Chapter 30
Wesley
This isn’t black and white anymore.
I let the cat out as soon as the door closes, and he promptly slinks across the room to hide under the desk. I don’t blame him—my hair’s raised about finding a dog here, too—and Madison already explained that he’ll come out to explore once he feels safe.
Hopefully she’ll do the same, though I’m far less concerned about Madison coming out of her shell. If she keeps making comments about being spat on, I’m going to give her exactly what she wants in front of everyone like I’m marking my territory.
Swiping a hand down my face, I stifle my groan.
I’m not normally such a damn caveman. It’s not as if I’m genuinely worried about Mac or Dimitri making a move.
They’re so settled and happy, it’s frankly maddening.
Nor am I particularly worried that Madison means anything by it—she’s probably the most overtly flirtatious person I’ve ever met.
It’s how she is. I know that. I like that.
Nothing gets me going more than seeing someone covet something that’s mine. Except maybe getting to teach her a lesson about who she belongs to…
“You’re moving around well,” I say, noting Dimitri’s single crutch as he heads towards his spot in the room. He’s not even leaning on it heavily.
“Da. I have always been a quick healer.”
Mac pulls his chair up to the edge of my desk. “Don’t keep us in suspense, Short Round. I feel like you’ve been gone for weeks. Catch us up; tell us what happened. The General put out another hit on her after you took the job? And it’s open season, to top it off?”
“Very unusual,” Dimitri remarks.
I nod, blowing out a long breath. So much has happened. Where to begin?
Probably with the part that they’ll think is the most important. “Yes. And there’s been a… development.”
“Good or bad?”
I won’t even bother trying to figure out how to answer that one. “Felix is Madison’s uncle.”
As predicted, Dimitri goes stiff and still. “What?” he demands, anger lacing his tone.
“They’re not strictly related, but that’s just semantics, I think. The point is they know each other very well. He’s faking her death for us to get the other assassins off our backs.”
There’s a second of stillness and silence, then Dimitri straightens. “You are saying that you know where he is at this very moment?”
Yeah, I figured Dimitri would hear that and want to take action. I take my seat at my desk, taking care not to accidentally step on a tail or kick the cat. “I am… but I’m also saying he’s helping us—her.”
“So we will go there later and kill him?” Dimitri guesses.
“No…” I sigh. “He knows more about the General than we do. He’s the one who made the connection with SmarTech I mentioned—he sent Madison in. He could be useful.”
Dimitri scoffs, waving his hand dismissively. “This is not enough to save his life.”
Mac jumps in to help—likely because he was never completely sold on the idea of killing Felix. “Wasn’t it you who said that it’s poor form to kill a neutral, useful man?”
He narrows his eyes at Mac but jerks his chin in a reticent nod. “He was no longer neutral the moment we discovered he had kidnapped my woman.”
“I know. But,” I say, holding up a hand when he would argue, “he’s not not on our side.
He abandoned Kyle instead of finishing the job and taking the payment months ago.
He got Eleanor out. And if he helps us with the General, then we’re more or less on the same side—at least temporarily.
Perhaps the situation ought to be reexamined from a new angle. ”
“And what angle is that?”
“The one where he’s family to someone who’s important to me,” I answer flatly.
Dimitri makes a face, then blows out a long breath through his nose. He turns his head to the side, and I almost miss the small nod that shows he’ll hear me out. “You and Nicole deserve your revenge, and I’m not saying Felix deserves to simply be forgiven. But this isn’t black and white anymore.”
“I suppose having information makes him useful,” Dimitri admits after a few seconds. He doesn’t seem particularly happy about it, but it’s a start.
But then he shakes his head. “His information is not useful if we do not trust him. That is the issue with men like him—trust is a bridge made of cards. Constructing it takes time, and problems cannot be fixed because instead they bring down the whole structure.”
“Google doc,” Mac interjects, grinning at the surprisingly accurate metaphor.
“You’re right,” I agree with both of them. I smile, but it tastes bitter. “But I think there’s one thing we can trust about Felix—that he’d never hurt Madison.”
As much as I hate to admit it, Felix’s protective instincts towards Madison make me feel oddly better.
Sure, he’s a dickhead, and he got her involved with SmarTech, and part of me wants to kill him for it…
but he also keeps tabs on her and obviously considers her part of his family.
He’s been protecting her on this dangerous path she chose, and now that the dust has settled, I find I’m oddly… grateful to him for that.
Dimitri frowns. “So she is… a hostage? We use her to control him?”
I cut him a look, knowing he doesn’t really think that’s an option.
“No… I know it’s a wild concept that a woman be brought to the house both willingly and aware of what’s going on”—Mac scoffs loudly and dramatically—“but Madison isn’t leverage to be used against someone for our own personal vendettas. ”
Dimitri considers this for a few seconds, then crosses his arms. “I do not like it. This is creating a situation where the choice will be Madison or Nicole—spare the man because of what he means to your woman, or kill him for what he has done to mine.”
And there he goes, cutting to the heart of the matter. As usual. “For what it’s worth, I agree. And I don’t like that it’s come to this.”
But Madison’s words in the car ring in my ears and buzz around in my chest, refusing to settle without acknowledgment.
I’m an adult, and my own safety is a discussion I get to be part of.
