Page 107 of His Tesoro

I ran my hand down my face, letting my mask slip a bit in his presence. “She said she loved me.” The words felt like ash in my mouth.

“She does,” Romeo said.

“How do you explain this?” I shouted, gesturing at the laptop. The messages went back to the first few days after we were married. The day I’d abandoned her in the apartment. But things had gotten better since then. I had gotten better. And still, she chose her sister over me.

Romeo’s suffocating silence stretched across the room like a tangible thing, stealing the breath from my lungs.

I was a man of action. Always in control, always with a plan. And yet my head was empty. My entire world was crumbling, and I couldn’t see the next step in front of me. Against my better judgement, I had opened myself up to Sofiya, bared my soul to her. And this was how she repaid me?

Romeo opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by a sharp knock at the door.

“Boss,” Domenico called out. “I have Ajello on the phone. It’s an emergency.”

I raised my chin at Romeo, and he opened the door.

My enforcer entered, eyes wide. “There’s an ambush at the northern warehouse. Our men have barricaded themselves inside, but they might not last long. Ajello says Arben is there.”

“Fuck!” I roared. This was the moment I’d been waiting for—the opportunity to take Arben down. Why did it have to happen now, when I needed to deal with Sofiya?

Unless that’s why it was happening now. Was Arben in the city because he was making some sort of move with Sofiya?

“Fuck, Boss, they won’t last much longer without backup,” Domenico said. Even across the room, I could hear shouts through the phone’s speaker.

I pulled my jacket on. I had to move now.

“Get Sofiya and put her in a basement room,” I told Domenico. Each word was agony, but I couldn’t see another path ahead.

“What?” Romeo hissed, eyes wide.

I met his shocked expression with my hard one. He might be my brother in all but blood, but I was the Don and my orders could not be publicly questioned. Romeo recognized his mistake and gave me a nod. His jaw remained clenched.

“You don’t want me to come with you?” Domenico asked.

“No, stay with Sofiya.” Possessive rage rose in me at the idea of another man being close to my wife. My body certainly hadn’t caught up to the fact that she was a traitor. How much of our time together had been a lie? But I had no choice. My priority had to be going after Arben. While Domenico was an asset in a fight, I needed someone I trusted to stay here. He was the one who had helped me identify traitors over a decade ago when I was fighting my uncle to win back what was mine.

“What do you want me to do with her once she’s in the basement?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I gritted out. “Don’t harm her, just put her in the room. Make sure she doesn’t have her phone or any other way to communicate. I will get her when we return.” I turned to Romeo, unable to ignore the urge to defend my actions. “If she is the traitor, hopefully her time in the room will scare her enough to confess.”

Romeo didn’t voice his question, but it hung in the air between us as clear as day—what if she wasn’t?

I couldn’t take that risk. My men were in danger, my entire empire threatened. I couldn’t leave her unsupervised when I was gone. It was possible that she and Arben already had some sort of plan in place, and if she suspected she was caught, she might try to run.

Never.

Never, tesoro.

You will never run from me.

“Yes, Boss,” Domenico said. “I’ll see to it.”

Romeo and I grabbed additional weapons in the armory before heading to the garage with ten of my best men.

We would go to the warehouse, destroy the Albanians, capture Arben, and then I would return and get the truth from my wife.

57

SOFIYA

---