30. Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty
Carys
T he door clicks closed, and Semyon studies me for a beat. I’m surprised Finn folded to his request. Our backs must be pinned against the wall. Not that I doubted our weak position, but I hoped there might be another fraction of light somewhere else if this meeting didn’t work. Apparently not. Hail Mary, here we come.
“How is your arm healing?” Semyon indicates my cast.
“Well enough.” I hold up my broken wrist. “A few more weeks, and I can take it off.”
“An unfortunate set of circumstances,” he says. “A bomb and a gas leak coming together at exactly the wrong moment.”
Jay shifts closer to me, but Semyon’s words aren’t a threat. Not yet at least. “The police don’t think the two are related. Hard to believe.”
“Coincidences in this business are rare.” He rises and crosses to the minibar. “Would you like a drink?”
“Whiskey.” I recognize my role in this conversation.
We both know what I want. He’s trying to decide what he needs in return. Hope threatens to rise in me, but I tamp it down. Semyon could ask me for anything, maybe even something like Demid did, that I can’t give. The possibilities are endless when a man already has so much influence. What can we offer when we have so little right now?
He pours the whiskey and passes it to me, but he doesn’t give Jay something. A power play, but neither of us will complain. Jay is, after all, my employee, even if I treat him more like family.
“I’ll take your family under my wing while you sort out your issues with the PLA in exchange for your silence and your unwavering protection in return.” Semyon’s gaze is glued to me.
I frown and draw my glass to my lips, considering his words. Jay relaxes beside me. I’m not so sure we’re out of the woods with this request. Silence and unwavering protection can be big asks. “Who would I protect you from?”
“The one who is not in this room.” Semyon releases a dark chuckle. “The loose cannon you seem to enjoy watching go off.”
I eye him for a beat. “Do I get to understand why or how I’m meant to protect you?” I throw out my hand. “I’d be more effective if I understood what he could learn that would make him seek revenge.”
“In prison, Hagen was applying pressure on Finn to kill a guy who owed us money and tried to turn evidence against us. The snitch didn’t have shit on us, so too bad for him. But I needed a message sent—a strong reminder not to mess with me. The strongest man in the minimum-security prison delivering my justice, a man who never takes orders from anyone else? Having him would have given me unprecedented power inside.”
“You wanted Finn to do your dirty work.”
“Initially a death sentence for my former employee, and eventually much more. I could have made Finn a powerful player inside. But he didn’t want to learn my games.”
“As you said, he doesn’t take orders from anyone.”
“We tried to apply a little pressure—let him realize the risk in turning us down. Obviously, with so many life sentences, and Finn pleading guilty to them, I never expected him to get out.”
“You planted the bomb in the hotel?” Jay tenses beside me, putting the pieces together much faster than me.
“So, you aren’t just the muscle,” Semyon says. “You’ve got a brain. Since your family is also at risk here, I expect the same deal from you I am making with Carys. Unwavering protection and silence. If he ever learns the truth you talk him down or pin him, but he does not come at me or my sons. Ever.” He points his finger and his drink at the two of us. “My son was supposed to find the right person to do the job on Cape Verde. He failed, and you were injured more than we intended. A scare. A warning. A reminder to Finn he was on the inside, and we were on the outside.”
“Except,” I swirl the alcohol in my glass, “now he’s on the outside too.”
“While I have your family, it should be easy for you to keep him under control.”
A brief spike of anger surges through me, and I wish Finn could be allowed to make this right. Tear them apart. Semyon and Hagen shouldn’t have tried to take advantage of Finn’s weakened position in prison. They should never have positioned a bomb that might have made my son an orphan.
“The bomb you set.” I search his face for the truth. “The serial number on it was ours, from the warehouse theft in Russia.”
“Are you asking if I stole from you?” He lifts his eyebrows.
Since he went there instead of to the connection to the PLA, I should be comforted. I don’t want to rescue my family from the jaws of one shark only to thrust them into the mouth of another beast. “No, I’m asking if you’re working with the PLA.”
He chuckles. “I don’t work well with others.” He winks. “Hagen hired a local in Cape Verde who secured the bomb. My guess? The PLA sold off your items on the black market. Not a bad way to raise some capital.”
