“Not this time.”
“It is a strange feeling to live such a...communallife.”
“Good strange? Or are you suffocated by it?”
I wrenched my head sideways. Cam was not looking at me, his frown focused on the wing mirror, and for once his face gave nothing away. A circumstance that made my heart tighten around the edges. Despite all we’d shared today, he was still worried I would leave him. And I could not promise him that I wouldn’t. Only that I did not want to. None of that altered the fact that the time I’d spent with him was the longest I’d been in one place since Sidorov had claimed me from my first master. “Strange things are strange.”
Cam snorted. “Either way, I don’t think Sambini will be surprised to see your face.”
In the end, Cam was right. We reached the Sambini owned strip club and pulled into the private car park.
Sambini goons waited and among them was a familiar face waiting forme. Viktor, an operative with unknown ties to the world that had seen me grow from a frightened boy to a lethal man.
Unease gripped my gut. It made sense that Sidorov had left a man in place to watch over the deal he’d made with the Sambini family on my behalf, but the flesh and bone reminder of my old life drove me headfirst into the agitation I’d witnessed in Embry before we’d left.
Ants on my skin.
The scent of blood and fear in my nose.
The coldness that had inhabited every facet of me until I’d met Cam.
Even the fear Saint had vanquished with his drown-me-in-the-river therapy came back.
Gianni Sambini greeted Cam. Ignoring Viktor—for now—I speared him with my gaze, letting him know that nothing had changed. That what I’d promised the night I’d set him free still held.
To his credit, Sambini didn’t flinch. He nodded and invited us inside the seedy establishment that smelled of everything I hated.
Sambini had an office at the back and a route to it that bypassed the main hub of the club. It was small and smoky, but there was an exit at the back that Mateo already guarded from the outside.
Gianni took a seat and gestured for Cam to do the same.
Cam folded himself into a red leather chair and kicked his long legs out in front of him, the denim of his dark jeans perfectly moulded to his muscled calves and thighs. He was six inches taller than any Sambini man in the room, in every sense, and Gianni knew it.
I told him.
“Where’s your cousin?” Cam glanced around. “The one who led the attack on our compound?”
Gianni steepled his fingers. “Lorenzo?”
“If you say so. He’s not here?”
“He’s out of the country. If we can agree a long-term truce today, it’s likely he’ll stay that way.”
“You only bring him in for war?”
“Something like that.”
“Why? He’s a fucking idiot. Who gets into bed with Frank Crow and thinks they’re gonna get anything but a fucking shitshow?”
“No one anymore.” Gianni’s gaze slid to me.
I smiled.
He shivered.
Good. You have not forgotten.
“Don’t look at him,” Cam snapped. “We’ve got business that was fucked up long before you knew his fucking name.”