, popping a giant nacho in his mouth. “Bold. And fucked up.”
“He killed my mother. Slowly. Painfully.” I stop, gritting my teeth to keep the rest of my feelings in, though they’ve leaked out with what I did say.
I shouldn’t have said that. While I knew I’d have to offer up some skeletons, I’m too raw on the topic of my mother to use the information as a point of negotiation. And this is about gaining their partnership again, not providing them more fuel to hate me.
But those words seem to shift the mood and not against me. “We know about that too,” Mason rumbles. “If I learned anything from my father, it was how not to conduct a marriage or raise children.”
We all come to this shadowed life with deep scars. But my daughter and Ava will live in the light. I take another slow pull on my beer. It’s not my normal drink, but it creates the proper pauses I need. “I want safety for my family. Security. I’d pay a great deal for that privilege.”
“How much?” Mason asks.
“What does safety mean?” Triston follows up. Both are excellent questions. I look across the island at Killian, the shadow, as he pops a chip into his mouth and then takes a drink from his glass of water. He’s the one man without a beer.
When he swallows, he gives a near imperceptible nod. “He wants me to kill his father, for one.”
“No,” Triston cuts his hand through the air. “That is not on the table.”
Killian doesn’t look at his brother, he stares at me. “I’ve seen you with the nanny. You love her.”
I swallow, not saying a word.
“I didn’t start following you until six months ago, didn’t begin scoping out your clubs until last month. But I hear the girls that work for you talk…”
I still. “And?”
“They say that you’re a saint in sinner’s clothing. That they’ve never been safer. They say they’ll follow you wherever you go because they aren’t exploited, they are protected. What did he do to your mother?”
I won’t tell them all of it. “She was a prostitute. I’m not ashamed, she had more heart in her pinky finger than he does in his whole body. But he treated her like…” I stop, my jaw going rock hard. I can’t share her secrets, not in front of strangers.
Killian’s hand flexes. “I’ll do it, even if you don’t close the deal with my brothers.”
