Dangerous Temptation (Dark Dream Duet #1)(24)

He snorted. “Don’t forget the mentally unhinged. Whatever it is you’re doing, Tiernan, I expect to be kept informed. Be in my office tomorrow at ten o’clock.”

Without waiting for my reply, he hung up.

In the echoing silence that followed, the men I’d collected into my employ over the years, my inner circle the underworld of NYC called “The Gentlemen,” shifted restlessly in their seats around the room.

“It’s not going to work, you know,” Walcott informed me as he poured chilled Kona Nigari water into a crystal tumbler and set it by my elbow on the desk. “You’re going about this all wrong.”

I ignored my old friend’s remark and lifted the glass to my lips. The absurdly expensive water was smooth and cool rolling down my throat when I yearned for the harsher burn of whiskey or scotch. I’d been sober for thirteen years even though I’d never been an alcoholic to begin with, but the desire never seemed to wane. That was fine with me, the daily struggle reminded me what I had lost to alcohol and drugs when I was still just a teen.

“Bryant’s going to find out,” Henrik added. “He has a way of sniffing out everything.”

“Yes, the way is through me,” I pointed out. “So this time, I won’t tell him. He trusts me, his loyal servant, enough not to scrutinize me the way he makes me scrutinize the rest of his world.”

“Tell him you took in two innocent kids to use them against him and Caroline Constantine?” Henrik murmured, as if the decibel of his voice would soften the blow of his traitorous words. “You’re really willing to ruin two young lives to get revenge?”

“Et vindictam retribuet in alis nigro,” I quoted the Morelli family motto in Latin.

Vengeance on black wings.

We’d built our entire family history on climbing to the highest echelons of success on the backs of lucky risk-taking, so of course, we were bound to be burned on occasion, just as the Constantines had burned us decades ago. The difference between a Morelli and everyone else was that we never let betrayal go unavenged.

And I wasn’t about to start deviating from the norm now.

“They took two lives from you,” Walcott whispered, leaning forward earnestly, his scarred face creased in odd places. “I know you want Bryant’s in retribution, but you’re taking two more by involving Brandon and Bianca.”

“You just met them, what the fuck do you care?” I demanded, but my fingers tightened on the glass of useless water I raised to my mouth.

“They’re cute,” Walcott admitted with a little shrug. “Cute, but tragic.”

Like you, Ezra signed to me, following the conversation by reading our lips.

Cute? I signed back.

A little bit tragic, he corrected.

“I have nothing in common with those brats.” I was being mean, but then again, I was always mean. Cruelty felt right in my mouth, ice in my veins. But there was something shifting restlessly beneath my breastbone that made me reluctant to discuss the matter further.

I didn’t care about the cost of revenge.

I didn’t need my own men reminding me about Bianca and Brandon’s stake in the situation because it didn’t matter.

Or, it shouldn’t.

Ezra knocked his heavy fist on the front of my desk to get my attention, then signed to me when I looked over at him.

You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

“What are you? A fucking wise woman, now?” I snarled at him.

He blinked at me, completely unfazed by my horrible temper.

And I was. In a horrible temper.

Why, I couldn’t quite understand.

I’d laid out the rules for Bianca and taken her locket the way I’d intended. I wasn’t the kind of man to be moved by female wiles or woes. The sight of tears tumbling from those blue eyes, sticking to her long lashes, staining her pink cheeks…none of it should have perturbed me.

I’d spent most of my life being Bryant Morelli’s enforcer, the man sent to do the dirty work none of my brothers or sisters had the stomach for. Once, a long time ago, I’d balked at the violence my father had thrust upon me, but I’d paid the price for that and learned my lesson. Whenever I thought about telling him to go to hell, I just had to look in the mirror at the scar slashing across the left half of my face to remember what happened to people who dared to defy the great and terrifying Morelli patriarch.

My blood set to a low simmer as I thought about the way he’d insidiously turned my own family against me over the years. Unwittingly, my gaze snagged on the framed photo of my younger brother, Carter, and me on the bookshelf to my right. We were just kids, eleven and nine, our arms wrapped around each other, faces broken open with laughter as we recovered from wrestling in the mud after a rainstorm turned Mother’s rose garden into a swamp. A thorny stem had cut Carter under one eye and it was bleeding slightly in the photo. Years later, he still had a pale scar.

It was the last time my brother had embraced me.

The last time any of my siblings had played with me.

Because two weeks later on my twelfth birthday, Bryant had turned me into a monster.

“Tiernan.” Henrik’s rough voice cut into my disturbed thoughts. “We’ve done a lot of fucked-up things in our lives, but toying with children…? It’s not worth it.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, at all three of my friends and employees. “Do not mistake me, men. I am your boss first and your friend second. You may disagree with me, but you will not sway me. My mind is my own.”