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AS SOON AS NIKITA HUNG up the phone, I stormed back in to Mauro’s office.
“What’s wrong?” Mauro asked. He looked concerned.
“He’s got Nadia,” I spat back, so angry I could hardly contain myself. I knew that it wasn’t his fault any of this was happening, but still – I could have ripped something apart with my bare hands, that’s how angry I was.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Mauro demanded, rising to his feet. He knew this was serious – there was little that would have got me as furious as knowing the woman that I loved was in danger.
“He was at her apartment, with her and her father,” I explained, as best I could, given the mess going on inside my head right now. “He said something about us snooping around his clubs...”
“Fuck,” Mauro muttered. “One of our guys was down there making an offer to a club owner on his territory, that must be what he was talking about.”
“You didn’t think to tell me about that?” I demanded. I couldn’t believe how far it had all gone spinning out of control, none of this made any sense to me – I knew that I needed to clear this all in my head, but it was piling up on top of itself until it was too much of a mess to sort through.
“We were just checking things out,” he replied, lifting a hand to try and calm me. That only set me off even more. The last thing I needed right now was someone to try and talk me into thinking that all of this was going to be just fine, when I knew it was anything but. I had no idea what we were dealing with here, how far that this fucker would go to make his point, but he had already overstepped in a serious way and I had no clue how to pull him back in line.
“And that’s why he’s hitting back at me with Nadia,” I muttered, shaking my head. “You need to tell me when we’re doing anything like that.”
“You were in Miami,” Mauro replied, his voice edged with some annoyance. “So we didn’t have much of a choice.”
“Don’t blame this on me—”
“I’m not,” Mauro shot back, raising his voice a little. “I’m telling you what happened and why.”
“I need to be kept up to date on everything that’s going on around here,” I warned him. I knew that it wasn’t going to help, striking out at him like this, but I didn’t want to admit some of this might have been my fault. I needed to stay in charge, in control, and nothing was going to get in the way of that right now.
“Then you need to stay in New York and keep up with everything that we’re doing,” Mauro replied. I knew he was right. No way was I going to admit it, though. I hated hearing him speak to me like that, this was the side of him my father had valued the most – the one which would tell him the truth when he wanted to hear it, and sometimes when he didn’t, too. But right now, I needed him to back the fuck off, and show me he really understood the shit that was going on right now.
“I will,” I muttered, hoping that would be enough to sate him. “What are we going to do about Nadia?”
Mauro didn’t reply for a long moment. It had been clear since day one that he had been less than impressed with how quickly I had fallen for Nadia, how much effort I had put into keeping her safe.
“It seems like something they’re working out between themselves,” he replied, firmly. I stared at him for a moment. Did he really think that was going to work on me? Did he really think that I would just throw my hands in the air and give up like it was nothing? Shit, he had another thing coming – another whole lot of things, actually, and there was no way in hell I was going to let him talk that kind of shit to me.
“I’m not letting anything happen to her, Mauro,” I warned him, and I was deadly serious about it. I would never forgive myself if she ended up getting hurt, and I didn’t want to do anything that might have led to her or her father getting into trouble. I knew that they had their own shit to work out, but it didn’t mean I was just going to take my hands off the wheel and wish her good luck in dealing with that nightmare.
“Nothing’s going to happen to her,” he replied. “He’s made his statement, now he’s going to give up on her and—”
“He said that it was because we had come looking at his club,” I pointed out, doing my best to keep my voice steady. It wasn’t like Mauro to be so bull-headed about this, and I had no idea what it was going to take to get him to see that we couldn’t just hang them out to dry.
“We still have that meeting with them, don’t we?” I asked him, and he nodded.
“Yes, we do...”
“We need to go in there ready to fight. Declare war, if that’s what it takes.”
Mauro winced. He, of all people, knew how important it had been to my father to try and leave all of that behind us, but he hadn’t accounted for something like this going down – a would-be enemy using the woman I cared about so deeply against me. Nadia was an innocent, and I knew my father wouldn’t have told me to look the other way when it came to protecting someone who had nothing to do with any of this.
