In Too Deep

8. Chapter Eight

~Kian~

The scene outside the bathroom door of my flat looked like the opening of a police drama, just before the police arrived. An Asian man lay on the floor with a bullet hole in his chest, his eyes wide and lifeless, blood seeping from his body onto the wood laminate of my floor. Two men who must be with Marco held another man between them: gagged, his face bloodied and his hands tied behind his back. My best guess? They killed one and would keep the other for questioning.

As I told Cara, the night hadn’t gone the way I expected at all. I took one look at the whole scene and turned back to her, shielding it from her view as I spoke to Marco. “What’s your plan now? The police are on the way.”

He just told me we needed to talk, but we both knew that didn’t mean in my flat. If the police arrived with us still there, we’d all be detained. Maybe they’d investigate Marco for this one count of murder, but with the kind of lawyers he had, he’d be able to talk his way out of it easily. There were no witnesses to what happened besides him and his men, and I didn’t want to jeopardize six months of work on a charge that wouldn’t stick, especially not with Cara involved. After the way she reacted to everything that night, I was more convinced than ever that she had next to no involvement with Marco’s activities. If all of this was an act on her part, she deserved some kind of award.

So, all in all, when I weighed the pros and cons, it would be better to get out of there before the police arrived, and Marco clearly agreed. “We’ll go back to our place. All of us.”

I suspected he wouldn’t let me out of his sight until he felt confident he could trust me with what had just happened, but the fact that he hadn’t taken my gun off me yet suggested that by keeping Cara safe, I’d already gone a long way towards earning that trust. I tucked it back into my jeans to free up my hands.

Meanwhile, Marco walked over to the captured man, trading places with one of the men holding him. That man went over to the dead man instead and hoisted him up over his shoulder. No point leaving the body around where anyone could find it, so it looked like he’d be coming with us.

“Keep your eyes on me,” I told Cara as I led her out of the apartment. “We’re safe now. Everything’s going to be fine.”

The wariness in her expression told me she had a lot of questions, but she allowed me to take her out of the apartment and downstairs to where Marco’s SUV stood running, the driver waiting inside. Keeping myself between Cara and the car, I watched as Marco’s man unceremoniously dumped the dead body into the boot, joining another one whose face I couldn’t see. Cara and I were ushered into the other car, the one she’d arrived in that night which one of the men must have brought over while Cara and I were upstairs. Inside it, Jussi already sat in the backseat, his face pale and blood soaking through the leg of his trousers. He must have been shot too, and I had to guess, based on the evidence, that the other body in the SUV would be Paul. I put Cara in the front seat while I got in the back with the injured Jussi.

Piecing things together, it seemed that the attackers had surprised Paul and Jussi out front, shooting at both of them, which were the two shots we heard from inside. If they’d been targeting Cara, they must have followed us there from the pub, though I hadn’t noticed anyone and obviously Cara’s bodyguards hadn’t either. What had we missed? How did they know which flat belonged to me when they got there? They got to us too quickly to have checked all the other flats between the front door and mine.

One of Marco’s men drove us while Marco himself rode in the other car with his other employee, the captured attacker, and the dead men. We pulled away just as the police car turned onto the street.

With Cara in the front and me in the back, I had no chance to speak to her or find out how she felt about anything that had just happened without the other two men in the car hearing every word. I did, however, have my phone with me, and I knew Cara had hers too. Even though I knew Marco would see every word since he probably had her phone cloned, I sent her a text anyway.

Thank you for trusting me back there.

The soft chime of her message alert filled the air and she pulled out her phone to check it. From the back seat, I could see the smile that pulled at the corners of her mouth, for the briefest of seconds. She tapped away at the screen for a few seconds before the message popped up on my screen.

I don’t know what any of this means, Kian. Nothing like this has ever happened before. You must wish you’d never met me.

I couldn’t begin to imagine how confused she must be if she really didn’t know anything at all about the situation, but I gave her the best reassurance I could.

We’ll figure it out. I’m not going anywhere.

The building where the Russos lived in St James’s had an underground parking garage of its own, and we headed down into it when we arrived. Marco got out of the other vehicle and came over to open the front door for Cara while I climbed out of the back. “I’ll need to take care of a few things tonight, but first, let’s go upstairs and talk.”

