Chapter 13
ETHAN
I sat in the rear of the plane, pretending not to listen to the heated conversation going on between the Italians. They were discussing something unimportant now, a football match I couldn’t care less about.
Why the hell had I told Olivia I’d been the one to kill Constantine? Her eyes had widened with surprise, and she’d gone stiff in my embrace, but she hadn’t run from me. She hadn’t even said a damn thing. It was like she’d pretended she hadn’t heard me.
It had been unavoidable, the death of Gio’s brother. It didn’t bother me that much that I’d been the one who’d had to pull the trigger, but it did put an enormous kink in the Agency’s plans.
Telling her about it was another mistake. Sloppy. Distracted. I could only hope it wouldn’t come back to bite me in the end.
I’d yet to figure out what the hell Constantine had been doing at the house the day I’d spun and fired. Constantine would have done the same to me, but the woman slung over my shoulder at the time had alerted me to the danger and saved both our lives.
I’d never thanked Kara Hayward for that, but I hadn’t seen her since, either.
The agonized screams that usually filled my moments of reflection were silent today. My thoughts were solely with the woman commanding the cockpit.
The argument between the Italians rose to yelling, and I squashed the desire to tell them to shut the fuck up. I should have taken their guns away when they boarded, but I wasn’t in a position to make demands.
I thought you were hot, she’d told me. That word didn’t do her justice.
It wasn’t just her looks, but her confidence.
Her aggression was undeniably sexy, and I wanted more.
But Olivia said she didn’t do relationships.
Why was that? Was it her job? Jesus, I had to stop analyzing that comment.
My fascination with her made me weak and foolish, and it might get me killed.
“When was the last time you heard from your brother?” Renzo asked Gio.
“June. He’d been too busy partying in Monaco, or Ibiza, or wherever the hell he was, to take any meetings. Our father was . . . disappointed, so I called to let Constantine know.”
“You talk about Juric?”
“Probably,” Gio said. “I sent someone to the Hayward woman’s apartment looking for him. I knew Juric blamed us for his CIA capture, so I was hoping to reason with him.”
Juric wasn’t wrong to blame the Abramos for the months he’d been held at a CIA blacksite.
His suspected contract killing for the family had put him on the CIA’s radar.
I’d spent four brutal weeks in Croatia gathering intel on Juric, hoping it would lead me to the Abramos, and it had—but it came at a steep price.
One that Jason Dunn and his wife Laurel had paid.
“Reason with him?” Renzo’s voice was filled with disbelief. “Juric was insane, even before his fascination with his little American pets.”
“Yeah, that’s obvious now,” he snapped. “Imagine what my father would have done to him when he found out about the bombing.”
The memory slammed into me. When I’d arrived on scene, the brewery was still on fire.
Hendrix, the director of my field office, had called me personally to authorize action.
The directive on Juric had shifted from capture to damage control.
And although it took a considerable amount of work to cover up Juric’s death, I’d been glad to do it.
The result was one less monster in the world.
“When we speak with your father,” Renzo said, “let me do the talking. I know what to say so you don’t fuck this up for us.”
“Us?”
I couldn’t see their faces because I was seated in the rear, but I imagined the expression of disgust that Gio wore.
“Half makes us partners, Giovanni.”
Shit, Renzo better be careful. If he kept pushing, he was going to end up with his partner’s fist through his face.