22. Rurik
22
RURIK
K elly didn’t protest moving in with me after her “debut” of working for Oleg. The Boss hadn’t been disappointed in how little intel she’d actually gotten from wearing that wire in the offices while she worked. And that pissed me off more.
“Were you just testing her to see where her loyalty lies?” I asked him when he reassured her that he was thankful for her trying to get information at the admin offices.
“No.” He shook his head, studying me. “I don’t need to test her. I simply saw this as another alternative way of getting more information about the Bensons.”
He was still after clues about Sonya’s death. I wasn’t sure at this point whether he cared about whatever Igor Petrov or the Ilyins were trying to accomplish on campus anymore. He didn’t need to worry about the drug distribution. We had other and more lucrative avenues of income.
It wasn’t my call to make, though, whether Kelly would be expected to spy again. Her one and only time of working for the family hadn’t ended smoothly.
“If that fucking guard hadn’t been such a dick…” Lev muttered as we headed inside the mansion.
I nodded. “Fucker would’ve been put in his place sooner or later,” I said.
“Yes. But it wasn’t convenient for him to be a hassle for us, right now,” he replied.
We jogged up the steps to enter the mansion together, just coming back from following up with the crew on campus who’d been there to manage another new issue that impacted Kelly.
“Nothing is convenient about this,” I told him, pausing him from entering the house for a second. “I was so fucking happy to have a reason to be near Kelly again. You understand that, right?”
He nodded.
“But it’s one thing after another.”
Last night, via the camera we hid at the entrance to her apartment, cops had shown up to talk with her. It looked like Jerome had planted drugs in a locker that she still had a rental on in the gym. The assholes hadn’t even waited for her to answer the door and broke in to search.
There were no damn drugs there, just as I suspected that she’d never had drugs in any locker on campus. She wasn’t the kind of woman to do drugs. She had yet to even drink at dinners with us. Kelly was square.
“It always seems like that,” Lev agreed. “But all we need to focus on right now is why those drugs were planted now.”
I raised a finger, reviewing what we’d speculated so far. “Jerome planted them to mess with her because he remembers her from before.”
He nodded. “Which seems weak, if you ask me, because unless she did or said something to make him dislike her back then, why care now?”
“It sounds like he’s just another one of those assholes who hates everyone.” I ticked another finger. “Or the security guards planted the drugs in retaliation for that guard being killed.”
He shook his head. “I don’t like that theory either. One, because he was a new guy and no one could have really known him to care. Two, because it wouldn’t be so easy to track her or connect her as someone he’d seen before he died. No cameras were in that basement corridor. And three, no one knows he’s dead yet. His body hasn’t been found and they haven’t even reported him missing.”
I grimaced, rubbing the back of my neck.
“We’ll figure this out, Rurik.” He patted my back. “It’s just a balance of helping you keep your girl while dealing with the Boss’s obsession about finding out what happened to Sonya.”
“You noticed that too?” I asked, glancing around as if the big Boss could hear us outside. “He doesn’t seem so focused on Petrov anymore as he does on Sonya.”
Lev shook his head. “I don’t get it. Why now? She’s been assumed dead for years, so why now?”
I shrugged, glad that I wasn’t alone in wondering why the boss was so determined to dig up old news.
While I enjoyed the privacy that Kelly and I had at my place, it seemed smarter to stay in the guestrooms here, where she could be closer to Eva. That was where we found the women when we got inside, talking together in the lounge. Eva paced, pensive, as Kelly groaned in frustration from her spot in a chair in front of the fireplace.
“I don’t like the idea that Jerome could’ve planted those drugs as a way to get at me.” She hugged her knees. “And I don’t like your idea that this attention from the cops is focused on me because of that guard who gave us trouble in the basement.”
Lev shook his head as we entered. “I don’t think anyone can make a connection between you and that guard. And if they did, they wouldn’t be sitting on it. They’d be trying to arrest you now.”
Eva shot him a stern look when Kelly paled. “Which is a moot point because if anyone targets anyone in the family?—”
“But I’m not family, Eva,” Kelly reminded her timidly.
“You practically are. If Uncle Oleg invites you to stay in his home, you are the next thing to family.”
I watched Kelly as she nodded, but she didn’t seem that convinced, hunching her shoulders and looking down at the carpet as Eva paced again.
“And if any cops are so foolish as to target anyone in the family,” Eva said, “then they will never succeed.” She faced Kelly, smiling as though she likely wanted to reassure her. “We have lawyers, legal aides, connections in the court and in the capitol. Believe me when I say that we have your back.”
“We will all have your back,” I promised her.
She lifted her gaze to me, piercing me with a sharp hit of all the worry that was turning her life upside down. She wasn’t going to class. She wasn’t working at the bar anymore. All those days and nights of toughing it out and trying to survive were a thing of the past. Judging by the sadness and anxiety swirling in her eyes, though, I couldn’t begin to guess whether she would agree that things had changed for the better.
I took her back to my place, hoping I could get her to relax at what was starting to feel like our home. On the way, she opened up a little more, talking freely with me in a way that maybe she was too shy to in front of Eva.
“I’ve never had it easy in life, but it seems like everything is happening so fast. All this danger.” She looked at me as I drove. “Is it always like this? When would I be able to act so calm and confident like Eva can? Or Irina?”
“There is danger in everyone’s lives, no matter what they do, who they know, and where they are.”
“But—”
“Yes, there are more risks in our family, but with those extra risks, there are extra layers of security.”
She sank back into her seat, quiet for a moment, and I couldn’t tell if she was relaxing from what I said or if she was still overthinking and going through her routine of what-ifs.
“Remember how we dreamed together? When you asked me what I wanted and we daydreamed?”
I smiled. “Of course.” Little did she know that I was making everything she’d told me the blueprint for my life. I’d make her dreams come true—just as soon as I ensured she was out of danger from anyone on that campus or elsewhere.
“It just seems like all those dreams are so much further away.”
I soured, hating that she’d have such little faith.
“They’re not,” I argued gently. I brought her hand to my lips and kissed it. “We just need to deal with these obstacles at the moment.”
She nodded but didn’t make eye contact, looking out the window instead.