The ‘things’ he needed to do tonight must involve disposing of the dead bodies, taking care of the wounded man in our car, and interrogating his prisoner, but Marco looked calm and unflustered as he led us to a small lift, his arm around Cara for support.

Up a level, the lift opened into a security room where all of us, even Marco, were subjected to a thorough search.

“Your gun will have to stay here,” Marco warned me as I pulled it out again. “You can pick it up when you leave.”

I wouldn’t have expected to be able to take it into his house, so I handed it over willingly enough, and my body scan didn’t turn up anything suspicious. When Cara went into the machine, though, alarms started ringing as I winced.

Back at the pub, Thomas had planted a tiny microphone on Cara when he showed her to her table. He argued that because the pub had been so busy, it would be impossible to prove who’d done it, and suspicion shouldn’t fall on me since I would be with her all night anyway, so why would I need to listen to our conversation? That had been the whole reason he’d approached her in the first place.

Obviously, we didn’t know Marco would have security equipment this sophisticated or Thomas wouldn’t have bothered.

“There’s something on her right shoulder,” the man at the computer explained, and Marco himself went over to Cara, examining the shimmering material of her shirt until he had removed a small, black tracking device.

My brow immediately furrowed. That was not the microphone Thomas had planted. I’d never seen that particular kind of tracker before.

“This must be how they knew where you were,” Marco explained grimly, holding the tiny electronic device on his fingertip as he examined it. “Did anyone touch you at the pub?”

Cara turned around to look at the tracker in disbelief before raising her eyes to her brother. “A few people bumped into me. The place was full of people. Why would someone follow me, Marco?”

I wanted to hear how he would explain that to her too, but first, Marco took the tracker over to his security man and they ran Cara through the machine again. That time, it didn’t pick up anything, and I tried not to look surprised. Did that mean it hadn’t picked up the microphone, or had it fallen off on its own earlier? I supposed I wouldn’t know until I got a chance to speak to Thomas and see how much of the night he had heard.

Through the door, the surroundings completely transformed from the cold and almost clinical security office to a beautiful, opulent home with tall ceilings, gleaming floors, fresh flowers and original art on the walls. It almost looked like a museum, but Marco and Cara didn’t seem to notice any of the elegance as Marco led us both down a hallway to a large office that must be his.

My heart beat faster as I took a look around, imagining the kinds of things that Thomas could find if he got just ten minutes alone in there. This was the heart of Marco’s entire operation, and I could barely believe I was seeing it for myself, not even two weeks after first making contact with Cara.

Flipping the switch on the wall turned on a number of floor lamps spread around the room. A large, solid wood desk sat at the far end of the room and Marco headed straight for it, taking a seat behind it and pushing the computer screens out of the way so he could see us better. I waited for Cara to choose a seat before taking one myself.

Marco looked between the two of us for a moment before turning to his sister. “Cara, I can understand this has been a very upsetting evening for you. Why don’t you go and make yourself a cup of tea while Kian and I have a few words?”

Cara’s jaw set, her lips pursing unhappily. “I’m not going anywhere. I want to know what the hell is going on! Why were those men after me? Why did you kill them?”

“I didn’t kill anyone,” he quickly corrected her. “My men fired in self-defense. I can explain it all to you, I promise, but right now, I need to talk to Kian.”

Cara looked over at me, her eyes full of frustration and desperation, and I quickly chose a side. Truthfully, it didn’t take much deciding. “I’m not interested in talking unless Cara stays. She has a right to hear anything that pertains to her. It’s her life.”

Gratitude immediately flooded across Cara’s face, and she turned back to her brother almost triumphantly. “Let’s get to the point. Why were those men after me?”

Sensing he was outnumbered, Marco gave in… sort of. “I’ll answer that if Kian answers one of my questions first.”

“Go ahead.” I wanted to get to the point as much as Cara did, and Marco dove in with exactly the question I expected.

“Where did you get the gun, and why didn’t my men find it when they searched your flat?”

