“I need to be blunt here,” I say. “If this drug, and this opportunity, had come to me without you contaminating my business with illegal activity, it would be a tempting proposition.”
“You can tell yourself that now,” he replies, “but we both know that not only would you have shut me down, you wouldn’t have apologized for the decision any more than I do for the actions I took to ensure we ended up in business together. I have a vision of a Martina empire, not a cartel, and I’ll do whatever’s necessary to make that happen.”
“And I have a vision for Brandon Enterprises. Illegal activity of any kind, for which you’re a magnet, is not part of it. So no. I would not have done business with you nor would I have apologized for that decision.”
“This is a good move for all of us.”
“And if I say no?”
“There’s no reason for you to take our relationship, or that of your family and my family, to negative places when ‘no’ doesn’t make sense.”
“Negative places,” I repeat, laughing without humor. “I don’t need an imagination to hear the threat in that statement.”
“I didn’t seek you out and go to the lengths I did to align our interests to have us end up in the same bad places our families would end up if they were the ones negotiating this deal.”
“That’s not a denial of the threat.”
“Not only is this drug a formula for us to make millions upon millions together,” he continues, as if I haven’t spoken, “but my consortium connects you to some of the most powerful men in the world. That’s not a resource to be taken lightly.”
“I need a list of every member of the consortium,” I say, wanting to know who I won’t be doing business with and how dangerous they are to my agenda of getting us the hell out of this.
“Tye Reynolds, the director of the consortium, will make contact and provide you that information. He’ll also be the one presenting a formal request for your corporate involvement. I’ll be playing the role of silent investor, along with the rest of the consortium.”
“Where does your father stand on this?”
“I have my father under control.”
“Forgive me for not being comforted,” I say, noting the tic in his jaw, aware that I’ve hit a nerve I intend to continue to punish, “but your brother is dead and your father killed him. I’m assuming your brother thought he had him under control as well.”
“That’s where my brother fell short. He thought. He didn’t know. He didn’t create insurance. That won’t happen with me, and it won’t happen with you, which is why I’m here. Change, and a new direction, isn’t easy. It comes with resistance, even anger. It takes backbone and real commitment to make it happen, no matter who fights you on it.”
His words, and the passion with which he speaks them, resonate with me as relatable and sincere, while his actions and methods for achieving his goals do not. “If I agree to do this,” I say, testing his honor and my level of influence over this man, if any, “I want Sub-Zero out of my facility completely.”
“Soon,” he agrees.
“Now,” I counter.
“That’s not possible.”
“If you mean to legitimize Sub-Zero with my help, and through my operation, any connection to the illegal distribution of the drug is tempting fate and is self-destructive. And you don’t strike me as self-destructive.”
“You’re right. I’m not, but I also don’t have a death wish for either of us. I promised revenue to the cartel and delivered at above expectations. I cannot simply cut that off without consequences.”
“You’re the cartel.”
“My father, and his inner circle, represents the beast that is the cartel. I’m the future for the Martina name.”
“If running drugs through my operation is your plan for the future, it’s not a good one. We have regulations and inspections. We will get caught.”
“I have people in my pocket at every level in this city, and we only need to keep them in check for a short window of time, at which point this will be a nonissue. I’m selling off the illegal version of Sub-Zero to the highest bidder, and on the condition they provide their own distribution outlet.”
“As in there’s an auction going on that could leak to the Feds?”
“Your obsession with the Feds really is over-the-top and unnecessary. As I said, I have people in my pocket. I have a sale in the works. This is handled, but you need to be crystal clear on where we stand. Any disruption of revenue between now and the closing of the deal could destroy it and anger the wrong people, people we do not want angry. And you need to know and understand that I cannot, and will not, let that happen to either of us. Distribution cannot be disrupted.”
“What do you think the Feds are?”
“Again with the Feds?” He scrubs his jaw. “Damn, man. Get over it. Read my lips if you can’t understand the words coming out of my mouth: I have people in my pocket.”
“And yet they raided my facility.”
“It won’t happen again. I’ve made sure of it, but I’ll shelter you and deal with your brother. You won’t know what’s happening if questioned.”
“My brother is not a token in your game.”
“You are in his. You should thank me for giving him the impression he’s fucking you over while you’re the one fucking him over.”
“I’m saving his ass, not fucking him over. He’s my brother. My blood, which means something to me even if it doesn’t to you.”
“Your blood? Don’t be sentimental. It doesn’t suit you. He’d let you die to get ahead, just like mine would have me.”
“And yet he’s the one who died.”
“That’s right,” he says, his voice taking on an icy quality. “He did.”
“You say that like you feel no remorse.”
“I say that like I’m a survivor and a winner, and so are you or I wouldn’t be here.” He glances at his watch, and I have the impression he does it to break eye contact. “And on that note, I have a naked woman in bed waiting on me who will get pissy if I don’t get back to her soon.” He glances back up at me, any emotion he might have been hiding now sheltered behind an unreadable mask. “And she’s a vicious bitch when she wants to be.” His lips quirk. “And since I looked into the eyes of your little Emily and saw ice you’ll have to warm, I suspect you’ll have a long night ahead of you as well.” With that accurate statement, he reaches into his pocket and hands me another card, which I accept. “My private numbers,” he explains, “which I’ll assume you will use with discretion.”
