Fuck it.
I lit a smoke and got up to open the window.
Then I turned back to Alexei. “What does all this big boy stuff mean for us?”
A dark frown marred Alexei’s pale face. He stood too and plucked the cigarette box from my pocket. “There are a few scenarios. One is that they are all so busy killing each other that they forget about us—about you, Cam, and the Kings in general.”
“Unlikely.”
“Agreed.” Alexei lit up and took a deep hit. “Especially now what we feared has happened. Esteban knew you were here and that the Kings had international ties. It did not take him long to discover your long-running feud with the Sambini family.”
“It’s not my feud. That beef outdates me by fucking years.” Decades, even. I wasn’t concrete on when this shit had started.
Alexei shrugged. “Timing means nothing. You are a King, are you not?”
“I’m a brother.”
“Indeed. And that is enough for Esteban to recruit Lorenzo Sambini to his cause.”
“Fuck.” I drew the curse out, my brain swimming with new catastrophes and not giving me the courtesy of exploding. “So Sambini gets muscle to take us out, and Esteban gets, what? My head on a spike, Juana in the family vault, and Liliana to pimp out for...”
I couldn’t even say it.
Alexei knew, though. Of course he did. “From Sambini, Esteban gets more manpower in Europe and intelligence on your whereabouts here. And if he finds you, he’ll kill you, yes? And he will find your family eventually, perhaps kill your mother too for fun. From assisting Sambini in the destruction of the Rebel Kings, he also gains influence and power. You see, what happens here is of little interest to Pavel Sidorov, but he showed otherwise when he spoke for the Kings, and your defeat makes him look weak, which will make other organisations less afraid of him—”
“And more afraid of Esteban.” I flicked my smoke from the window. It spoke volumes of how distracted Saint was that he didn’t notice and get the royal hump about it. “Fuck,” I repeated, in case Alexei hadn’t got the gist the first time.
He let me have my moment, then he speared me with his weird grey eyes again. “It is important that you know this conflict won’t be solved by fighting on the streets. The Kings are now a tiny pawn in a bigger game, and you have no say whatsoever in your fate.”
I scrubbed a hand down my face. “What does that mean?”
“It means there are many egos in the room, and it will take time to navigate that.” Alexei finished his smoke too, eyes on Saint as he ashed it against the window frame and tucked it back in the box. “There is a chance I will have to leave to assist Sidorov with his... negotiations. I wanted you to know that before anyone else.”
“Why?”
“Two reasons. One, I do not know if I will be able to tell anyone else. Two, I wanted you to know it is not your fault. This war was inevitable the moment Cam’s father interfered in something that made a lot of powerful men very rich. Your daughter may be a catalyst for the end, but if not her, it would’ve been something else.”
The end. “What are you saying, exactly? That we’re all going to die regardless?”
Alexei spoke in Russian, sharp-edged, like the blade of a fucking sword. Then his expression softened and he almost smiled. “You are a good father, Mateo. If my own had faced the world like you do, my life would’ve been very different.”
He left me at the window. Moments later, he appeared in the deserted yard and ghosted into Saint’s path. They kissed, and there was no one around to watch them but me.
No one to hear the guttural sound their love tore from my chest.
I dragged myself from the window and into my room. The urge to punch everything was strong, but I had other shit on my mind.
Alexei’s intel baffled me. There were too many players on the board and all I got from his twisted pep talk was a sickening sense we were running out of time.
I pulled my phone from my pocket and opened the text thread I shared with Embry. He hadn’t responded in so long I had to scroll and scroll before I found the last message he’d sent me, the morning we’d parted ways, thinking I was heading out on the haulage run without him.
Embry:don’t drive so slowly it takes you a week to come home
I’d read that message a thousand times that day alone, pulling it apart, word by word, searching for a meaning that was just him and me in a world so simple it had to be a fucking dream. The best I’d come up with was that he was gonna miss me, and fuck, if knowing it hadn’t made me feel ten feet tall.
I scrolled down again fast enough that my unanswered texts blurred.
Then I typed another. No more apologies, just the truth.