“Katalina, I can only agree to so much without the other families.” Bastian was already leaning back on his heels as if ready to walk away from the deal.
“Do what you want,” she replied. “Without us, you make an enemy of us.”
“Don’t threaten the family that fed you for years.” His tone was harsh but I would have said the same thing. She belonged on this side of the table and we all knew it.
“The bratva gave me a seat at the table, Bastian. I didn’t have one before.”
Cade cracked his knuckles but kept his mouth shut. Dante winced at her accusation. I stepped forward before Bastian put a hand on my shoulder to stop me. We all hurt when she hurt. She was one of us even though she acted like she wasn’t.
We’d put her in the box that tradition had made over time. Learning was the first step and change was the second.
“We need more time, woman,” I said. “You never gave us a chance.”
“How many chances are women supposed to give?” Brey, quiet as ever throughout the whole meeting spoke up then. “How long have you truly known her, seen her, included her within your family, Rome? Bastian?”
Bastian rubbed his forehead and answered before I could. “We’ve all made mistakes. You do that when you’re growing up.”
“Seems some had to grow up quite a lot faster based on the actions of your family.” Brey’s emerald stare weighed us all down, along with her words.
Bastian’s hand slammed onto the table, his palm smacking the wood hard, the sound cutting the tension in the room. His glare turned hard on Katie. “What’s your angle? We all bend your way so that we can have an alliance rather than a war? We’ll kill you, Katalina.”
The bratva tsked and muttered obscenities. Ivan balked at the threat. “I won’t deny that. We’d die in the end, sure. Yet, your families . . .” He waved at both us and the Stonewoods in disgust. “You would fracture. We’d pick off a few. Maybe one good one. One that would wound you enough for the others to turn to vultures and jump in.”
Bastian’s eyes narrowed at Ivan.
Mine were on the woman I knew better than anyone else in this room. “You’re sitting on that side, Katalina. You willing to go to war for them? Take lives for them?”
“It’s bigger than that, Rome. My allegiance to my bloodline affords me the power to change what needs to be changed.”
I hummed at her response. “Tell me then. You willing to take my life?”
“What?” she whispered as I left Bastian’s side and stalked toward her.
“If we can’t have you, prove it. Prove your loyalty.”
The other Bratva Pakhans nodded in agreement. “Good idea,” one said, completely on board with my taunting.
She stood up to face me right as I reached her chair, like suddenly she didn’t trust that she could have her back to me. I searched her eyes and found a new kind of fear there.
“I’m not taking your life,” she said. “I’m not spilling blood.”
I pulled my Glock from the back of my pants’ waistband. She gripped the table and leaned back on it as I held the weapon out.
When she didn’t initially reach for it, I pressed it up against her chest. Her breaths were coming quickly and her heart was going a million beats a minute.
Good.
I took her wrist and set my gun in her hand; I said the words I knew she would finally understand. “Just like Jimmy, huh? Show me what you’re made of.”
She squinted. Her hand still shook, but slowly and surely Katalina’s thin fingers curled around the gun one by one. “You forget that I’ve killed for much less than this.”
Her finger hovered over the trigger but she glanced around the table first. She wanted someone to object, to call my bluff.
“Me and you, Cleo,” I whispered. “Pull the trigger and show them what you’re made of.”
I didn’t know if her trust in me was that great, didn’t know if our connection was that strong after everything that had just happened.
She lifted the gun another centimeter and pointed it right at my head. She rolled her lips between her teeth and said, “I loved you more than I would have ever loved Jimmy. He got in my way though. He didn’t do as he was told. It’s best this way, right?”