“I’ll get you home, Caroline,” he murmured next to my head. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
No, it wasn’t. Nothing was ever going to be okay again.
“Right now,” I croaked. My legs felt like jelly and my mind was static-y and savage, wild with too many thoughts all clambering to be heard. This was the exact opposite reaction I should be having.
I was usually so cool under pressure, so collected. I was a goddamn genius when it came to getting out of sticky situations. Francesca and I had escaped the Volkov pakhan for God’s sake.
But now? When I needed to be in control, my most inventive? Now I was crumbling like a coward.
Fear was overpowering me, giving me away and if I didn’t get my shit together in the very next second, everything was over.
All of it.
My new life. My sparkling future.
My daughter.
Finding strength buried somewhere deep down, I latched onto it and inhaled another shaky breath.
You have a spine, I reminded myself. Use it.
“Caroline, seriously, you’re scaring me,” Jesse murmured gently. “Are you going to be okay? Do I need to get help?”
“I’m okay.” And as I said the words, I decided they would be true.
I would get out of this.
I would get Juliet out of this.
But then my past reached out from the dark tomb I’d buried it in and grabbed ahold of my present in a chokehold. All of the demons I had been running from, hiding from, crashed into my safe haven present in a fiery collision that jarred my body, mind and soul.
“Caro?” a voice called across the gallery.
We were still in the center of the restaurant, white partitions displaying art on every side of us, half hiding the other patrons, half isolating us out of sight from everybody else.
The familiar voice called again. “Caro, is that you?” It was deeper than I remembered, more cultured, more masculine. And yet it still had that raspy edge to it that reminded me of my childhood and sneaking around warehouses and stealing candy from gas stations.
“Is he talking to you?” Jesse asked, sounding truly perplexed.
I stood up straighter. My face was white, drained of all the blood and color and life I’d spent five years pouring into my body. Now I was a corpse, ready for judgment and punishment.
“I think so,” I told Jesse.
Without acknowledging the man approaching us, Jesse asked in a low voice, “Do you know him?”
“I think so,” I repeated.
And then he was directly next to us. Past meet present. Life meet death.
It had been good while it lasted.
But it was over now.
Everything was over.
“Caro, I can’t believe it’s you!”
Lifting my chin in defiance, I turned to face Gus. The sight of him was a slap in the face, a punch in the throat, whatever other analogies there were for feeling completely beat up at just the sight of someone. It was Gus. Gus was here. Right here. I could touch him if I wanted to. He was here and I was here and my heart hurt looking at him.
I wanted to scream and run away and cry all at once. He’d had the advantage of seeing me first. He’d already collected himself. Or maybe he was a better actor. But I started shaking. It was all I could do to keep standing. After all this time, after everything I had done to ensure we never saw each other again… here we were.
Our gazes collided and I thought I was going to be sick. Something sharp and hateful flashed in his eyes, gutting me to my very core, calling out my worst sins.
Betrayal.
I had betrayed him.
“Oh my God, Gus,” I said in disbelief, letting real emotion warp my tone, my voice hoarse and strained with the effort to speak. “I can’t believe it’s you.”
His smile was wolfish, knowing. “I bet you can’t.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked politely, when I really wanted to scream, WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE????
There was a weighted beat of silence before he said teasingly, “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“Do you know each other, Caroline?” Jesse asked bluntly.
I swiveled to Jesse, remembering that he was here. Oh God! I needed to get him out of here. Fast.
His arm was still across my back, his hand resting on my hip. Gus tracked the subtle touch with a not so subtle raise of his eyebrows, causing all the color that had drained from my face to return with hot, red vengeance.
“Caroline, who’s your friend?” Gus asked, still casual, still nonchalant, still frustratingly adjusted.
I could not speak. I mean, I tried. But the words would not leave my mouth. They lodged themselves in my throat and tried to strangle me to death.
There was no way in hell I could introduce Jesse to Gus. Or Gus to Jesse. Or that this was really happening and not one of my worst nightmares. I had to be still asleep.
Right?
This was a nightmare??
Right?!?
So instead of introducing the two men that had zero business ever meeting each other, I flailed silently and tried not to pass out.
“I’m Gus.” He thrust out his hand and waited for Jesse to shake it, which meant relinquishing his supportive hold on me. “An old friend of Caro’s.”
“I’m Jesse,” my date said, finally taking hold of Gus’s hand. “This is some surprise. Caroline has never mentioned you.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Jesse. Caroline is funny like that. She probably hasn’t really mentioned anyone to you though, right? She’s private, this one. Secretive.” He winked at me like this was all in good fun.
But this was the opposite of fun. This was so fucking not fun.
He looked so different than I remembered him. It was almost hard to reconcile the gangly twenty-two-year-old I’d left behind with the twenty-seven-year-old man in front of me. There were traces of him in the face, the boyish mischief that he could never hide, the floppy mop of dark hair. The signature beanie. The smile.
But he was so different too. Broad shoulders and muscled arms. His jeans were stylishly ripped, expensive, nothing like the torn, well-worn jeans he’d sported as a kid because he hadn’t cared one way or the other what he looked like. His sweater was expensive too. Cashmere. The Gus I knew from before never wore anything but T-shirts that said stupid things meant to be funny.
