Chapter 29
DMITRI
Still have eyes on her.
The text says very little, and yet, it says everything I need to know. Clara is being watched over by one of my men. One of my best. And that means I know she is safe, and I can finally pull my mind from her and focus on what’s going on in front of me.
I’m parked across the street from a coffee shop tucked between a bank and a dry cleaner. From this distance, through the dark glass of the SUV, everything is muted, slow, and precise.
“Target is in motion. Heading toward the coffee shop.”
Pavel’s voice, calm and clinical, echoes in my ear. I can’t see him from where I am, closer to the café.
Right on cue, Mark Palmer appears around the corner, wearing a puffy vest instead of a coat despite the biting wind and temperatures that hover just around freezing.
From my vantage point, he looks miserable, squinting behind cloudy glasses, his nose and cheeks bright red, his hair a wind-whipped rat’s nest.
He hustles along the crowded sidewalk, his shoulders hunched, before he drags his hands out of the vest and tugs open the coffee shop door.
“Target in sight,” Pavel whispers in my ear. “Monitoring.”
I wait, counting the seconds, the stillness in my chest absolute. This is it; this is the moment the connections snap into place.
Or not.
I try to follow the paralegal’s tall figure through the coffee shop, but between the lights, the swags of fake evergreen, and the chalk drawings of hills of snow and waving snowmen on the glass there are too many decorations to get a clear view.
“He’s heading to the back; it appears he’s looking for someone.”
It’s difficult to hear Pavel with the din of chatter, coffee machinery, and too-cheerful holiday music behind him. I’m barely breathing as I wait to hear the confirmation we need.
“Target has found a table. Sitting with someone in a ball cap.”
“Can you see his face?” My question is strained with tension, my honed hunting instincts boiling up until I can barely contain myself from joining in the hunt.
“Not yet.”
We may have to split up and follow each one. The bastard could just be meeting with a friend, instead of passing off information about my company and my bratva, but we need to be sure.
“They’re talking, but I can’t hear anything.”
Mark Palmer might be reckless, but he’s not stupid. Far from it, if he is, indeed, the mole and kept himself hidden for so long. Meeting at a busy coffee shop during the holiday rush ensures no one listening in will be able to hear much. A smart move.
“Fuck,” I hiss under my breath.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Pavel doesn’t say a word for the next few minutes. I drum at the steering wheel with pent-up energy, my entire body taut as a guitar string ready to snap.
“He just handed the guy something.”
Pavel’s sharp whisper snaps in my ear.
“What? What did he hand him?”
“A large manila envelope. Big enough for file printouts, pictures, and a flash drive.”
All the fake information we slipped to him, hoping he would do exactly this. My hands clench tightly, victory surging through my body.
“They just shook hands. The subject is standing. Heading to the door.”
A few breaths later, Mark Palmer emerges from the café, squinting and hunching against the wind as he starts back down the street. I watch his progress; my sights trained on my prey.
I have you, you fucking bastard.
He fell for the trap—a beautifully crafted trap—thanks to Clara. It is a poison that will spread to anyone it touches, and I will know.
“Can you see who the other one is?”
“Not yet. He looks like he’s waiting and doesn’t want to be seen with the target.”
Another half hour passes while I watch the tracker I had put on Mark Palmer.
He makes his way back to the office, sometimes taking a side street, other times going the opposite direction, and then doubling back.
It gives me a grim sense of satisfaction to know he’s freezing the entire time in his stupid little quilted vest, like he’s some sort of Wall Street finance exec and not a low-level paralegal at Smirnov Corp.
“It’s Dean.”
The words crackle over the connection with Pavel, echoing down to the deepest, darkest parts of me.
Got you, you fucking bastard.
Thirty seconds later, a figure emerges from the café, tall and bulky, and wearing a baseball cap low over his face.
He looks both ways ,then pulls the sweatshirt’s hood over the ballcap before heading in the opposite direction from Mark.
Even without seeing the detective’s face, there’s something about his brutish nature that gives him away immediately.
“We fucking got them,” I hiss as soon as Pavel appears at the café’s door. He doesn’t look my way, but he nods. “Follow Detective Johnson. I’ll take care of Mr. Palmer myself.”
Another subtle nod from my second-in-command before he slips into the crowd and disappears.
It isn’t until darkness falls that I pull up at Mark Palmer’s apartment building, where he lives in a fifth-story walk-up.
I know all about Mr. Palmer now, everything, from where he lives to where he shops for groceries, to his favorite bar, and even where his parents live in the St. Louis suburbs on the Illinois side.
I park the SUV just down the block and cut the engine.
Silence descends, broken only by the ticking of cooling metal as I watch Mark disappear into his building.
Five minutes later, the light flicks on in his apartment.
He doesn’t bother to close the window shades, so anyone passing by can see inside.
Idiot.
I watch as he moves around his tiny space, disappearing for a moment, then reappearing on the other side of the room. I ponder my next move.
For all intents and purposes, Mark Palmer’s utility to me is finished.
With the information transfer complete, he has no further value to my company or to me; there are a thousand other paralegals to take his place.
Keeping him employed and alive is a risk; he could panic, confess, or try to run before we’ve fully plugged up the hole.
A clean end that won’t tip off Dean Johnson is the most efficient solution. It always has been.
The question now is whether Mark and Dean have some connection to Andrey, or Andrey simply has his own network of connections he’s been playing.
My dark side stirs, the thing prowling deep down in my soul that was forged in the cold, brutal shadows of St. Petersburg and honed on the streets of New York.
It runs on instinct, a muscle memory that demands satisfaction.
It craves the quick, precise use of force, the tying up of loose ends, the swift, brutal end to betrayal—a permanent solution.
But Clara is inside my head now, fighting for supremacy over the darkness in me. I think about her body pressed against mine, the feel of her skin, the fragile, precious life growing within her.
Can I be the man she needs me to be? Can the husband and father I learned to become with Lauren rise again, older, scarred, and experienced, but older and with more blood on his hands?
I want him to. He has to, if I want to keep Clara in my life. She knows who and what I am, but she also knows I can overcome the darkness.
My fingers trace the cold leather of the steering wheel, tapping out the desire to move, to act, to take revenge. The darkness pulls at me, that shadowed place inside, a deep, comfortable familiarity that whispers that Mark is a threat, and that threat must be eliminated.
I close my eyes, violence hovering at the edge of my control, demanding release. The need is a tight, aching tension in my chest; the time for a clean, easy kill is now.
But I promised Clara.
I open my eyes to see Mark Palmer talking on his phone, laughing, the window open, as he leans out over the sill to smoke a cigarette, the glowing butt a point of light in the darkness. I sit in heavy silence as it grows colder in the SUV’s cabin.
I wait and do nothing, because I told her I would.