~Cara~

As much as I wanted Marco to answer my question, the question he asked Kian had me curious too. With everything that happened since, I’d forgotten about my bodyguards searching Kian’s flat before we went in, and I supposed a gun would have been something they would have been looking for.

It always made me nervous when Marco stared at me the way he looked at Kian, as if he could see straight through him, but Kian didn’t seem affected by it as he answered the question calmly. “The gun belongs to one of my brothers. He insisted I take it with me for protection when I left home, but this is the first time I’ve ever had to pull it out. As for why your men didn’t find it, I think that’s a question for them more than me.”

Marco’s lips tightened, not looking pleased with the second part of that answer, and Kian obviously noticed his reaction because he added a little more.

“I grew up in a very small house with a mother who knew every nook and cranny of it. I had to learn how to hide things very well if I didn’t want them found.”

I couldn’t tell if that answer satisfied Marco or not. His expression never wavered. Looking back and forth between him and Kian felt like watching two chess players at work, neither of them giving anything away. The only difference being that I had no idea what game we were playing. Yet again, I felt completely in the dark.

“It’s illegal to own a handgun in Ireland, just like it is in the UK,” Marco pointed out.

“And yet, you and your men seem to have a few of them,” Kian replied before shrugging his shoulders. “Why do you think I hid it so well?”

Those both seemed like valid points to me. Who was Marco to give Kian a hard time about owning a gun when his men not only had them, but used them? Kian had done his best not to let me see what happened in his flat, but I could guess based on the gunshot we heard and the state of the man in the back seat of the car. People had been injured, or worse.

“Self-protection is necessary sometimes,” Marco conceded. “So let’s agree that you don’t mention anything about my weapons to anyone, and I won’t mention anything about yours.”

That sounded almost like blackmail to me, but Kian agreed to it anyway. “Trust me, I don’t want to get in the middle of whatever you’ve got going on here. However, I think you still owe Cara some answers: why were those men looking for her?”

I gave him a grateful smile as he drew me back into the conversation. If he hadn’t stood up for me earlier, Marco probably would have forced me out of the room, blocking me out like he always did when there was something I ‘didn’t need to worry about’, in his words.

With a sigh, Marco leaned back in this seat, his hands gripping onto the armrests of his expensive office chair. “I’m in the middle of a very important business deal and there are people who would rather see me fail. They thought that by kidnapping Cara, they could force my hand.”

Kidnapping me? I wanted to protest that no one actually did that in real life, that it sounded ridiculous, but after everything that happened that night, I had to admit that I couldn’t really say that anymore. Apparently, I had no idea what might or might not happen. The whole world felt unfamiliar to me, like I’d only been existing on the edges of it before.

“What kind of business deal involves kidnapping people?” I had to ask, and Kian gave me an encouraging nod, showing he approved of the question, or maybe just of me asking questions at all.

“Honestly, it would be safer for you if you didn’t know,” Marco tried to tell me, but that was bullshit.

“Apparently not. I wasn’t very safe tonight, was I? The only reason they didn’t get to me was because Kian held them off. You and your rules and your protection and all your secrecy weren’t enough, so stop treating me like a child. Tell me the truth: what’s going on?”

I could have predicted Marco’s answer almost word-for-word. “You don’t have to worry about it. I’ll take care of it.”

“No!” The word burst out of me so forcefully that Marco and Kian both jumped in surprise. “I’m tired of you making all the decisions. I’m an adult, Marco, and if I say that I want to know, you have to respect that. If you want me to stay here, if you want me to go along with any of your ridiculous rules, if you want me to trust you, you need to start trusting me too.”

Marco’s nostrils flared as he considered my words, his eyes flicking over to Kian as if he were somehow to blame for my newfound defiance, but that wasn’t the full story. I had been frustrated with the way Marco treated me for a while, once I no longer had my music to distract me from it; meeting Kian and finding a connection with him had only brought it into sharper focus.

Most people didn’t live this way and I shouldn’t have to either. I deserved to know the truth about my own life, especially after tonight.

“Why don’t you wait outside?” Marco finally said, speaking to Kian. “The kitchen’s just across the hall, you can help yourself to anything you find there.”

