Chapter 135: Threats and glitter

"He is moving fast," Viktor Vance added, his deep voice heavy.

"Over the last six months, Carter has consolidated Kingston’s domestic assets with ruthless efficiency. He didn’t just survive the divorce scandal with the Kingston girl, he turned it into a hostile takeover. He’s crushing his primary competitors in New York, absorbing shipping logistics in the Atlantic, and expanding into European markets faster than Kingston ever did when he was alive."

"He’s aggressive," Matteo chimed in, his dark eyes narrowing as he joined the discussion.

"My intelligence guys in North America say Carter isn’t operating like a standard corporate executive anymore. His tactics are brutal. He’s using aggressive buyouts, political blackmail, and private enforcement to clear his path."

"There are rumors," Sir Reginald added quietly, "that he intends to officially file paperwork next quarter to strip the Kingston name from the corporate entity entirely. He plans to rename it the Carter Global Syndicate."

The room went completely silent.

Aaron set his whiskey glass down on the polished wood with a quiet, deliberate clink.

His eyes were dark, calculating, a deadly storm brewing beneath his calm exterior.

He didn’t care about Kian Carter’s corporate ambitions.

He didn’t care if Carter became the richest man in North America.

But Kingston wasn’t Carter’s legacy to rebrand. It belonged to Lance Kingston. It belonged to the blind girl sitting downstairs in an emerald silk dress, who had been systematically stripped of her birthright while she was mourning her dead father.

"He thinks he owns it," Aaron said, his voice dangerously soft.

"Legally, he does," Laurent pointed out cautiously. "The paper trail is clean, Kazarov. If you try to move against him financially, you will be fighting American corporate law, not a street gang."

"Paper trails can be torn up," Aaron said flatly. "And corporate law doesn’t apply to me."

"Carter isn’t a small man anymore, Aaron," Don Vito warned gently, his old voice carrying the weight of experience. "He knows you are keeping the girl. He knows you are a threat to his position. He has already hired high-level private security from former military contractors in South Africa. He is building a fortress around his assets."

"Let him build it," Aaron replied, his blue eyes locking onto the center of the table. "It just makes it more satisfying when I burn it down."

"You intend to take the Kingston empire back from him?" Al-Mansoor asked, genuine curiosity in his tone. "That will cost tens of millions. It will cause a massive disruption in North American trade."

"I don’t care what it costs," Aaron said coldly. "I am going to take everything he took from her, tear his name off the building, and hand the keys back to Isabella."

Matteo looked at Aaron, a slow, approving smirk spreading across his face. "Now that... is a fight I’d pay to see."

"It won’t be an easy fight," Don Vito said quietly, leaning forward on his cane. His sharp eyes fixed on Aaron’s face.

"There is one more thing you need to know, Aaron. My contacts in London informed me two days ago... Carter has been making private inquiries outside our standard networks."

Aaron turned his head slightly. "Who?"

"He’s reaching out to the syndicate in Eastern Europe," Don Vito said softly. "The ones who refused to sign the Lotus treaty three years ago."

The air in the room seemed to temperature drop by ten degrees.

The eastern dissidents... a ruthless, fractured cartel of former military officers and rogue oligarchs who hated Aaron’s dominance over the region.

If Kian Carter was reaching out to them, it meant the ex-husband wasn’t just trying to protect his business. He was looking for an alliance capable of waging a bloody, off-the-books war against Aaron Kazarov.

"They haven’t accepted his offer yet," Don Vito added quietly. "But Carter has money. And men with money can buy very dangerous friends."

Aaron sat in silence for a long moment. He didn’t look angry. He looked entirely focused, his mind already calculating the variables, the troop movements, the financial angles, and the exact sequence of events required to crush Kian Carter before the man could strike first.

Kian wasn’t just an annoying bug anymore. He was a rising power who was actively reaching into Aaron’s backyard.

"Let him buy them," Aaron murmured, his voice laced with a lethal, quiet finality. "It just means I can kill them all in the same room."

Don Vito held his gaze for a second before nodding slowly. "Meeting adjourned."

Downstairs, in the private reception room, the atmosphere was about as far from global criminal conspiracies as humanly possible.

Isabella was currently trapped in a state of polite, overwhelming captivity.

She was sitting on the wide leather sofa, her dark lace mask still covering her eyes, her green silk dress slightly wrinkled from the absolute ambush of teenage girls who had effectively claimed her as their new favorite toy.

Giulia, the youngest, was kneeling on the carpet behind the sofa, her small, gentle hands delicately sliding pearl-studded decorative hair clips into the side of Isabella’s dark bob.

"Hold still, Isabella," Giulia whispered earnestly, her breath warm against Isabella’s ear. "If I put this one near your ear, it makes you look like a princess. Like a dark princess. Because your dress is green."

"Thank you sweetie," Isabella said softly, keeping her head completely still, her hands resting patiently in her lap.

She didn’t mind the hair clips. In fact, the gentle, careful touch of the young girl was surprisingly comforting.

What was slightly more exhausting was the relentless, rapid-fire interrogation happening on her left and right.

"So wait!" Francesca, the sixteen-year-old, said, leaning her hip against the armrest of the sofa, the heavy scent of sweet vanilla perfume washing over Isabella.

"If you live in New York, do you know any famous people? Do you know Timothée Chalamet? Have you seen him?"

"I... no, I haven’t seen him," Isabella said, a small, amused smile touching her lips as she subtly adjusted her posture.

"What about boys at your school when you were younger?" Sofia, the seventeen-year-old sitting right beside her on the cushion, asked eagerly.

"Were American boys annoying? Because Italian boys are disgusting. They just play football and wear too much axe body spray and act like they’re kings when they can’t even cook pasta!"

