Chapter 30
SILAS
Istare at the documents in front of me. My mind is trying to make sense of what I’m seeing. Mikhail Sokolov did me a favor through his network to get me what I couldn’t unearth myself from her cleverly put-together file.
The woman on the driver’s license doesn’t look remotely familiar.
She has a pixie cut as black as night, and it makes her facial features easy to see.
Her eyes are wide apart. Her lips thin. And I can irrefutably say that the woman in the driver’s license is absolutely not the Leonore Graves I know.
I stare at the two licenses in front of me. Same license number. Different woman.
The woman in the original license is a bank teller in San Diego, California. Well, she was, until she went missing six years ago. Around about the same time Leonore appeared on the East Coast and began working for a funeral director.
Mikhail’s tech analyst wasn’t able to get a hit on Leonore’s face. But this much is useful to me.
I know what Leonore has done. She stole this woman’s identity.
I don’t need to know how.
What I want to know is why.
I look out the window that oversees the dance floor, my eyes naturally gravitating to the bar where I watch Leonore pulling a face as she tastes the cocktail she is holding.
The corner of my lips tilt slightly, knowing it’s probably too sweet for her.
So if you’re not Leonore Graves, who are you really?
A low knock on the door interrupts my thoughts, and I’m quick to hide the files in my drawer. When the door opens, it’s exactly who I was expecting. Elias Nero. He looks tired, though still immaculately put together.
One of my men stands there holding the door open, and I dismiss him to leave us in private.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I say sincerely.
“That’s a pretty fucked-up thing to say since you were the one who put my two brothers in the grave,” Elias growls, but it lacks bite. I pour a glass of whiskey for us both and offer him the seat across from me.
He does so, looking more man than anything else today.
I look back out at the window, still watching Leonore as I speak. “Your brothers made a miscalculation, even if you tried to protect them.”
He sighs. I knew it would go either way. He’d either try to kill me or accept the truth of their individual actions. “I had no particular fondness for my brothers,” he says as if hearing my thoughts. “But the killing spree stops here, or I will have to get involved.”
I have no doubt.
At the bar, Leonore’s hips begin to swing to the beat of the music and as I watch her, I feel the heat of protectiveness sweep through me. I brought her here because I want to keep her close. Now that I know what I know, I don’t want to set her free until I uncover who she really is.
“What does your father have to say about this?” I ask, somewhat curious. Apollo has been quiet for months now. There’s an internal shift within Nero’s crew, and I know other crews will have noticed by now as well.
Elias sighs, as if a defeated man. “My father’s sick. He’s been bed-bound for months now and doesn’t have much longer.” I turn to face him. I don’t much like Apollo, but my uncle and he were close.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say, genuinely meaning that because I know what it’s like to watch a mother slowly die from cancer, unable to fight her demons or keep her safe.
Elias casually shrugs. “But my brothers acted impulsively. Had they acted like that as the head of the crew, we would’ve been in trouble.
” It goes unsaid that I helped him clear a path to become the heir.
It wasn’t for him, but he’s the only one I’ll do business with.
It doesn’t mean that I entirely trust him.
After all, an eye for an eye can often create a very bloody future.
“What will you do now?” I ask, going to take a sip, but pausing the drink at my lips when I notice Cian Hayes slinking up beside Leonore. My grip immediately almost shatters the glass.
“Regroup. I only came here to tell you the blood spree has to stop. I don’t want to oppose you, Silas, but I will if it comes down to it.”
I look at him then, really taking him and his mismatched eyes in. We’re around the same age. And I have no doubt that, if he matures, he’ll be either a great ally or an adversary. I look forward to either. “Then we share the same sentiment.”
He stands as he adjusts his cuffs. “My father sends his condolences. Pietro was a good friend to him.”
Then he lets himself out. Valen walks in with an eyebrow raised. “No body bag tonight; that’s rather refreshing. I have some information on one of our new weapon deals,” he says as he immediately steps into business, but my focus and gaze burns into the floor beneath us.
