Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
~SHANE~
“ T ake the shot.”
The voice is calm in my ear, coming from several thousand miles away in a secure office at the White House.
I’m lying on my stomach on a rooftop, my sights trained on the target, but people keep walking in front of him.
“Not clear,” I whisper and swear when the target walks into another room.
“It’s taken three weeks for you to find him,” the president reminds me. “Take him out. Now. ”
Yeah, yeah. I don’t need her to remind me how long I searched for this asshole. And as soon as he moves a little to the left…
I squeeze the trigger, and less than a second later, the target falls.
“Mission accomplished,” I say and move quickly to the stairwell that leads to a waiting car below.
In less than three minutes, I’m safely away from the scene and headed to the airport.
“Good work,” she says into my ear. “Now, get yourself home. The plane’s waiting for you.”
“Thank you, Madame President.”
I nod to the driver, my partner for this operation, and he steps on the gas to get us to the airfield quicker.
Suddenly, the front window explodes, a bullet hitting the driver squarely in the forehead, killing him instantly.
“Miller’s down,” I say with a calm I don’t feel as I reach over to take the wheel. I maneuver him out of the seat and manage to step on the gas, winding my way through the foreign city.
If I’m caught, I’ll also be killed.
And I’m not ready to die today.
Only one car is following me, and it doesn’t take me long to lose them.
“Your transport has been compromised,” I hear in my ear. “The crew was killed. I need you to disappear for a couple of days. Lay low and await further instructions.”
“Abandoning me in a foreign country wasn’t part of the deal.”
“We’re not abandoning you,” the president replies. “We’ll get you out.”
“See that you do.”
“We expected you home a few days ago,” my brother, Carmine, says as I walk into his office at our family’s base of operations in Seattle, Washington. Rocco, my other brother, stares out the window but turns to look at me as I move farther in.
“Yeah, well, I got hung up.”
I won’t mention that I spent two nights curled up under a box, waiting for the US government to get me out of enemy territory after I assassinated one of the bad guys.
My brothers aren’t allowed to know any of that.
It’s better this way. The less they know, the less likely they could be killed for having the knowledge.
“Have I missed anything important?”
“Wedding plans,” Rocco volunteers and then smiles at our brother sweetly. “I mean, it was a rough few days there, deciding between lilacs and freesia. And then there was the matter of the cake flavors.”
My gaze bounces between Rocco—who’s clearly getting a huge kick out of razzing our big brother—and Carmine, whose mouth firms into a hard line.
“He’s the groom,” I say simply and cross to the small kitchenette to see what kind of food we have stashed away in the fridge.
I’m fucking starving.
“I never pegged Nadia as the type to get all swept up in the fancy wedding deal,” Rocco says thoughtfully.
“She’s a woman,” Carmine reminds him. “And big weddings are the mafia’s way. You know that.”
“So, which was it? Lilacs or freesia?” I ask as I return to the desk with a half-eaten sub sandwich and a bag of nacho chips.
“Both,” Carmine says with a shrug. “She couldn’t decide, so we went with both.”
“As one does,” Rocco says with a wink.
The door bursts open, and the bride-to-be herself hurries inside, her eyes wide with an emotion I rarely see on my brother’s fiancée.
Fear.
“Carmine,” she says as she hurries over. “I have Annika on the phone. She needs our help.”
“Put her on speaker,” I say, and we all lean in to hear what Nadia’s cousin has to say.
“Okay, they can all hear you,” Nadia says as she plants her hands on the desk. “Tell them exactly what you just told me.”
“It’s Ivie,” Annika says, immediately getting my full and undivided attention. “She’s been taken.”
“Taken by who ?” I ask, keeping my voice calm but feeling my blood erupt through my veins with a surge of new adrenaline.
“I don’t know,” she says and sniffs. “I got a call from her, but I was about to get in the shower, so I let it go to voicemail.”
She sniffs again, frustrating me.
Just fucking tell me.
“I remembered it the next morning, this morning, so I listened to it. Oh my God, you guys. She’s been taken. She was trying to get me to pick up, to listen, and help her. And I failed her horribly. I need you. Is Shane there?”
