Page 34 of The Boss
When the sun came, he’d pick it back up. He’d call Cade. They’d draw a circle with no angles for a man who liked to watch. He’d make a plan for a brother who removed people, and then he’d remove the brother. He’d ask the Dantes for old stories of Brands that crossed bloodlines. He’d find his mother’s silence and force it to speak.
For now he breathed in the scent of sex and woman and sleep, and he let the Brand’s heat settle into a steady throb that matched hers. He knew he wasn’t done wanting. He knew the wanting would be the work. He didn’t fear work. He only feared losing what the work wasfor.
He tightened his arm around her and fell, finally, into dreamlessdark.
DAWN SEEPEDin at the edges of the blinds when Leif woke. The city below had the hush that came before engines and money started up again. Mariah slept warm and loose against his chest, breath soft and deep. The lion on his palm pulsed against her stomach, an echo that throbbed down to his bones.
He eased his arm from under her and lay still until she settled. He watched her for one long heartbeat more. Then he slid from the bed, pulled on slacks and the shirt he’d dropped last night, and stepped into the living room with his phone in hishand.
The window looked east. Abruise of color rimmed the horizon. He stood there with the glass cold at his shoulder and stared at his palm. The Brand was black and certain. No dream. No madness. Destiny branded into a Severinhand.
He scrolled to his mother.
Letty answered on the fourth ring, voice sleep-rough and wary. “Leif?”
“It’s early.”
“It is.” A small pause. “Are you all right?”
“I will be after you tell me the truth.” He didn’t dress it. “Would it surprise you to know I have a lion on my palm?”
Silence fell. He could hear the small domestic sounds of her house waking. The click of a lamp. Abreath taken in and held. His stepfather’s murmur in the background. Something about coffee.
“Leif,” she said at last. “Describe it.”
He told her the lines, the angle of the head, the way it had burned into skin in the middle of the night like iron from a forge. He told her about the heat that came in waves, steady now, answering another heat that was not his alone.
Another breath over the line. “You sound frightened.”
He laughed once without humor. “I’m not frightened. I’m just done with lies.”
“I never lied to you.” The protest was quiet, almost a flinch.
“You withheld. That counts.” He looked at the skyline. “Tell me about your divorce from Bjorn.”
“That’s old business.”
“It’s my business now.” He let the words sit. “Why did you leave him?”
She didn’t answer at once. He could hear her moving, imagined her crossing to the kitchen, imagined the thin china cup she favored, the silver spoon on saucer, the habit that calmed her. When she came back to the call her voice had steadied.
“We married for alliance and for a kind of love,” she said. “We didn’t have the other thing.”
“The Brand.” He said itflat.
“Yes.” Another quiet. “We waited. We hoped. Years passed. Your grandfather pressed. His brothers pressed. They wantedto know why I’d married without a Brand, why I’d broken the law that held the family together. Power doesn’t like questions without answers.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that part?”
“Because you were a boy. Then you were a young man who prized control above everything else. What would that truth have given you except another weapon to turn on yourself.”
“It would’ve given me the map I was missing.” He looked down at his hand again. The lion stared back. “You’re not surprised by this.”
“No.” The word was soft and it rang like a small bell in a largeroom.
He shut his eyes for a beat. “Say it clean.”
“I knew it was possible,” she said. “I hoped it would be true for you. Ididn’t know when. Ididn’t know with whom.”
