Chapter 22
22
ROBE
The longer Mari stayed, the longer I needed to test out my theory. I stopped interrogating her in a bid to maintain the level of trust and intimacy that had developed with the woman I’d fallen for so damn hard. From the looks in the eyes of every man standing around the room where Mari had seated herself at our small table, I wasn’t alone in my vulnerable state.
Perhaps I’d been in denial for too long… but I didn’t want to shatter our fragile peace. Alan boycotted me from playing games with her, but even he saw the sense in trialing just how smart his little sweetcheeks could be. He detached himself from the bar and whipped a paper filled with figures and statistics out of… somewhere. He worked his way around to Mari’s other side and dropped the sheet in front of her. I recognized it as one of the accounts pages from Gideon’s business he’d already spent hours diagnosing, searching for weaknesses on transfers, anything that might give us an inkling on how and where his money went.
He’d pulled this set of transactions apart, leaving little chance that she could tell us anything new. We knew where the trail led—straight to George Petersen. The mayor of New York City was as filthy as the air his coveted city consumed.
“Pop quiz, sweetcheeks.” Alan patted her head and gave me a look over his shoulder, though he still spoke to her. “Tell me what you see.”
Frowning a little, Mari bent her head over the figures. She hummed beneath her breath, running her finger across lines, then down in a zigzag pattern. The room fell into heavy silence as she worked. I could see her mind churning, the critical part of her that had been missing all along.
My stomach dropped. How much damage had we—had I —done to her by keeping her here so I could play with her whenever I felt like it?
She reached out absently, flapping one hand.
Jon grabbed a pen from Alan’s private cocktail writing collection behind the bar and tossed it to her. She grabbed it with a mumbled thanks and kept working, circling rows of numbers and underlining others. After everyone began to fidget, she made a line straight down one side of the page and added a little arrow off the side.
“The fuck is she doing?” Jon grunted in my ear.
Across from us, Miller folded his arms over his chest as he watched her, a stormy expression taking over his face. I curbed the defense that lurched to the forefront of my mind, but I didn’t need it. Miller brooded in silence, stewing at the far corner of the room. We all knew what he was thinking, and more than a few exchanged glances confirmed my long-term fear.
“Mari’s a setup, and you’ve allowed her into our inner circle.”
“She’s not loyal to you like we are.”
“You risk everything we’ve built together.”
But I’d risk everything to give her the chance to prove herself yet again to us. To me.
She had been set up, and no part of me wanted to believe that the girl I caught running for her existence playacted through the horrors she suffered in order to gain entrance to our world. But Miller’s fears overtook that assessment. Even if her trauma was real, Gideon had inserted an oblivious Trojan horse into my home who he could take back at any time and extract crucial information from her pretty, dark head—even if he killed her in the process.
I love you.
Her reaction to those three words, nonverbal on her side though still present between us, told me everything I needed to know.
That she gave her loyalty to me, and she loved me back.
That she loved all of us—even Miller. The way she flirted with Jon, sharing confidences, looking after Alan when he crawled in the door damaged and hurting. Falling for Will’s sweet sense of romance, an air of innocence surrounding them despite the inner turmoil I knew he suffered.
She loved us, and we all loved her back in our own ways, fucked up as our history made us. Words didn’t need to be spoken to express what actions said on her behalf.
Another frustrated sound originated in her throat as she crinkled the edges of the paper. Mari’s expressions trawled across her face no matter how hard she’d tried to conceal her fears in our early days together. I made a mental note to up my interrogation techniques, maybe plant a few false memories of my own in there as a confusion tactic, just in case.
I won’t let her be taken from me.
And I refused to let my needs place these men and her in danger. Whatever I could do now still wouldn’t save her life if he got hold of her again. Nothing would. I knew that. A heavy weight that seeded too deep in my stomach reeked of selfish guilt no matter how I justified it. The thought of losing anyone else broke me.
“He told her to tell us what she could see.” I paraphrased Alan’s words, knowing Jon was still processing everything I’d already come to terms with. He’d come so damn close to declaring himself to her—if he hadn’t already in private. But I didn’t think so.
“Shush.” Alan sent another baleful look over his shoulder, wedging his ass against the chair beside Mari. “Ignore them, sweetcakes.” He watched her fondly as she flipped the page over to check for information on the back.
She looked so damn innocent and sweet there, like she belonged between us. Beside us. My heart twitched. I had no defense against the pain that ripped through me. We were her place right now, though we couldn’t be her forever home, and we weren’t her forever people. Somewhere in the world, she had a home that wasn’t us, and I had to return her to her place no matter how much that thought stung.
