Page 52 of Beautiful Ruins
Idon’t like owing people.
Favors have weight.They linger.They collect interest.
But there are moments when information is worth more than pride, and the Russians trying to carve out a drug trade in my territory qualified.
So I made the call.ToanotherRussian.
Archie “The Pope” Popovich didn’t hesitate.
He arrived late in the afternoon, the sun cutting through the tall windows and laying long strips of gold across the marble foyer as he stepped inside.His gaze swept the space automatically—assessing, cataloguing—because men like him didn’t enter unfamiliar territory casually.
He’d never been here before.Not many had.
This house wasn’t a clubhouse or a neutral meeting ground.It was mine.Reserved for a very short list of names I trusted enough to let past the front gate—my inner circle, and no one else.
But answers had weight.And what happened to Izzy carried more of it than my preference for privacy.
So for once, I made an exception.And I invited the devil into my home.
He walked in with that same uneven gait—measured, deliberate, the limp subtle enough to pass unnoticed by most.But it was there.A fractional delay in one step.A stiffness that didn’t quite belong to a man his age.You wouldn’t see it unless you were looking.I was looking.Three years ago, my cousin Gianni put two bullets through his knees in a gunfight that had meant to kill Archie.
But Archie had survived.Not because Gianni had missed.Gianni never missed.He survived because my other cousin Atlas stepped in.
Atlas had needed him alive at the time—needed his connections, his leverage, his particular brand of ruthless intelligence to untangle a problem no one else could solve.
Mercy, in our world, was rarely sentimental.It was strategic.
He held on to a cane, although it seemed more like a prop than a necessity.
What was Archie up to now?
He paused just inside the doorway—not out of hesitation, but reflex.His eyes moved before the rest of him did, sweeping the foyer, tracing the line of the staircase, dissecting my home.
That kind of awareness didn’t come from paranoia.It came from survival.
Always the professional.
The bullets had altered his stride, but they hadn’t softened his instincts.
Tone chose that exact moment to descend the staircase, keys spinning lazily around her finger, sunglasses pushed up into her hair.She moved with that effortless confidence of someone who’d never once doubted her right to take up space.
Her heels hit the marble in sharp, precise bursts.Rata-tat-tat.Rata-tat-tat.You could set your watch by that sound.
For someone who spent most of her waking hours elbow-deep in human anatomy, saving lives, stitching arteries, and bossing death into submission under surgical lights, Tone had an almost aggressive commitment to sky-high heels.Not sensible heels.Not modest heels.These were weapons of mass destruction.
She was halfway down the stairs before she registered the man standing in the foyer.She slowed.
Archie stood perfectly still, alert in a way that felt almost mechanical.His weight transferred subtly onto his good leg, shoulders straightening, gaze locking onto her with steady recognition.
The air tightened between them.
And for the first time since he’d stepped inside my house, he stopped assessing the architecture.He was assessing her.
I watched recognition spark in his eyes—quick and unmistakable—before it settled into something warmer.Something brighter.Sharper.Very close to delighted.
Tone, on the other hand, blinked at him like he was just another well-dressed stranger occupying her foyer.A stranger in a tailored suit and expensive shoes.Another man with history written into the set of his shoulders.
She hadn’t placed him yet.And the imbalance amused me far more than it should have.
