I REACTED ON INSTINCT.
I grabbed Roman’s arm a split second before he pulled the trigger; the shot went wide, the bullet pinging against steel as we fell back into the elevator and the doors slid closed.
His gun clattered to the floor. We lunged for it at the same time, but Roman drove his elbow into my ribcage right as my fingers brushed the metal.
Thuds and grunts, fists against flesh. The air evacuated from my lungs, replaced with a desperate, primal need for survival.
I didn’t allow myself to think. If I did, I’d have to confront who the gun belonged to. Whose number I’d called when I needed someone to talk to. Whose reemergence in my life I’d accepted despite misgivings because I’d slipped up once and allowed sentimentality to get the best of me.
Unlike our fight at the penthouse, this one didn’t shed blood, but it bruised harder than any of our previous blows.
Roman finally got the upper hand when my phone rang and split my attention for a fraction of a second. A twist of his arm, and I was pinned against the wall with a gun pressed under my chin.
We stared at each other, our breaths heavy with exertion and something deeper than physical struggle.
My phone stopped ringing. The ensuing silence was so vast and charged it warped the tenor of my voice.
“Nice seeing you too, Rome,” I rasped. Somewhere, in the dim recesses of my mind, I realized the elevator had stopped moving. We must’ve hit the emergency switch. “Now can you tell me, exactly, what the fuck is this?”
The fog of shock had gradually dissipated, giving way to a thousand unanswered questions. For example, why the hell my brother was trying to kill me and why, if he wanted me dead, he hadn’t attempted to finish the job earlier. He’d had plenty of opportunities over the past month when my guard was down.
Why now? Why here? And why the look of regret in his eyes when he’d pulled the trigger?
Roman’s jaw ticked. “I can’t let you go through with the deal.”
What—realization threaded through the sense of betrayal simmering in my gut. “DBG? This is about a goddamn bank?”
“I tried to warn you.”
Don’t buy the bank. If you do, you’ll die. Last night’s strange call resurfaced with razor-sharp clarity.
“You said you weren’t behind the unknown calls.” I recognized the absurdity of my accusation. If he wasn’t above murder, he certainly wasn’t above lying.
“Not the ones from the fall.” Roman’s eyes flickered beneath the lights. “That was them. They were…displeased about me making contact with you. The calls were a warning to me more than you.”
My blood drummed in my ears. Them. “Who do you work for?” I had my suspicions, but I wanted him to say it.
“I can’t tell you.” His grip tightened around his gun. “Let’s say I fell in with the wrong crowd.”
“Classic Roman.”
He didn’t smile. “I wish I didn’t have to do this.”
“So don’t.” My eyes stayed on his. “Whoever they are, they’re not here.
It’s you and me. That’s it.”
I was painfully aware of the cold metal against my skin and the seconds ticking by. There was a strong chance I wouldn’t walk out of this elevator alive, and the only thing I could think of was Alessandra.
The grand opening was in full swing. Did she think I’d forgotten about her? That I wasn’t going to show because I was too busy with the buyout? It was her big night, and I might ruin it the way I had so many other things in the past.
I didn’t fear dying as much as I feared never seeing her again.
Regret hardened into determination. Fuck that. We’d just gotten back together, and we had our entire lives in front of us. I wasn’t letting that go without a fight.
“Why do you care so much about the bank?” I stalled. If I could distract Roman for just one second… “What difference does my buyout make?”
“None to me. A hell of a lot to my client.”
“It’s funny.” An acrid taste welled on my tongue. “You talked so much about loyalty, yet here you are, choosing a client over your brother. So much for family.”
His jaw ticked again. “Don’t pin this on me. If you’d listened— ”
“To an anonymous caller using a voice distorter? I can’t imagine why I wouldn’t take business advice from someone like that.” I could barely hear my voice over the thudding of my heart. “At least be honest. There’s a part of you that’s always wanted to do this. You wanted to make me pay for my betrayal, and this is your chance. So do it. Right now, face to face. You’ve waited fifteen years for this.” I grabbed his wrist and forced the gun tighter against my skin. “Do it.”
Click.
My heart outpaced my breaths. Oxygen thickened into sludge, and acrimony raked across my skin like razor blades.
My brother’s eyes blazed, and for a second, just a second, I thought that was it.
But then Roman hissed out a curse, and the sensation of metal disappeared from my skin. He stepped back, his gun still trained on me.
“If I don’t kill you,” he said, “they’ll kill both of us. Unless…”
I waited, suspended between relief and dread.
“You give up the deal. Walk away from DBG, Dom, and I might be able to convince them to let us live.”
“Done.”
“Don’t lie to me.” Roman knew me too well to take me at my word. “If I let you leave and you complete the buyout anyway, no amount of security could save you or me. It won’t be about the client anymore. It’ll be about their reputation, and they would go to any lengths to protect their reputation. Trust me.” Shadows crept through his eyes, the echoes of horrors better left buried.
The hammer of my pulse caused my veins to hurt.
I’d planned to do exactly what he suspected. I would walk out, sign the deal, and hunt down whoever was behind tonight. I wouldn’t rest until they were dead, every single one of them.
“It’s a bank.” Roman kept his gaze on mine. “One bank. Is it worth what you might lose?”
The hammering intensified.
It should’ve been a no-brainer. Give up the deal and live without looking over my shoulder every day. But the DBG buyout wasn’t about one bank. It was about the culmination of everything I’d tried to do since I was old enough to realize I didn’t have to stay in my shithole town.
No one had ever bought a bank this size before the age of thirty-five. I’d be the first. It would be a fuck you to every naysayer I’d encountered and every teacher who said I would amount to nothing. No matter what happened after, it’d ensure I go down in the history books.
Immortalized. Unerasable.
It would be security and my legacy.
I wasn’t afraid of Roman’s mysterious backer; I had my own connections and enough money to bury them alive. But winning wasn’t guaranteed, and I wasn’t the only one at risk.
How much was I willing to gamble to achieve everything I’d ever wanted?
“The ball’s in your court, Dom,” Roman said, his voice low. “What will you choose? Your legacy or our lives?”
