CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
Raina
I freeze.
What?
Connor is on one knee, holding out a ring. His eyes are full of heat and something frightening. Hope. Real, unshakable hope. With me at the center of his optimistic dreams.
I can’t breathe. Am I wife material? Mob wife material no less.
I think of Lennox and Ava.
Could I?
Maybe.
“I...” My voice dies as I stare down at Connor.
This man has seen me at my lowest and still wants to claim me as his own. I know what he feels for me is real. I feel it every time he touches me, every time he lets his guard down just for me.
But I also know he’s cunning and calculating.
The Albanians have been a thorn in the Quinlans’ side for years. I’m the key to the brotherhood’s collapse. Griffin wants me to deliver the fractured pieces on life support through an alliance.
Waiting for the DA to arrest the knights has been grueling. It’s been seven days and I’m bouncing off the walls. Connor makes me dinner every night, except Sunday, and finds all kinds of ways to keep me sane.
This is about power and leverage for me.
The ring sparkles as he gently shakes it. “Raina?” he says, voice low. “What’s wrong?”
I want to say yes. God, I want to. But the moment I do, he’ll have me in a car and on the way to City Hall, and then what? He will lock me up, claiming some kind of spousal privilege and take away my chance at vengeance.
I pull my hand back gently. “Can we wait?”
Connor’s face falls. Dark eyebrows knit together, shocked that I’m pushing back. God, I hate that look. “Wait? Why?”
“I just found my real father. We’re planning a fucking massacre.
And you’re asking me the most important question a woman can get.
I don’t want it in the shadow of death or while I’m standing here naked with wet hair stuck to my face,” I snap, harsher than I mean to.
“For all I know, I’ll be dead tomorrow when I kill Tahiri . ”
He just watches me with that wounded-wolf look, like he’s afraid to move and scare me off. “I’m not letting either happen.”
“You can’t promise that.” I recoil, and everything inside me tenses with restlessness. I feel like I’m suffocating in his gaze, in this room, in this war.
“Yeah, I can because you’re not killing Tahiri,” he lays down his final move on the chessboard.
I drop the towel and pull a fistful of my old clothes from the dresser. The faded jeans and black T-shirt feel like a comfort I didn’t know I needed. The armor I wore before I became whatever I am now.
Connor reaches for me. “Venom, don’t.”
I shake my head. “I’ll be back.”
“Where are you going?” he asks softly.
“I don’t know.” I head for the apartment’s front door.
He steps in front of it. “No.”
“I can’t and won’t live like this.”
Teasing me, he opens the door. “The entire Albanian Brotherhood is looking for you out there.”
Outside, the cool night air for the coming fall hits me like a slap. It’s a stark reality check on how much time has passed from that sweltering August night at Tahiri’s club when this all began.
The street is quiet, except for Connor’s protection detail.
My eyes flutter. “Give me a guard.”
Connor studies me, and the war that breaks out on this face frightens me. This is a test. On both sides. And we both have to pass it.
“Aye.” He whistles, and Nero strides up to the front door.
He came back after Ruby was taken into protective custody.
“Yeah, boss?” he asks.
“Take Raina wherever she wants to go.” Connor backs off to let me leave.
“Want reports?” Nero asks.
“No.” Connor glances at me. “If she wants me to know where she is, she’ll tell me.”
“Thank you, Connor,” I say, holding back tears.
But I don’t hug him, I’m afraid he won’t let me go.
I turn and flee the apartment.
Nero steers me to his SUV and helps me inside his midnight blue Tahoe parked at the curb. “Where to?”
“Just drive.” My mind is spinning.
Connor’s ring, his blue eyes, and the fear in my chest that I can never truly belong to anyone but myself are suffocating me.
Finally, I blurt out an address.
Nero’s Chevy rolls to a stop twenty minutes later. I stare up at Rhys’s building from the backseat window.
“Shall I call Mr. Rhys that you’re here?” he offers.
Exhaling, I say, “Yes, please.” After he makes the call, I add, “Can you leave me here?”
“Are those your orders?” Nero twists to watch me from the front seat.
