29. Twelve Years
TWELVE YEARS
My phone begins buzzing on the table. Rather than silence it again, I shut the device off entirely.
I haven’t decided what I’ll tell Igor. Haven’t decided what I’ll tell Carina. I was preoccupied by disarming the immediate threat of the Italians finding her first, and now … what?
If I deliver her as requested, Igor will broker a deal. She’ll be sent back to the family she ran from. We’ll receive some benefit. Something useful, but nothing important.
Why did she leave Chicago?
Why did she run to Paris?
Why did she never tell me who she was?
That last question I at least have a guess at the answer—she wasn’t sure how I’d react. She was smart enough—and I was careless enough—to make an accurate guess at what I was involved in. To know it was similar and in conflict with her family’s dealings.
I understand why she didn’t lead with the truth. Not in that pool and not at the party I’d arranged for the sole purpose of seeing her again. Or when I snuck around her university.
But twelve years? Twelve fucking years of deceit?
“Morning.” Carina enters the kitchen with sleepy eyes and tangled hair, wearing only the oversize shirt she slept in.
It shouldn’t be a sexy outfit. I avert my gaze from her long legs, only for it to snag on the outline of her nipples.
This should be an easy situation to separate sex from. I’m here on orders, with a clear objective from my pakhan. Problem is, I associate Carina with sex. Not only when I’m around her, if I’m being entirely honest.
Twelve years.
For most of those, I’ve lied to myself about what she meant to me. Fooled myself into thinking that it wouldn’t matter, that it couldn’t have consequences. And now my loyalties are divided between a woman and my family—a decision I didn’t think I was capable of facing.
Blood. You always choose blood. It’s the easiest choice and the obvious answer.
I watch Carina fill a cup with the coffee I brewed an hour ago. It must be cold by now, but she doesn’t appear to care as she sips. She still looks tired, and I’m annoyed I notice.
I watch her sink down into the chair across from me, noting how she rubs a finger against the mug’s handle the same way she stroked the glass whenever we met at a bar.
“Can you shoot?” I ask abruptly.
She sips. “A gun?”
I nod once, impatiently.
“No.”
“Your father should have trained you.”
“Well, that would have required him spending time with me. Or caring.”
I surmised they weren’t close, but the bitterness in her tone is new. More than she revealed last night.
“Why did you run?”
Her finger rubs faster. She exhales, the sigh long and defeated. “My father wants me to marry Nico Morello.”
“So, marry him.”
A scoff. “Easy for you to say.”
It wasn’t. My throat stings since those words sliced like razor blades as they exited my mouth.
“I wasn’t supposed to … my entire life is in Chicago,” she continues. “I didn’t know if I ever wanted to get married, but I know I don’t want to marry some criminal I’ve never met.”
“You’ve never met him?”
She shakes her head. “I, uh … I left the night I was supposed to.”
I would have paid a lot of money to see the reactions when they found out she’d run.
“Have you?” Carina asks. “Met him?”
“No.”
“But you know who he is? He’s—he does what you do?”
I lift an eyebrow. “What do I do, Carina?”
She raises one back. “Things that get you ‘mugged.’ ”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She shakes her head, shoving the coffee away and crossing her arms. “Stop it. I told you the truth. Be honest with me. I’m all—” Her voice breaks. “My father, my brothers—they’re all—”
“You have brothers?”
“Yeah. Three.” Her gaze drops to the table. “Should I have not told you that?”
“You think I’ll track down your brothers and …” I wait, curious about what assumptions she’s made.
“I don’t know!” she snaps. “I’m not on their side, obviously, and they were never on mine, but they’re still family.” She bites her bottom lip. “You know?”
I do know.
And I’m far more conflicted than Carina because my family and I are on the same side. I might disagree with some of their decisions, but there’s never been a question of where my loyalties lie.
“I have no interest in your brothers, Carina. Lions do not hunt house cats.”
She rolls her eyes rather than looking relieved. “That was rude.”
I’m fully grinning now. “You are offended your family is not an important enemy?”
“They were important enough for you to stake out a Paris theater.”
She holds my gaze, watching me sober.
“Or do you get sent on a lot of trivial errands to track down missing women?”
“Careful,” I drawl.
Carina relaxes back in her chair, propping her feet on one of the empty ones. “Or what?”
I stand. “Eat something. I have to make a phone call.”
I’ve only made it two steps to the door when she speaks again. “What are you really doing here, Lev? Just … tell me. Please.”
I pause. Blow out a long breath. Glance back at her.
She was chewing her bottom lip, which she stops when our eyes meet. Hers are wide. Worried and wary and wondering.
I don’t want her to matter.
I don’t know if pretending she doesn’t is an option any longer.
If Igor is already losing interest, like Misha said, I could have talked my father out of this to begin with.
I would have if I hadn’t seen that photo on his computer.
I didn’t fly to France to track down a missing woman; I’m here for her.
“Twelve years.”
I turn away and continue walking without waiting for her reaction.
Carina doesn’t call after me again.
I turn my phone back on as I walk away from the house, closer toward the gardens that lead to a pond. Call my father back.
“Anything?” Igor asks immediately.
“No. Andrea share anything new?”
“They are still looking too. They’ve sent more men, he said.”
I frown. More men?
“I will keep looking,” I say. “She can’t hide forever.”
“Only until Thursday. I need you back here.”
“Fine,” I say, then hang up.
And release a string of swears that startles a nearby flock of birds into flight.