Page 17 of Auctioned to the Mafia Don
“I disagree.” His mouth curves. “Five days, Maya. You play my acquisition. You help me get close enough to Leon to finish what he started in my territory. In return, I give you the children.”
“And Leon?”
His face stills.
“Alive,” I push.
Stefano still says nothing.
“Alive,” I repeat.
“You can have him,” he agrees, his eyes lighting up with an unmistakably cruel sort of excitement. “When I am finished with him.”
I grip the edge of the desk until the polished wood presses hard beneath my fingers. “If you kill him, you destroy my case against him.”
“If your case was strong enough, you wouldn’t have been among the women kneeling on that stage.”
For one second, all I see is Alice. Not the crime scene photographs. Alice, younger, laughing over the phone, telling me I worried too much. Alice insisting love was complicated. Alicepromising she knew what she was doing. The way my world had suddenly stopped the day she’d been found dead.
I want to hit him for being right. I want to hit him for everything else too, but especially that.
The silence stretches between us. He lets it, and that is how I know he is manipulating me. Men who push too hard reveal themselves. Stefano doesn’t push. He places the instrument of destruction on the table and waits for me to pick it up by the blade.
I know the trap for what it is. But that does not make it less effective.
If I refuse, I lose access to the twins. I lose Stefano’s information. I lose the chance to get close to Leon while he still believes I am nothing but a purchased woman in a bad dress and a worse situation. If I agree, I step deeper into Stefano’s control and trust a criminal who has already drugged me not to decide I am easier to use broken.
Neither option is good. But only one option gets me closer to Erin and Heath.
“I want to see them first,” I say.
Stefano’s eyes narrow slightly. “No.”
“Yes.”
“You aren’t negotiating when you have very little to negotiate with, Maya.”
“I’m negotiating from reality. You need me to convince everyone that I am what they think I am. If I don’t know they’re safe, I will spend every public second looking like a woman deciding which of your arteries to sever in your sleep.”
He tips his head, nodding slightly, “That may be convincing.”
“Not for the role you described.”
He studies me. I hold his gaze, even though standing still beneath the weight of it takes more effort than I want to admit.
Finally, he says, “After breakfast.”
I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
“You are obsessed with breakfast.”
“You are recovering from the aftereffects of being drugged. You need to eat.”
“Your concern is touching,” I say, the edge of sarcasm returning.
“It is practical. I need you upright.”
“I’m not hungry.”
