Poison Served In Polished Sips.
Then he exhaled. “It was smart,” he admitted. “But don’t do it again.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you trust me?”
“I trust you to win,” he said. “But I also know men like Crane. The more rope you give them, the more they think they have permission to run with it, and if he leaks even a hint about your identity before we’re ready…”
“He won’t,” I interrupted. “I made that clear.”
Darius leaned forward slowly, voice dropping.
“Sis, you have the whole city wondering if you’re even alive, that kind of mystery is power, please, don’t waste it by talking to men who trade secrets for clicks.”
His eyes locked with mine, dark and fierce.
“I know how bad you want revenge,” he said. “But you have to be smarter than your anger because if you slip even once, Ronan will smell it.”
I stayed quiet because he wasn’t wrong.
“I’ll make sure Julian stays in his place,” I said. “I already reminded him what’s at stake.”
Darius nodded slowly. “Good because we don’t need his voice, we have ours, and when it’s time to speak, we won’t whisper.”
He stood, walked to the liquor cart, and poured himself a drink.
Then he glanced at me over the rim of the glass.
“Everything’s falling into place, Zyrah,” he said. “We just have to stay three steps ahead, always.”
I stood too, adjusting the sleeve of my coat.
“We will,” I said because for the first time in a long time, I had a voice, and the world would hear it, when I was ready to make them bleed.
I rose from the chair in Darius’s office, ready to leave and return to my floor. The tension had thinned, the air less charged, until I paused mid-step.
There was something I hadn’t told him yet.
Something I shouldn’t have forgotten.
I turned back slowly and sat down again.
Darius looked up from his drink with a sharp eye, sensing the shift in my energy. “What is it?”
I hesitated for just a beat.
“You remember that encrypted message I received a few days ago?” I asked.
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He paused for a while and his brow furrowed. “The anonymous one about wanting Ronan destroyed?”
I nodded.
“I found out who sent it.”
His entire body stilled and his glass paused halfway to his lips.
“Who?” he asked, voice cold now.
“Leo,” I said quietly. “He said his name is Leo Vincenzo.”
The silence that followed was like the eye of a storm.
Darius slowly set the glass down, never breaking eye contact. “Say that again.”
I met his gaze. “The man who sent the message, the one offering to take Ronan down along with us, is Leo Vincenzo, he called me today.”
Darius stepped around the desk like he needed to be closer to hear the full weight of it. He looked at me the way one might look at someone standing on the edge of a cliff.
“Do you have any idea who that man is?” he asked.
“I know his name,” I said. “He introduced himself. There was something calm, formal, and very controlled about his voice.”
Darius’s eyes darkened. “He’s not just some man, Zyrah. He’s not a businessman nor is he a rival investor. He’s a goddamn Mafia kingpin.”
I sat still as my eyes widened in shock.
“What?”
Darius’s jaw clenched as he stepped back toward his desk, voice hard and fast now. “Leo Vincenzo runs an empire built on blood, not corporate competition or market strategy. Death, blackmail, extortion, and bodies in rivers, you name it, he’s behind it.”
The air around me seemed to shift.
He looked over his shoulder, eyes narrowed. “You want to know how I know that name? When I was in college, he used to come visit Father. I’ll never forget the first time I locked eyes with him. I was already 21 and in my last days in college before I graduated. He pulled up in an obsidian-black Jaguar, no security, or entourage, just that predator calm look that cringe one that fuck out.”
I listened in surprise.
“He walked in like he owned the place, it didn’t matter that Father was one of the most feared men in the city at the time, Leo made even him stand up.”
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“You never told me this,” I said.
“Yes, because I never thought he’d be in our orbit again,” Darius snapped. “He disappeared from the media ten years ago, and retreated into the shadows and nobody knows how many people he killed, Zyrah, there’s never proof, just
absence.”
I sank back in the chair, absorbing it all.
“I didn’t sense any of that, he didn’t come across as dangerous.”
Darius scoffed. “That’s exactly what makes him dangerous. Leo doesn’t need to raise his voice or make threats. He will pour you a drink, compliment your shoes, and burn your legacy while you sip.”
I swallowed.
“He accessed my encrypted line,” I said, more to myself now. “That line isn’t even linked to this company but he found it easily.”
Darius barked a humorless laugh. “He’s a devil, Zyrah, and devils always know where to dig, no lock is a safe and no secret is unreachable.”
I leaned forward slightly, voice low. “He said he wants revenge on Ronan too, that he’s been watching him for years, and he wants to meet with me face to face.”
Darius stiffened again.
“You didn’t agree, did you?”
“No, I told him I’d think about it.”
Darius walked back to his desk and planted both hands on the surface, glaring at the wood like it had personally of- fended him.
“If you go alone, you won’t come back the same, that man doesn’t do conversations, he does leverage, and if he thinks for one second that you’re a threat, or worse, a pawn, he’ll erase you.”
I was silent, trying to reconcile the calm, precise voice I heard on the phone with the brutal portrait Darius was paint- ing.
“What do we do?” I asked.
Darius looked up at me, deadly calm now.
“You call him,schedule a meeting with him but you’re not going alone.”
I arched an eyebrow.
“I’ll be there,” he said. “Right next to you.”
“And if he doesn’t like that?”
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Darius smiled faintly.
“Then he’ll have to kill me first.”
I stared at him, heart tight but underneath it all, one thought pulsed through me, steady, cold, true.
If Leo Vincenzo was willing to turn on Ronan Lancaster, then whatever happened between them must have left blood on the floor.
Although I was a bit skeptical why he wouldn’t get rid of Ronan by himself due to his status, why try to work with me?
Something still doesn’t make sense and I intended to find out where it was still staining the tile.
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