The only thing familiar about his style was a leather cuff that used to be Atticus’s. It was worn and lined with age. The initials AU were etched into a gold medallion in the center. A chill slid down my spine. Was that his business partner?
Was it Atticus?
And if so, what in the hell were they doing here?
If they meant to kill me, why had they gone to so much trouble to set up a gallery? They were using fake names, obviously, but why go through all this effort?
“We haven’t spoken in years,” I quickly told Jesse in answer to Gus’s comment. “It’s been… Er, how long has it been, Gus?”
“Five years,” he said plainly. “It’s been almost exactly five years.”
Trying to laugh off the sudden flatness in Gus’s voice, I turned to Jesse without taking my eyes off Gus. He might have once been as close as a brother to me, but I didn’t trust the man. Not even a little bit. “Five years. It’s hard to believe it’s been so long.”
Jesse bought my reassuring smile. I watched the questions he’d wanted to ask me click into place inside his head. He turned to Gus. “You know Caroline from back east?”
Gus’s eyes narrowed suspiciously, realizing the same thing I did. Jesse saw this as an opportunity to find out about my past. And no matter what I had done to Gus, he did not appreciate an opportunist. Even if Jesse was relatively harmless.
Gus ignored his question, jerking his chin in hello to someone behind me. “Look who I ran into?”
My stomach dropped to my toes. Instinct screamed at me to run. This was it. Get out. Get out of this place. Out of this
town. Out of this freaking country!
Instead of doing any of that, I turned to greet the newcomer at the same time Jesse did.
If seeing Gus after all this time felt like a kick in the face, turning around to find Sayer Wesley was worse than that. So much worse I didn’t have an adequate way to describe it. I felt turned inside out, strung from the ceiling by my toes so all my secrets could shake out of me and land on the floor below. I felt exposed and transparent and broken in half.
Here he was. Alive. And free. And standing in front of me. And all I wanted to do was disappear.
“This is a surprise,” Sayer greeted smoothly, without any speed bumps of shock getting in his way.
My mouth fell open at the same time my heart just gave up and quit beating. I was dead.
This had to be death.
Gus had stabbed me in the back or shot me in the head or did something irreparable to me to cause death. And I was currently bleeding out all over his art gallery floor.
This could not be real life.
Sayer was here.
Sayer was standing in front of me.
Sayer was out of prison and here in Colorado. Within touching distance.
My gaze traveled from his mouth up and over his nose to those blazing blue eyes that created an ache inside my soul so deep I could have sworn it tore me in two. And that’s where I stayed, trapped by the cold, lifeless nothing staring back at me.
Held hostage by the one man I never expected to see again.
By the boy I’d fallen in love with when I was ten years old. The boyfriend I had let change the entire course of my life.
By the father of my daughter—the daughter he had no idea existed.
Chapter Ten
Ten Years Ago
The middle of January and I didn’t have a freaking coat. Figures.
I used to have a coat.
It had been a nice coat. Long and puffy and so warm. Now, in the middle of winter, in the middle of a job, I didn’t have one.
I wanted to punch something.
“Where’s your coat?” Gus asked as he hopped up on the retaining wall next to me.
My jaw quivered as I tried to fight the biting wind in a battle of wills. “Whichever whore my dad brought home last night ran off with it.”
“His taste in women has definitely declined over the years,” Atticus consoled in that way of his that was not at all consoling. “Which is saying something since I thought your mom was about the dirtiest piece of trash he could have drummed up.” Atticus smiled at Gus. “I mean, talk about bottom of the barrel.”
“Shut up, asshole,” Francesca growled. She was shivering too, but only because she barely weighed a hundred pounds. It didn’t matter how bundled up she was, she needed more meat on her bones. “That’s an ugly fucking thing to say.” She sashayed by him, reminding him that her ass was about the only non-boney part of her body. “Besides,” she taunted, “if we want to talk about slutty mothers, yours is always top of the list.”
“Geez, Frankie,” Gus groaned. Atticus and Gus’s mother was still very much married to their father. Much to all of our surprise, since she hadn’t been faithful to her very dangerous husband in a long time. I assumed every time Gus and Atticus went home they were surprised to see their mother still there, still breathing.
It wasn’t that Ozzie was faithful in return. In fact, it was probably his lifetime of infidelity that had pushed her into the arms of other men. But Oz was derzhatel obschaka to the most powerful Russian syndicate in DC. And she was just arm candy.
Aging arm candy.
Atticus’s expression flattened, turning into that cold serial killer psycho we all knew and loved. And then he turned that cruel glare on Frankie. “It’s not a good idea to talk about my mother.”
She didn’t flinch. “So talk some shit about my mother. Get me back. I dare you.”
Atticus turned away, knowing he couldn’t say a damn thing to Frankie. Let alone, her deceased mother, the favorite sister of our bosses. “I don’t know why you’re here anyway, princess. You don’t belong with us.”
“Who’s us?” Gus asked. “The working class?”
