The smoke from the cigars was thick in my dad's study when I entered the mansion the next morning. Thomas Marvin was perched behind his gigantic oak desk like a king on a throne, and the expression of disappointment was colder than any punishment that he could have conjured up.
"You didn't come home last night." It wasn't a question.
I poured myself coffee from the service cart, not shrinking back in the presence of the tension that was coursing through the room. "I'm thirty years old. I don't need permission on my schedule."
"You do when Victoria sits in my living room for three hours waiting on you." He dumped his cigar into the ashtray with barely suppressed fury. "Do you have any idea how that makes us look? How does it make me look?"
"Victoria isn't my responsibility."
"She could be your wife!" Thomas stood up quickly, slamming his hand on the desk. "Her father controls half the development contracts in the city. Marriage between our families would secure our future for the next generation."
"I'm not marrying as a business deal."
"It's all business, Anthony." He stood up behind the desk, encroaching on my domain the way he always had when I was a kid who had disappointed him. "Marriage, love, family – business. It's all business. The sooner you get that through your head, the sooner you can get on with the things that matter."
"And what's that?"
"Power. Legacy. Ensuring that everything I've built survives long after I'm gone." His gray eyes – so like mine but definitely harder – bore into me. "But you're too busy playing house with some banker to see the bigger picture."
I was shocked. "What did you just say?"
"Premier Financial, Katherine Blaire." Thomas returned to his desk, pulling out a folder I recognized the moment I looked at it. My background information on Katherine. "Did you honestly think I would never find out? I have people all over, son. Including that small Italian restaurant in Brooklyn."
Anger and fear fought in my chest. "You had us followed?"
"I had you covered. There's a difference." He flipped open the folder, reading through material he had no doubt memorized. "Plus-size banker, supports her autistic brother, lives check-to-check despite her fancy job. She's been after you for weeks, and then all of a sudden you're having dinner dates? What's her motive, Anthony? What does she really want?"
"Maybe she wants exactly what she says she wants – a professional business relationship."
Thomas laughed, but there was no humor in it. "You really believe that? Women like her see men like us as a means to an end. She's probably already calculating how much she can squeeze out of you before moving on to the next mark."
"You don't know her."
"I know her type." He threw the folder across the desk at me. "Take a look at page three. She wants money for her brother's college education. Her bank is taking a hard stance, either bringing in the big accounts or losing her promotion. She's desperate, Anthony. And desperate people do desperate things."
I didn't want to look, but I couldn't stop myself. Page three detailed Katherine's financial situation with brutal clarity – the student loans, the medical expenses for Elliot's therapy, and the credit card debt she'd accumulated to keep them afloat.
Everything she'd told me about fighting for her brother was true. But my father had twisted it into something calculating and cold.
"This proves nothing other than that she works hard on behalf of her family."
"Or that she saw an opportunity and took it." Thomas leaned back in his chair. "I'm not saying she's a bad person. I'm saying she's a liability. The Torrinos are circling, Marco is making moves, and the last thing we need is some woman distracting you from what matters."
My phone buzzed with a message from Katherine: Thanks for last night. I had a really nice time.
Something warm went through my chest with the brief message. No games, no manipulation – just sincere appreciation.
"I can see it on your face." Father's voice sliced through my reverie like a knife. "You're already in too deep."
"I have the situation under control."
"Do you?" He stood again, but this time his expression was almost pitying. "Let me tell you what's going to happen, Anthony. You'll keep seeing this woman because you think she's different. She'll continue to be sweet and vulnerable, everything you think you want. And then one day, she'll be the reason you hesitate on a critical decision. She'll be the distraction that gets you killed, or worse – gets someone in this family killed."
"That's not going to happen."
"It's already happening!" His voice thundered in the study. "You ignored my calls last night. You chose dinner with her over business with the Sterling family. You're making emotional choices, not strategic ones. This is exactly how weakness starts, son. How good men become dead men."
The words stung more because they resonated with my own fears. What if he was correct? What if Katherine was already affecting my judgement?
"I want you to end it." Thomas's voice was calmer now, but no less commanding. "Tonight. Clean break. Pay her off if you have to, but get her out of your life before this becomes a real problem."
"No"
The one word hung between us like a challenge. My father's eyes had popped a little – I had disobeyed him before on little things, but never on one he had directly commanded.
"What did you say?"