“We’re meant to be getting out of that side of the business,” he pointed out, but there wasn’t much conviction in his voice. He knew I had already made my mind up about it. He knew there would be no talking me out of it. Much like my father, when I had set my head to something, I knew that there was nothing I could do to stop those wheels rolling.
“That was before Nadia,” I muttered. A flash of anger passed over Mauro’s face, and I knew he was going to kick off soon. He didn’t want her to be involved in any of it, and it probably drove him downright fucking insane to know I had already poured so much into Nadia, into our relationship.
“Andreas,” he began, keeping his voice as even as he was able to. “You need to think about this. Really think about it.”
“I have,” I replied at once. “I don’t need to think about it any more, I’ve made my mind up.”
“You barely know this girl,” he fired back. I could hear the anger in his voice, but I did my best to ignore it.
“Yeah, and she doesn’t deserve to be involved in any of this,” I replied. “That’s why I’m trying to keep her safe—”
“The best thing you could do to keep her safe is leave her alone,” he pointed out. I bristled.
“If that was true, then nothing would have happened to her when she was in Miami.”
“Did anything happen, until you went back there?”
I hated that he was right. I glanced away from him.
“She’s in it too deep now,” I replied. “It’s too dangerous for me to just let go. She could get hurt. Look at what Nikita did, going to her place after he kidnapped her and her father...”
“He’s doing it to get to you,” Mauro pointed out. “If he didn’t think that it would work to get under your skin, he wouldn’t bother with it at all.”
“He’s already made his decision,” I muttered. “He’s pulled her into it now. I’m going to keep her safe.”
“Do you hear yourself?” Mauro snapped at me. “You’re talking like you don’t have a brain in your head, Andreas, and I’m praying that’s not true. Do you really think you need to give up everything for this woman?”
“I’m not giving up anything,” I fired back, through gritted teeth. “I’m doing what I can to keep the woman I love safe—”
“The woman you love?” he exclaimed, shaking his head. “You hardly know her! You met a few months ago, and she’s been in Miami without a word to you for weeks.”
“I know how I feel about her,” I snarled back. There was no way I was going to let Mauro, of all people, tell me how I felt about this girl. I knew this was real, and I knew I wasn’t going to let anything get in the way of it.
“What would your father say about this?” he demanded. He knew that was a last resort, an attempt to get me to give in and run by his rules, but there was no way I was going to let that happen.
“It doesn’t matter, he’s not here—”
“Andreas, this is his legacy you’re dealing with here,” he reminded me. “Don’t you think that you should at least consider what he might have to say about everything that you’re doing here?”
I fell silent. Okay, if that’s how he wanted me to come at it, I would. let’s think about what my father would have said about all of this.
“He would be glad that I had found a woman I was willing to fight for,” I replied, and I glared at Mauro, daring him to contradict me. My father, for all that he had been a man focused on his legacy and his empire, was one who cared deeply for the people around him, forging deep relationships and making sure that he kept the people closest to him safe. If he had seen me doing the same thing for Nadia, he would have encouraged me. In fact, in doing this, I felt closer to my father than I had for a long time – understanding this fundamental part of his being, realizing how important it was to go fight for the people who needed you.
“You don’t know her,” Mauro argued, searching for anything he could use to throw me off my game. “She could be a honeypot, for all you know. You could be walking right into his trap—”
“Stop!” I yelled at him. I wasn’t going to listen to him spin this shit about her any longer. I knew this was just his way of trying to protect me, but I didn’t need protecting from her. I didn’t need protecting from Nadia. I knew the way that I felt about her was real, and I was certain that she couldn’t have faked the way she had come to feel for me.
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” I snapped at him. “And if that’s the way that you think about the woman I love, then maybe it’s time for me to move on to an advisor I can actually trust.”
I turned to storm out of the office, not wanting to hear another word out of his mouth. Whatever he had to say, I didn’t give a fuck. I knew I needed to get to Nadia, to find out what had happened with Kozlov since he had turned up at her apartment, and get her out of there so that I could keep her safe, properly, once and for all.
The fury was rushing around and around my head, making me blind with rage – blind for anything other than knowing that I needed to get her out of there.
That I needed to protect her against anything Kozlov threw her way.
