22. Fin
FIN
Finn
I sense that something is wrong before I wrap a towel around my waist and wander back into the bedroom. A silence. An emptiness. The apartment holding its breath and waiting for me to make my next move.
Tamara is gone.
Her jacket and weapons are gone too.
But I thank the God I’ve never prayed to when I realize that the burner phone is missing. Tamara is the only person I know who doesn’t carry a phone around with her, so she took it for a reason: she isn’t done with me yet.
I pick up my cell from the nightstand on my side of the bed, the side that still carries the indentations from our love making and feel the roller coaster inside my chest dip when I read the message.
I’m sorry, Finn. I have to do this alone. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be back.
“Telling me not to worry about you, sweetheart is like telling me not to breathe. Not a chance in hell.”
I pray for a second time as I open up the tracking app that I added to the burner phone before I gave it to Tamara.
There’s a strong possibility that she sent the message and then dumped the phone, but when the red dot that now represents my connection to the woman I love is still moving, the roller coaster car faces skyward.
“Good girl,” I mutter to myself as I dress quickly and slot my weapons into position.
The red dot is moving quickly. City traffic will be light at this time of night, so she must be in a taxi. I estimate that it should take me ten minutes max to be on their tail unless she tosses the phone out of the window. The kind of odds I can live with.
Odds that drop drastically when my key isn’t where I always leave it in an earthenware dish on the end of the breakfast counter.
“No, no, no, sweetheart. What are you up to?”
I know my door is locked from the outside before I try to open it, same as I know Tamara will have the spare key that I gave her also.
I unlock my phone, check her movements, and locate Connor’s number on my contacts app.
His apartment is a five-minute drive from here on a good day, and I’m relying heavily on this being one of them.
I’m also relying on him being alone because if he’s getting in some love guru practice, he won’t pick up.
He answers on the third ring, and I don’t waste a breath.
“Connor, I need you to bring your spare key to my apartment.”
I sense him connecting the dots before he responds. “Did she lock you in?” He catches on quickly; it’s only one of the reasons why I love him.
“I’m tracking her, but I’d rather be doing it from outside the building.”
“I’d have something to say about tracking the woman you love if I didn’t think you’d rip my head off. Give me five.”
He ends the call.
Six minutes later, I hear him unlocking my door from the outside.
“What took you so long?” I rest my hand on his shoulder and reciprocate his beaming smile. “Don’t say a fucking word.”
He makes a zipping motion with his fingers across his lips.
“Take this.” I place the burner phone into his hand. “She’s in a taxi heading out of the city. I want you and Aiden to follow her, but don’t try to intercept her.”
“Do you know where she’s going?”
“No, but she was holding something back after she spoke to the men on the dock, and whatever it is, it was important enough for her to want to do this alone.”
“You guys have some weird telepathic communication going on now?” Connor quirks an eyebrow at me.
“It’s called love.”
I pause my thoughts racing around my head at a million miles an hour and study my little brother.
When he finds ‘the one’, I’ll know it instantly, because those blue eyes will be the color of the Irish Sea on a glorious summer’s day, and I’ll be there for him every step of the way because this is what life is all about.
It isn’t about guns and deals and territories.
Love is all you need, as the song goes. I could live out my days in a cave with Tamara and know that I’ll be happy waking up beside her and feeling her lips on mine.
“You’ll understand someday.”
He nods once. “What will you be doing while we’re following your woman out of town?”
“There’s someone I need to speak to.”
I approach Leonid Ivanov’s mansion with my hands raised above my head.
The guard is unwilling, as expected, to allow me anywhere near the entrance until I mention the Petrovs. Then, he escorts me into a small, unfurnished room and waits with me while someone informs the Pakhan of the unexpected visitor.
Leonid enters the room minutes later with his brother Andrej.
The guard leaves the room, no doubt to take up his position outside the door, and the three of us consume the space like we’ve been thrown together into a wrestling ring with no idea how we got here or what’s expected of us.
“Tamara got news of Ivana today.” I kickstart the conversation. “She was seen being escorted onto a ship owned by the Petrovs.”
“That’s why you’re here?” The suspicion in Andrej Ivanov’s voice is unmistakable.
“No.” I look him in the eye. “I’m here because Tamara locked me in my apartment tonight.”
His scarred upper lip tilts into a smile, and I can wholly appreciate how he gained his playboy reputation before he met his wife. “Sounds like Tamara.”
“She doesn’t want you to follow her,” Leonid says. “So, you want us to do it for you?”
“Not at all. I want you to help me.” I shrug.
Either they will or they won’t. If the answer is negative, I’ll go alone, but I think I understand how much Leonid cares about her, and I trust him to want to keep her alive as much as I do. We also have a far greater chance of taking down the traffickers if we pool resources and work together.
He eyes me coolly, his expression neutral. “She made her choice. She knew the consequences.”
“She’s scared.” I didn’t come here to beg them for help or sympathy. I simply want to arm Leonid with all the information so that he can base his own choices accordingly. “Her sister is missing. She’s out of her comfort zone away from the only life she has ever known with you. And she’s pregnant.”
I wait for this to land. Which it does with a gentle slap around each of their faces.
“Do you love her?” Leonid asks eventually.
“Do you really need to ask?” I counter.
“I want to hear it from you.”
