8. Rand
RAND
Itake a few minutes to hold Karolina, pretending she’s sleeping peacefully in my arms.
But it’s not a natural sleep. I drugged her.
Everything is spinning out of control.
My enemies have come for her.
Ghost will help. I’ve never needed a friend more than I do now.
I shift Karolina so she’s cradled against my chest, propping my back against the headboard. When she’s carefully nestled in my arms, I pull up the duvet to cover her nakedness and reach for my phone.
Ghost answers almost immediately, his face filling my screen.
His ice blue eyes immediately focus on Karolina.
“Why are you calling me when she’s there?” he asks in an undertone. “I know you won’t want me to meet her.”
“She won’t wake up,” I assure him, my cheeks heating with a hint of shame. “She’ll sleep for a few hours, at least.”
His brows lift to his buzzed blond hairline. “Did you drug her? What the fuck, Ragnar?”
My jaw tightens. I don’t like the judgment in his sharp tone.
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“Sure. You tell yourself that.” He shakes his head. “What’s going on?”
“Someone else found her. I need to know who it was.”
My voice darkens on the last. Whoever scared her is going to scream before I finally allow him to die.
“Where am I looking?” He’s serious now. His eyes focus on something out of frame, and I hear his fingers clattering over his keyboard. “I’ve been monitoring the CCTV feed around her building, and nothing has seemed out of the ordinary there.”
“She said she was at Brownie Bakehouse when the man approached her. He knew about Brandon.”
“Oh, fuck,” he says softly. “She knows who you are now?”
“No. She still thinks the gunshot killed me. Whoever threatened her told her that he found her through Brandon. She thinks it’s about revenge for what she did to me.”
Ghost scrubs a hand over his stubbled jaw. “You should come clean. This is too fucked up. Do you really think you can keep lying to her forever?”
“I can’t tell her the truth. She can’t know what I am.”
He sighs. “If it’s meant to be, she’ll accept you. The two of you were in love back then, right? She might be relieved you’re alive.”
I jerk my head to the side, refusing to engage in that foolish hope.
“The man who found her knew her real name, Karolina Taylor,” I say instead of replying directly. “He knew I’m Brandon. Someone from the old days must’ve given him that information.”
Ghost nods his agreement. “It wasn’t exactly a secret. The Bratva boss knew exactly who you were when he recruited you from the ring.”
I grimace. The boss, Dimitri Sokolov, saw my cold, murderous capabilities in the ring, and I was all too eager to accept his money in exchange for my brutal skillset.
“But how did they find Karolina?” I ask. “She wasn’t in my life back then.”
Ghost looks at me like I’m an idiot. “You have her name tattooed on your chest, and her face is clearly visible on your arms. You think no one noticed that during your fights? Anyone could’ve found her if they wanted to look hard enough.”
“But why now?”
“You tried to get out of the game. Maybe your enemies think you’ve gone soft. They wouldn’t dare to cross you before, but now they know you still want her in your life. They know exactly where to strike to hurt you the worst.”
My blood goes ice cold. “I’ll kill them all.”
“Who?” Ghost challenges. “You don’t even know who you’re targeting. Or have you forgotten that you’ve pissed off at least one man in every major organization? If you hadn’t sold your services to the highest bidder, you might still have Sokolov’s protection. You got greedy, Ragnar.”
“I needed the money. You know why.”
I had to fix my face. I had to earn enough to support her in the way she deserves.
Ghost eyes Karolina. “Yeah, I know. She’s all you’ve talked about for years.
Not that you’ve shared anything with me other than the necessary facts to track her down for you.
It took me months to find Lena Williams at UNC.
Whoever she bought that identity from was pretty good, but not as good as me. ”
“You weren’t good enough to cover my tracks as Rand Hirst,” I accuse.
He grimaces. “You have some of the wealthiest, most dangerous men in the world with you on their shit list. They have almost endless resources. They probably found you through her. If I discovered Karolina’s real identity, then others could have, too.
She’s your weak spot. She always has been.
People were just too scared of you before to dare to go after her. ”
“They should be scared,” I growl. “Whoever is targeting her will pay.”
He sighs. “I have at least one name for you. Remember Pasquale Costa? He’s the one who approached her at Brownie Bakehouse this afternoon. I have the video feeds from the café.”
“I remember him. I killed his father.”
And that cost him his place as heir. Costa will never have the power he thought was his birthright. The war that broke out after the assassination decimated his own organization. I’m surprised he even survived the fallout.
His rivals paid me half a million for that job.
“But what does Costa have to do with Ivanov?” They didn’t even operate on the same continent, much less have affiliations with the same syndicate.
“It can’t be coincidence that they both ended up in York at the same time.
They both knew about Karolina. Were they sharing information before I killed Ivanov? ”
More clattering on Ghost’s keyboard. “I’ll see what I can dig up. If your old enemies are working together to take you down, you’re in deep shit. Even you might not be able to survive that.”
All the more reason to keep Karolina isolated in the countryside and lock her away while I deal with the threat.
“I want their names,” I seethe. “Anyone who dared to so much as look her up online is a dead man.”
“It’ll cost you,” he reminds me.
“I’ll pay anything. You want that Spyder you’ve been drooling over for years? It’s yours.”
He lets out a low whistle. “You love that car.”
I wave in dismissal. “I had it shipped to the UK when I moved here. If you want it, come and get it.”
His eyes narrow. “You’re pulling me into this now? Hacking into your enemies’ lives remotely is one thing. You’re asking me to put my neck on the line.”
“It’s your decision,” I say, but I’m tense. I need his help.
He considers me for a moment. “I know you don’t want to hear this sappy shit, but you’re my friend, Ragnar. Just ask me, and I’ll come to England. I’ll have your back.”
My chest aches. “I need you here. I can’t leave her alone while I’m out eliminating the threats to her safety. You’re the only one I can trust. Please.”
I met Ghost in the ring, when I was still disfigured from the gunshot wound. I’m not the only one who was recruited by the Bratva back then. His skillset is different from mine, but his value as a hacker is nearly equal to my paygrade as an assassin.
“I’ll be there in twenty-four hours,” he replies solemnly. “How are you planning to tell her we know each other? You know, when she wakes up from the drugs.” The last is heavy with accusation.
“I have to be able to track her if we’re separated,” I say defensively. “She doesn’t need to know about it.”
His lips pinch with distaste. “You put a tracker in her without her consent? Come on. Even for you, that’s a step too far.”
“I can’t lose her,” I say, desperate.
He scrubs a hand over his face. “Fine. Jesus, you really are insane for this woman.”
I try to ignore the heat in my cheeks. “When she asks, just say we’re old friends from after I left my foster home. You can tell her we met in the ring. She knows that much.”
“I’m guessing you don’t want me to tell her about the Bratva?” he drawls.
“You know I don’t want that,” I shoot back. “All she knows is that I earned my fortune as a fighter. She knows I have a friend who’s good with tech. That’s enough.”
“Good with tech?” He snorts. “I guess I’ll keep the fact that I’m the best hacker in the world to myself, then.”
I sigh. “Are you going to be able to check your ego and keep my secrets, or not? I really do need your help to watch over her.”
He sobers slightly. “I get it. I’ll be there, and I won’t let anything happen to your girl.”
“Thanks, Ghost.”
“Just take care of her,” he grumbles, uncomfortable with our moment of sincerity. “And try not to completely fuck things up with her. I don’t want to be in the middle of your drama.”
He ends the call.
I pull her closer to my chest and kiss her forehead. I hate her drug-induced sleep, but I didn’t have a choice.
Nothing bad will happen to Karolina. I won’t allow it.