I clear my throat and force my frustration aside. “He won’t come after you.” Do I have that much control over Finn’s actions? If he was in this room, he might have put a bullet between Semyon’s eyes already. “But,” I say, “I need to tell him what happened. If I leave the culprit of the bomb a secret, he may discover the truth when I’m not around to stop him from doing something stupid.” Even if his wrath is justified.
“I’m going to second Carys on this one. She can wait to tell him until our families are wherever you’re going to stash them, so you feel protected. But she needs to inform him before he finds out on his own.”
Semyon tips back his drink. “He threatened to saw off the limbs of anyone responsible for the Cape Verde bomb. While I’d like to believe he can’t get to me, today proves otherwise, doesn’t it?” He gives us both a long look. “You’re confident you can control him?”
“Yes,” Jay and I say at the same time. I’m tempted to smile. There’s no way either of us are certain. We’re desperate.
“This ‘kill them all’ strategy he employs is not one I’m keen to see in action. My family will retaliate, and it will be bloody.”
“I understand.” I slide my finished glass onto the table. “Do we have a deal?” I hold out my hand, and Semyon embraces it.
“Send them to Boston.” He sets his drink on the nightstand. “My best compound is my home in Boston.”
Jay is already taking out his phone to get in touch with the pilot. “I’ll message Dominic the details,” he says.
“I’ll have men collect them from the airport.” A hint of a smile touches Semyon’s lips. “Good luck with the PLA.”
I don’t acknowledge his sinister well wishes, and we back out of the room with the deal done.
Outside the door, Finn has propped the four security guys up against the wall. He lifts his eyebrows in question, but I shake my head. Shift change for the guards will be happening any minute, so we need to get out of here. We hustle down the back stairs, and when we get to the bottom, Finn grabs my wrist. “What’d he ask for?”
“I’ll tell you as soon as we’re sure our family is safe.” While we’re still within striking distance, I can’t be certain his temper won’t get the best of him. “You’re not going to like it,” I admit. “But it could have been much worse.”
With our family on the way to safety, we’ve taken hotel rooms under aliases near the airport. I’m too jacked up from my meeting with Semyon to sleep, so I’m drinking more whiskey from the minibar. Jay’s room is on one side of us, and on the other is Lorcan and Kim.
Their handler is pissed we abandoned the PLA compound when we seemed to be making progress. Kim and Lorcan assured them we got enough information to track and foil the PLA’s plans. I don’t know what Finn and Lorcan discovered, other than Pearl’s identity, but there’s been no concrete talk of disrupting the PLA’s plots.
I’m in the en suite bathroom washing my face when Finn leans against the entrance clad only in his boxer briefs, arms crossed, and muscles bulging. In the mirror, I drink in the sight of him. We need to figure out and foil the PLA as our top priority now that we’ve secured protection for our family, but I can’t help the pang of sadness when I realize Finn will be going back to jail when this is over. We’ll have another three years of separation to battle through before we get to be together for the rest of our lives.
Given how much has been going on since I arrived in Ireland, we’ve had little quality time together when we didn’t have to worry about someone listening in or danger dropping into our laps. Are we safe now? Hardly. But it’s a relief not to have to watch our words. For conversations to be real and genuine rather than coded and, sometimes, riddled with false starts.
“What’s that look for?” he asks.
“When I decided to break you out of jail, I did not see it going this way.”
He glances at his feet and then meets my gaze in the mirror. “We took your sister’s threat to your mother seriously months ago, but we turned up nothing. Too many aliases, I guess.”
“She sent the confetti bomb—sent all the bomb threats.” I pat myself dry and face him. “They’re the ones who raided the house in Russia too.” His jaw tightens a fraction. “Did you kill Eric?”
Finn searches my face for a beat, but whether he says the word or not, the truth is in his eyes. He’s debating whether telling me will make the future harder or easier. Either way I know, so he might as well say it.
“Yes.” He holds my gaze. “There was an opportunity, and I took it.”
My heart thumps at his bluntness, at the danger in his words. He killed my ex-fiancé, the biological father of our son, and I’m not even fazed—the briefest twinge of anxiety at explaining the circumstances to Lucas, but that’s it. There must be something wrong with me, but I’m not going to question my sanity. As much as Finn might rage against others, he loves me with the same fiery intensity. Who wouldn’t want to be loved like that?
