Chapter 35
ROMAN
Another week passed and my frustration worsened.
We had men inside the prison system looking for Amber’s rapist.
We had the IRS and other alphabet agencies looking into all of William’s records and business dealings.
Already, he'd had several accounts frozen for fraudulent behavior.
If there was a way to attack him without anyone tracing the probe back to us, we utilized it.
Through his finances, through his workplace, and through his former associates.
As soon as word got out that he was under fire for illicit practices, his so-called friends and acquaintances pulled back and wanted nothing to do with him.
Networking was a mighty force of nature, but it went two ways.
He could schmooze and buy his way into many people’s favor, but when things went sour, they dropped him like a dead weight, afraid of being contaminated with any reference to him.
“Niko can bitch all he wants,” my uncle said as we finished discussing how things were going. “But he can’t pin a single fucking thing on us.”
I shoved my hands into my pockets and let out a ragged breath. We were making way on protecting Amber, but it was just going so fucking slowly. “We could hit them, though.”
He arched a brow. “And have them attack us with all they’ve got?”
I shook my head. I didn’t want that either. The Popovs were our most laterally structured rival—almost equal in size and number and wealth. But they didn’t diversify their income. They could go down faster than we could.
“We already have been hitting back at the Popovs,” Andre reminded us both. “After they carjacked us and drugged the driver, we delivered them a lesson.”
But it’s not enough.
Sure, we’d had some men go and rough up a few of theirs. We’d caused several crashes when they were out and around the city. We attacked the club where Ivan Popov was partying. It all felt like child’s play, though.
Lorne rushed into the study with Sergei. I turned to face them, surprised that they were back already. They’d gone to speak with our middle man to the informant in the prison, but that should’ve taken them longer.
“Got ’im,” Lorne said, nodding.
“You do?” I asked, hesitant to believe it.
“We did,” Sergei amended with a scowl. “Cian O’Sullivan. We found him and arranged for a discussion with his lawyer.”
“And?” I gritted my teeth and held my breath at what my brother and assistant could’ve learned about the man we suspected was Amber’s rapist.
“And he confessed it all. He fucking sang like a canary.” Lorne nodded. “Kid, he admitted to it all. Amber. The transaction. The price he was gonna give Rossen—”
I held my hand up. I didn’t want to even know. No price would ever be high enough for her.
“He also told us more. About other shit Rossen was up to. What other plans he had. We’re talking federal-level espionage. Top-clearance shit he was paying to know.”
“For what?” Uncle Mikhail asked.
“To start with, this trafficking ring,” Sergei said. “It was already a global setup that Rossen arranged. The Popovs seemed to pull back on putting too much into it and were cautious to invest the sums Rossen wanted.”
“He fessed up about the Popovs’ involvement too?” I asked. I shared a glance with my uncle. This was golden. We could use this as leverage against Niko Popov for as long as we wanted.
“He did. Popov was only interested in trafficking here, not so much internationally,” Sergei said. “But with all he told us, his lawyers got agitated, wanting to take this to repeal his charges and use this cooperation as part of getting him paroled sooner.”
“Fuck!” I fisted my hands, not at all pleased about the chance of this asshole getting away. Or even living outside the cell where he could get it in his head that he could have Amber as William arranged.
“He offered for you to outbid him for Amber,” my brother added. “But—”
“But that’s not on the fucking table. She’s not for sale. She never was. Fuck Rossen and his plan to use her like that. And fuck this asshole for thinking he’s got any say over her life.” I clenched my fingers together so tightly that my nails bit into my palm, nearly drawing blood.
I couldn’t bear to think of her being seen as a pawn, as a thing to barter or trade around.
Sergei held up his hand, gesturing for me to calm down. I couldn’t. But I heard him out since he seemed to be the voice of reason I needed to get through this.
“I only mentioned his lawyers’ agitation because they seemed to have the intention of relocating him. For security. With him fessing up, they worried that someone in the prison would target him as a snitch and kill him behind bars.”
I nodded. “Well, what are we waiting for?” I didn’t need to spell it out that we couldn’t lose this asshole.
“For the changeover in patrols,” Lorne replied.
“While we were there,” Sergei said, “we finalized the instructions with someone who will handle it before O’Sullivan can be moved anywhere. They’ll stage it as infighting in the row when the guards have their shift turnover, and that will be that.”
I let out a deep breath. “Good.” That would settle part of this retribution, but I’d be tense until I had a confirmation of the kill. Ordering a hit inside the prison system wasn’t as simple as a hit on the outside, in society. “That will be that for him, but we still need to handle Rossen.”
Uncle Mikhail and I talked further about what we could and couldn’t do. Actually, that was false. We could do anything we fucking wanted to. That was how much power we had in this city. It was a fine balancing act of how far we wanted to push things now, though.
