Page 40 of Toxic Love

His lips curl. “My father will be hearing about this disrespect.”

Oh my God.

“Forty seconds, dipshit.”

“You can’t order me around, Dante. I’m not one of your whores from your little club?—”

“Thirty seconds.”

Silvio swallows heavily. His eyes dart past me to Lorenzo.

“This isn’t over,” Silvio mutters. “Your sister and I have unfinished?—”

“My sister and you, much like my tolerance for your presence in my home, are over. Fifteen…no, ten seconds.”

Silvio starts to open his mouth. Then he’s got the good sense to close it before giving me one last glare and storming away through the ballroom toward the exit.

Probably the smartest thing the idiot’s done all day.

“Have him tailed after he leaves,” I growl to Lorenzo.

“You got it, boss.”

Lorenzo disappears back into the crowd inside as I wait in the shadows of the balcony, surveying this whole debacle.

An engagement party.

Give me a fucking break.

It’s not that I actively never wanted to get married. I mean if we want to get technical with things, I was once married, for about eight minutes.

…To Tempest’s sister Layla, right before she died.

These days, the lack of any motivation or urge to get married is because I alreadyam. To my job. To the club. To the webs of information I weave.

And that’s not even counting myotherjob. My…crusade, if you will. My hunt.

But that’s another story entirely.

My gaze darts to the bar before I can stop myself. She’s not standing there anymore. I actually don’t see Tempestanywhere, actually. But before I can chide myself for looking for the little agent of fucking chaos, a heavy hand lands on my shoulder.

“Congratulations, my friend.”

The heavy Serbian accent is a dead giveaway before I even turn toward him. I’m not a small man by any standard. But fucking hell, it’s hard for even me not to feel small next to Drazen Krylov.

The man is justbig—tall, broad-shouldered, and built like Henry Cavill’s Superman. He’s a good-looking guy, and he’s taken to wealth with style. I mean, I don’t know if Drazen was everpoor, per se. But the mercenary-turned-Bratva kingpin came intobillionsabout a year ago with the discovery of a long-lost treasure of Tsarina Alexandra’s royal jewels, which she’d bequeathed to Drazen’s great-great-grandfather a century ago, when the Romanov family fell.

Now, he calls New York home as he works to build the Krylov Bratva family into a formidable empire. He’s also become a friend of sorts, now that he and Carmy and Nico are pals and business partners. And, of course, now that he’s an investor in Club Venom.

I roll my eyes. “Let’s skip the congratulations.”

Drazen grins. “Well, whatever the circumstances, she’s beautiful. So there’s that.”

“She’s crass, mouthy, and a royal pain in the fucking ass.”

He chuckles as I sigh.

“So where are your partners in crime?”

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