"Sofia!" her mother called out from across the room, rustling her Italian magazine. "Stop complaining about boys!"

"I’m giving her crucial cultural context, Mom!" Sofia yelled back before instantly turning her head back toward Isabella, lowering her voice to an excited whisper.

"Seriously, Isabella. There’s this boy in my class, Marco. He sent me three heart emojis yesterday, but then he didn’t text me all morning! Should I ignore him for three days or five days?"

Isabella blinked behind her mask, completely stunned by the sheer, unfiltered velocity of teenage drama. She hadn’t thought about high school dating rules in almost a decade.

"Um..." Isabella hesitated, tilting her head toward the sound of Sofia’s voice. "I think... if he made you wait all morning, three days sounds fair. Make him think you were busy."

"YES!" Sofia practically squealed, clapping her hands together in absolute delight. "See?! I told you, Francesca! She’s a genius!"

"Is Aaron busy?" Giulia asked from behind her, gently patting the final pearl clip into Isabella’s hair. "He looks very busy. He never smiles. My dad smiles, but Aaron looks like he wants to fight a bear."

Isabella couldn’t help the soft, genuine laugh that bubbled up from her chest. "He... he does look like that sometimes, doesn’t he?"

"Can I try on your ring?" Giulia asked innocently.

"Giulia, leave her alone!" the mother warned again, standing up from her armchair across the room. "Isabella, I am so sorry. My daughters have zero manners. They act like wild animals the second they meet someone pretty."

"No, no, it’s fine," Isabella said quickly, waving her hand in a gentle, reassuring gesture. "Really. It’s... it’s nice."

And it was nice. For a long time, every interaction Isabella had experienced had been stifled by sad, heavy sympathy.

People spoke to her in hushed tones, careful not to mention her lost sight, her dead father, her ruined marriage, or her stolen life.

But these three girls didn’t care about any of that. They didn’t treat her like a tragic headline or a fragile porcelain glass. They treated her like an older sister whose dress they wanted to borrow.

Still, after thirty minutes of continuous chatter, hair-clipping, and relationship advice, Isabella’s senses were starting to feel slightly overwhelmed.

The loud voices, the clinking of glasses, the thick scent of vanilla perfume, and the constant movement around her were making her head ache faintly behind her dark mask.

’Aaron, she thought to herself, a quiet, desperate plea in her mind. If you don’t come back down those stairs in five minutes, I’m going to let these girls drag me into the gardens.’

Suddenly, a new voice cut through the room.

"Alright, that’s enough, you little bloodsuckers. Back off before you smother her."

The voice was cool, smooth, and laced with an effortless, commanding authority. It carried a light, melodic Italian accent, but the tone was so dryly assertive that the three girls instantly froze.

Isabella tilted her head toward the sound. The scent of sweet vanilla perfume was suddenly cut through by something entirely different, the sharp, distinct aroma of expensive clove tobacco smoke and rich honey.

"Aunt Klara!" Giulia whined, stepping back from the sofa. "We were just helping her with her hair!"

"You’re hovering over her like a flock of pigeons over a piece of bread," the woman, Klara, replied smoothly.

The light, rhythmic clicking of her high heels echoed against the marble floor as she approached the sofa. "Giulia, go find your mother. Sofia, Francesca, go harass your cousins in the ballroom. The adults are talking now."

The three girls let out a collective, dramatic sigh, but surprisingly, none of them argued. They gathered their things, offered Isabella quick, affectionate goodbyes, and scurried out of the private room like obedient little soldiers.

The sudden silence that settled over the sofa was almost shocking.

Isabella let out a long, quiet breath, her shoulders lowering as she relaxed back into the deep leather cushions.

"Thank you," she murmured genuinely toward the direction of the footsteps. "I was starting to think I was going to have to solve all of Italy’s teenage relationship crises tonight."

The woman didn’t answer immediately.

Isabella heard the faint, soft rustle of expensive silk, followed by the subtle click of a lighter. A gentle exhale of sweet, aromatic clove smoke drifted through the air between them.

The woman stepped closer, her heels quiet against the rug, before she gracefully sat down on the leather cushion right beside Isabella.

She leaned back against the sofa, taking a slow, quiet drag of her cigarette.

Isabella could feel the woman’s presence, warm, confident, and radiating a quiet, dangerous elegance. She could smell her clearly now: honeyed amber perfume, dark clove smoke, and the faint scent of fresh rain.

"You know," Klara said softly, her voice a smooth, purring alto that carried an unmistakable American-style cadence beneath her light Italian accent. "They weren’t exaggerating."

Isabella turned her face slightly toward the sound, her dark lace mask tilting upward.

"What?"

Klara leaned in closer. Isabella felt the subtle shift in air pressure, the faint warmth of the woman’s face coming just inches from hers.

Though Isabella couldn’t see her, she could feel the sharp, intelligent weight of Klara’s gaze sweeping over her features... taking in her dark, short bob, the pearl clips in her hair, the sharp line of her collarbones, her full lips, and the elegant cut of her green dress.

"The skin," Klara murmured softly, a small, appreciative smirk in her tone. "The dark hair. The sweet, stubborn little chin. And those lips..." Klara pulled back slightly, taking another slow drag of her cigarette before exhaling a thin cloud of blue smoke toward the ceiling. "...no wonder your ex-husband is tearing New York apart trying to get you back."

Isabella froze, her breath catching in her throat. "I—"

"And no wonder Aaron Kazarov looks like he’s ready to murder anyone who looks at you for more than three seconds," Klara added smoothly, a quiet, throaty huckle escaping her chest. She crossed her long legs, the silk of her dress rustling softly.

"Heck, darling... if I were your ex-husband, I wouldn’t let you go either."