Page 175 of Fractured Allegiance
No knock. No warning. Just that smug air of assumed ownership trailing him like a shadow.
“I hope the accommodations are to your taste,” he says, spreading his arms like I’m supposed to thank him.
I don’t.
He shuts the door and leans against it, all charm and menace in equal measure. Black shirt open at the collar. Gold cufflinks that glint when he crosses his arms. He’s never liked me. Not really. I remind him of Elias. Of someone he couldn’t fuck into silence.
“Where am I?”
“A safe place,” he says. “Just until the smoke clears.”
“What smoke?”
He walks toward me, slow and theatrical. “There’s a situation, Lydia. Some of our partners think you’ve been talking to outsiders. That maybe you’ve gotten… sentimental.”
My jaw locks.
“You mean Silas.”
Dom smiles. “I mean anyone who isn’t us.”
I say nothing.
He stops a few feet from me, eyes glinting. “I told Drazen you were too smart to betray us. But he’s feeling exposed. Someone’s been feeding information into the city wire… too much of it tracing back to the club. To our shipments. Our timing.”
I tilt my head. “And you think it’s me.” It isn’t a question. It doesn’t have to be one.
“I didn’t say that,” Dom says.
“No. You just drugged me and locked me in a penthouse.”
He steps closer. “I protected you. From what Drazen would’ve done if he thought you were lying.”
“And what would that be?” I snap.
“Something messier,” he answers calmly.
I snort at that, eyes rolling to the ceiling. “So, I’m supposed to thank you for not breaking my fingers?”
“No,” he says, voice dipping. “You’re supposed to help me make this look like loyalty.”
He hands me a phone. I don’t take it, staring at it instead.
“I want you to call Drazen,” he says, “and tell him you’re ready to cooperate fully. That you understand his paranoia. That you want to help find the leak.”
“And if I don’t?”
He shrugs. “Then I walk out. Leave you here. Let him come up himself.”
I stare at the phone.
This isn’t about belief. They don’t believe I did anything. They just want to see how much they can make me bend.
I take the phone.
I don’t dial.
Instead, I toss it back to him.