"I said no." I straightened, looking him directly in the eye without blinking. "Katherine's not a threat. She's not manipulating me, and I'm not ending things with her because you're afraid I'm weak."
"This is not about fear. It is survival." He stepped closer, and for the first time ever, I saw genuine fear in his eyes. "Your mother-"
"Don't." My voice was sharp enough to cut. "Don't use her as an excuse for your control issues."
"Your mother died because I loved her too much to see clearly!" The confession burst from him like a wound finally breaking open. "I was so consumed with her, so desperate to make her happy, that I didn't see the signs. Didn't insist on better doctors, better care. I let emotion cloud my judgment, and she paid the price."
The pain in his voice was raw and honest, and it faltered my anger. I had never listened to him talk about my mother like this – with actual feeling instead of clinical detachment.
"That was not your fault," I whispered.
"Wasn't it?" He turned away, staring out the window at the sprawling grounds. "I had all the power in the world, all the resources, and I couldn't save the one person who mattered. Because I was weak, Anthony. Because I loved her more than I loved survival."
It all came clear to me. Dad's whole ideology, his demand for control, his disgust at weakness – all these things came from guilt and sorrow he had never worked through.
"So you want me to live the rest of my life alone because you could not save her?" I asked. "That is not strength, Dad. That is just... sad."
He whirled around, anger displacing weakness. "Be careful."
"No, you should." I grabbed my jacket; I was done with this conversation. "I'm not apologizing for wanting something more out of this empire you've created. And I sure as hell am not breaking up with Katherine because you're afraid I'd feel something real."
"If you walk out that door, there will be consequences."
I paused, hand on the doorknob. "What kind of consequences?"
"This is fifty million in revenue on the table today and double that down the road. You lose that on some chick, the family will notice. Marco will know. And I'm not gonna be able to protect you from their questions about your priorities."
The threat was clear. Choose Katherine, and my position in the family became vulnerable. Choose the family, and forfeit the first real connection I'd felt in years.
"Then I guess they will have questions then." I opened the door.
"Anthony!" His voice stopped me one last time. "She will break your heart. Or, worse, she will get you killed. When that happens, don't say I did not warn you."
I went without response, but the words followed me like ghosts. I climbed into the car and reached for the phone to text back to Katherine, but my hands hovered over the keys.
What if he was right? What if I were making decisions by sentiment and not logic? What if bringing Katherine into my life actually did make me open to being vulnerable?
But then I remembered the way she had looked at me over dinner. Not at Anthony Marvin, the future kingpin of the underworld, but at Tony – just one who wished people could look past the armor.
I typed in the message: I had a great time too. How about we meet again?
Her response was immediate: Are you sure that's a good idea?
I tensed up. Had my dad already found a way into her?
Why wouldn't it be?
Because I did some research. Victoria Sterling was at your family home last night. Your father's been pushing for an engagement. I don't want to be the reason you have problems with your family, Tony.
So she understood. She had done her homework, just as I had done for her. But instead of using that intelligence as leverage to ask for more, she was giving me a way out.
That is when I realized that my dad was wrong about her.
I called instead of texting, and she answered on the very first ring.
"Tony"
"Have dinner with me tomorrow night. At my place this time."
"You didn't hear what I just said?"
"I heard you trying to protect me from my own choices." I pulled into traffic, heading toward my penthouse. "But here's the thing, Katherine. For the first time in my life, I'm making a choice that's mine. Not my father's, not the family's. Mine."
"This might go badly."
"Maybe." I couldn't help grinning. "But I'm willing to risk it if you are."
The silence persisted long enough that I figured she had hung up. Then: "Your house tomorrow then. But Tony?"
"Yeah?"
"Don't say I didn't warn you either."
She hung up, and I sat in my car feeling like I'd just jumped off a cliff with no idea if there was water below.
My phone buzzed with a text from Marco: Heard you had an interesting meeting with your father. Call me.
Then another from Victoria: I'm sorry about last night. Your father said that you had urgent business. Perhaps we could reschedule?
And last, one from an unfamiliar number: You're making mistakes, cousin. Everyone in the family is watching.
I deleted all of them and typed one message to my dad: I'm not backing down. His answer was immediate: Then I hope she's worth what's coming.
The threat was clear, but so was my decision.
I was choosing Katherine, and whatever consequences followed would be mine to handle. I just wished that I was strong enough to protect her from the storm that I was about to unleash.