Chapter 30
Rhys
Zervas & Company looks more like a palace than an office. The elevator opens with a whoosh, and I groan. With marble floors and gold-veined wall coverings, everything gleams like sin polished to a shine. This place even smells expensive.
I got a call to meet Ares and his brothers about some kind of development. And I’m betting it’s not about the UN campus they’re building with Griffin.
The side gig makes Quinlan Empire and Zervas & Company look legitimate. Glossy over the dead bodies and blood.
Ares said it couldn’t wait. With a man like him, nothing waits. The Greeks aren’t scrappy Irish brats. They’ve dripped with stunning wealth their entire lives.
As I round the corner to reach Ares’s office suite, I hear muffled voices. His office door is cracked open, light spilling across the hallway carpet.
“Don’t,” Ares says to someone I can’t see, his voice sharp enough to cut steel. “Don’t pretend you didn’t know what he was doing, Lourdes.”
Lourdes Sinclair. The assistant.
Her breath hitches. “Just like I’m supposed to pretend you didn’t kill him.” She thinks he killed her husband.
How arrogant. Taking the credit for my hit so he can get laid. Is he keeping her quiet with his dick in her mouth?
There’s a loud thud. Maybe she set her purse down too hard. Maybe she hit him with her purse. I hope she did.
“I told you. If I saw one more bruise on your face, I would end him.”
I edge close enough to see through the gap, just a sliver. Lourdes stands by his desk, chin high but trembling. Black dress. High heels. Red eyes. Still wearing her wedding ring.
“And you think this fixes it?” She tosses papers on his desk.
“Yes,” Ares hisses. “It’s for your protection. Black thinks you had David killed. He’ll send his men to kill you.”
Elias Black… Fuck, this is getting complicated.
Silence blares again in the office. One heartbeat. Then Two. When Lourdes finally speaks, her voice sounds smaller. “I can’t do this, Ares.”
In what looks like an expensive suit, but the jacket unbuttoned, his hands rest on the edge of the desk, knuckles white. Every muscle in Ares’s body is braced like he’s fighting himself not to touch her.
I step away from the office door before they see me and go to the men’s room to splash water on the back of my neck.
By the time I get back a few minutes later, the woman is sitting at her desk. Her eyes reach mine, and her jaw trembles. Does she know me? Or do I remind her of her husband?
“Ares is expecting me,” I say, low and calm.
“Go right in,” she says, her voice different. Lighter, a little ditsy even. Like she’s playing the role of an airhead assistant.
That’s not who I heard putting Ares Zervas in his place a few minutes ago. But fuck him, I have my own problems.
Ares waves me into his office like nothing is wrong. The air is scrubbed clean of whatever just happened. His brothers are in there now, and a new kind of tension thickens enough to drown in.
Looking at Ares, Atlas, and Ambrose, I get why Troi Keller, the former Irish don, wanted to slaughter the Zervas brothers for a decade. Smug, rich, and entitled.
The Irish are rough around the edges, hands callused, and souls of stubborn grit. We drink our whiskey in crowded pubs where the floor is sticky, and the drunken laughter is too loud.
The Greeks are a different breed. You can smell their superiority before they open their mouths. Our worlds were never supposed to meet. Theirs is polished and ours is scuffed with dirt. Then Griffin, a brutal Irishman if there ever was one, married Ava Zervas, their sister.
Perhaps in life, opposites attract more fiercely. Maybe love is better when you have to burn and ache for it.
What I ache for is not to have to deal with fucking Ares Zervas. But I’m anchored to this ocean liner at the moment because I killed his assistant’s husband. For him.
Ares sits there with a smile as cold as ice, his cologne a hit of spice and leather. He’s got dark brown hair and grayish-violet eyes that flick over me with the cold precision of a hungry hawk.
Ambrose leans against a column while Atlas hovers near the window.
These fuckers need to get laid. Not Ares, apparently, he’s shagging his assistant.
“Rhys,” Ares purrs, steepling his fingers. “You cut your hair?”
The moment Fallon said she didn’t like it, neither did I. I cut it the next day.
“It was getting to be a nuisance.” I shove my hands into my coat pockets and glance around, noting exits, shadows, and security cams. “Why am I here?”
“Because you’re useful.” Ares grins.
A useful eejit.
“Have a seat.” He pushes a thumb drive across the desk.
Grumbling, I take it and plug it into my phone. Grainy surveillance shots of crates from China and men in dark coats unloading them.
“That man we killed had a side hustle,” Ares says, voice smooth as silk.
“The man I killed,” I say, like an idiot clinging to the credit, all while it’s put a noose around my neck.
I consider whether I should admit that my brother and I figured out who the guy is and call out Ares for fucking the wife.
But… I don’t.
“What am I looking at?” I ask about this data dump instead.
“A shipment is on its way to New York,” Ares says smugly, unable to contain himself and I want to go for his throat. “But that’s not the best part.”
I swipe for more photos. Dock coordinates. A manifest. Dates and times.
“What’s the best part, Ares?” I ask.
“From what we were able to tell from our dead guy’s phone, none of his security contacts were made aware of the shipment.” Ares twirls a pen. “We contacted the seller from his phone and changed the delivery location.”
“Let me guess.” I put down my phone. “Your dock. So you can pick it up.”