“Boss, are you listening?”
“I am,” I say, looking down. She is on her second drink, and Cian Hayes is getting a little too close for my comfort. I place my whiskey down and head toward the door.
“Boss, where are you going…” I walk out without looking back; the weapons deal can wait. But Cian being that close to her cannot. I have warned him already about her; seems he doesn’t like to listen to me.
Pity really.
That I will have to kill him.
“He’s the man I fuck,” she says as I get closer.
I stop directly behind Cian, who doesn’t realize I am there, but she does, because her eyes are on me.
It fills me with pride that she tells him that we’re fucking because I know she likes to fight her own battles.
I’m also aware of how the other crews treat her.
No one has a monopoly over her, so for her to say that to him draws a line in the sand, as much as she says it with a dismissive tone that I’m nothing but a piece of meat. But I’ll take what I can get.
“You’re fucking him?” Cian asks in disbelief.
“So it would appear. Why else would I be here while I wait for him?”
“I’m here.” Cian’s head swings around at the sound of my voice.
I know exactly where his men are in my club, and so do my men.
I allow them to come in under the guidance that they play nicely.
Or I may very much fucking kill them all.
And he is getting a little too close to what’s mine for my liking.
“You’re seeing the doc…” he says. Ignoring him, I keep my eyes on her. If not Leonore Graves, then who? Her deep emerald eyes shine against the passing light from the dance floor.
“You should walk away, before you can no longer walk,” I say to Cian, but my eyes are on her.
“We should dance,” I suggest, and she scrunches up her nose.
All these minor details I’ve come to know of her …
all belong to someone else? But even if I don’t know her name, it doesn’t change the sharp intellect behind her eyes or the heavy distance she always tries to keep between us.
“I don’t dance,” she says, but I definitely saw her hips sway slightly before this piece of shit interrupted.
Those secrets between us make me want to only uncover more.
I take the drink from her hand as Cian steps away, completely forgotten, and reach for her, pulling her out to the crowded dance floor.
Immediately, her hands go to my chest as I pull us close.
I want her to be squished so she has no other option but to touch me.
“You dance for me, or have you forgotten?” I tell her, my hands finding her hips and bringing her even closer as she looks up to me.
“This is not fun for me.” Oh, but how this has suddenly turned more fun for me.
“It is for me, watching you squirm. I quite enjoy it.” And I wonder what amount of pressure will break her to uncover those truths. “What else can we do next that puts you out of your comfort zone?”
“I would say die, but that is my comfort zone.” I love her dry humor, dark and delicious. And so I decide at this moment that my focus is on uncovering her truths and figuring out who lives beneath the mask of Leonore Graves.
“But who would you examine alive then?” Her emerald eyes shoot up to mine.
“I’m sure I can find someone…” She leaves the words hanging.
“I’m contemplating having a contract made, in case I die that is,” I tell her.
“Okay … you are weird.”
“That if I die, they’re still to kill any man who makes a move on you or who you try to take home.”
“That’s a bit fucked up. We’ve only had sex a handful of times, and you’re already putting me in your will.”
“You’d be the sole beneficiary, I reckon,” I tease her.
“Yeah, well, I’d be the one to cover up your death, you know, because I couldn’t incriminate myself; I would lose my job.”
“For my death?” I ask her. We completely ignore the loud music and the bodies floating near us.
“Yes, you would have done something to piss me off, of that I am sure…”
“I have no doubt.” I lift her chin so I can lean down and kiss her. She lets me, her hands even lift from my chest to snake around my neck as she pushes her body into mine. I can taste the alcohol on her tongue and want to replace it with my cock.
Fuck.
I’m falling hard for the fucked-up doctor hiding behind a mask.
I suspect that she’s no better than me. She’s always so reluctant to join me, but once she’s in my arms, she can’t help but carve her nails in deeply and possessively—even if she hasn’t realized it herself.
I quite enjoy a game of cat and mouse, and I wonder if she even knows that I will certainly be her demise. Because once I’m determined, there’s no changing my mind.