Restriction and protection aren’t the same thing.
That’s called benevolent control.
“Will you do me a favor?” I ask. He nods instantly. “Speak with Nicole and try to put aside your own anger to see how she feels about it. She’s the one who was injured, after all. She deserves a say in her revenge.”
Dimitri takes a second to think, then inclines his head. “That is a good idea.”
“Now that you two have hugged it out,” Mac interjects, rubbing his hands together. “Let’s talk shop. Where are we? What do we know?”
“From what I understand, Felix sent Madison to SmarTech to copy and steal their secure files. Right after she finished the transfer and quit, the hit came out on her. The timing is too coincidental, especially combined with the fact that so many of our other jobs have used SmarTech tools. They’re involved somehow—someone at that company could very well be our man. ”
“She stole data from a company that makes its business in security?” Dimitri asks, brows lifting. “This is impressive.”
I can’t fight the grin. “Massively impressive. She went undercover on the inside to get it, then snuck it out right under their noses. She’s got guts.
And skills. Fuck, I couldn’t have built a more perfect woman for me,” I gush.
Because I can. Because after listening to these lovesick fools talk about their women all this time, it feels good.
“All right, save your not-so-floppy disk for her,” Mac says, rolling his eyes. But he grins at me, obviously happy for me. “So, you’re going to start with this SmarTech data, I assume.”
I nod. “Madison has the files.”
Mac considers that, scratching at his short beard regrowth. “So where do we go from here?”
I think about the book in my top drawer, hidden in its locked compartment, and all the notes I’ve been keeping for a decade about my search.
Do I tell them? We’re getting close—this is closer than I’ve ever been.
And this next part will be tricky—knowing would give them some additional context about what we might be up against…
Or it would upset them, like it did when I told them how I parse out the names. Perhaps it’s best to stick with the original plan, and the plan has always been to wait to tell them until it’s over.
There’s a soft knock on the door. Dimitri, who’s closest, goes to answer it. “Oh, hello, Madison.”
“Hey!” Her head pops out to the side as she leans around him, and she waves with her fingers. “Whatcha doin’?”
“We were just speaking about the data from SmarTech. Come on in,” I wave.
She disappears again as she straightens, totally eclipsed by the man in the doorway. “Should I go back and get a running start, or is this more of a Great Wall of Dimitri situation? Is there a toll?”
“Of course there is no toll,” he replies simply, moving aside to let her in.
Her eyes bug out as she looks all around, taking note of the line of Raspberry Pis and single-board computers on my back desk with an impressed whistle. “Sweet setup, SpyderMan.”
I grin, glad she approves. “Sit,” I gesture to the chair Mac’s in. “Mac can stand.”
With a chuckle, he does just that. “Sure can.”
A feeling of rightness settles into my chest as she takes her place next to me. Then she gasps at the sight of the transparent walls of my desktop. “Is that the most recent NVIDIA RTX graphics card?”
My grin widens. “It is.”
“Why do you have the best graphics card money can buy? You don’t play any games.”
“Because it’s the best graphics card money can buy,” I repeat her words back, heavy with the implication that she answered her own question.
She snorts and rolls her eyes. “That’s such a price-tag-flex goon move. ASUS GE Force would have gotten you there for a quarter of the price. All the performance you’d need—”
“Not when I’m streaming multiple sources of video simultaneously—”
“Dear God, there’s two of them,” Mac declares, locked in on our back and forth. I look over in time to see him elbow Dimitri, who raises an eyebrow and nods his agreement.
Madison and I smile at each other.
“Well, in our own Wes’s words, if nothing needs shooting or stabbing, Big D and I aren’t much help. You two clearly have things under control.” Mac waves, heading for the door. “Call us when the action starts!”
“Da, and I will expect you at our regular training sessions. I accessed the security footage you saved and watched your fight in the alley by Madison’s apartment. You need to work on your footwork and blocking. Your entire left side was wide open; it is no surprise he got in a hit.”
I roll my eyes as they turn to leave. “It’s always ‘work on your footwork, Wesley,’ and never ‘good job taking down the giant bloke, Wesley.’”
“It was not good work; it was sloppy work,” Dimitri argues. “Mediocrity is not to be admired, even if the outcome was favorable—mediocre assassins are simply dead men.”
A giggle slips out from Madison as Mac cries from the hall, “Google Doc!”
“You’re going to love the Google Doc,” I explain to her, bringing it up in my browser.
Her laugh is bright as she leans in and scans through the first couple of lines. “A blanket of snow hides many sins. That’s beautiful.”
With a long-suffering sigh, Dimitri follows Mac out, shutting the door softly. A few seconds later, Some Bills pokes his nose out from underneath my knee, surprising me with a cold, wet hello against my shin. I lean down and give him a scratch with a fond smile.
“USB?” I prompt, holding out my hand.
She digs into her pocket, producing the little panda keychain, and places it in the center of my palm. “There’s a ton of data on there. Transferring it is going to take a while. A few hours, maybe.”
I stick it into the port, initialize the transfer, and sit back as my computer calculates. She’s right. “Well, then, it looks like we’ve got some time. How about a tour?”
“Sure.” Her lips quirk as she glances around, then she tilts her head. “Think I can bribe the tour guide to show me your bedroom first?”