Page 115 of Dangerous King
My spine straightens. Every hair on my body stands on end as if drawn by static. "I take it I'm speaking to Ledyanoy Prizrak," I say evenly. I want nothing more than to crawl through the line and choke the bastard who dared lay hands on my sister.
Silvano gets up and comes closer to my desk. I put the phone on speaker.
"You are. But for posterity, call me Alaric," he doesn't deny it or posture, which I appreciate. "You're currently interfering with a one-point-five-billion-dollar target," he continues. "Stand down. Or feel my wrath. And I assure you, Enrico Sartori, you do not want that."
I scoff. "One point five billion? That's a hell of a paycheck for Preston Kingsley. Who the hell's paying you? God Himself?"
When there is no answer, I say, "I'm flattered you know my name. But if you knew me, you'd know that threats don't work on me. I'm not some C-list Russian arms dealer you can strangle with piano wire and dump in the Seine."
"No," Alaric says, and there's something like amusement in his voice. "You're worse. A man who believes the world bends for him. The most dangerous kind of fool."
"I'm a fool who keeps his family safe," I snap. "If your one point five- billion-dollar job means hurting mine, I'll burn down your empire, ghost or not."
"I don't have an empire," he says in a low voice. "But Iamthe storm that buries kings." The call crackles slightly. I can feel his gaze through the phone, the weight of it even without a face.
"This is your first and final warning," he adds. "You are in the way. Stay there… and you become collateral. And for the record?—"
"What?"
"There won't be a second call."
"Let me give you some courtesy advice,Alaric," I snarl. Silvano waves his hand, wanting me to keep myself under control, but I'm done playing games with this asshole, "no matter where you hide or what name you call yourself, I'm coming after you. I'm going to kill you for putting your filthy hands on my sister. That's not a warning, that's a promise."
Click. The bastard hangs up on me.
I stare at the screen, grinding my jaw so hard that my molars hurt. My grip on the phone tightens. The plastic creaks, then the glass gives—snap—a spiderweb of cracks bursts across the screen like veins of lightning. A tiny shard flakes loose, catches the light before it drops to the ground. My breathing is hard, but my mind is working, calculating, replaying our conversation. The bastard knows me. Knows my name. Knows I'm a threat. He felt compelled towarnme, instead of trying to eliminate me. That means he's not as untouchable as he likes to pretend to be.
"Sounds like he doesn't want to tango with us," Silvano says, settling into the chair across from my desk, arms folded, already thinking three moves ahead.
"He didn't sound scared," I admit, jaw still tight. "But he sounded... invested. Like I'm screwing up something bigger than just Kingsley."
"He made a mistake," Silvano says. "Calling you? That wasn't a power move. That was rattled ego. You're inside his perimeter. He wanted to shake you off."
I nod slowly, my fingers still curled around the cracked phone. "And he's just confirmed his timeline's fucked. If he were on track, he wouldn't need to call. He'd just finish the job."
Silvano leans forward. "What's our move?"
I glance out the window, the skyline blurring into silver and steel under clouded daylight. "He said I'm interfering. That means someone else gave him the target. I want a list of Kingsley's contacts over the last six months. Everyone. Government, private, foreign. If he so much as had lunch with a diplomat's secretary, I want the name, the bank records, and her blood type."
Silvano's mouth quirks. "Copy that."
"I want every detail from the casino surveillance repulled; I need to retrace every second of that bastard's life. If Alaric set foot on New York soil, he left a trace. I don't care how good he is—he's not a ghost. He's flesh. Bone. Fallible."
"Then we bleed him," Silvano says quietly.
I nod once. "Yeah. We bleed him."
Because warning or not, ghost or not, he touchedmysister.
And for that, he's already dead. He just doesn't know it yet.
But that's not how my day goes to shit.
Alaric is just… a nuisance. A ghost with a price tag and an ego to match. There are hundreds of Alarics out there, men who think they're untouchable because they're invisible. I'll kill every single one of them if I have to. Burn down every safehouse, rip apart every fake identity. If they touch my family, they don't get to live.
No, the moment my day truly spirals is when I'm summoned—yes, summoned—to Edoardo's office.
At his mansion.
