“Oh, child,” she says. “You’ve been one of my pieces since you were born.”
“So all this has been you…” I swallow back the nausea. “And I fucked it up, didn’t I? When I killed Freddy.”
Cassandra’s expression flickers for the first time.
“Frederick was supposed to handle the Rosebrook operation with more care than he did. His death was a consequence of his own incompetence, and the mess he created was unfortunate.”
I shake my head, pressing my palms to my eyes. “Wait.What?”
“Here’s what I’m offering you, Lance. Come with me.Chooseto be my weapon.”
“You’re joking.”
“I never joke about business. You and I both know empires aren’t built on nobility. They’re built on leverage and power. On people willing to do what needs to be done.”
“And you think that’s me.”
“I know that’s you,” she corrects. “I made you, remember? You were always mine, Lance. From the moment I took you to your first Jeet Kune Do class. The moment you sat down in my room and asked how to play chess. I knew you’d be the one. Not Paxton, he’s too rigid, and not Alex, he’s too soft. Not even Tyler, though he tries so hard to belong. Butyou… You’re the spare. The one nobody was watching. The one I could shape. Come work with me directly. No more middlemen, no morecages, no more rigged fights for petty criminals with gambling addictions. I need someone I trust, someone I trained, someone who understands how the game is played at the highest level.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“I’m offering you a seat at the table instead of a chain beneath it.”
“And Genevieve? Her father?”
Cassandra’s gaze slides to Genevieve, who’s glaring at her with a stiff upper lip and fear shining in her eyes.
“They go free,” Cassandra says. “Leo’s cooperation with the FBI becomes irrelevant if the evidence never materializes. The footage stays where it is. The case dies. And your chef gets to go back to whatever life she’s built and forget any of this ever happened.”
“I won’t forget,” Genevieve says.
“Then you’ll learn to live with it. People do.”
I look at Genevieve. She’s staring at me, and shaking her head back and forth like she knows. She can see it forming on my face before I’ve even decided, because she reads me the way I read rooms, and right now, every exit is closed and there are four guns in this brownstone and the only person with any leverage is standing in front of me offering a deal.
“Don’t,” Genevieve says. “Don’t you dare.”
“Half-Pint.”
“I saiddon’t.” Her voice cracks, and she takes a step forward, but Cassandra tsks, and one of the men shifts to block her path.
“If I go with you,” I say to Cassandra, “they walk. Tonight. No one follows them. No one contacts them. Leo’s FBI deal goes quiet and nobody touches his daughter again.”
“You have my word.”
“Your word doesn’t mean shit.”
“My word is the only currency that’s kept my family’s operation running ever since my parents passed years ago. I don’t break deals, Lance. You know that. If I did, no one would work with me.”
She’s right. And I hate that she’s right, because it means the logic holds, and the logic holding is the only thing that lets me do what I’m about to do.
“Lance,” Genevieve says. “Look at me.”
I do. Green eyes bright with tears she’s refusing to let fall, her jaw set, her fists clenched. She’s shaking.
The queen is the most powerful piece on the board.
She is. She always has been. But the queen can’t strike if the knight doesn’t hold the line.