“Was he—was he conscious? Jade mentioned she gave him a message for me.”
“They tortured him. You wouldn’t have wanted to see him. Did he have a note somewhere on him? Not that I found. Did they tell him something? Maybe. He wasn’t in any shape to speak.”
“She said if I knew what was coming, if I’d known all this time, I’d be terrified.”
He straightens, tension oozing out of him. “She wants you afraid.”
“She wants me beyond afraid. Terrorized. Said she watched the video of me trying to diffuse the confetti bomb in my office on repeat. She gets off on the power.”
He rubs his face with both hands. “We should’ve looked harder when your mother told us Pearl was hell-bent on seeking revenge for being left behind.”
“Not just for being left behind—for being left behind with a man who abused her.”
Finn gives me a long look. “Assuming we can trust that motive.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s slippery. Tells people what she thinks they want to hear. Turns and twists herself into whatever version suits the person she’s speaking to. Did her father abuse her?” He shrugs. “I got a feeling it was more”—he taps his temple—“than physical.”
His phone buzzes on the nightstand, and he leaves the door to check it. I follow him into the bedroom and run my hand along his back. His muscles flex under my fingers, and he turns to offer a quick kiss on my temple. “Lorcan and Kim think we should head south tomorrow.”
“South?” I frown.
“One of the bombs the PLA secured was delivered to someone in Cork.”
“Their PLA faction there?” Finn and Lorcan just gave them more manpower by taking over the McCaffrey organization in Cork. We were always flies in their web, and we’ve been luring more flies with us.
“Don’t know.” Finn sets down his phone. “Lorcan thinks we should go see Thomas in Dublin.”
“Lorcan can’t see him.” We’re walking a dangerous line with him by going south. At least up here, few people recognize the Donaghey brothers. Down there? Their misdeeds are legendary. “Even Kim they’ve met before in Boston.”
Is she supposed to be dead too? I try to remember the news stories I read, but I can’t recall those details. My primary focus was Finn. Every outlet reported Lorcan’s death, but my FBI contact, the one who dragged him out, relayed the truth.
“You gonna tell me what Semyon wanted from you?”
I check the clock on the nightstand. Have they landed yet? I haven’t heard from anyone to be sure they’re safe. Until then, I can’t take any chances. Would he listen to me? To reason? Likely. Not worth derailing everything else we need to accomplish right now. “Not yet,” I say. “But I will.”
He searches my face, and his gaze is intense. “Is whatever you agreed to do going to cause you any pain or hurt?”
“Not even a little.”
He wraps his arms around me, drawing me into him. “Then the truth can wait.”
When we get into bed, he gathers me close. My head rests on his chest and my casted hand on his stomach. He sighs into my hair.
“What are you thinking?” At one time, I would have cringed asking. Now it’s natural—normal—to ask and to expect him to tell me the truth. There’s no pretending between us anymore. We are who we are.
He tightens his hold, and his lips brush my hair. “I lay in that prison for months not letting myself remember what being with you felt like. This wasn’t something I was ever going to get again.”
Whereas I lay in my bed and tried to recall every detail of him. What it felt like to have his arms sliding around my waist, my head pillowed against his chest, and his breath stirring my hair. The easiest way for me to get to sleep was to wrap myself in a blanket of Finn memories and sensations. I never stopped hoping or believing we’d be together once again.
“I’m not a good man, and I’m not a peaceful man, but I’m almost both of those when I’m with you.”
I glance up to make eye contact with him, and love swells in me. He’s the man I’m meant to be with, and I’ll love him until the day I die. “When this is all over, you can be whoever you want to be.”
“I’ll fight like hell to make sure I come home to you and Lucas in three years. They may think they have the lead, but I’ve been doing this long enough to realize I can steal their advantage and make it mine. We just have to figure out the right moves.”
I mull over his words as sleep threatens to drag me under. When we understand our opponents, the right steps are easy to determine. Pearl Jade and Pierre-Jacques are so cloaked in false identities, how will we ever know enough in time to foil them? Impossible isn’t a word we use, so I keep my thoughts to myself. Whether or not we can win, we’ll go down fighting. Giving up isn’t an option.