There’s no question in my mind that her sticking to me is going to mess her up more, but I didn’t bust my ass finding this girl to let her be stolen again. Taking a stab in the dark at what’s really got her worked up—and not in a good way—I tell her, “They would’ve come and searched for you, but Nick’s supposed to be dead. He can’t be running around down here in Rio because if his name leaks then he’s on the run again, along with Daisy. Plus Nick’s a shitty people person. He’d never have been able to get you out of Gomes’s place without a huge gunfight.”
I don’t know why I’m explaining this to her. Nick’s not a friend at all. He’s an acquaintance. If pressed, I’d say he was a colleague. Part of the fraternal order of the Fucked-Up Guys Who Can’t Function Without a Gun. I’d watched him for a while because I was always looking for connections—anyone I could find that might lead me to my sister. And Nick had worked with scum since he was a kid. He’d been a paid hit man working on his own since the age of fifteen. He looked his age of twenty-five, but his eyes told you he’d seen and done hellacious things that men the age of eighty wouldn’t come close to dreaming up in their worst nightmares. And I wasn’t wrong to hook my wagon to Nick, because helping him off a Russian Mafia boss gave me my first good lead in a long time. A blonde taken from Cancun turned up in an auction in Rio eighteen months ago and then disappeared, sold through the same channels that Regan had been funneled through. Boom. Two birds. One fucking heavy stone from me.
I’ve got Regan, and now I need to find my sister. As Regan’s face loses its pinched, hurt look, the tension knot at the back of my neck releases. She’s not going to cry. I pour her another drink because the worst feeling after being drunk is the cessation of liquor. And if there’s anyone who needs the little peace that the brown bottle can bring, it’s Regan.
“So they didn’t leave me?” she asks in a stronger voice, the tremors all but gone.
“Nah, they sent me. Trust me. I’m far better looking and a better shot. Not to mention a helluva lot funnier. You’d rather have me, wouldn’t you?” I flex for her, and she chuckles like I intend.
“I guess so. I mean, I like Daisy, and it sounds stupid after all that I’ve been through that being abandoned by her hurts worse.”
“Sugar, you’re allowed to feel any damn way you want.” Just don’t cry, because your tears hurt worse than a knife wound to the gut.
She nods slowly, as if she’s trying to rearrange her internal feelings toward Daisy. I guess betrayal by someone close is worse than constant abuse from strangers?
Her head is starting to bob now. Lightweight. I could drink the whole bottle and feel nothing. It’s my party trick. I can drink nearly anyone under the table. Vasily Petrovich—the newly installed head of the Petrovich mob family—and I had a contest when we were waiting for Nick to show up so we could go kill Vasily’s uncle. He swore no westerner could drink as much as a Russian. I kept up and Petrovich deemed me suitable to retrieve his hacker. Shit, why is everyone in Rio? I shake my head.
So helping Regan fell to me because Nick Anders is not a hit man. He’s an art student. It’s hard to kill the head of the Bratva and come out alive, which is why Nikolai Andrushko is dead, killed by Vasily in retribution for his uncle’s death. From the ashes rose Nick Anders, a quiet, brooding American. So no, Nick can’t be running around the slums looking for blond girls from the U.S. when he’s supposed to be dead, and Daisy . . . well, there isn’t anyone less suited for doing the rescue of her best friend.
“You sleepy?” I ask gently. She nods. “I’m going to pick you up and carry you to the bedroom.” The up-and-down motion of her head could be consent or it could be that she’s too drunk to hold her head up. I pick her up, and she doesn’t protest. Instead, she snuggles into me, her soft cheek pressing against the skin exposed by my unbuttoned shirt and beater tank. “We’re going to need to take you to a doctor and make sure you’re okay on the inside.”
She ignores this and instead proceeds to rub the tip of her nose into the hollow of my neck, and I tremble like a goddamn preteen. I need to rub one out. It’s just a desperate backlog of sperm. “You smell good,” she murmurs. Man, I had no idea that spot on my neck is such a sensitive place on my body. Picking up the pace, I stride over and drop her onto the bed. She bounces a little and the mattress squeaks, but she doesn’t appear fazed.