“I’m here.”
“Thank God. Please, we need your help.”
We all look at Rocco, who’s already pulling his phone out of his pocket.
“The plane will be ready when we get to the airport.”
“I thought Annika was going to tell me that this was all connected to Rich,” Nadia says, shaking her head as the plane lands in Denver. “That there was more information or that someone else was dead. Something. I didn’t expect her to tell me that Ivie had been taken.”
I swallow hard, fear a very real and icy demon settling in my stomach.
I don’t fear much. But Ivie and I have become friends over the past several months, and if my life weren’t well and truly a shitshow, I’d take it much, much further with her.
If anyone touches a hair on her gorgeous head, I’ll fucking skin them alive.
“Rich’s organization fell,” Carmine reminds his fiancée.
“We don’t know that now,” Nadia says, shaking her head. “Maybe this is tied to that. Maybe someone thinks they can get something out of Annika, or punish her by taking Ivie.”
“We don’t know what’s going on,” I remind everyone. “Let’s get to Annika’s place and figure things out.”
My mind is racing. I haven’t slept in seventy-two hours, and aside from the stale sandwich, I haven’t eaten.
And I don’t give a shit.
I need to find Ivie. Make sure she’s safe and whole.
Annika’s house is an hour from the airfield.
“You should sleep,” Nadia says to me, her voice soothing. “I can see that whatever job you were on took a toll. You need rest if you’re going to help Ivie.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine,” she counters, and I barely stop myself from rolling my eyes at her.
Nadia is a fierce woman. I don’t need her to kick my ass over an eye roll.
“I’m fine ,” I repeat and narrow my eyes at her.
“What is it with the Martinelli brothers and being so fucking stubborn?” she asks as she turns back in her seat and scowls out the windshield.
“It’s just part of our charm,” Carmine says, but Nadia shakes her head.
“No, actually, it’s not charming. It’s dumb. He’s going to hurt himself if he keeps overworking like that.”
As if I have a choice . I can’t exactly tell her that I sleep when the fucking president says I can.
So, I just grunt and watch Denver whiz by outside the window. The few hours it took to get here is, unfortunately, valuable time wasted. Time that I could have spent trying to find Ivie.
Jesus, where is she? What are they doing to her? And who the fuck are they ?
“Almost there,” Rocco mutters and sends me a sympathetic smile.
I know my brothers are aware of the massive crush I have on Ivie. I’ve never had a crush on anyone in my fucking life. But I saw her once, and that was all it took.
I know that Rocco and Carmine don’t understand my attraction. That’s because she’s a little awkward and has a classic, girl-next-door look about her that I find absolutely hot as hell. She’s not the type that would usually turn my head, and my siblings know it.
In the past, that may have been true.
But Ivie attracts me in every damn way. She’s funny and sweet. So damn sweet. We’ve spent a little time on the phone, talking. I’m not much of a talker, but it comes so easily with Ivie.
How my brothers don’t see the amazing woman she is, is beyond me.
I know that a relationship—hell, a future —with Ivie is out of the question for someone like me. My job consumes my life, and what’s left over belongs to my family. Between the government and the mafia, I’ve killed more than any one man should. My time doesn’t belong to me.
But if things were different, if I were free to be my own man, I would scoop Ivie up and make her mine in a heartbeat.
“She looks worse than the day she found out that Rich was a lying asshole,” Nadia says as we pull into Annika’s drive and see the woman standing in the doorway, waiting for us.
Her eyes are red-rimmed from crying, her nose chapped from wiping it too much. And when Nadia hurries to her and engulfs Annika in a hug, the other woman falls apart once more.
“Let’s go inside,” Carmine says, urging the women into the house and to the living room.
When Annika’s seated and wiping her wet eyes, Carmine speaks again.
“Now, tell us again exactly what happened.”
“Okay.” Annika takes a long, deep breath and then tells us again about seeing the call from Ivie, but how she let it go to voicemail because she was getting into the shower and how she didn’t remember about the call until this morning.
“So I finally listened to the message, and my blood ran cold.”