“You mean don’t copy them, hand them out, and tell people you’ll get them a good fix if they need one?”
He laughs. “I can think of a few people I’d like to do that to, but no. Please. Do not do that to me.”
“You’re apparently thinking I have that sense of humor you claim to lack,” I say, sticking the card into my pocket. “Which in itself is amusing, considering that’s the last thing anyone who knows me would call me. Focused. Yes. Driven. Yes. Vicious, by more than a few of my courtroom opponents. Abso-fucking-lutely.”
“Sometimes,” he agrees, “being vicious is the only way to win.” We stare at each other, another of those battles of will between us, until he says, “But there’s no reason to go there for us.”
He’s wrong. There is every reason, and that’s exactly where this is going, a detail I’m too smart to voice to a drug lord’s son without a survival plan, but then I don’t get the chance anyway. He starts for the door and I watch his departure, having no intention of stopping him. I want him out of my apartment even more than I want him out of my company, but almost as if he’s replying to those wants with defiance, he isn’t quite ready to leave. He reaches the door and pauses, turning to face me, a dark, sharp shift to his energy.
“No one likes to believe their own blood will betray them, but denying that they will is a good way to end up dead. Your brother’s your enemy, not me. Watch your back and keep your woman close.”
/>
He lingers just long enough to allow those words to punch through me, before he pulls back the door to depart, leaving me with one certainty. Veiled threats are unnecessary for a man like Adrian Martina, who has already been quite frank about his character, and that of his family. No. That was a genuine warning, and I’m not sure what bothers me the most. The fact that my brother is willing to kill me, or the fact that I have far too much in common with Adrian Martina for comfort. I know that man. I understand him. I even respect his intelligence and manipulation skills, skills that every attorney worth their salt must master. But then, you have to respect the abilities of your opponent or they defeat you, and I can only hope he underestimates me in a way I won’t him. Because no matter how much I sympathize with his unique plight, his actions and my certainty that he would hurt those close to me to win his own war have made him my enemy.
He disappears inside, and I follow in his footsteps to ensure his rapid departure, entering the apartment to find him already halfway across the living area, his pace steady as he turns the corner and heads for the door. He pauses at the door, hand on the knob, heavy seconds ticking by, but he never turns. He inhales sharply on whatever words he seems to think better of speaking, and exits the apartment.
The instant he’s out of sight, I dig my phone from my pocket, dialing Seth as I walk to the door, where I flip the lock into place. “He’s gone,” I announce when he answers. “You want to tell me how he got to me with no warning?”
“I’m working on that,” he assures me. “What did he want?”
“That’s a conversation I’m not having with you over the phone.” And knowing I need to talk to Emily before I leave, I say, “We hired Nick’s team to do a job, and as far as I’m concerned, they failed tonight. I need to see him in person. At his facility, where we can speak frankly.”
“He’s expecting as much. When and where?”
“Have a car waiting for me in the garage. I’ll be there as soon as I can, but I make no promises as to how fast that will be.” I end the connection and slip my phone back into my pocket, and a tight ball of emotions in my chest has me leaning against the hard surface of the door. Instantly, my mind is processing, trying to analyze and store things in a way that is logical, not emotional, but instead I bob and weave through it all: my father’s cancer. My mother’s infidelity. My brother’s defiance and, most important, Emily, who has to be shaken by Martina’s visit.
Shoving everything but her aside, I straighten and then walk down the hallway, turning toward the stairs, only to hear, “Shane,” from behind me.
My jaw clenches at Emily’s voice, and the realization that she isn’t upstairs has me mentally cringing with the memory of Martina exiting the door that wasn’t shut completely. Emily heard everything that was said, and I have a feeling I’m about to be in damage-control mode all over again. Turning toward her, I find her standing in the living area, on the other side of the couch, her hand pressed to the glass window, her complexion pale. Her brown hair is in sexy disarray, which is ten kinds of fucked up considering it’s a creation of her nervous fingers, not my eager ones. Worse, though, it’s not the desire I’d come home seeking in her eyes but rather the exact thing I never, ever want her to feel: fear. And I don’t think Martina is the one who’s scaring her. It’s me. It’s my family. It’s this world I live in that is so much like the one she ran from. She’s afraid I’m like her brother, my brother, and my father. Like everyone in her life and mine who ever let either of us down. She’s afraid the path I’m traveling is taking me to the hollowed, dark places where they already live.
She’s afraid of what I might become. Or perhaps already am, and she just doesn’t know it yet.
