Page 98 of Jayson
Lucky shoves his tumbler aside, all trace of amusement gone. “Let’s be perfectly clear. Your commissioner may want Miss Bishop. He may even need her. But she has obligations to us. Ones that supersede anything Maddox has scribbled on a legal pad.”
“That’s not negotiable?” Ferris asks, already knowing the answer.“Maddox assures us she won’t be a problem,” he adds. “Once he has her.”
Meaning he plans to make sure she disappears.
Jayson couldn’t bring himself to end her. Fought tooth and nail to protect her. Bled for it. And there’s no way in hell I’m letting that effort go to waste.
I lift my glass, let the liquor touch my tongue like a warning.
“Negotiate with a corpse if you want, Ferris. But the girl stays where she is. Under our roof. Under our flag.”
A pause. Then Emilio sighs, tilts his head—not insulted, not angry. Just resigned. “Very well. We’ll inform Maddox the Gatti-Moreno alliance… declines.”
“Not declines,” Lucky says. “Refuses. You tell him this—” He leans forward, voice low and cold as the grave.“If he tries to take her, I’ll tear every tooth from his skull and string them like prayer beads.”
Something flickers in Ferris’s gaze. Not fear. But respect.
Emilio exhales, folds his hands. “Noted.”
I set my tumbler down, untouched. “Conversation’s over.”
But they don’t move. Emilio holds my stare. “Kanyan, I told him this might happen. I warned him. He insists he only wants her safe.”
“Then he shouldn’t have hired a cleaner to drag her out of her bed in the middle of the night.”
Emilio’s brows rise. “Cleaner?”
“Someone’s already tried to take her. Jayson handled it. Swiftly. But if there’s another attempt, I won’t just clean it up—I’ll return the favor.”
Ferris curses under his breath. Emilio’s silence is heavier than the wood-paneled walls.
“That… wasn’t disclosed to us,” Emilio says quietly.
“No,” I murmur. “Because Maddox is feeding you a lie. And you don’t need me to tell you what happens to a girl like her if she ends up in his hands. You know.You’ve seen it.”
The room falls to silence. Outside, the city pulses like a dying heart.
Emilio reaches for the decanter, nudges it toward me—a gesture of peace.
“If we find out he’s lied?—”
“You will.” I rise, buttoning my jacket. “And when you do, you know where to find me. But don’t get in my way again.”
Lucky rises beside me, looks disdainfully at the bottle. “And next time? Bring better Scotch. War is expensive.”
39
KEIRA
Silence isn’t silent in a house this old. It’s a living, breathing thing—wooden bones settling, water whispering through copper veins, distant wind lifting the gutters like a giant exhaling. Tonight, the quiet feels especially full-bodied, swollen with secrets too heavy to float.
I slip out of bed, still wearing Jayson’s black T-shirt, hem brushing the tops of my thighs. My legs wobble—equal parts afterglow and exhaustion—but a prickle at the base of my skull drags me forward. Down the hallway, the study door hangs half-open, light knifing across the Persian runner.
Jayson’s voice slices through the hush, low and venomous.
“I don’t give a damn if he’s bleeding out in the street. Nobody gets five minutes with her. You hear me, Lucky? Not the Cavalhos, not Maddox—no one.”
The name detonates in my chest.Maddox.
