Page 122 of Malicious Claim

Why did Makros seek revenge against my family?

What did they do?

I clenched the paper clutched in my hand and read the name written there again.

Dario Conti.

Chapter Forty Six

A Game of Precision

MAKROS'S POV

The moment I stepped out of the plane, I felt it.

Something was off.

The air contained a ripple, a barely perceptible change in the power balance. Years of cautious living had refined my senses, attuned me to the slightest deviation. This wasn't paranoia—it was experience.

I adjusted cufflinks, my hands tightening into a fist before I relaxed them. My men remained by the car, standing up straight, their faces unreadable. It all looked like everything was supposed to be the way it was, but that didn't mean anything.

I climbed into the back of the car. Nicolai sat beside me. The door closed with a gentle thump.

"How was Moscow?" he asked.

I didn't answer immediately. I simply let the city slide by outside the window, my mind already figuring it out.

"The Orel Bratva has been taken care of," I said finally.

Nicolai curtly nodded, but his jaw was clenched. Something was amiss in his demeanor.

I tangled my head by a fraction of an inch. "What did you do when I was away?"

He hesitated for a split second.

That was all I needed to know whatever he had to say was no good.

"Stefanos got too friendly to Leila when you were gone," he admitted. "And he made it impossible for me to keep an eye on her as much as you would've had me have control over her.

My jaw ticked but I said nothing.

Leila.

It always came back to her.

By the time we arrived at the estate, I already had a sense of something being wrong.

Stefanos was behaving differently, too hyper, too fidgety. He laughed a little too hard, talked a little too much, looked away from me for a moment too long.

Weak men believed that they could conceal guilt. They could not.

I sat at the head of the long table, stretching out my fingers against the cold of the wood. Leila sat directly across from me, calm as a stone. If she was playing innocent, she was doing a good job of staying cool.

Stefanos came in, shrugging his shoulders, trying too hard to be normal.

I did not turn to him right away.

Instead, I kept my gaze fixed at Leila. She met my gaze unblinking, but something had shifted.

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