I’m catching on to the lingo. Smiling, I say, “Those are my orders. You can tell Mr. Connor I’m here. Let the guy calm down.”
“You got it, Ms. Raina.”
That triggers something in me. “How was Ruby these last couple of weeks?”
“She’s strong. That father of hers is a piece of work,” he grumbles.
“Want orders?” I whisper.
“Yeah?”
“Kill him.” I push out of the car and don’t look back, unsure if I have the power to order a death.
It’s liberating once again to walk into Rhys’s building on my own. His doorman remembers me and lets me inside. I reach the fifteenth floor, and a whiff of something nutty hits me, calming me.
Then I stop short.
There she is. Fallon is kneeling in front of Rhys’s apartment, peering through the scope she’s stuck under the door again.
My shoes make a light slapping noise, and she whips around my way. Her eyes light up when she sees me, but then they turn sad.
“They’re dying!” she cries out.
“What? Who’s dying?” I’m ready to shove her out of the way and kick down the door.
“He’s not watering his plants! He doesn’t deserve the gift of life.”
He is an assassin, but I’m not sure if she knows that.
“It’s okay.” I calm her down. “I’ll water them when I get inside.”
Before I can knock, the door swings open. Fallon jerks upright so fast she nearly crashes into me.
Rhys stands there shirtless in gym shorts, glistening with sweat, and long hair dangling in his eyes like he’s just returned from a war fought on a treadmill .
Damn.
Rhys bends down and takes the scope from Fallon’s hands.
“Bad girl,” he murmurs with the kind of silky amusement that makes me shudder at the thought of her breaking down his walls.
Rhys tugs me inside without a word and shuts the door behind us.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, toweling off.
“I need to talk.” I slip into his kitchen and grab the watering can. “But first, I’m saving your plants.”
“The plants are fine.” He watches me and murmurs so low I’m not sure if I’m supposed to hear him. “Besides, how else will I keep her bothering me?”
I finish the plant’s triage, tempted to call him out for his obvious returned sentiment and possible obsession with his stalker neighbor.
Setting the watering can down, I face Rhys and say, “I need to talk about the plan to kill Noel.”
Rhys raises an eyebrow. “You’ve got my attention.”
“I need your perspective. As an assassin, but also objectively.”
He nods, leaning on the wall across from the kitchen. Alert. Concerned.
“The knights are being picked up tomorrow morning, pre-dawn. All at the same time. That gives us a very narrow window.”
“There’s no us .” Rhys grins at me. “Connor and I will take Tahiri out.”
I ground my molars. They’ve already talked about this. Already hatched a plan.
“Noel is arrogant, but slippery. If we mess this up, he’ll vanish.”
“There’s no we .” Rhys swipes his phone from the counter and starts typing .
I grab it from him and shove it down my shirt. “The we here, Rhys, is you and me. Consider yourself honored that of your entire empire, I am asking you for help. I know I can’t do this alone. But I have to be the one who ends him.”
“Why is the hair on the back of my neck standing up?”
“Because you know I’m as unhinged and reckless as Connor.
And when I’m on an op, shit almost always goes sideways.
But me taking out Noel to end his reign and install Valdrin, my father and the rightful heir, will be seen very differently if it’s done by a rival crime family.
I’m doing this to end the tyranny. Not start a war. ”
Rhys thinks about that. “So, talk. I’m dying to know how unhinged you really are.”
“I want to earn the name Connor gave me. Venom .”
“Now every hair on my body is standing up.”
I swallow, thinking how Fallon would love to trim his body hair like the leaves on those plants with the same close precision. “Let’s get to work.”
We order takeout. Rhys makes calls. We drive around the city for an hour looking for the perfect weapon.
Connor keeps blowing up his cousin’s phone. But after a five-minute private conversation, all calls stop.
We return to Rhys’s building around three a.m., and I ask the most unlikely person a favor.
“Yeah?” Fallon answers her door with tired eyes and rich red hair falling in soft, chaotic waves around her face.
“Can I borrow a dress and heels?”