“Excuse me?” I ask, blinking. He makes it sound like she’s something I can just return.
“Well, the world has no idea she exists. How are you going to keep that under wraps?”
I sit back in my seat.
“Look … by the way I saw you and Nite react to her running into the hospital, you two knew she existed. I’m not even going to ask how. But she’s obviously been in hiding. Now she’s out.” He spreads his tatted arms out wide. “The Bianchis have a lot of enemies—case in point, our friend is currently in a coma after being shot—and Mia making her presence known to the world could cause even more problems. For her. For you. The Bianchis in general.”
I never thought about that. Luca said she was to be used as a weapon, but what would happen if someone actually got their hands on her? Her father wouldn’t give a shit what happened to her. He proved that by selling her off to the highest bidder. She said he wants Kingdom, but the dots don’t line up. If someone else had bought her, who knows where she’d be right now. He got his money already. Did her father send her back here because he knows I was the one who purchased her? Names were never used in the private auction. I didn’t have to sign anything. We paid our table fee in cash, and that was that. The wire transfer was untraceable. If someone were to leak any information about the auctions—you’d be killed. No questions asked. So that makes me wonder how they know I did it.
I try to tell myself she’s not my problem, but then I think of Luca. I can’t allow someone to use him against her like that. I can’t go to her brothers for help. They already gave her a timeline before they came after her again.
“Call a meeting,” I tell him. “The conference room in thirty. And text Nite. I want him there too.”
He nods and gets up without saying another word. Picking up my phone, I make a couple of phone calls.
An hour later, I walk into our conference room to see my brother, Titan, Cross, along with Nite already seated at the custom-made black table that easily sits twenty people. A skull is carved out of the middle, and Kingdom is written in gold at each end. This is where we conduct all our business meetings. We’ve got jammers blocking any type of electrical devices in here.
“You’re late,” my brother announces, checking his watch.
I snort. Like he’s never been late for a meeting before. Hell, there were days that went by, and none of us even knew where he was.
“What’s this about?” he asks when I don’t acknowledge his previous statement.
Cross gives a chuckle. “I can guess.”
Sitting at the head of the table, I toss some folders onto the center and speak. “We’ve got a problem.”
“Well, you’ll have to be a little more specific.” My brother laughs, reaching out for one.
“The Bianchis,” I add.
Grave’s jaw sharpens, opening it up. “What about them?”
“Mia is meant to steal Kingdom,” I announce.
Silence falls over the room, and each one looks up at me. Then the Kings start to laugh, and even Nite smiles. The guy is mute. We all have our weapon of choice, and he’s picked silence. “How’s she going to do that exactly?” Cross questions.
“She’s supposed to marry me,” I answer.
All laughter comes to a stop, and I lean back in my seat.
“Wait … what?” Grave asks, his eyes quickly scanning over the papers in front of him, double-checking it’s not a marriage license or something. Making sure I haven’t lost my mind.
Cross shakes his head.
“You’re serious?” Titan sounds skeptical, not even bothering to pick his folder up.
I nod. “Luca came to me about four weeks ago. Showed me a video of Mia. She had been sex trafficked—”
“Fuck,” Titan hisses, interrupting me.
“Told me she was being shipped to New York. I made a phone call, got an invite to an auction, and bought her,” I explain in the simplest way possible.
“Tell me you’re kidding.” Grave growls. “Why are you giving us medical records then?” He gestures to the open folder in front of him. “Who do they belong to?”
I go on. “I shipped her off to live in my Malibu home. Everything was going well. Then three days ago, Matteo and the twins somehow found her at my beach house. Told her to come back—her father wants Kingdom, and he’s going to use her to get it.”
Cross pushes his seat back and stands over by the floor-to-ceiling windows. Pulling his Zippo out, he starts fidgeting with it.
“Then ship her back,” Grave demands. “Somewhere they won’t fucking find her.”
That’s not going to work. “She refused them.” He snorts, not believing that. “When she told them no, they gave her three months to make me fall in love with her, marry her, and her dad will have Kingdom.”