Page 23 of Wicked Mafia Mistake
Fuck that.
My stomach drops through the floor. I wait for the thought to fade the way it did when the taxi address first flagged it. It doesn't fade. It locks in and every detail I already have falls into line behind it.
Sloane wears Chanel. I've smelled it at Harrison's dinner table for a decade without thinking twice. Sloane wears red vintage heels. Cherry red. Every time. The shoe on my desk is her shoe. The taxi dropped my mystery woman in front of Sloane's apartment. And the face in the dome light, the jaw, the profile that nagged at me through two hours of security footage, I've been looking at that face across her father's table since she was a teenager and I never once paid attention.
Harrison's daughter was in my bed last night.
I fucked my best friend’s daughter.
The recognition builds one detail at a time, each one locking into the next, stretching all the way back to the text message on my phone last night. The wrong number. The birthday wish. The woman who showed up at my door stripped every recognizable detail away except the scent I should have placed the second she walked in.
She knew what she was doing.
I don’t know if I am impressed or pissed.
And then the older memory hits.
Not from last night but eleven years ago. His fifteen-year-old daughter was being attacked. I tore the man off her so hard Iheard something in his shoulder pop. I broke his face against the wall and then the other guards took him away. Once I made sure Sloane was okay, I made sure the guard never thought about harming women and young girls again.
I remember the terror in her baby blue eyes. I should have remembered them last night. I was so wrapped up in my own lust all I saw was a beautiful woman there to take my loneliness away.
I turn back to the wish.
More than a last name, more than my father's plans, more than invisible.
Harrison. My best friend of twenty years.
My hands flatten against the table on either side of the wish, pressing into the polished mahogany hard enough that the wood grain bites into my palms. The Chanel hits me again from the paper and I'm back in my bed with her trembling hands on my chest and her blue eyes locked on mine and the wordtesoroon my lips. I had no right to say it, but I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
"Massimo." Rafael's voice cuts through the static clogging my brain.
I look up and find five pairs of eyes watching me with varying degrees of curiosity and concern. Rafael's are sharp, assessing. Luca's are bright, gleaming. I’ll bet the contents of my bank account, the man already guessed something is up. Kon’s expression is about the same.
Nosy fuckers.
"You alright, brother?" Drake's voice is low, measured, the question carrying genuine warmth beneath the gravel.
I blink twice. Drag my jaw loose by force. Press my spine against the back of the chair and pull the mask into place. Courtrooms and negotiations taught me how to hide what's on my face when the wrong expression could cost someone their life. I use every bit of that training now.
I press my palms against the mahogany, steady and deliberate, even though my pulse is still hammering behind my ribs hard enough to make my shirt move.
"Yep. Fine." The words come out flat. Controlled. The voice of a lawyer who has spent fifteen years hiding reactions behind professional composure while the rest of him falls apart. I raise the envelope. "This one is mine."
I fold the wish, slip it back into the red envelope, and tuck it into the breast pocket of my suit, over my heart. The paper is warm against my chest. Her tears. Her perfume. Her initials.
I can’t believe how fucking stupid and blind I am.
The reading continues. I assign the remaining wishes, make my notes, contribute to strategy discussions with a competence that runs on autopilot while the rest of my brain burns through implications at a speed that would make Luca's processors jealous.
The meeting ends. The brothers file out. Luca lingers in the doorway, his eyes fixed on me with an expression that hovers between curiosity and the delighted anticipation of a man about to witness something spectacular.
"Whatever you're about to say," I tell him without looking up from the table, "don't."
"I wasn't going to say anything." His grin is audible. "Just admiring the view. You've got that look."
Irritation flares inside me. “If this is you not saying something, I think you misunderstand the words coming outta your mouth.”
I narrow my eyes on him not really wanting to play into his game, but if I don’t say something the man will hound me for hours. "What look?"
