Page 17 of All's Fair In Love & War

I swallowed my irritation and responded smoothly. “They’re poking the system to see where we’re soft. We’ll letthem think they found the cracks. Then we collapse the whole thing on top of them.”

Several of the older men exchanged dark smiles, clearly entertained. The game excited them. The violence, the politics, the illusion of control, it was all they thrived on besides money.

Naeem’s hand brushed the back of my chair, his thumb dragging slowly along the wood grain. I wanted to push him away, even punch him in the face. Nothing he was doing was slick, and the gesture damn sure wasn’t affectionate.

It was territorial and possessive, making it look as if I, Tatum, The Don, needed her husband standing over her shoulder, pulling the strings like a puppeteer.”

Highly irritated, I kept my face still, but if I recognized it, I knew someone else would too, and they’d call it out eventually.

And that they did.

“How we supposed to know who’s really makin’ the calls now?” Jax asked, tapping his ring on the wooden table, his tone bold enough to silence the room. “The Don we knew didn’t need nobody whisperin’ in his ear.”

Jax had served as my father’s senior advisor for over two decades. He was a relic of the old world—respected, ruthless, and impossible to intimidate. While the others adjusted to my reign, he tolerated it. Barely. The only reason he wasn’t sitting at the head of this table was because he never wanted the crown… just the ear of whoever wore it.

Inside, I cringed but kept my face still, the weight of Jax’s words pressing on my chest like heavy stones. What Jax asked wasn’t curiosity; it was a calculated blow aimed directly at my authority—more of a challenge than a question, demanding a reaction rather than an answer. He wanted to see if I’d crack. If I’d fold. Whether the crown I wore was truly mine or just borrowed.

I had never been allowed at that table, not as a daughter, not as a messenger, not even as a silent observer. The men in this family had made it clear from the beginning that this space wasn’t built for women. So, when I sat at the head of it now, I felt every set of eyes digging into my skin.

I could almost hear the unspoken questions circling the room like vultures.How long before she folds? How long before her husband has to step in? How long before this whole thing collapses because of her inferior gender?

I wasn’t naïve. I knew they didn’t see me as a real Don, at least not yet. To them, I was a walking vagina, a woman who got the seat because of bloodlines, and not backbone, and that’s what made it worse, because Ihadthe backbone. What I didn’t have was experience with them. I’d never worked side-by-side with any of these men. I hadn’t been invited to the late-night strategy meetings, the off-book negotiations, or the quiet decisions made over cigars and scotch.

I wasn’t one of them, and they made sure I felt it.

My nerves had been raw from the moment I walked in. It was in the way my hands gripped the armrests too tightly. In the dryness of my throat when I opened my mouth to speak. I hated how unfamiliar the room felt, how unnatural it was to command attention in a space that had been built to exclude me. There was no blueprint for how to lead men who believed they were born better than you.

And Naeem didn’t help my cause each time he leaned in behind me, whispering suggestions like I hadn’t already thought ten steps ahead. Maybe he thought he was protecting me. Maybe he didn’t trust me to handle it. Either way, it chipped away at everything I was trying to prove, and made me feel small in the one place I couldn’t afford to be.

However, even with the weight of their stares and the simmering heat of Naeem’s presence behind me, something inside me started to harden.

I wasn’t here because I was incapable of leading. I was here because I had put in as much work as these men and had lost so many pieces of myself to keep this family afloat. If they weren’t going to show me the respect I deserved, I was going to make them. By the time I’m done with them, every man in this room will understand that the world has changed, and they could either fall in line or be buried beneath it.

I would not let anyone ever bully me into silence again.

Not them.

Not Naeem.

Not anyone.

They didn’t have to respect me today, but by the time I was finished with what I had to say, they’dneverquestion me again.

Naeem moved behind me, ready to respond, but I raised my hand before he could open his mouth. My palm was steady, my fingers still, the diamond on my ring finger catching the light and casting it straight across the table.

“I’ll handle this,” I said, voice low but infused with enough heat to melt steel.

He hesitated for half a second before stepping back, but the heat rolling off him was impossible to ignore, like standing under the sun in a New Mexico summer heatwave. Naeem hated being silenced, especially in public, but that wasn’t my problem. He chose to be here. My table, my rules.

I stood, my heels clicking against the floor as I stepped away from my seat, letting silence stretch thin between us, every eye following me.

“I wasn’t handed this seat,” I said, letting my voice carry without raising it. “I wasn’t protected, groomed, or propped up.I earned it. Every cut, every scar, every loss—it was mine. No, I may not have sat at this table with you while my father was alive, but don’t get it twisted, behind the scenes, I was calling more shots than most of you even realized.”

I took a slow step forward, locking eyes with Lorenzo before sweeping my gaze across the rest of the table.

“When we launched the first off-book freezer at the Southside clinic, who do you think helped design the inventory system that kept the feds from sniffing around? Who coded the transport manifests and flagged fake delivery routes so we could move blood without a single trace?”

I didn’t wait for an answer.

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