“I can shower now too.” She sounded so proud that I had to smile.
“With Saran Wrap?”
“To be on the safe side.” When she climbed off the bed, I noticed the ease in the movement where before, it had been a damn struggle just sitting up.
It was a fucking miracle that she hadn’t been taken from me, and rather than kissing her fucking feet since it had happened, earning her forgiveness, I’d spent three-quarters of my time at my goddamn desk.
The room was smaller than I was used to. The bed only a double, with a dresser and a TV on the wall. That was it. It sure as hell wasn’t comfortable, and I regretted she hadn’t been able to heal at home.
Sadness welled inside me and I tugged her into my embrace. “My miracle,” I whispered in her hair, not just for the light she brought to my life but for how she’d survived, how she was healing. Getting better.
She curved her arms around my waist and let me hold her.
I wondered if she knew how much she’d changed my life, how much my goals had veered off course because of her.
Pressing a kiss to the crown of her head, I sighed and just relished the moment, knowing that soon I’d have business to attend to. Something bitter after the intense sweetness of last night with her.
An hour later, I stepped out of the compound and tugged on my shades.
I felt Aoife’s eyes on me from one of the living rooms on the ground floor, but I didn’t turn back. If I did, I might not leave.
The hotel was surrounded by a fifteen feet high perimeter wall. We had men patrolling the area on a twenty-four hour rotation, and though the place looked and felt like a prison, it wasn’t enough in my mind. The place’s only saving grace was the safe room in the basement where, if the compound was under siege, the women could hide, and which Aoife could finally reach unassisted.
I hated the necessity of it. Some days, I wondered if we were in the US or some stinking third world country. But this was my life. I’d just never felt the stain until Aoife.
A grim look around the barren yard had me hoping that today’s meeting would let the women return home.
Samuel was there, waiting for me with a cheerful grin as he shut the door once I’d climbed in. As we headed out of the industrial estate in Queens and toward Brighton Beach, I dug out my phone and checked through my messages.
There was nothing of any importance. Nothing out of the unusual, anyway.
Was I stressed?
Maybe.
I could be walking headfirst into an ambush, and I might never see my wife again, but I was aiming high and figured that the Russians wouldn’t be so stupid as to take Aidan or me out.
We were brokering peace, sure, but we were also bringing a different deal to the table. The Mexican coke was cheaper, after all. Geography made up for one of those reasons, but the cartel we dealt with had tried and tested delivery routes, and I was under no illusion that they’d oiled the bureaucratic wheels too. They’d been at this shit for too long not to. The Colombians, on the other hand, had been easy to hold up. Of the gangs that operated under their colors, they were small fry by comparison.
If the Russians fucked us over, they were idiots.
The risk was still there though, and when I saw Aidan outside the warehouse where we’d met the Bratva before, I tipped my chin at him in greeting and he handed me a briefcase.
Of course, because I was nervous, he was grinning like a Cheshire Cat. We had twenty-five million on the line, but he was so goddamn close to rubbing his hands together in glee, it was a joke.
Still, this was his party. I’d just have to sit through it until the deed was done.
Our weapons were stored by the entrance, but we were greeted with grunts instead of walls of silence like before, as we were guided away from the office where we’d met last time, to a larger space.
I saw the man first.
He was naked and tied to a crucifix of all things.
Had they done that to piss Aidan off? Or to fire him up all the more? I wasn’t sure, but Aidan could be so goddamn volatile, I wasn’t happy at a potential trigger.
The room was stacked with a variety of different crates, something that put me on edge because only fuck knew what was hiding behind them in the shadows.
The Pakhan and his Obschak were here, looking relaxed, but there was no sign of his Sovietnik—the Bratva’s money man. That figured. If Aidan Jr. wasn’t laid up in the hospital, he’d be here for the fun and games, not me—as I was Aidan’s equivalent of the Sovietnik.