Peace was never an option. Total, complete peace was a myth. We would always have some degree of fighting in our lives, but it was how much and what kind we wanted to allow—that was the decision to be made.
“I understand the urgency you feel,” he told me hours later when we were still going over the options.
“It’s not urgent,” I argued. “It’s a matter of delivering on my promise to her. To prove that she can see me as the one who will keep her safe.”
He nodded, sage and patient. “And she will. Just stick with the plan so far,” he instructed. “Keep her here, where we can provide optimum security, and we will let things fall into place.”
I left shortly after that, in a mood. I’d never defy my uncle, but his wording bothered me. Let things fall into place? That was way too fucking passive for me. It sounded inactive, and I was getting sick of waiting and being patient.
When I returned to the penthouse, later than I wanted to, I found Amber waiting up for me in the living room. The twins weren’t out there with her, likely already in their cribs and sleeping at this hour.
Amber was awake, though, and she set aside her book to look up at me as I stepped off the elevator.
“I was wondering when you’d be home,” she said.
It wasn’t a complaint. She wasn’t nagging. Just a comment, perhaps because she was unsure of what else to say to me.
And I can’t blame her.
I’d been a workaholic over the last few weeks.
The aftermath of her sharing her secrets with me that night and morning following her abduction had been a tense spell of putting hours in.
On the phone. In meetings. Going out and speaking with spies.
Then even more hours of being in the office and poring over all the research the investigation entailed as we hunted down her rapist and also how to get to William Rossen.
I’d been absent and not as present as I wanted to be, but it wasn’t going to be like that forever.
Once I could see the proof that Rossen and that rapist were dead and no longer a problem, I could finally have the freedom to let the rest of my life start.
With her. With my children. With the fact that I didn’t need a nanny to pay for but the love of this woman.
If she does.
So much of the connection between me and Amber circulated around her gratitude and my willingness to provide and protect. She had yet to tell me that she loved me, and I wondered if that was the last check I needed to make. The last line item that had a box to X out as completed.
I didn’t want her to ever think we weren’t the real thing. That what we’d forged together and fought for wasn’t a permanent bond.
Marriage. More kids. The rest of our lives together.
But as I stood close to the couch and peered down at her, wondering how I could explain that this was sometimes what it was like to be with someone in my position, I felt a nagging sense of distance between us.
She had that look again.
That worried frown she tried to hide.
I saw it in the way she avoided holding direct eye contact for long.
She’d lower her gaze down toward the right, that was her tell.
Her teeth pressed on the plumpness of her lower lip, as if she had to bite back any words that might slip out.
And she sat there, not relaxed like she’d been lounging and hanging out in the quiet while she waited up for me.
Instead, she was posed and upright. Rigid.
Fuck.
I couldn’t stand the possibility that she was hiding something else from me.
That she could be putting distance between us because she wasn’t fully committed to me.
“Yeah?” I said as a belated reply to her comment about wondering when I’d be home.
She almost cringed, looking down.
Goddammit. What’s going on?
“Sorry I’ve been in the office so much,” I replied. I didn’t mean for it to come out so curtly and sharply like that. I didn’t want to lower my short temper with her. I wasn’t mad at her, but at how slowly things were resolving as I fought to keep her.
But now, with this sinking suspicion that she was hiding something from me again, just based on the tells she was giving me from her posture and nonverbal cues? That pissed me off even more.
Fuck it.
Maybe I’m reading into this too much.
We’d been apart with me so busy in the office and with my men. She was just as busy here, handling the twins solo while I put all those hours in.
I hated that I could be lashing out just because I was tense and impatient. Tired and exasperated. But hell, maybe that was all it was. Fatigue and being cross because things weren’t going as I wanted them to.
Get a grip. Calm the fuck down and take a breather.
Amber might be seeming nervous right now because she could be worrying that I was pulling away from her.
I couldn’t let this frustration get between us.
“I’m exhausted,” I told her with a heavy sigh. “I’m going to bed.”
I didn’t have it in me to be charming right now. I wasn’t mentally equipped to be comforting when I was starting to harbor doubts about her and whether she had more secrets to keep from me.
Sleep on it.
And if she was still acting weird in the morning, I’d need to figure out how to approach this new chasm that was taking up residence between us.
As if we don’t have enough problems.
Sure enough, by the time I showered and was ready to get into bed, Emily fussed and insisted that all the worries in my head had to be less of a priority than hers.
I sighed and released the covers to walk over and get my daughter to console her, hating myself a little more that I’d been struggling to balance my duties to my uncle, figuring out how to start this life with Amber, and how to be a good father.