“Finished.” She flicked the page at Alan, shoulders straight with a palpable energy I hadn’t seen from her since I first paired her with Miller for sparring. “It would help if the pages were complete. Would you like an interpretation service as well?”
Alan made a show of turning the page around and held it out to her upside down. “Which way does it go?”
“Smart-ass.” She huffed and snatched the paper back, then spread it out on the table. “Here, here, and… here. These are regular payments. Bills, maybe. Transactions that go to the same place, like a scheduled drop. It’ll be something he— they set up as a timed transfer. Or whoever accesses the accounts.” Her eyes narrowed as she corrected the ownership slip that didn’t go unnoticed.
I wondered how much she’d guessed about who the accounts belonged to, considering no name was listed on the page.
“That’s good. What else?” Alan folded his arms, mirroring Miller across the room, sans the simmering rage. His eyes were hooded, a sense of pride and possession lighting his face.
Jealousy smashed over me as she explained a few more basic things about the account and smiled back. I wanted her to look at me that way, damnit.
But hadn’t I been the one who pushed for sharing her? My jealousy didn’t spring from Alan’s ability to love her, or earn her love for him back, or what I saw in their easy banter as they worked through the task together.
What hurt was that the trust she’d developed with him still felt tenuous with me in this fragile moment.
I shifted, taking an unconscious step forward before I checked myself. Jon’s gaze darted toward me, and I cursed inside my head for giving myself away. Schooling my face to a blank canvas, I rocked back on my heels under the guise of rubbing my shoulder blades on the lip of the bar. Jon looked back at Mari, and I breathed again, unsure why I needed to hide my revelation over her love for my bartender, though the fucker still owed me. Their connection seemed to have been obvious to the rest of the household, but I wanted to keep that moment private for a while longer.
Maybe until I could have Mari alone again.
“It all looks normal, except that there are transactions that don’t line up.” Her gaze broke from Alan’s to meet mine, an accusation blazing there.
“If you gave me full access, this would have been easier.”
Her intelligence was a massive turn-on. I might have grinned like a lovelorn teen if her words hadn’t broken through my sensibilities first.
“What?” Alan and I said at the same time, and even Miller took a step forward.
Mari smirked, knowing she’d earned our attention. “Here. This transfer comes in and goes out several times. Kind of like a clownfish.” She grinned. But when I offered her a small smile back, she shook her head as though she’d taken it as condescending. “He tried to send it somewhere, and it was rejected. Why? And here, it’s come back again… but out of order. More than once,” she clarified. “Like an electronic check bounced. The transaction changed, its progress halted. Listed as a scam, maybe. Why would you do that? Where did it go? This throws everything out, and the balances don’t match up. See? Where’s the rest of this?” She flapped her hand at the page, frustration and pride warring for prime real estate on her face.
I met Miller’s eyes over her head. He offered a small shrug, conceding defeat for now. I had no doubt that he’d find another angle to attack her on until she wore him down like she had the rest of us.
I was the first sucker who fell for her, more than willing to man up and admit that her appearance in my section of the woods had been a turning point. Our twisted little band grew without effort, and I wanted to keep it that way forever.
Pity that can never happen, asshole.
Maybe karma from my previous life let me find the perfect girl—beautiful, clever, brave—but that same cosmic bitch slap also said I needed to set her free. I’d cloistered her away under a guise of health and recovery, but I couldn’t claim those reasons any longer. Mari had stood up to us, pushed away Miller’s bullying, his rage, and etched herself into each of our souls in her own way. Even if some of us—maybe just one—were in denial.
I knew she needed to be free to enjoy her own new life, even at a detrimental risk to us.
Away from us.
I swallowed a wave of grief in advance of that impending break for freedom without us to tether her to the ridgeline we ourselves couldn’t escape.
Maybe she’ll come back.
Yeah, and maybe Gideon would lay down arms and become part of the neighborhood watch.
“Show me that.” Alan snatched the paper from her hand and ran his finger along her calculations, ignoring the chatter that broke out around him.
I stopped pretending disinterest and leaned over his shoulder, offering Mari a quick wink that drew a blush to her cheeks. She’d circled the suspect transactions. Alan stopped when he came to one reversal that had been heavily underlined. He whipped out a second piece of paper and lined it up seamlessly.
Mari craned to look over the pages that matched up line for line. “I knew you were holding something back. Asshats,” she muttered with no small dose of amusement.