Sending Kian away felt like an attempt to divide us so he could steamroll me again, as if he knew that I felt stronger with Kian beside me. I didn’t want him to go. “Why can’t he stay? He’s involved in this too after tonight.”

I expected Marco to argue with me, but Kian spoke up instead. “It’s okay, Cara. You and your brother obviously have some things to talk about, and it’s between family. I get it. I’ll let you guys talk but I’ll be waiting just outside, okay? Like I said, I’m not going anywhere.”

Without waiting for my reply, he got to his feet, and I could see a touch of respect in Marco’s eyes as he watched him leave. He stayed silent until Kian had left the room, closing the door behind him, and once we were alone, he got up and came around the desk to sit in Kian’s empty seat. Leaning forward, he put his hand on my arm.

“You’re right, Cara. You do deserve to know the truth. I kept it from you because I wanted to protect you, but as you said, it hasn’t entirely worked. I’ll tell it to you now if you’re sure you want to know, but understand that after I do, things will seem pretty different, at least until you get used to it.”

“More different than having armed men track me down in the middle of my date?”

He huffed in dark amusement as he straightened up. “That’s fair. But once I tell you, you’ll have to carry the burden of that knowledge too. If you choose to tell anyone else, you might be putting them in danger too. It will change your life, Cara. I know that sounds dramatic, but it’s true. Are you completely sure you want to know?”

Fear and worry bubbled in my stomach, tightening my chest, but no matter how much I might want to go back to burying my head in the sand, locking myself away in the room with my piano, that time in my life was over. I had to move forward, and if that meant hearing what Marco had to tell me, then so be it.

“I’m ready.”

Taking a deep breath, he leaned back even further, relaxing into his seat. “Though neither of us realized it at the time, our lives changed pretty dramatically twenty years ago. We were both young, you especially, when we moved to London. Do you remember anything about that time?”

I shook my head. I knew that I’d been born in Italy, but I had no real memories of it. Anything I thought I remembered had probably been pieced together from old photos.

Marco seemed to have expected that. “Our uncle had just died and he left the house and his business to our father. That’s why we moved, to take over the family business.”

I vaguely remembered hearing that before, but, as usual, nobody had given me any of the details. “What kind of business was it?”

“Mostly financial investing, just as it is now. The man you work for is one of our brokers. We have a whole network of them.”

That didn’t sound like anything that needed to be hidden, so obviously, there was more he hadn’t told me yet and I tried to guess what it might be. “Whose money are they investing?”

Marco looked almost impressed with the question, suggesting I was on the right track. “That’s where it gets a little less clear cut. Most financial institutions have a lot of rules about providing documents and proof of the source of income. We don’t bother with that. People appreciate our services because of their flexibility, and they pay well for it.”

“It’s money laundering.” It should have shocked me, but deep down, it didn’t. I had known something felt off about the office I worked in, I just turned a blind eye to it because Marco told me to.

What else had I ignored?

Marco didn’t seem offended by my assessment. “If you want to call it that, you can. Some of it is legit, some of it might not be. We’re simply providing a service; when it comes to our clients, we don’t discriminate and we don’t judge.”

How could he say that with a straight face, so calmly? What he was talking about was illegal, not to mention dangerous as that night had so clearly proven, although I still didn’t fully understand the connection between the business and the armed men in Kian’s flat.

“There are a lot of people out there who do a lot worse,” Marco added, as if he could guess my thoughts. “We don’t deal in drugs, we’re not involved in trafficking, nothing that hurts other people.”

“But you help people who might be doing those things.” The distinction seemed minor to me. If he didn’t make it easy for them to legitimize the income from those things, they’d have a harder time doing it. Above-the-board businesses didn’t need to use unregistered financial services. By offering them an alternative, he enabled them even if he wasn’t directly involved, and apparently, our father had been too.

Did our mother know about this? She and my father had always seemed to have a charmed life to me, attending dinner parties with their rich, elegant friends, but did she know what it had been built on? Everything I thought I knew about our family suddenly felt tenuous and slippery.

“How old were you when you found out?”

“Fifteen. Dad started training me to take over, and it turned out to be a good thing he did, since not even three years later, he would be killed by one of our clients.”

