I don't plan on either.
My phone vibrates. Unknown number. I glance at the screen.
Looking forward to our meeting, Miss O'Brien. —N
He has my number. Of course he does. A man like Nico Konstantinos probably had my number before he had my name.
I type back:It's Siobhan. And you should be.
I hit send before I can second-guess it. Three dots appear. Then nothing. He read it and didn't respond.
Good. Let him sit with that.
Outside, Boston rushes past in streaks of light and dark. I press my forehead to the cold glass and think about gold eyes and the way he saidagreedlike he was swallowing something he didn't expect to taste.
Tomorrow, I walk into a room with a man who runs an empire built on blood and ask him to treat me like an equal. The smart money says he won't.
The smart money doesn't know me.
Behind us, the lights of Elysium shrink in the rearview mirror. Somewhere inside, Elena Drakos is watching me leave through a window, her expression hovering between admiration and something I can't name from this distance.
Chapter 3
Nico
Terms
* * *
I've arranged my office the way I arrange everything: to my advantage.
Desk positioned so the window is behind me — anyone sitting across has to squint into the afternoon light while I sit in comfortable shadow. The chair I've set out for her is leather, expensive, and exactly two inches lower than mine. Subtle. Effective. I've closed deals worth eight figures from this side of this desk, and the men on the other side never realized the furniture was doing half my work.
I check the sight lines. Water on the table — glass, not plastic, because details speak. No files visible, nothing she can read upside down. The room sayspowerwithout saying a word.
Lex offered to stay. I told him no. This negotiation doesn't need muscle. It needs precision, and Siobhan O'Brien strikes me as the kind of woman who'd resent an audience. He looked at me the way he does when he thinks I'm making a mistake, which is to say he looked at me the same way he always does, silent and watchful, and then left without arguing. Lex trusts my judgment. I'm not sure I trust it right now.
Because the truth is, I don't negotiate marriages. I negotiate shipping routes, territory lines, the price of silence. Those have clear metrics of profit, loss, leverage gained. What's the metric for a wife? What's the ROI on sharing your home with a woman who looks at you like she's already figured out three things you haven't told her?
I'm reviewing the alliance contracts when I catch myself adjusting my cuffs for the third time. I stop. My hands go flat on the desk.
This is a negotiation. Nothing more.
She's four minutes early. The door opens without a knock, and she just walks in, takes three steps, and sits in the chair across from me like she owns it. Crosses her legs. Folds her hands in her lap. Waits.
She doesn't fill the silence with nervous chatter. Doesn't compliment the office, doesn't fidget, doesn't look away. Most people in this room break within thirty seconds. They start talking, start justifying their presence, start shrinking. She's been here for a full minute and she looks bored.
Dangerous. This woman is dangerous.
"You're early," I say.
"You're stalling."
I almost smile. Almost.
"Why me?" She doesn't ease into it. No pleasantries, no warm-up. Just the question, direct and clean. I've had men with thirty years of negotiating experience spend twenty minutes circling before they got to the point. She's been in this chair for ninety seconds.
"The alliance requires a union between Greek and Irish leadership. Your family controls the unions, the docks, three hundred men in Southie. Strategically?—"