“Exactly,” Ares says. “The dead guy already sold it to someone else and paid the seller. We just have to accept the shipment.”
I glance at him. “A shipment of what?”
“Does it matter?” Ares asks, faintly amused.
“It could be humans. I’m not getting involved in that shite. We can get Griffin in a room right now to—”
Ares gets to his feet. “You just better pray I don’t want to smell Irish blood in the streets again, Quinlan.”
Griffin and Ava stopped years of brutal conflict, and the families have lived in peace for more than two years now.
That alliance dragged me to the Greeks’ doorstep.
I was just unfortunate enough to get tangled with a ring of contract killers.
Now, I’m being made to feel like Ares will re-light the war with the Irish if I don’t continue to be his bitch.
If I tell Griffin any of this, he’ll send Ava to kill Ares because deep inside, she hates her brother. It’s not worth the trouble or the suit I’ll need to get dry cleaned for the funeral.
I lean back in the chair, my heart ticking like a bomb. “Why do you want me to accept that shipment?”
“It’s the perfect job for an assassin hardly anyone has seen,” Ares says. “The one person who has is dead.”
As if that is some form of fucked-up comfort.
“You’re also someone I can trust to give the product to us,” he finishes buttering me up, sounding calmer.
“And what makes you think I’ll hand it over to you?” I fold my arms, negotiating for some stupid reason.
“Our alliance is with you. Not your girlfriend. That leaves her at risk.” Ares smiles. “Unless you make her your very own Mrs. Quinlan.”
They’ve got me by the balls. I was stupid enough to commit murder for them when I had a nosy neighbor who liked to break into my flat. Now, they can mess with Fallon.
Ares lifts his gaze, and it’s like staring into a glacier. “You’ll get a cut. When we sell it.”
I’d never been motivated by money. Quinlan Empire pays me well.
Maybe when I figure out who this Kosta is, I can buy him off to stay the hell away from Fallon.
“You will need that same tattoo as the man you killed.” Ares doesn’t mince words this time about who was responsible for the death.
Despite Zervas wanting David Sinclair dead, he died by my hand. Even if in the end it was self-defense because—
I stop… I technically killed Sinclair in self-defense. And I have a witness.
Fuck, I can’t do that to Fallon. I trust her to keep my secret.
A hollow laugh bubbles out of me. “I need a mercenary neck tattoo now?”
Ares says lazily, “It’s only ink.”
“It’s only my life,” I snap and rake a hand through my freshly shorn hair, exhaling hard. “What is your connection to Elias Black?”
Ares leans back, studying me. Wondering if he should play dumb. Atlas whispers something in his ear. My C.V., perhaps? I’m guessing he’s reminding his brother of my security background for the Irish ministry.
“It’s a loose connection,” Ares says succinctly.
“You mean a dead one. That’s who David Sinclair worked for?” I play my final card in this game. “Yeah, I know who he is.”
“Yes, David worked for him, and yes, he was married to my assistant. He was beating her black and blue nearly every night,” Ares snaps with visceral disgust, giving away all his secrets. “When he wasn’t off screwing women he met in my club.”
I’m not sure he cares at this point, but why does this need to be happening when I will be traipsing all over the city with Fallon?
I’m ready to vomit.
“And it’s microchips,” Ares finally admits. “Not humans. That manifest was detailed. Black-market stuff. Military-grade for drones. Very valuable.”
“And who are you selling them to?”
His mouth curves into something that resembles a smile.
“Balor O’Rourke,” Ares says with no irony in his tone. “His order coincidentally got lost in cyberspace, and he really needs them.”
With Quinlan Empire’s twisted ties to the Greeks and Trace being Balor’s brother-in-law, the O’Rourke hacker will trust us and take the shipment.
My body buzzes with the urge to walk out of here. But I don’t move.
Because this is who I am. This is what I agreed to when I got a call three years ago from Griffin. And because saying no to Ares Zervas is a good way to wind up at the bottom of the East River.
I drag my gaze back to him. “Fine. I’ll do it. Are we done here?”
“I’d get that tattoo sooner rather than later,” Ares says, smiling.
“Those microchips better not be counterfeit or worthless, or you’ll find yourself getting a visit from Lachlan O’Rourke.” My throat muscles constrict in tight coils like barbed wire.
The way they all visibly shudder spreads a grin across my lips.
“My brother is married to his sister,” I add. “Only she can call off that maniac of a brother.”
“He’s more like a nuclear warhead with a grudge,” Ares mutters.
“Don’t fucking forget it.” I kick the chair back, loving how the legs screech against marble tile. “If I get gunned down walking through Midtown with that tattoo, you have to answer to all of Quinlan Empire.”
I push out of Ares’s office, ignoring his gorgeous assistant. An elevator waits for me, its chrome walls reflect my face back at me, pale and furious and tired.
By the time I step out onto the street, the wind slices at my coat. Why is it I only feel warm when I’m with Fallon? Why does the city only glitter when I see it as a halo around her hair?
I shove my hands in my pockets and start walking, the sound of ‘Here Comes Santa Claus’ bleeding faintly from somewhere above.
And for a split second, I imagine Fallon’s wild laugh tangled in the music
Then the moment’s gone, and I keep walking.