Fire flashed in Marco’s eyes as his words sent a shockwave through my whole body. “Killed? What do you mean? They died in a car accident.”

I’d always been told that and never had any reason to doubt it, but Marco’s next words dispelled that illusion once and for all. “They died in a car crash, certainly, but it was no accident, Cara. The vehicle that hit them did it deliberately. They were followed and they were hunted down because someone invested a lot of money through one of our brokers who made some stupid decisions and lost it. They paid the price, and with them gone, the client tried to take over the business. He hadn’t counted on me, though.”

My mind flashed back to that time, to all the days I spent locked in the music room with my piano, pouring my pain and grief into the keys, while Marco had been out doing… God knows what. Whatever he did must have worked since he retained the business.

“You never told the police,” I guessed, my voice sounding dull as my mind filled in the blanks. Of course he wouldn’t have; that might lead to an investigation about why anyone would have wanted to kill our parents in the first place.

“There was no need. I knew who did it and I knew there would never be the evidence the police required. I took care of it my own way.”

The sound of the gunshots from earlier that night echoed in my head, and combined with Marco’s words, it sent a chill down my spine, making me shiver. I suspected I could guess what ‘his way’ was, but I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to hear it confirmed.

“And the men tonight?” I asked, still sounding far more detached than I actually felt. My mind and my heart were both racing, but I still wanted to know more. I needed to know all of it before I could begin to process anything.

“Another disgruntled client. I’ll take care of this too. I’ve been trying to, but it’s proving a little more difficult than I expected. Until it’s sorted, it might be better if you stay here in the house. I don’t want anyone getting to you.”

At last, the ridiculous security and over-the-top protection made some sense to me, but not in a way that inspired any confidence in me. People were out to get me, people who had no problem killing those in their way, all because of my family’s name and business.

Even worse, I’d gotten Kian mixed up in all of it. How could I ever explain any of this to him?

~Kian~

The Russo kitchen was exactly what I would have expected based on the rest of the house that I’d seen: elegant, spotless, and top-of-the-line. A woman stood at the counter, making fresh coffee when I walked in, but before I could even say hello, she bowed her head, avoiding eye contact, and hurried out of the room into what looked like a pantry next door, leaving the coffee on the counter.

Though it was late, I poured myself a cup anyway. I had a feeling sleep wouldn’t be coming any time soon anyway, so I might as well keep my brain active. With the cup warming my hands, I sat down on a stool at the island in the middle of the room, reviewing everything that had happened that night and my own actions and reactions. Overall, I thought I handled everything pretty well in terms of my assignment, except perhaps by leaving Cara and Marco alone like I just had. That definitely hadn’t been by the book.

Maybe the microphone would pick up their conversation, if Cara still had it on her. Maybe she would share what he told her with me later. But even if it didn’t and she didn’t, even if I never found out exactly what was said between them, I still made the choice to leave them alone, not because it helped me in any way but because I thought it might help her.

Without me there, Marco might be more willing to open up to her and tell her the truth, and she deserved that. After everything she’d been through, she deserved to know why, and at that particular moment, that mattered to me more than getting any information for myself.

When had I made that decision? When did that priority shift for me? I honestly couldn’t say, but as I examined my motivations, I had to concede that it had; as much as I wanted justice for Matt, I cared about Cara getting the truth too, and after the events of the night, that took precedence.

Somehow, I’d have to figure out how to explain that to Thomas when the time came to report to him on everything that went down.

Without any other context, my best guess was that the men who invaded my flat worked for David Park. Part of that might have been a stereotype based on the fact that they were Asian, but it also made sense that Marco might still be in dispute with him after what he did to Cara. That dispute had already resulted in casualties, and after that night, with losses on both sides, it seemed likely that it would escalate until someone backed down or was forced to take a step back. From what I knew of the two players, neither would willingly concede.

If I could get some hard evidence of the connection between them and the fact that their men were going around shooting each other on London streets, we might be able to take down two dangerous criminals, not just one.

