The older mafia boss said he was too old to ask her to dance, and her answer put a target on both of them

By dusk, Blackwood Estate had been transformed into a war room.

The library was filled with cigar smoke, the low rumble of masculine voices, and the sharp clicking of laptops tracking maritime shipping routes along the Atlantic seaboard. Six men sat around the mahogany dining table—captains of Marcus Vale’s syndicate, men who controlled the trucking unions, the deep-water docks, the private rail spurs, and the city’s private security firms.

Clare sat in a high-backed armchair by the fire, a mug of black tea between her palms. She had refused Marcus’s offer to rest upstairs. If her life was the currency being wagered on this table, she refused to be blind to the bets.

"Vance moved thirty men into the old cotton warehouse at Berth 4," Michael reported, tapping a satellite map spread across the wood. "He’s got high-caliber rifles on the roof and two speedboats docked in the canal for a quick escape into international waters. He’s expecting a siege."

"A siege is noisy," another lieutenant, a scar-faced man named Peter, grunted. "The federal authorities are already watching the port after the gala shootout. If we start a trench war on River Street, the feds will step in and shut down the entire harbor."

"Then we don't start a siege," Marcus said from the head of the table.

He had not sat down once in two hours. He paced slowly behind the chairs, a dark glass of scotch in one hand, his silver hair catching the amber light of the chandeliers. He looked neither tired nor stressed. He had the terrible, focused calm of a chess master three moves away from checkmate.

"Vance wants a meeting," Marcus said.

Silence descended upon the room. Dominic looked up sharply from his terminal. "A sit-down? Boss, that's suicide. Vance doesn't want peace; he wants your seat. He’ll use any neutral ground to ambush you."

"Of course he will," Marcus said smoothly. "Which is why we will choose the ground. And the terms."

"What terms?" Dominic asked.

Marcus paused, turning his eyes across the room to where Clare sat by the fire. Every man at the table followed his gaze. Clare felt the weight of their scrutiny—hard, assessing, dangerous eyes measuring her worth.

"Vance believes I have grown weak because of my age," Marcus said, his voice ringing like iron against stone. "He believes that my interest in Miss Bennett is an old man’s foolish vanity. He sent word through the Mercer family that he will exchange a cessation of hostilities for the deed to Berth 4 and... Miss Bennett’s presence as an apology."

Clare’s fingers tightened around her mug until the porcelain strained. "An apology?"

"He wants to humiliate me," Marcus explained, his tone conversational, though the air around him turned arctic. "In our world, taking a man’s territory is business. Taking the woman he protects is an execution of his reputation. If I surrender you to him, my captains would see me as toothless. My empire would crumble by morning."

"And if you refuse?" Clare asked, her voice steady despite the tremor in her heart.

"Then he attempts to kill me, take my empire, and take you anyway," Marcus said simply.

"So what do we do?" Michael asked, leaning forward.

Marcus set his glass down on the mantelpiece with a definitive *thud*.

"We accept the invitation."

"Marcus, you can't!" Clare stood up, the tea sloshing over the rim of the mug. "You just said it’s an ambush! He wants to kill you!"

Marcus walked over to her, his gaze locking onto hers with such fierce intensity that the rest of the room seemed to fade into gray fog. He stopped inches away, ignoring the stares of his lieutenants.

"Lorenzo Vance thinks like a hyena, Clare," he murmured, his voice low enough that only she could hear the full richness of it. "He waits for the lion to grow old, sick, or distracted. He expects me to bring an army to Berth 4. He expects armored cars and snipers. He does not expect me to walk into his parlor with nothing but a fountain pen and a smile."

"And what happens to me?" she asked, her eyes searching his.

Marcus reached out, his knuckles brushing lightly against the high curve of her cheekbone. "You will be standing right beside me, Miss Bennett. Because tomorrow night, Lorenzo Vance is going to sign over every asset he owns to your dance foundation, and then he is going to leave this state forever."

"And if he refuses to sign?"

A smile touched Marcus’s lips—a smile so dark, so cold, and so utterly devoid of mercy that Clare finally understood why half the state of Georgia bowed whenever this silver-haired man walked into a room.