Chapter 17 Seamus
SEVENTEEN
seamus
That furious fuckfest in the bathroom was hot as hell. Immensely satisfying and equally idiotic.
What I should have been doing after I lifted and looked at the ID in Lev’s wallet is find a way to talk to the two men.
I’m more interested in Hank Kerry, whoever he is. The man with the scar’s definitely involved in this, though. He’s older, maybe pushing late sixties. But I’m not one to make the mistake of thinking age has anything to do with lack of power or diminished danger.
It doesn’t.
I just don’t know why he’d look at me with the same depth of hatred on his face that Ava normally does.
No… not hate, actually.
Malice.
As I steer my bride back to our table, I slide an arm around her and kiss her deep as two Russians who’ve been watching us avidly continue to do so.
Fuck my life, I could lose myself in her.
The taste is like wildfire. Shit, she’s like wildfire. Ferocious, unpredictable, and impossibly beautiful. Because fire is beautiful.
When I pull my head away from her, her eyes are big, her pupils dilated and impossibly inviting. Lips red without her lipstick. This woman doesn’t need makeup to shine. She’s that gorgeous.
Pity she has no heart.
Also, I remind myself as the waiter comes over with the champagne, strawberries, and dark chocolate mousse, she threw a knife at me tonight.
Which means she’s definitely got a death wish.
“Don’t keep kissing me,” she says, trying to squirm free. “You’ve got men to chase, am I right?”
I pick up a strawberry half and scoop up some mousse, smearing it over her lips and feeding it to her. Then I lean in and lick them clean, kissing her once more, just because she told me not to with her mouth and begged me to keep doing it with her eyes.
“Happy marriage, sweet thing.” I feed her a sip of champagne. “Your Russian pals are basically taking note of everything we do.”
“Where—?”
But I grab her chin to stop her from looking. “Does it matter? Act like you’re into me.”
Ava does, perfecting the flirty facade I know so well. She touches my cheek, my thigh, exposing her wrist and ear with a flick of her hair. Then she feeds me berries and mousse and licks my lips, kissing me slow, linking our arms to drink the champagne.
She does everything but hump me in the restaurant.
It should be a turn-on, seeing her so willing and playing the part of the doting wife.
But it isn’t.
I know what turns her on, and it’s me. But she likes the fight and teeth and blood and bite. She wants the chase; she wants to play to win. The real Ava turned on is a clawed creature of myth. She’s seductive, not because she is trying to be, but because she can’t help herself.
I want that.
I crave that.
This is tepid in comparison.
But it tells a story, and I’m so fucking pleased when Hank and Lev leave that I pull her to me. “We’re going.”
I pay the bill and we get up. I haul her against me, and when a man eyes her as we walk out, I actually snarl.
Because none of these fucks can handle the real woman inside her little coy shell. She’ll rip them apart and feast on their entrails.
The fake Ava? I can see her being appealing, but if they even think they can touch her, I’ll come back and kill them.
All of them.
Every last fuck who’s salivating or hiding a hard-on over those endless legs of hers, her high tits that are so suckable it makes a man insane, her beautiful face, and imagining the real joys of those full lips wrapped around their small dicks.
Them and their X-rated fantasies deserve an agonizing end.
By my hand.
I’ll make her watch and fuck her over their corpses.
I’ll—
I hit the wall outside and Ava is on me, kissing me, biting, rubbing up against me as she devours my lips. I spin her around so we’re in the shadows and she’s pressed between me and the wall. I slide my hand down along her side, tugging the dress so I can play in the petaled wetness of her cunt.
But a catcall brings me slamming back down to reality and I drop her dress and step back, licking my fingers under her hungry, feral gaze. “Better than any fucking dessert.” Then I nod at her. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Did you do that?” I ask.
“The look on your face was… I don’t know.” She’s irritation on legs. “Can we go?”
Mikey’s in the car with the motor running, and I open the door and push her in.
“Got Ben on the job, following the two. You want to go?”
I glance at Ava. “No, let’s go home. Ben knows what to do.”
“Who’s Ben? Follow who?” she asks.
But I don’t answer her.
When we arrive home, I take her inside and leave her there, secure in the knowledge she’s both safe and can’t get into trouble.
Everything will be locked if no one’s home or otherwise occupied. And if she leaves, the alarm will sound. I leave the brownstone, ignoring Ava’s questions, and get back into the car.
