Treachery

Frustration rode me all the way home from the auto shop near Luca’s apartment.

When I’d pulled up, her wrecked car wasn’t within sight, the shop closed up for the night with no windows into the garage to see if Priest had dragged the car in there to examine what went wrong with it.

None of this situation makes sense. Not the car that almost ran her down, and not the sudden issue with her car’s brakes.

Sure, it could be a coincidence. People drive like assholes all the time, and it’s not unheard of for someone to get run down in a parking lot.

Also, her car is a piece of shit. Maybe it was a simple leak in the brake system, or possibly the asshole driving it fucked up and didn’t want to admit the wreck was his fault.

Everything is a possibility at this point, and I returned home with far too many questions that don’t have easy answers.

I hate not having a handle on what’s going on around me. I’m too controlled. Too precise.

I have to be with what we’re up against. Our fathers aren’t young punks that don’t know how games are played. They practically taught us how to manipulate the world around us.

So, if games are being played, I need to be the puppet master orchestrating the board, but in this situation, it feels like I’m ru

The only difference is I know it.

And I certainly don’t fucking like it.

A knock at the door causes me to turn as I’m stripping off my dress shirt to toss into a nearby hamper, green eyes staring at me as Gabriel lets himself into the room.

Shutting the door behind him quietly, he leans a shoulder against a wall as I strip off my belt and toss that on a nearby chair.

“Should I assume your early arrival means there’s an issue?”

“It means I’m pissed off,” I growl as I drop my weight on the side of the bed and lean back on my elbows.

He nods. “Well, then you’ll be more pissed off when you head downstairs and discover that Sawyer turned poker night into a party.”

Teeth grinding, I curse beneath my breath. I should have known better than to leave that asshat unsupervised.

“Where’s Luca?”

“With Ava, which is the only reason I felt comfortable leaving her down there without you or me to keep an eye on her.”

I breathe out heavily, rubbing the back of my neck as if that will ease the tension locking my muscles in place.

Ava is an angel. Always has been. How Mason has managed to hold on to her despite everything else in his life is a mystery. She deserves better, but then we all know he’s not in love with his fiancé and never has been.

Mason barely even speaks to the woman he’s supposed to marry. And she isn’t too thrilled with being engaged to him either. It’s simply a matter of two families using their children to blend their assets in a bid for more influence and power.

“And the gauntlet?” I ask.

“Already started.”

I glance up at him. “Same game?”

The bastard quirks his lips.

“With a few tweaks. It would be a shame to do exactly the same thing and risk being thought of as boring.”

This situation is getting too complicated. But everything I’ve done, every piece I’ve set in place, has been essential to reach an end result that works in the group’s favor.

Pushing up to my feet, I strip off my slacks, toss them over the chair and walk into my closet to grab jeans and a shirt.

“Clayton came by the office today.”

Gabriel’s soft laughter bleeds in through the closet doors.

“No wonder you’re in a bad mood. Was he begging and pleading to be cut loose again?”

I tug a shirt over my head and stab my arms through the sleeves. After stepping into a pair of jeans, I’m yanking up the zipper and buttoning the top as I walk into my room again.

“He threatened to tell Luca the truth.”

Brows rising, Gabe tucks his hands into his pockets.

Unlike me, he has no problem staying in dress slacks and a dress shirt all night while still remaining comfortable. The man was born for business and everything it entails. I swear you can find him at all hours of the night, looking like he’s just walked out of a boardroom.

“Dumb move on his part.”

I laugh, a quick bark of sound that has no humor to it. “Yeah. He’s signed a death warrant.”

“And you still have a handle on it?”

Gri

Leave it to Gabriel to see more beneath my anger than the shit with Clayton. He knows me better than I know myself.

We’ve been best friends since before we could walk, our personalities matching perfectly when it comes to the games we play. I can’t hide anything from him, just like it’s impossible for him to hide anything from me.

“What else happened?”

Leaning against an opposite wall, I meet his stare.

“Daddy Dearest didn’t try to kill Luca. So everything that happened this morning was either coincidence or something else.”

Gabe and I never refer to our fathers with anything other than the nicknames we’ve assigned them. To call a man Dad, he’d had to have raised you. And while our fathers were sure to use us for whatever advantage they could gain by doing so, neither of them lifted a finger in our upbringing.

We were raised by na

Ours has been a blessed life.

“I’m sure Warbucks has nothing to do with it either. He’s been out of town since the party this weekend and typically leaves those sort of affairs to other people.”

Any of our fathers could have played a role in the attempt on Luca’s life - if it was an actual attempt - but they wouldn’t have done so without reporting to Daddy Dearest or Warbucks about it.

“Are we assuming there are other factors at play in this?”

My fingers curl into my palms, anger forcing my hands to fist because I have no fucking idea. “It’s something to watch out for.”

A simple nod of his head is his response to that discussion.

“We should probably get downstairs then. Although Ava is around, she isn’t the perfect person to be watching Luca. Not for too long anyway, and we’ve already been out of view for almost an hour.”

There’s no telling what the hell is going on down there, the loud music that’s playing a soft thump against my bedroom walls. It’s not something I’m new to. The endless partying in undergrad and at Yale has taught me to ignore the constant noise and random chaos.

I shove away from the wall. “Let’s go.”

Not in the mood to mingle within a group of people, I walk at Gabriel’s side as we descend the stairs, my gaze finding Luca immediately where she sits on the couch with a beer in hand.

The fact that she’s talking and laughing with a group of women doesn’t bother me. But seeing her sitting against Sawyer does.

He has an arm draped over her shoulder, his co

Luca, however, notices me immediately, her blue eyes locking to mine, widening just a fraction because I’m sure my anger is obvious.

But instead of pulling away from Sawyer like any smart woman would do, she narrows her stare on me, takes a sip of her beer, and turns her attention to the group around her as if I’m not standing in the room.