I roll out of the car and fire the first shot. It’s answered by three gunmen who use their vehicle for cover. Bullets slice through the air to pierce metal or whizz past as they miss me and my men.
Glass shatters. Air hisses from punctured tires.
Geoffrey is low, Yelisey is high, and I’m crouched off to one side, adrenaline washing away apprehension. No man lives to tell of shooting at Kostya Zinon.
The SUV takes round after round, but the firefight is over almost as soon as it started. It takes only one last shot from my rifle, a shot in the middle of the last man’s thigh, to end this unexpected confrontation. I have the opportunity to put a bullet between his eyes, but I need one alive.
For a moment, anyway.
I hold the rifle down at my side and walk to where he lies prone on the ground, blood pooling beneath him. I kick his gun away and crouch beside him. I want to kill him, to watch the light leave his eyes, but I need him. Goddammit. I need him to give me answers.
“Who the fuck are you?”
Young and dumb, his mouth is drawn into a tight line, but I know his tattoo. I grew up knowing it.
1919, it says in a tight serif font along the base of his throat. It was a significant year, if you happen to be Irish. The year that Ireland signed its Declaration of Independence.
That means one thing: the bastards are from the Whelan mob. My Bratva’s bitter rivals. Callous motherfuckers, down to the last of them.
“You want that I shoot him?” Yelisey slips back into broken Russian. It always happens when stress takes hold. Probably the only endearing thing about him.
“No. Lock him up. We might find a use for our little redheaded friend.” I nod to Geoffrey who is rifling through the pockets of the other men, looking for clues or evidence. “Get their IDs. Cut off the hands. We need to send a message.” I look down at the moaning Irishman. “Then burn it all.”
First a party, then a child, now an assassination attempt.
I need a fucking drink.
Charlotte
I am so late.
Mom is probably half through a good ranting and onto a particularly disgusted raving to whatever stranger had the misfortune to choose the table beside hers. But once I sink my teeth into one of Bianchi’s avocado chicken paninis and all that cheesy melted goodness hits my tongue, it’ll be worth all the trouble she’s going to give me.
If only the line would move a little faster.
The smell of herbs and spices makes my mouth water. I’m distracted by the aroma, mid-drool, when someone taps on my shoulder. I almost jump into the ceiling as I let out a surprised little shriek.
“Excuse me, miss. Have you been here before? I’m trying to go vegetarian. I’m debating between the veggie panini and the herb spring salad.”
What I really recommend is not going vegetarian. But instead of shooting down his try at eating healthy, I clear my throat and look up at him.
He’s cute, in a Jim from The Office kind of way. His tie is slightly crooked, and it matches his smile. “Can’t go wrong with a panini,” I mumble. And then, like the dork queen I am, I spin away from him too quickly and bump into the woman in front of me. “Sorry.”
She shoots me a textbook Orange County glare from behind her not-quite-dark-enough sunglasses and huffs around to face the front.
The guy behind me, the one who tapped me on the shoulder, chuckles. “Some people, right?”
I would agree, but I probably wouldn’t have liked being accosted in a line that doesn’t seem to be moving, either. Instead, I give him a smile as my cheeks burn.
One of the women in the line next to ours looks him up and down and licks her lips without even a smidgen of humility. It’s a little over the top—okay, a lot over the top—but I can admit, he’s nice to look at.
And Lord knows I should be looking. I’m thirty-two, single without a prospect of changing it, and tired of going home alone every night. I blame it on my lack of sex appeal. And my social ineptitude. And the fact I can’t stop comparing every man I meet to my boss.
Stop that, I scold myself, in what has become a near-constant ritual that makes my grandmother’s ceaseless clacking of her rosary beads look like a one-time quirk. Fantasizing about Kostya Zinon is, at this point, a low-level mental hum that I’ve forgotten I ever lived without.
It makes sense, for a variety of reasons. After all, Kostya is a six-foot-four-inch sigh of a heartthrob with eyes that strip me naked every single time I walk into his office. I can’t even count how many seconds I’ve spent standing outside his doorway, steeling myself to walk in and not make a fool of myself in his presence.
Not that that ever works. Being near him is like taking a drug that turns the simplest action into the most complex athletic endeavor that anyone has ever attempted. I’ve become an Olympic gold medalist in stacking papers without knocking them over, in carefully delivering cups of coffee without spilling a drop on the pristine furniture.
I’ve been keeping notes of how many days I can go in a row without doing something stupidly clumsy. It was a personal record hot streak—thirteen days and counting—until yesterday, when I knocked over a cup of pens in his office, so awkwardly that I could swear he was about to ask me if I just discovered my elbows. That is a moment I’ve been dying to forget.
But, as hot as Kostya is, he is a bit of an asshole, too. When I tripped while helping him get tuxed up for the gala last night, he caught me and gave me
