Chapter 17
17
brAIDEN
L iam phones me from the freeport. He tells me things didn’t go well at the hearing, that Samantha seems stressed. Stunned even. I tell him to get her home when she’s ready. Not to force her. I can wait.
Last night I told her she could do anything. Tonight I’ll tell her I love her, no matter what she does. No matter what happens.
Of course she misses dinner. She’s still dressed in black and white when she comes to my office. She’s ignored her skirt, broken every rule I’ve put in place, the ones I enforce for her own good.
Without me, she destroys herself from the inside out. She works too many hours. She misses too much sleep. She skips meals, forgets snacks, lives on caffeine and adrenaline alone.
And Jesus, she’s wired tonight.
“I shouldn’t be telling you like this,” she says. “I should have taken some time. I could have drawn up a presentation, the way I did for your Irish imports. Alix came by my office, by the way. She wanted me to bring you some brochures. She said you’re moving up the auction, from November to the end of this month.”
“I am,” I say, cautious because I don’t know where this flood of words is coming from.
“I left the examples at work by mistake. I got distracted because Alix and I started talking. I should have put together some examples, some suggestions for my new idea. I’ve already drawn up a list of pros and cons. There are a lot of pros—I can count them out for you now. There are just a few cons. Really. And they don’t matter. Not in the long run.”
I lean back in my chair. Her cheeks are flushed. Her breath is coming short and fast. She looks like a woman who’s been well and truly fucked, which doesn’t make sense, because Liam said she was a mess after the hearing.
“What’s your new idea?” I ask.
Her fingers twist around themselves, over and over like she’s washing her hands. Looking down, she realizes what she’s doing. She catches the hems of her sleeve like she’s a little girl caught outside in a snowstorm, suddenly cold in a gust of wind.
“Speak,” I say, layering in my Captain’s voice. I know she can’t refuse.
She takes a deep breath. “We’ve known since that night in the safe room. Madden told us. Sure, he hired the waiter at the party. He delivered the fake documents to the freeport. Madden made sure I went to the tent, and he had his waiter ready, gun in hand.”
I feel my face flush with every fact she recites. I want to cut her off, to make her stop. My brother suffered before he died, but I should have drawn out his last few hours. I should have made him pay more for what he did to Samantha. For what could have happened. Choking on his own cock was too good for Madden Kelly.
But he’s dead now. Gone. Burned. So I ask, “What do you want with Madden?”
“Not Madden!” she says, and she sounds surprised. She walks over to the window. Stares out at the yard. Talks to her reflection in the glass as she says, “Russo.”
“Samantha…” I warn her.
“Madden knew you’d kill him if he made a move against me. You’d already broken his jaw. Laid down the law. But he did it anyway. He risked his life. And that was because Russo played him. Madden probably didn’t even realize it at first, didn’t know he was being used. But Russo was behind that attack at the freeport, as clearly as if he hired the waiter himself.”
My finger tightens around a remembered trigger, a pistol lodged in the mouth of the man who threatened Samantha. I’m the one who demanded the shitehawk waiter say who sent him. I’m the one who blew off the back of his head when he refused to answer.
Just like I let Madden go too soon.
“Think about it,” Samantha says. “You and Russo had a truce. He couldn’t act directly, not without starting a war. Not without getting his own boss to weigh in. That’s what happened at the Rittenhouse. Those were the rules he was working under.”
I pinch my lower lip. She’s right. Russo’s hands were tied.
“But when has Antonio Russo ever shown an ounce of patience?” she asks. “He used Madden. He tried to kill me. It was Russo all along.”
She looks at me. She stops fiddling with her sleeves, stops pacing like a junkie, stops rolling over her own words like a child telling the plot of a movie.
“You can strike back,” she says with perfect poise.
“Russo’s wife is dead.” As if I have to remind Samantha. Russo shoved a gun up his wife’s cunt and pulled the fucking trigger. But I don’t say that. Samantha doesn’t need her mind filled with that image of her murdered cousin.
“You could go after one of his mistresses,” she offers.
“That isn’t the same.”
“One of his capos, then.”
“Not even the same playing pitch.”
She nods, and I have the strangest feeling I’m making her arguments for her. She says, “What if I found you the perfect target? You strike hard, and you succeed where he failed. What happens next?”
I don’t answer. I don’t want to believe her. I don’t want to hope.
When I don’t play her game, she picks up the thread again. “Russo hits you again. That’s what happens. And that’s not all. He bankrolls someone to head up the GIU. He convinces the other captains you’re not fit to run the Fishtown Boys. He uses everything Madden told him, every truth, ever lie.”
My hands curl into fists so tight my knuckles stand out like commas. A tic twitches beneath my right eye, and my jaw aches. I force myself to count to ten.
“But it doesn’t have to be that way,” she says, her voice low and soothing.
“What do you want, Samantha?” I sound like a man staring at my own grave.
“Let me invite him into the freeport.”
I make a strangled noise, but she goes on before I can interrupt.
“We’ll set up a gallery for him. Give him a trading account. Get him into the Diamond Ring.”
“Over my?—”
“I’ll meet with him,” she says, not letting me build up a full head of steam. “The same way I meet with any client. Always at the freeport. Always surrounded by security.”
“Freeport security is shite.”
“It’s better now. You know that. And I’ll have Liam with me. Along with any other guard you say I need.”
My jaw works, but I let her go on.
“I’ll collect information about Russo. About his business. About his plans. I’ll do presentations for him the same way I have for you.”
“Not the same way,” I growl. But God help me, I’m listening to her. I’m considering every word she says.
“I’ll learn where he’s vulnerable, domestically and internationally. That book you’re going to auction by month-end exposes you to what? A hundred years in prison and a million-dollar fine, if you’re caught breaking Ireland’s antiquities laws? We’ll get leverage like that on Russo.”
“It’s too risky.”
“I’ll get tax documents. Bank account information. You’ll fund the Fishtown Boys for a decade.”
I dangle my hands between my spread knees because I don’t want to hope. I shake my head. “Even if you got out of there alive, you’d be breaking every ethical rule in the books.”
“So?”
“So what will you do when they yank your law license?”
She stares at me like she’s waking up from a very long nightmare. Her throat works, and it takes her three tries to speak. But when she finally gets the words out, her voice doesn’t shake. “They’re pulling my license anyway. I’ve got ninety days or less.”
I refuse to listen. “We’ll get you a better lawyer.”
“I already had the best.” She swallows hard, but she’s brave enough to go on. “There’s no coming back from this. Trap will have to fire me. He won’t want to, and he’ll put it off as long as possible. But clients won’t invest billions in a company with a disbarred General Counsel.”
“You can sue the freeport. Say it’s discrimination. Harassment. You can keep a case going for years.”
She shakes her head. “I wouldn’t do that to Trap. He’s been too good a boss.” When she finally looks at me, her eyes are calm. Her gaze is steady. “I’ve worked this problem in my head for weeks. I’ve studied all the facts. I’ve applied all the laws. There isn’t any other end.”
I’m used to bowling over my opponents with raw power. My feckin’ Irish charm when I can. Stacks of cash when I must.
But here, there’s no one to intimidate. No one to charm. No one to buy off.
Samantha’s fate has been sealed since she drove down that mountain eleven years ago.
“Let this be the last thing I do as a lawyer,” she says. “Let it work for both of us.”
And God help me, I agree. “Do it,” I say. “Tell me what you need and we’ll take him down together.”