Fair enough. “Yes, I love her. I fell in love with her the first moment we met. I loved her even more, if that’s possible, when she stole my gun and walked away, and I’ll continue to love her until I take my last breath.”
Leonid is silent.
“She’s in self-destruct mode because she doesn’t know how else to handle it,” Andrej says finally.
His wife is pregnant. Gianna told me that the pregnancy news took her and Leonid by surprise too. If anything can unite the three of us, surely it will be this.
“She doesn’t know that I know about it. I found the test in my guest bathroom the last time she disappeared, but Gianna had already guessed.”
A tic pulses in Leonid’s jaw. “You spoke to my wife?”
“I thought Tamara was sick, and I didn’t know who else to speak to.
I didn’t want to question your relationship with her, neither did I want to undermine your position, but I couldn’t sit back and do nothing to help her.
She’s frightened,” I conclude. “And I accept full responsibility.” I raise my hands in the universal gesture of peace.
“I like this guy.” Andrej addresses his brother and tilts his head in my direction.
Leonid doesn’t react. “Do you know where she is?”
“My brother is tracking her as we speak. She’s heading out of town.”
They exchange glances. Finally, Leonid says, “We know where she is headed. Is she armed?”
The question sends a chill down my spine. “Are you?”
A glimmer of a smile lifts the corners of his mouth. “She’s following the distraction, not the cause.”
“Which means?”
If they know where the distraction is headed, stands to reason they know the cause’s location too, and I’m struggling to stand here in this room with them knowing that they chose to do nothing about either.
“How well do you know Tamara?” Andrej asks.
My hands ball into fists. “If you know where the cause is, I’d appreciate it if you get to the point. The woman I love is in danger, and I’ll follow her to the wrong destination if that’s what I need to do.”
“She’ll handle the distraction and meet us at the docks.
” Andrej holds my gaze, defying me to overstep the mark and give him a reason to stop me from walking out of here the way I came in.
“So, are you in or are you going to demand answers while Tamara tackles the whole fucking Bratva family alone?”
“I’m in.”
I’m only now paying attention to the two men who chose to hear me out when they could’ve locked me in this room and finished the war with the Petrovs just as easily without me as with me.
They were not relaxing in bed with their wives when I arrived.
They are wearing clothes that bear no designer label to be found in my closet, immaculate shoes, and they are armed for battle.
I didn’t interrupt a cozy evening.
I walked in on a meticulously planned Bratva operation.
“We’ve got her.”
The call comes from Connor while I’m driving to the Port of Chicago with Leonid and Andrej.
How my life has changed since I met Tamara.
Two months ago, this would never have happened in my wildest imagination.
If someone had told me I would be riding in the back seat of Leonid Ivanov’s car, I’d have known they’d predicted the date of my death.
But here we are, working on the same side because I have no choice but to trust them.
“Is she…” The question sticks in my throat.
“Angry?” Connor says. “Fuck yeah, but the anger is directed at you, so I think I’m safe. I can’t vouch for the fucker in the aircraft hangar we just left behind.”
Aircraft hangar? The distraction Leonid mentioned must’ve been making a getaway.
“Did she tell you what happened?”
“She can tell you herself.”
Connor passes the phone to Tamara because the call goes deathly quiet, and I wonder if she cut me off.
Then, she whispers, “They threw Ivana overboard.”
“Fuck!” I wish I was there to hold her, but a hug isn’t what she needs from me right now. “Where? Did you get a location?”
“No.”
“We’ll find her.”
“Finn…” The line goes quiet again. “She can’t die out there.”
“I won’t let that happen, sweetheart.” I know I’m making a promise I might not be able to fulfill, but if it gives her hope… “Leonid will find her. We’ll—”
“You’re with Leonid?”
It’s difficult to tell if it’s panic I can hear in her voice or relief. For the purposes of this call, I’m going with relief.
“We’re on our way to the port.”
The silence drags out. Then, “Don’t touch him. The asshole who fed my sister to the sharks is mine.” She ends the call.
“What do you know about Ivana?” I ask the Ivanov brothers.
“The Petrovs have her.” This comes from Andrej. “That’s all we’ve been able to determine.”
Not even fucking close.
“According to the distraction, she’s now somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean.”
Andrej whips his phone out of his pocket, locates the number he’s looking for, his expression never faltering, and hisses something in Russian into the handset when the person at the other end picks up.
He’s angry. I don’t speak Russian, but I’m fluent in mafia-speak, and this guy is fucking raging.
“My man is retracing the movements of the ship approaching the harbor now.” He stares out of the passenger window, while Leonid keeps his eyes fixed on the road ahead.
It’s the cold that will claim Ivana. She might already be dead in the time it has taken the ship to cross the ocean and the St. Lawrence Seaway into Chicago, and the chances of ever finding her body will be little better than zero.
I’ll respect Tamara’s wishes and leave the asshole for her.
But no revenge will ever erase the images in her head of her sister hitting that cold water knowing that she was going to die before anyone else discovered what had happened.
The port is eerily silent when we arrive.
I guess this is Leonid’s doing when no one questions us driving onto the quayside with the headlamps killed. No one is waiting to check in the ship silently gliding into the harbor. No onward transport is lined up ready to go.
“Is there a plan?” I ask when Leonid kills the engine and no one moves.
“We wait for Tamara,” the Pakhan replies.