Alan glanced sideways, and I nodded my assent. If he wanted to test her, this was the best way. She’d spotted something we all overlooked the many times we’d trawled through these same accounts, some of the transactions Gideon’s, others from an unknown source, though I had my suspicions.
Her eyes were fresh, and she provided a perspective I needed. My lips rose at one corner. Miller was going to be pissed that I didn’t play this out logically but followed my heart instead.
I had a reason to keep her. Again.
“How about now?” Alan folded his arms and stepped back, his expression closed, cold.
Mari looked over her shoulder toward the darkening doorway as long shadows lingered in the yard outside. Her eyes darted around the room, settling on Jon, then me, and avoided Miller in his brooding depths altogether.
“I thought?—”
“You thought right, Mari.” I met her gaze. “Same job, different details. Show us what you see now.” I closed my fist, letting my nails bite into my palm.
Come on, Mari Merripen. Give me a reason for you to stay.
Mari’s head went down again as she connected each line to its transaction in a methodical sequence. There were faster ways to find the information, but seeing as we gave her half a job in the first place, it made sense that she took a longer path to get there, cross-checking her initial assessment.
And all the shit we missed.
“Who owns this account?” Mari ran her finger across an account number printed at the top of the paper.
Alan shrugged. “I have no idea. I can’t find it, so it doesn’t— shouldn’t —exist.”
“Fair enough.” Mari nodded, taking his assumed skill set in her stride. She connected three transactions together and carried over a balance to one side. “These don’t line up. Something’s missing.”
“They redirect to George Petersen’s accounts.” Alan leaned forward to wrap his arms around her upper body, brushing his thumbs beneath her breasts. “Can you do it with distraction?” He glanced at me as she shivered and then back at the page again.
“The mayor of New York City?” She frowned, turning the papers to look at the blank spaces on the back. Her lips pursed, and her tongue flickered out to wet the corner of her lips.
A collective sigh swept through the room, every one of us taking an appreciative moment over what that tongue could do, except for Miller, who stiffened as the ambience of the room changed.
“Yes, sweetcakes.”
“A line has been removed here.” She traced a fingertip across the back of the page, then flipped the page to point it out to Alan.
“Photographic….” He shook his head and then dropped a kiss on the top of hers before he whisked the papers away, leaving her playing with the pen. “You’re so precious, Mari.”
“Is that it? What happens now?”
Already engrossed in studying the figures and muttering to himself, Alan plucked the pen away and added notations to one corner of the paper.
Her head swiveled between me and Jon. “Robe?”
Mari wasn’t stupid. We gave her specific information on some of our more clandestine activities she hadn’t been aware of before. Whatever she suspected, we’d just confirmed it.
“Now you go home.” Miller didn’t budge, though his chin dipped as he glared at her, a muscle in his cheek twitching.
Mari’s eyes widened, her curls already shaking side to side. “No.” Desperation brought her to her feet. “I don’t want to go home. I don’t have a home. Except here.”
I stepped forward, resting a hand on her shoulder. The contact sang with the same energy that lit her gaze aflame. “No, little runner. You don’t get to go home. Now, I thought you might like to work.” I stared at Miller in challenge, offering him a onetime silent warning.
He kicked the wall before disappearing out the door.
“Looks to me like he’s the one always doing a runner,” Mari muttered.
Jon laughed, breaking the tension. “She’s not wrong.”
“I know I’m not. That’s why you’re keeping me.” A cute and snarky-as-hell smile tilted her soft pink lips.
I slid my hands along her arms, circling them around her waist. She let out a soft squeak of surprise but didn’t pull away. “That’s one of the reasons.” The other is that I can’t let you go no matter how much of a threat you might or might not be to me or the men I’m responsible for.
Not that I continued to believe Mari would willingly hurt us.
Crooking a knuckle beneath her chin, I tipped her head back and leaned down to claim a kiss. I meant it to be brief, but… that didn’t happen. Once her lips parted, I was gone. My jeans constricted my blood flow as I leaned into her, trailing my mouth along her cheek to her ear.
She sighed, linking her hands behind my head and arching into my touch. “That’s good.”
“Good, huh?” I paused, holding her in a firm embrace, blocking out the rest of the room and lowering my voice so she alone could hear me. “I can think of other things that come under that heading.”
Her soft giggle nourished a flame of arousal that burned deep and long for the girl I loved. I always longed to earn one of those pretty little sounds from her.
And now I had.