“Where to?” Mikey asks.
I give him the address to Ava’s apartment but have him drop me off.
Mikey’ll find a spot and wait for me to call if I need him or if I decide to send him home.
I don’t expect Ben to find out anything other than an address for where this Lev and maybe Hank go.
The apartment building is easy to get into, and I really don’t give a shit that my suit gets looks. I’m armed, though, the gun secure against me, just in case.
Protocol for walking into someplace uninvited. Even if the person who could do the inviting happens to be my wife. Actually, on second thought, I should probably have a bazooka on me.
Her apartment’s dark when I get the door unlocked, and I pull out my gun as I step inside, listening carefully.
The walls are thin, and noise from outside and inside the building seeps in, but the air’s still, like it’s untouched. I snap on a light.
A quick search reveals a few things. I’m alone, and this place—like Ava said—has been ransacked.
It has all the hallmarks of a professional search, one that masquerades as a robbery. Didn’t she say some things were missing?
Question is, what were they looking for?
Not money, it’s clear the person here didn’t have money beyond emergency funds.
Person. Not Ava.
Why the fuck did I think person?
Because… I walk through it again. Because there’s nothing really personal. The artwork’s generic, photo frames have pictures from magazines. I examine one of them by picking the broken glass out and pulling the picture free.
“What the hell are you playing at?” I ask. “Who the fuck are you?”
The image of the woman here isn’t the one I have of Ava. This isn’t a greedy, power-hungry woman’s place.
This is a place that belongs to someone hiding away, a little desperate. Oh, I’m sure she’s still power hungry, but for what’s hers.
They were looking for the crest.
It makes sense to me now.
I have it hidden in a safe at home. But what the fuck’s so special about it? Whatever’s written on it in Russian? Some mystical thing deemed as whoever has it rules?
This is the modern world, not a place of myth and legend. No one would allow a ruler to take over just because they possess a crest. It’s asking for trouble.
It’s worth something, though.
And Ava… knows. Or, at least, it means something to her.
I walk into the kitchen, but it’s been turned inside out. A red heirloom Le Creuset is on the floor, which I only know because Mam has them, but in blue.
Frowning, I head to her bookshelf in the living room and pull out random books, searching for… I don’t know what.
I pause as my fingers graze the spine of an old cookbook. I pull it out, flipping through the pages. It’s annotated, and for some reason I slide it under my arm. I’m about to look again in the bedroom when a slender pamphlet catches my eye.
Now this… this is the Ava I’ve come to know and loathe. It’s handwritten, photocopied, and it’s about how to build bombs, the flash bomb style. It’s a piece of tattered paper with only the broadest strokes of how to, but on the bottom is a number and a name.
One I recognize.
Brad the Mad is the name he goes by. I don’t know him, because I don’t do business with people who like to sell parts to build bombs.
All kinds of parts from feedback I’ve gotten, and he doesn’t—or didn’t—care about who he sold to.
I say didn’t because last I heard he was doing time in Rikers for robbery.
But if he’s out…
I know his hangout. And he’ll have names.
I’m about to leave when my phone buzzes. It’s Ben, and would you believe it, the address the two assholes from the restaurant went to was 86, the place dear ol’ Brad likes to call home. That’s convenient.
I close the apartment door, taking the book and the pamphlet, my heels digging into the worn carpet, and I don’t look back.
Mikey and I watch from up the street as the night drags on. The two men I’m interested in either left out the back or are still inside getting their drink on. My money’s on the former. They were meeting for a reason.
Maybe it really has nothing to do with my family, or someone wanting to claim ours as theirs, or wanting to stir trouble in our camp. Maybe we’re not part of whatever the fuck this is at all.
But I can’t shake the feeling that keeps gnawing at my brain that it all had to do with us from the beginning.
Or maybe not.
Maybe it has something to do with the Volkov Bratva and the crest. Which, now that I’m married to Ava, means attention might be on us for that reason, too. Especially as we were at Romanov’s for that wedding.
He fits into this, somehow. Does he want the crest? I can see him wanting the bratva as part of his. He knew the stepmother and Ava’s father. For all his crying about being the target, he could be involved, too.
I sigh.
“Something wrong?”
I’ve run this through with Mikey. He’s family now, by his loyalty to Lucie, by how he’s handling the de Rosa business for us. He’s trusted. So I just say, “I can’t piece all this together.”