Atticus pushed off the retaining wall and walked away. Throwing an, “Exactly,” over his shoulder.
“What’s wrong with him today?” I asked needlessly.
Neither Gus nor Frankie answered. Something was always wrong with him. He was always pissed about something. Or everything.
Lately, though, I had an idea of what it was. He had it bad for the pretty, untouchable, angry-at-the-world princess. And she’d just insulted his mother.
Sayer crossed the street, headed in our direction. His long legs ate up the distance with purpose and speed, making the rest of the world appear in slow motion. He had his hands thrust into his pockets and a plaid scarf tucked around his neck.
I lost my breath watching him move toward us. I had never seen anyone more breathtaking than Sayer. He couldn’t be human. I refused to believe he was a mere mortal.
And in the five years I had known him, he had done nothing but prove me right.
Fallen angel. That was my current theory.
He walked right up to me, stepping between my legs and rubbing his hands over my biceps. I sank into his warmth, needing as much of it as I could get. “Where’s your coat?” he demanded in a much firmer, more possessive way than Gus had.
With him this close, smelling like cigarette smoke and spearmint and this new soap he’d started using, I lost the ability to form coherent sentences. That or my brain had gotten frostbite. “Uh…”
“Her dad’s lucky lady of the night ran off with it,” Gus explained for me.
Sayer frowned, his freakishly blue eyes darkening with concern. His hands moved over my neck and up to cradle my face. I loved the way his callouses scratched against my jawline and the way his fingertips disappeared into my hair. “You going to buy a new one?”
“O-of course.” I licked dry lips and wished I had the courage to tell him to get on with it. Despite how much I loved his attention, I really was freezing.
“Tell him the truth, Caro,” Frankie demanded.
I bit back a growl, hating how much I’d told her on the subway. “There’s nothing to tell him, Frankie. I got it covered.”
Frankie rolled her eyes at me. “Her old man ran off with her savings.”
“Frankie!”
She gave Sayer a look. “All of it.”
I dropped my face into my frozen fingers. “It’s not a big deal. We have a job right now, don’t we? I can wait until we get paid.”
“How much did he take?” Sayer demanded.
I shook my head. I wasn’t going to tell him that. The amount was sickening. I felt like puking every time I thought about it.
Sayer dipped his head and held my gaze. I wanted to look away so badly. I really did. But I couldn’t. He had this frustrating way of hypnotizing me. And getting the stupid truth out of me.
It would be easier to lie if I could look somewhere else. Anywhere else.
But I couldn’t.
And I couldn’t lie to him. Which seriously rubbed me the wrong way.
Frankie said it was because he was always touching me. She claimed it was way harder to lie when you were turned on.
Obviously she was an idiot.
It wasn’t even like his touches were sexual. He just… I didn’t even know what it was about him. But when we were together, his hands were on me. His arm was around me or he was holding my hand or he’d pull me into his lap in front of his entire crew and just expect me to sit there like it was the most normal thing in the world.
And maybe it would have been if I was his girlfriend or if he’d admit he liked me or something. But I wasn’t and he hadn’t.
He’d kissed me once, five years ago, when I was ten and he was thirteen. But that had been the last time.
Now that I was fifteen and he was eighteen and we were both official employees of the Volkov, he’d kept everything between
us completely platonic.
Except for the affectionate touching.
And sometimes intense looks that made my knees buckle.
“A lot,” I finally admitted to Sayer.
“Her college money,” Frankie added.
I was going to punch her later. She was always complaining about being treated differently and how everyone was scared of her. Well, not me. I was definitely going to throat punch her.
“Fuck, Caro,” Sayer growled, jumping back from me.
The urge to cry pricked at the backs of my eyeballs, but I refused to let the tears fall. It was a hell of a lot of money, but I should have put it in the stupid bank. I should have hidden it better. I should have had it better protected.
Instead, I’d left it where anyone could find it. Yeah, fine, it was in my apartment, in my room, hidden away in a spot that I thought only I knew about, but my dad was in trouble. I knew that he was. He acted like everything was fine, but I knew he’d started gambling again.
Which was a dangerous thing to do for a bookie and an addict.
“I’m going to get it back,” I announced to Frankie and Sayer and Gus for good measure. “He’s going to pay me back.”
Sayer unzipped his coat and pulled it off his body, wrapping it around me. I closed my eyes against the sensation of warmth and his scent still lingering in the lining. “Here, at least take mine for now.”
“Then you’ll freeze,” I pointed out weakly.
He shrugged. “I’ve been through worse.”
He always said that and we all believed him. Whatever Sayer had gone through before he joined the syndicate had been hell. He never talked about his life before Fat Jack had found him on the streets. He’d wormed his way into the syndicate by helping the bratva steal an entire container of Irish guns. But it was something you could tell about him just by looking at him, by watching him climb the ranks of the brotherhood faster than any Six had in the history of organized crime.
He was our brigadier, our avtoritet. And we were his boyeviks, his soldiers. And we knew in another few years he would make vor. Sayer’s eyes were on the top. It was only a matter of time before he got there.