Page 84 of Beautiful Ruins
“You also know,” I pointed out, my voice steadier now, colder, “that Chernov overestimates his reach if he believes a two-bit opportunist with a gambling addiction and a death sentence can destabilize this house.”
Archie’s mouth twitched faintly.
“They’re not betting on competence,” he pointed out.“They’re betting on chaos.”
I leaned back slowly, dragging a hand down my face as the full scale of it settled in.
This was no longer just about a debt.Nor was it a desperate ex-boyfriend.It was a whole network.A syndicate planning to destabilize my own.Men who saw the woman upstairs as a viable solution to a financial loss.
“You’re suggesting,” I clarified, each word measured, “that Chernov will give Azzopardi the resources he needs to get close enough to repay his debt.”
“Yes.”
The room felt smaller.Colder.More unforgiving.And I was livid.
“You know as well as I do,” I started, “that won’t fucking happen.”
Archie inclined his head slightly.
“The Cavalho family has ruled this region for over five centuries,” I pressed on, my voice dropping into something ancestral and absolute.“Empires have risen and collapsed in that time.Governments have changed.Borders have been redrawn.”
“There is no scenario,” I looked at him with a calm that was far more destructive than rage, “in which a desperate pawn and a Russian opportunist take control of territory that has been fortified in blood for generations.”
A brief pause.
“No offence, Archie.”
“None taken,” he assured me.“I am well aware of my place.”
My gaze drifted, involuntarily, toward the ceiling.
Toward the floor above.
Toward the room where she existed, unaware that her name was being weighed in criminal circles like a negotiable asset.
And for the first time in a very long time, the emotion sitting in my chest was not fury.
It was something darker.
More primal.
Protective horror.
Not at the threat to my power.
But at the thought that men I had never met were discussing her as a strategic variable.
That they knew her name and knew where she slept.That a man had stood at my gate while being secretly backed by a syndicate that saw her as a solution to their problem.My hand curved slowly into a fist.
Over my dead fucking body.
“They have made,” I whispered softly, “a catastrophic miscalculation.”
Archie did not ask which one.Because the answer was obvious.They did not understand that she was a non-negotiable.
“She does not know,” Archie read my silence.
“She willnot,” I fired back instantly.
