6. Finn #2
“Okay.” Connor’s eyes are on his golf ball which landed on the putting green, giving him an inevitable hole-in-two. “What does she know about their current operations?”
I can already hear his brain shuffling facts and opportunities around like a deck of cards. “I can’t be certain, but I don’t think she’s aware of the trafficking.”
My brother turns his cool blue eyes on me. “You’ll have to give me more than this. If you’ve drawn conclusions, I need to know how and why.”
So that he can look at the situation objectively, which is exactly the reason why I’m talking to him rather than Aiden.
“She was at the port last night. We…”
A lopsided grin tugs at one corner of Connor’s mouth. “You fecking kissed her, didn’t you?”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Only if you have eyes and a pulse.” He shakes his head still grinning. Then it fades and he furrows his brow. “You fucked her too.” It’s a statement rather than a question.
“She spotted me staking out the refuge from the gym across the road.”
“Ah, the good old gym bunny ruse.” Connor rolls his eyes. “True James Bond style.”
I ignore him. “I took her back to my apartment.” Adrenaline pumps around my veins when I think about fucking her with my tongue, the piercing through her nipple, the way she exposed her clit for me because she knew exactly what she wanted. “She’s like no one else I’ve ever met.”
“Jesus, you’ve got it bad.”
My brother knows me better than anyone else, including Aiden, and he’s right. I already knew it in my core, but now that he’s released it into the universe, I feel like I can finally own it.
“Before you tell me that she was using me for information—”
“Was she?” he asks.
“No. She took my gun last night. She could’ve killed me, but she didn’t, even though I told her nothing; she walked away and then came back again this morning. No questions asked.”
“Did she return your gun?”
“No. She’s loyal to the Pakhan, but she isn’t involved in the trafficking. I’d stake my life on it.”
Call it Irish sixth sense, or intuition, or even just my gut reacting to having my heart stolen, but we all have a past, and her past dwells in the shadows behind her eyes, fueling her vulnerability and polishing that tough veneer.
“How loyal?” Connor asks.
I recall her reaction when I asked her about Ivanov’s operations. The shield shifted back into place tempered with what could only have been bewilderment.
“Would you and I die for Aiden Kavanagh?”
My brother’s eyes narrow while he thinks. “Maybe we should show her what her boss is really made of then.”
“No.” I’m firm. “I won’t force her hand. I don’t want her to question her loyalty because I get the feeling it’s all she has.” She came to me as a virgin for fuck’s sake. “And stealing that from her will make me as bad as he is.”
I never want her to feel that she owes me anything, especially not her life. When she comes to me, it must be because she wants me, not because she has nowhere else to go.
“How does she feel about you?” Connor asks.
I can’t help smiling. “She doesn’t even know my name.”
We reach the putting green, and I watch Connor line up his shot and give the ball a gentle tap that sends it rolling into the hole. He doesn’t gloat. He doesn’t look for praise. He simply retrieves the ball, docks the putter back into his golf bag, and moves on.
“She can’t accommodate your name,” he says as we walk to the next tee. “She’s keeping you at arm’s length for a reason.”
Don’t I fucking know it. “I promised I wouldn’t try to find her.”
“That’s because you’re a decent guy, Finn.”
Connor’s smile when he glances sideways at me lights up his face and makes him look like a child again, a little boy in my old clothes with holes in the knees and sweaters that barely reached his waist. I’d kill with my bare hands for him.
I’d take a bullet in the skull every fucking day if it meant he had a future because I can’t change the fucking God-awful childhood he had.
Something else Tamara said seeps slowly through my rose-tinted consciousness.
“She has a sister. She asked me if I knew where she was.”
“She’s missing?” Connor’s curiosity has been piqued.
“I didn’t dwell on it at the time.” Because I was too busy thinking of all the ways I wanted to fuck Tamara. “But she seemed to think that we were involved somehow.”
“Or more specifically that you were involved.”
“I asked if her sister was at the port too, but she didn’t answer.”
“You know what you need to do then,” Connor says. “Find her sister and prove to her that she can trust you. I still think that you should tell Aiden though. No secrets, remember.”
I smile. “I will.”
Something is holding me back though, and I’m uncomfortable with this feeling of disconnect between the beautiful Russian enforcer and my best friend.
It’s like reaching the destination you’ve always dreamed of only to find it barricaded behind reinforced steel, razor-wire-topped walls. But I’ll have to deal with it for now.
“Maybe I should go back to the port and retrace my steps.”
“There are two more holes to play first.” Connor stops at the next tee, eyes up the course, and chooses a club. “Unless you want to draw attention to us, I suggest you start practicing your swing, brother.”
I play diabolically as always, my ungainly swing hampered further by images of Tamara naked beneath me on my living room floor, and the permanent semi inside my pants.
By the time we get back to the golf club, my balls are throbbing, and I’ve paid zero attention to the Sicilian don walking around with the police commissioner. I seriously need to get my head back in the game if I have any hope of finding Tamara’s sister and gaining her trust.
I’m distracted by laughter and children squealing at the poolside.
I’m not a golfer, but exclusive resorts like these are generally adults-only, an extension of the boardroom for many paying guests, somewhere business deals are made or broken in the peaceful luxury of a course untouched by sticky fingers.
Two little girls in neon-pink swimsuits are splashing each other at the shallow end of the pool, dark stringy-wet hair stuck to their faces, inflated arm bands keeping them afloat while a woman who must be their nanny hovers close to them.
But it’s the man crouched at the poolside, watching them with a fond smile lighting up his face that catches me unawares.
Leonid Ivanov.
The two little girls must be his twin daughters, left in his care while their mom is at the women’s refuge.
In the moment, it’s hard to reconcile the doting father to the monster who imports women and children in death-trap shipping containers for profit.
I feel nauseous. Men like him don’t deserve a beautiful family when they’re destroying so many other lives, and those two little girls deserve better than a fucking demon for a father.
But then he pulls one of his daughters out of the water, wraps her in a fluffy pink towel, and kisses the tip of her nose, oblivious to the water dripping onto his shiny shoes and soaking his suit pants, and I wonder if perhaps Aiden got it wrong after all.