Jax sighed. I glanced at Brey with my eyes wide.
She quickly shook her head, signaling not to look her way. But I needed her reassurance. We were dealing with the mob. Someone needed to let me know I wasn’t dying today.
“I took over the city if that’s what you’re asking.” Bastian folded his hands on the table and pointedly moved a ring around one of his fingers. It matched the one on Cade’s ring finger.
Jett’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “When?”
Bastian laughed, but it felt hollow. “Dear old dad handed it over right before this meeting.”
Reading between the lines of two men who ruled the business and mafia worlds wasn’t my strong suit. I knew there was more to the story as Jett nodded solemnly. “Well, then. Let’s me and you talk business, Sebastian.”
“Our contract stays the same. We don’t have time to negotiate a change in terms.”
“That contract was outdated the day our fathers shook hands.”
“There’s no record of that handshake,” Bastian quipped.
“I don’t have time for this,” Jett sighed, shoulders slumping as if the world’s weight had become too heavy. “You know I’m trying to develop a way of maintaining a clean water supply in third world countries. It’s time sensitive for people who live there. This isn’t as important.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose, and everyone fell silent. His words echoed through the room, shifting the focus from the power struggle between men to the struggle of humanity. A man’s pride should have been measured by what he did for the world, not by who might have been a bigger man in the conference room.
Maybe both Bastian and Jett knew that. Maybe the two saw and fought battles so much larger than the rest of us could fathom that they could put aside whatever differences they had to make their partnership work.
“I’m here to keep working with you, Jett,” Bastian said, his words precise, clear, and starkly honest.
Jett’s blue eyes scanned the room. “We’re all here for that. Let’s make it work. What do you need?”
“I need backing on the pharmaceutical company, Levvetor.”
Sheets of paper ruffled throughout the conference room as our team scrambled to find the relevant information.
“Not even on the table, Bastian,” Jett grated out. “You didn’t send any information on that. It’s a curveball I’m not willing to entertain.”
The air shifted, I saw it before anyone else or they didn't care to see it. Bastian rolled his shoulders once and flicked his gaze to his brother.
“We should do it,” I blurted.
Every single blue eye, green eye, Italian eye, and brown eye swung my way. The attention of the whole room was on me.
And not in a good way.
Maybe a concerning one from Brey and a curious one from Bastian and Cade’s side of the table. Everyone else wanted to kill me, burn me at the stake, shove me out of the conference room and apologize for the idiot. I understood it. I wanted to take back my words as soon as I’d unleashed them.
"She's new," Jett explained and waved away my comment.
"She's also intelligent. Hear her out." Brey sat up tall, head turned to face Bastian. And to avoid Jett, no doubt.
"Anything for you, little dancer," Bastian smiled as he murmured it. Partying with Bastian and Cade one night had ended mostly in Bastian wanting more from Brey than she could give him because her heart already belonged to Jax. Bastian flaunted his soft spot for Brey every time he encountered the couple now.
“Drop the name, Bastian," Jax warned.
Jett cleared his throat. "Let's keep this about business."
I stopped him. “Investing in Levvetor would not only benefit the company from a publicity standpoint, it's also a good company. And if that solidifies the contract we want with you …" I glanced at the Armanelli team and then looked at Jett. His shoulders sat stiff and straight under his suit jacket. He glared at me while he clicked his pen in and out. The sound matched my heart’s beat. Fast. Rapid. Alive. “I think it’s a deal we shouldn’t pass up.”
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Stepping in to take the decision out of a powerful man’s hands so I could give my opinion washed away any feeling of weakness, fragility, or deficiency. Normally, I worried over whether my cells would divide abnormally one day. It took one simple imperfect DNA mutation and I would go back to wondering if I would get to see another day.