CHAPTER SIX
SHANE
Frozen in place with the slice of the blade that is the fear and doubt I see in Emily’s eyes, I stare at her, the armor I’ve learned to erect long ago, a way of surviving life in the Brandon clan, cracking like glass rather than remaining impenetrable steel. Each flaw forms a representation of the conflicting emotions I felt by the door moments before. I will them all back into containment, under my control, but there is one that refuses to be quieted: anger. And at the core of that anger is the realization that this woman who I love, who I want to protect—and yes, Derek, dear brother, I dare to admit to myself in this moment—who I want to make my wife, is shaken by me. Not my brother. Not my family in general. Not Martina. By me.
So yes. I’m angry. I’m angry as hell, in fact. Angry with my people for letting Martina up here to ever allow that look in Emily’s eyes to exist right now. Angry with myself for allowing a conversation I couldn’t avoid once Martina was here, to be held in a place Emily could overhear, when I know all too well what her family has put her through. But damn it, I’m angry with her too. She knows me. She knows what I’m trying to do and who I am, and it guts me that she now doubts me.
It’s with that thought that I step forward, my stride long, and in a few short moments, I’ve closed the small space between myself and the woman I love, who now thinks I’m no better than anyone else in her life, and from nothing more than one conversation. Instantly my senses are overloaded with the mix of my temper and her contrasting sweet floral scent, the memory of that smell on my skin after, and during, me licking and kissing her, heating my body. And just that easily, that dark, hungry need I felt in the elevator roars to the surface, a beast I want to deny that I know from the past, though I don’t.
This part of me that punishes myself with the far too human feeling of self-doubt that I couldn’t afford to feel then and damn sure can’t now … the part of me that I would tame with hard, meaningless sex the night before every courtroom battle I feared I might lose, which was every damn one of them … He’s the beast that demands satisfaction above all else and has none of the tenderness or caution in him that the man Emily knows does. He’s the man who wants to grab Emily now and kiss her with what I know would be punishment to us both. I should have protected her better tonight. She shouldn’t have trusted me more. A ridiculous contradiction that I hate has even entered my mind.
“Why didn’t you stay upstairs?” I ask, my voice low, tight, one part that anger I’m still feeling, another part barely bridled lust I will not unleash with Emily. Not when I’m in a mental and physical place that isn’t one I frequent or welcome, and might just convince her I’m as dark and dangerous as she seems to think I am.
Her eyes flash in response to my demand, her chin lifting in this delicate defiant way that just makes me want to say fuck it, and fuck her despite that animal clawing away at me. “Stay upstairs?” she demands. “I’m not a child sent to my room. I’m either in this with you or I’m not.”
I tell myself not to touch her for all of one second, before I shackle her arm and pull her to me. Instantly, I am aware of her many soft curves pressing against me, tempting me in all kinds of deviant ways, but her words are what have my attention now, even above her body. “This is the second time tonight you’ve mentioned leaving,” I say, hyperaware of her hand settling on my chest, scorching me through the starched cotton of my shirt. “If you keep bringing it up, I’m going to think that’s what you want.”
“I never said I wanted to leave. I said I can’t be here if I’m not in this with you. You know I don’t want to leave.”
She’s wrong. I don’t know that at all, and judging from the shadows glazing her pale blue eyes, whether she realizes it right now, I’m not sure she does either. And since nothing else we can say on this topic, this night, under these circumstances, will change anything, I move on. “How much did you hear?”
“Everything, and yet I don’t know what I heard. What was that between you and Martina?”
“Strategy,” I say. “I’m letting him think I’m playing his game while I make it mine.”
“Strategy?” she demands. “That’s what he said. I can’t begin to tell you how much I don’t like you repeating his words.”
There is a hint of accusat
ion to those words that I do not like, and I turn her, pressing her against the thick wooden beam dividing two panes of the floor-to-ceiling window wrapping the room. My body lifts from hers, my hands settling on the wall above her, while her hands press to the glass on either side of her. And for several beats we just stare at each other, her gaze probing, looking for something, I assume for a reason to trust me. And I wonder what she finds. I wonder if it would be the same thing I would see if it were me looking.
“Shane,” she says softly. “You and Adrian Martina—”
“It’s a game, Emily. Just a game.”
“A dangerous game.”
“One that would be far more dangerous if I didn’t play it right.”
“Please tell me this right way doesn’t include doing business with him.”
“The right way is any way I get his drugs out of my facility.”
“In other words, you are going to do business with him.”
“We’re already doing business with him. I’m controlling how and when until I can remove him from our lives.”
“You’re playing his game. He wants you in his inner circle. That was clear. This is what he wants.”
“I let him think I’m playing his game. There’s a difference.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “I looked into that man’s eyes, Shane. He’s smart. He’s intelligent. He’s vicious. He scares the hell out of me, but he doesn’t scare you, does he?”
“Fear to a man like Martina is like blood to a lion. He craves it. He will come after it. He will use it against you, and I won’t give him that weapon. So no. I don’t fear him, but I do understand him. I know who he is and what he wants. And that is power.”
“Understand him? What does that even mean? He’s not you. You know that, right? No matter what he might seem to have in common with you. He’s not you. He’s not really trying to do the right thing.”