Chapter 22 · Cousin

"Get your hands off my desk." Luca's voice came from the doorway, flat and cold enough that the room actually went quiet.

I was already on my feet, my chair scraping back so hard it hit the credenza. The man who'd just thrown a leather folder onto my ledgers hadn't even looked at Luca yet. He was looking at me.

"So this is her." He said it like he was reading a price tag. "The bookkeeper wife."

"CFO," I said. "Try again."

He laughed, short and mean, and stepped closer, close enough I could smell cigars and something sweeter underneath, cologne trying too hard. "Dante Voss," he said. "Luca's cousin. Guess nobody told you about me."

"Nobody told me a lot of things." I didn't move back. My spine was against the desk edge and I wasn't giving him the satisfaction of a retreat. "Which is your specialty, apparently, since you walked into a locked office without knocking."

"Nora." Luca crossed the room in four strides and put himself half between us, not all the way — enough that I could still see Dante's face over his shoulder, enough that Dante knew exactly what that meant. "Step back from her."