Page 44 of The Boss
The door opened.
Rocco walked in with a smile that didn’t include his eyes. He wore expensive rage like a suit he hadn’t paid for. Broad shoulders, careful hair, lips he tightened when he couldn’t hit things. He moved like he needed the room to register him. Some of it did. Most of it didn’t. He didn’t likethat.
Mariah didn’t look straight at him. She watched the room watch him. The hostess’s smile flickered. The bartender’s hand paused above a bottle. Acouple near the door finished their glasses too fast as if their bodies wanted them to be anywhere else. The air shifted, like pressure before a storm.
Rocco saw them and altered course from the hostess stand, ignoring a hand that offered a menu. He didn’t ask before he took the chair across from them. He dragged it with a scrape. He wanted noise.
Leif didn’t look up until Rocco’s cologne reached them. Then he lifted his gaze, slow, and it seemed as though the temperature in the room dropped a degree.
“Sit,” Leif said.
Rocco sat. His pupils were too wide. He dragged his stare over Mariah like a hand she would’ve broken. “You were supposed to be mine.”
“She isn’t,” Leif said. His fingers didn’t tighten on her shoulder, but heat pulsed from his palm like a warning. “Say anything else.”
Rocco smiled. It twitched. “You can’t kill me here. Too many eyes. Too many cameras. Too much of your brand-new reputation to risk.”
“I don’t need to kill you here,” Leif said, voice soft enough to be mistaken for kind... if you were an idiot. “I just need you to understand you walked into my claws. You thought this was your trap. It isn’t.” He let that sit. “It’s mine.”
For a heartbeat Rocco almost hid it. Then something moved behind his eyes and he couldn’t help himself. Triumph. He leaned back, opened his hands, careless and showy, and Mariah saw it. The cuff of his jacket rode up. The thin black line of a wire tucked along his wrist and under the sleeve. He was miked.
Her pulse ticked. She tipped her glass and laughed at something only she heard, letting the movement spill her hair over her shoulder to hide her mouth. “He’s wearing a wire,” she said, voice barely sound.
Leif didn’t move, but she felt the change in him the way she felt a current shift under a boat. “I see it,” he said, lips hardly moving. “Let him play.”
Rocco crossed his ankle over his knee like a man posing for a portrait. “I loved you,” he told Mariah, like the words cost him money he wanted back. “Still do. You and me—meant. Your brother knew.”
“My brother is irrelevant,” she said, because pushing the words out of her throat was better than letting fear in. “And you loved what I could do for you.”
“What you are,” he corrected. “That mouth. That fire.” His eyes cut to Leif. “He doesn’t deserve it.”
“Talk about deserving,” Leif said mildly, “after you shoved a bomb under my table.”
“Me?” Rocco blinked, then laughed like the word was air on a bruise. “You can’t prove that here.” He leaned in, grin widening. “But you can try.”
“Take the jacket off,” Leifsaid.
Rocco looked down at his sleeve like he’d forgotten what clothing was. “Why?”
“Because you’re about to sweat through it,” Leifsaid.
For a second, anger broke past Rocco’s practiced face. He didn’t take the jacket off. He reached under the table instead, and Mariah’s body reacted before her brain did—spine tight, thighs pressing together, fingers slipping under the napkin to close over the steak knife she’d palmed when he satdown.
Movement. Three things at once, small and loud if you knew how to hear. The door scraped, then shut too quickly. The piano faltered and found itself. The hostess’s laugh broke and didn’tcome back. Rocco’s free hand flicked her water glass and sent it spinning. It toppled. The glass hit, shattered, and everyone near them flinched as water skittered across the tablecloth.
“Oops,” he said, amused. “Look at that.” His eyes never left Leif as the water ran across the linen and into Leif’s lap. “I guess accidents happen.”
Mariah lifted the knife under the napkin and set its tip against Rocco’s thigh, just below the table edge. She smiled and her voice dropped to a razor’s edge. “Don’t,” she said, the knife steady under the linen.
He jerked, eyes snapping to her face, the first real surprise she’d seen there tonight. It wasn’t fear. It was a man who’d forgotten that prey had teeth.Good.
Leif shifted, slow and deliberate, like a big cat deciding whether to continue sleeping. He dabbed at his lap with his napkin. “You wanted me wet?” he asked Rocco. “You’re gonna hate how this ends.”
Rocco’s nostrils flared. The hand beneath the table hesitated, then completed whatever it was doing. Aclick, tiny, confident. The lights dimmed half a notch, then came back. The pianist missed a note, cursed under his breath, and kept going.
Leif’s attention didn’t leave Rocco’s face. “Remote?”
Rocco’s mouth twitched again. “You tell me.” He leaned back and lifted his hands in a let’s-see gesture. The wire in his sleeve glinted and slipped.
