in my office, after two days of holding cells and courtrooms. The charges against me are a problem for my team of lawyers now, and they are doing their part to keep the police busy. The evidence is damning, but will it be enough to put me behind bars? That remains to be seen.
Besides, I have bigger problems.
I stare at the computer screen, watching as Alexis and Harry play with his toy airplane on the floor of their new living room. My decision to take Harry away was an emotionally charged one, and had I not been in a police station with an army of reporters trying to bust through the front doors, the Cartel’s threats dangling over my head, and my enemies converging on my empire, I might have responded a little differently.
I’m still tempted by the notion. I want Alexis gone, banished. That is what she deserves after her betrayal, and it’s a more lenient sentence than most men in my position would be inclined to offer. Letting my son remain in her custody is a move I will be criticized for by my men and by my enemies. They will see it as weakness.
But when I heard Alexis was pregnant, I couldn’t do it, and I realized that it was wrong of me to try in the first place. She may be the worst thing that has ever happened to me, but she’s a good mother, and Harry needs her, especially with my fate so uncertain.
Harry reaches his chubby fist for the plane, laughing. Alexis laughs too, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. I wonder why. She got everything she wanted. She wrote an article that made a difference. She proved herself as a journalist. Perhaps me ending up behind bars was a sweet little bonus for her, a way to put distance between her son and the wolf who would raise him to lead the pack.
She said she wanted us to be a team, that she wanted to be with me, but I can’t trust a word she has ever said to me. This whole time, she was scheming behind my back.
I take a breath. One problem at a time.
My cell phone rings. Silvano.
I close the laptop screen and answer. “Yes?”
“I’m in the basement with a friend of yours,” Silvano says. “From the Cartel.”
In the background, I hear Miguel Garcia cursing my men in rapid Spanish.
“I’ll be right down.”
I pull myself together as I make my way to the cellar, locking my bones and muscles into a prison of steely resolve. I push out all the weakness, all the pain, all that residual longing for a woman who I will never touch again.
I take slow steps down the creaky cellar stairs. Mirko, Dom, and Silvano are waiting for me at the bottom. Miguel is tied to the metal chair in the center of the room, his long brown hair messy around his cheeks. He glowers at me as I come to stand in front of him.
“I will kill you for this,” Miguel growls.
His cheek is bruised and his bottom lip is split. His face is covered in a sheen of sweat, though it is chilly and damp down here. He is not smiling.
“I sincerely doubt that,” I reply.
Dom hands over a knife without me even having to ask. We have already lost two days while I was held back by spools of red tape, and the Cartel is closing in fast. Their plan was to get me out of the way so they could take the city for themselves, which means their forces are already converging. There is no time to waste.
“I need answers from you, Miguel,” I say, tipping the blade of the knife back and forth so it catches the light. “If I don’t give me those answers, I’m going to cut them out of you.”
He spits at my feet, his saliva red with blood. “You can kill me, but it won’t change your fate. You’re a dead man.”
“Why don’t you let me worry about that?” I ask, sticking the point of the knife against his cheek. “Would you prefer a horizontal or vertical slash?”
“Diagonal,” Dom suggests. “Make it cross the other one.”
“Good idea, Dom.” I press a little harder and blood blooms from the tip of the blade.
Miguel grits his teeth, and I hope he is regretting every time he disrespected me, every smug word he ever said, every fucking smirk. I press a little deeper and he groans with pain.
“Now that its