Chapter 3 - Blood and Ink
I didn't bother knocking. I slammed the double doors of Victor’s private study open so hard they bounced off the mahogany walls.
Victor was sitting behind an enormous mahogany desk, surrounded by leather-bound ledgers and open laptops. Two of his top enforcers stood near the window, but they vanished into the hallway with a single flick of Victor's wrist as soon as I entered.
"Where is my brother?" I demanded, marching right up to his desk, my voice trembling with a fury that completely erased my fear. "What did you do to Liam?"
Victor leaned back in his leather chair, steepling his fingers beneath his chin. He looked devastatingly composed, the fresh white shirt pulling slightly across his broad shoulders where the wound throbbed beneath the fabric.
"Your brother," Victor said slowly, "is currently boarding a private flight to Zurich. One-way ticket. All his debts have been wiped clean."
I stopped dead in my tracks, my breath catching in my throat. "Wiped clean? But... how? Why?"
"Because debts owed to the Chicago Syndicate don't get paid off by maids scrubbing baseboards for minimum wage," Victor replied, his dark eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that felt magnetic and suffocating all at once. "He was a liability. A drain on your time, your energy, and your life. I removed the problem."
"You exiled him?" I gasped, a cold shiver running down my spine. "You shipped him out of the country without even asking me?"
"I saved his life, Elena. The men he owed money to were planning to harvest his organs by midnight," Victor stated flatly, standing up and walking around the desk toward me. "Instead, he’s starting over in Switzerland with a clean ledger and fifty thousand dollars in his pocket. You should be thanking me."
I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to hit his chest, to throw a glass of bourbon at his pristine suit, to run away screaming into the Chicago snow. But as he stepped closer, towering over me with that dark, magnetic aura, all the fight drained out of my limbs.
"And what about me?" I whispered, my voice cracking. "What am I now? Your prisoner?"
May you like
Victor reached out, his thumb gently brushing against the raw, cracked skin of my knuckles—the scars left behind by three months of chemical cleaning. A shiver raced up my arm.
"You’re not a prisoner," Victor murmured, his face dangerously close to mine. "You’re an investment. And tonight, you’re going to sit across from me at dinner, and you’re going to tell me every single thing about yourself."