For that, I would have to get Marco to open up to me, and the events of that evening, as upsetting as they may have been, paved the way for me to step into Marco’s inner circle far more quickly than I otherwise would have. Rather than a slow, methodical initiation, I’d just had a baptism by fire, and the fact that he would let me wander around his house unsupervised was a very strong indication of just how much he trusted me already.

I finished my coffee and found some fruit in the fridge to snack on while I waited. Mid-bite on an apple, the door to Marco’s office opened. I swallowed the piece in my mouth without chewing, wincing as the hard edges scraped my throat on the way down, while I stood up and tried to prepare myself for whatever might be coming next.

Cara and Marco appeared in the doorway together, her face paler than before, and I took a step towards her before I even realized I meant to do it. Something in her eyes made me want to comfort her and take away any pain she might be feeling, but I had to control myself. I couldn’t lose sight of everything else at play.

“Cara’s going to go and rest now,” Marco told me, putting his hand on her shoulder supportively. She didn’t shy away from it, I noticed, so she couldn’t be all that angry with him. “I’d like to speak to you for a minute, Kian.”

I looked to Cara for her permission before I agreed to anything, and she gave me a small, uncertain nod. Marco and I stood at the doorway of the kitchen, watching her go down the hall to the last door on the left, which must have been her bedroom. When she’d gone inside, he led me back to his office and I took a seat in the same chair as before while he returned to his spot behind his desk.

“I’ve got men at your building,” he told me. “The police have been speaking to your neighbours, but they knocked on your door and no one answered, so they moved on. When they’re gone, my men will go in and clean up all the evidence. No one needs to know you were involved.”

I thought I saw where this was going. “You don’t want me to go home tonight?”

“It would be better if you didn’t. You can stay here. We have room.”

That seemed like an understatement.

“If you’d like to leave tomorrow, you can. No one’s holding you here. However, you should be aware that the man behind tonight’s attack is still out there and he doesn’t give up easily. Now that he knows you’re connected to Cara, he may use you to try to get to her, to get to me. It might be safer for you to stay here until things are settled.”

I suspected his desire to keep me there had a lot more to do with making sure I didn’t open my mouth to the wrong people rather than any real concern for my well-being. However, since it played into my own wish to get closer to him, I wouldn’t put up too much of a fight. “I’ll see how I feel in the morning. It’s been a lot to take in tonight.”

“I’m sure.” He offered me a small smile of commiseration before leaning forward, his expression turning more serious. “Thank you for protecting Cara tonight. She’s the only family I’ve got and she’s very special to me. That’s why they went after her, and if something were to happen to her…”

He trailed off, not finishing that thought, and I couldn’t help thinking he should have said if something else were to happen to her. Something already had happened, something I guessed he still hadn’t owned up to his sister about, no matter what else he might have told her. If she knew the truth about her ‘accident’, I suspected she’d be a lot angrier than she had seemed.

“I don’t want anything to happen to her either,” I assured him. “But how long will it take to get this ‘settled’? I can’t put my life on hold inevitably, and Cara can’t either.”

Marco’s face clouded over, his expression turning visibly darker. “I’m going to do my fucking best to finish it this weekend. I actually hoped to take care of it tonight, but they must have known that and that’s why they made their move, to distract me. Now that I know that, and now that I know not to let Cara out, I can readjust. The man we captured tonight might have some more information for me.”

His eyes glanced towards the door, showing how eager he was to get on with his questioning, but I still had more questions of my own, and I spoke the words I hoped would feel natural in this moment, and not raise any suspicions about coming too soon. “If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know. I’m pretty pissed off about having my date interrupted.”

Marco sniggered, appreciating the dark humour, but he kept his cards close to his chest. “We’ll see how tonight goes, but thanks for the offer. I need to get back to work, but let the maids know what you need for the night and they’ll get it for you.”

He called one of his staff to the office and gave her instructions to take me to a guest room. Inside, everything I could think of that I would need had already been laid out: pajamas, toothbrush, a comb, towels, shampoo, deodorant, cologne, and a change of clothes for the morning. A luxury hotel couldn’t have done any better. After thanking the woman who showed me around, I waited a few minutes until I could be reasonably sure that Marco wouldn’t return, and I slipped out of the room and down the hall to the last door on the left to check on Cara.