Chapter 45 The Terms
They sat across from each other at the small table in the basement safe house.
The blueprints were spread between them from financial statements to lists of names and numbers written in Liam’s sharp, precise handwriting. The scattered remains of a life he’d been trying to turn into something survivable.
Alessia watched him work. Her body still buzzed from the escape, from the run through the city, from the shock of seeing him alive and still willing to let her breathe.
“We need to set terms,” Liam said at last, eyes still on the papers. “Rules. Boundaries. Because if we’re going to survive the next seventy-two hours, I need to know exactly what this is.”
“Okay,” Alessia said.
“but I don’t trust you .” He didn’t soften it. Didn’t dress it up. “I don’t forgive you. And I won’t take anything you say at face value.”
The words hurt more than she expected.
She nodded anyway, because she already knew gaining his forgiveness or trust again won't be easy.
“I need you,” he continued, finally looking up. “The cartel wants fifteen million. My accounts are frozen. The legitimate businesses are gone. What’s left can’t generate that kind of cash in time.” His jaw tightened. “I’m running out of air or more of time.”
“What do you need from me?”
“Everything,” he said. “Everything you know about the FBI, who’s involved, what else they’re targeting, what leverage they’re using. And I need you. Your training. Your instincts. Whatever you’ve been holding back and hiding.”
“And what do I get in return?”
“Protection,” he said coolly. “I don’t turn you in. I don’t kill you.” His eyes were hard. “This is transactional. You help me save my family and clean up what you destroyed. That’s all.”
“That’s all,” she repeated.
“No more lies,” Liam said. “No more secrets. If I catch you holding anything back, this ends.”
“Yes.”
“And no more…” He stopped, something painful flickering across his face before he could stop it. “No more personal entanglement. We’re not partners the way we were. We’re not friends. And we’re definitely not..” He paused.
“Not lovers,” Alessia said quietly and painfully, not entirely expecting the statement.
“Right.” He looked away. “You will sleep in the other room. We only talk about what matters. And when this is over, you disappear completely from my life.”
Each word landed heavy.
“Those are my terms,” he said. “Take them or leave.”
Alessia stared at him. At the man she loved. At the man she’d shattered. At the man she have destroyed.
She wanted to argue. To beg. To tell him that even this, cold, distant, condition was more than she deserved but still not nothing.
But she’d forfeited the right to ask for anything else.
“I agree,” she said. “All of it.” she said even if she never wanted it.
He nodded, something unreadable passing through his expression. She thought, maybe she imagined it.
“Good.” He pulled a map closer. “I can come up with about five million, that leaves us with ten million.”
“Ten million in seventy-two hours?”
“Since we can't get it the clean way,” Liam said. “Then we steal it.”
“From who?”
“Anyone who has it. Rival families. Cash-heavy operations.” He paused. “Your father.”
Her chest tightened.
"From my father?"
“Yes,” he said evenly. “The Scarpettis.”
She didn’t answer right away.
“Can you help me rob him?” Liam asked.
The question hung between them.
She thought of her mother. Of her father’s hands on everything. Of years spent trapped inside someone else’s power.
“Yes,” she said. “I can.”
“He’ll know it was you.”
“There’s already no going back.”
She leaned forward. “But there’s something else.”
Liam looked up. “What?”
“My handler more like my supervisor. Marcus Thorne.”
Something darkened in his eyes.
“He’s the one who leaked your ledger,” Alessia said. “He set the raid in motion. He’s why your clean businesses are gone.”
“I assumed it was you.”
“I gave it to him,” she said. “I didn’t know he’d use it like that. I thought it was leverage. He burned me the moment I stopped being useful.”
“Where is he?”
“Probably convinced I’m locked up and you’re finished.” She slid Katherine’s information across the table.
“There’s more. He works for my father for eight years, and not only my father but also works for the council.”
Liam went still.
“He helped cover up my mother’s murder,” Alessia said, her hands shaking. “Made sure it disappeared. Then recruited me into the FBI. Used me to attack everyone except the man paying him.”
“He’s playing both sides.”
“All of them.”
Something lethal settled into Liam’s expression.
“Where does he live?”
“I have his routines and his security details.” She hesitated. “But if we touch him, the FBI will escalate.”
“Let them,” Liam said. “He destroyed my future. He killed your mother.”
He leaned in. “We deal with him first.”
“How?”
“We make him talk.”
“He won’t.”
“Then we make silence uncomfortable.”
Liam stood, opening the weapons cache.
“You said no more secrets, right?” he said with a raised eyebrow, like he doubts me. “So tell me, how good are you at interrogation?”
Alessia stood still, something cold and familiar settling into her bones. The part of her that had survived. The part she’d buried.
“Very.”
Liam smiled. It wasn’t kind.
“Good,” he said. “We start tonight.”
He handed her a gun. She took it easily.
“One last thing,” he said. “When we’re done with him… what do you want?”
She thought of her mother, of the threats, the years stolen and the lies.
“I want him to pay.”
Liam nodded. “Then he will.”
They moved together toward the stairs.
Thorne had played god with their lives.
Now he was going to learn what happened when gods fell.