“Play it,” I say, sitting next to her as she pulls it up on her phone, taps the screen, and it starts to play.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know a Laryssa. I’m Ivie. And we’re closed for the day. But if you’d like to make an appointment, I can help you with that.”
“You know, I thought for a long time that your father was an imbecile. Stupid. He didn’t cover his tracks well. But you’re different. You covered your tracks very well. And I know that you couldn’t have done that alone. Which tells me that your father isn’t as stupid as I thought.”
“I don’t know what you could possibly want from me. I’m just living my life.”
“And a nice life it is,” the man says. “Good for you, Laryssa. I couldn’t make your father pay for his sins when he was alive—and we both know that those sins were many. But now I’ve found you. Now, don’t do something silly like try to get away. You’re coming with me. And you’re going to pay for the sins of your father.”
There’s a pause.
“There, now. Come along, Laryssa. We have plenty of work to do.”
“After that, it’s dead air for a couple of minutes, and then it ends,” Annika says, locking her phone.
“Do you recognize his voice?” I ask her.
“No. I didn’t recognize his face, either.”
My head whips up. “You saw his face?”
“Yes, we have security cameras at the spa, of course. I looked at the footage, but I don’t know who he is.”
“I can find out,” I reply. “I’ll need to see it.”
Annika nods, but Carmine shakes his head.
“He kept calling her Laryssa. That’s not her name. Could she be a victim of mistaken identity?”
“No,” Annika says softly and then stands to pace the room. “I can’t believe I’m about to tell you this, but she’s in danger, and you have to know.”
My hands curl into fists.
“Know what?” I demand.
“Ivie’s real name is Laryssa Pavlov. Her father was a Bulgarian asshole, but she escaped him when she was young. Made a new life for herself—one she could be proud of.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. After all the hours Ivie and I spent talking, she never told me any of this.
“So, this guy really is trying to punish her for her father’s sins,” Rocco says, blowing out a breath.
My brother’s eyes haven’t left Annika. It’s no surprise he doesn’t give me a hard time about Ivie. He, too, longs for someone he can’t have.
It’s a shitty situation to be in.
“What was her father’s name?”
“Ivan. Ivan Pavlov,” Annika says. “I can’t tell you much about her past. She told me the story in confidence, but this definitely has something to do with her father.”
“Get me that footage so I can find this motherfucker and get Ivie home where she belongs.”
“Of course,” Annika says, reaching for her laptop.
“I need to transfer this file to my system,” I inform her, already tapping the keys on her computer. “I can find out who he is by running the face through some software and a database I have.”
My hands fly over the keyboard, and then I reach into my bag for my laptop and get to work again, fingers flying.
When the screen simply says Searching… for what feels like a fucking year, I want to punch my hand through a wall.
But, finally, an image and bio appear on the screen.
“Boris Nicolov, fifty-eight. Bulgarian. Last known address is in New York. Looks like I’m going to the east coast.”
I stand, and Rocco joins me. “Maybe you should do some more digging before you head off on a wild goose chase.”
I push my brother against the wall and get up in his face.
“Get the fuck out of my way.”
“Hey.” His hands come up in surrender. “I’m not in your way. I’m just, you know, trying to be the voice of reason.”
“Either you’ll help me, or I’ll do this without you.”
“You know we’ll help,” Nadia says.
“I’ll inform the Sergi family that we’ll be on their turf for this,” Carmine adds, referencing another mafia family. No one just shows up on another family’s turf. You always let them know in advance.
“I didn’t even think of that,” I mutter and rub my hand down my face. “Thanks. Let’s do this.”
“Keep me posted,” Annika says as she hurries behind us to the door. “I guess I could have shown you all of this while you were still in Seattle.”
“It’s better in person,” I reply and then reach back to squeeze her hand. “And this way, we’re closer to New York than we were a few hours ago.”
She offers me a watery smile, and Nadia, Carmine, and I all hurry back to the car.
Rocco hangs back to say something to Annika that has her tearing up again, then he jumps in the car with us, and we’re off to the airfield.
“What did you say to her?” I ask quietly.
“It doesn’t matter.”