Chapter 10
Dmitri
When I arrive back at the antique shop, it feels like I’m moving in a daze.
Cara’s words loop in my head.
She insists that she was forced. That she had no choice. But she came here to hurt me.
So, when did she change her mind? Or did she?
There are so many unanswered questions, and I think Brendan can clear some of them up, including a big one that I haven’t pushed Cara to answer just yet.
I can’t bring myself to torture Cara.
Brendan is another story.
“He’s awake,” Isaak tells me once I step into the hallway where he’s seated in a chair with a magazine in his hands.
“Finally,” I mutter. “I need to talk to him.”
“Everything under control at your place?” Isaak asks nonchalantly but I know that he’s trying to secretly be nosy about Cara.
“Peachy,” I reply before walking into the room with Brendan and shutting the door behind me. “Glad to see you’re finally awake.”
Brendan glares at me, shivering and shaking as sweat drips down his face and soaks his clothes. “Just kill me, you bastard.”
I pull a little baggie of pills out of my back pocket. “Talk, and I’ll ease the pain.”
Brendan’s eyes lock on the bag. “Oxy?”
“Possibly,” I reply as I shake the baggie.
Brendan swallows hard. “What questions?”
Pain is such a powerful motivator. Sometimes, it only takes a little bit to get people talking.
“What was Sean’s relationship like with his daughter?” I ask him as I slip one pill out of the baggie.
Brendan sighs and shrugs. “I don’t fucking know. I think he loves her, as much as a man like him can. But they’re not close.”
“Why not? Fathers are supposed to protect their daughters,” I question him as I step closer. “His only child.”
“He didn’t know about her until she was a teenager. And he always wanted a son,” Brendan tells me. “He was disappointed from the get-go. Had a lot of expectations of her that she couldn’t meet.”
“Like killing someone?” I reply.
Surprise flashes across his face. “Killing? She would cry when she saw a hurt bird. She wasn’t that strong.”
“Why choose her to be the plant? And be honest this time,” I warn him as I turn the pill between my fingertips.
Brendan stares at the pill like he’s entranced. “I think she wanted to prove herself.”
“That can’t possibly be the only reason,” I tell him, pushing for more. “He didn’t have faith in her. Why trust her?”
Brendan chews on his bottom lip for a moment before looking up at me. “She was bait. Sean knew you’d take it. Then he made her feel guilty for caving, basically told her she was a whore just like her dead mother.”
That sick bastard.
I knew that O’Malley was cold, but I didn’t realize just how heartless he was. Maybe Cara wasn’t lying when she said that he doesn’t see her as his daughter, that she’s just a pawn.
Which means there may be other things that she’s told me that are actually true too.
Something pulls tight in my chest. I ignore it.
I offer the pill to him, knowing that just one won’t totally take the pain away. He’ll need more, and he knows it.
Brendan tilts his head back and dry swallows the pill, a relieved sigh breaking from him.
“I’m not done yet,” I tell him as I take another pill out of the bag. “I want to know what her father specifically ordered her to do. She involved herself in my life. Helped me with my business. Encouraged me to make certain decisions.”
Brendan looks wary, but his eyes go right back to the pill between my fingertips. “Intel was secondary. She didn’t provide much of it.”
My eyes narrow. So, she did withhold information from him. “Intel wasn’t the main mission?”
Brendan shifts uncomfortably in his seat, his eyes flickering to the door like he’s expecting Sean O’Malley himself to burst inside and shoot him on the spot to keep him silent. “It was a long game. Sean planned it after he heard that you were arranging a deal with the Suyunovs.”
“He found out about the arranged marriage?” I ask.
Brendan nods. “We found out through an informant that we pay off for information.”
I narrow my eyes. “Who?”
“Evan Briggs on the Strip,” Brendan replies.
Of course. Loose-lipped bastard. Maybe I need to send someone down to the Strip to silence him.
“So, what was the big picture plan?” I question him as I move even closer.
Brendan sinks back into his chair, his shoulders hanging. “You’re trying to get me killed.”
“The Irish will already suspect that you’re dead. Maybe I’ll have you dropped off in the middle of nowhere so that you can run,” I tell him. “But only if you work with me.”
“You didn’t ask Cara any of this before you killed her?” Brendan replies with his brow furrowed.
Yet again, I let him believe the worst. “She spent weeks lying to my face about who she was. I knew I couldn’t trust her word.”
“You could’ve thrown her in here to take my place. She probably would’ve told you whatever you wanted to know,” Brendan says confidently.
“I wasn’t cruel enough to beat her with a baseball bat. Not when I have you here running your mouth,” I say. “Now, come on. Answer. That one little pill will run out soon.”
Brendan grimaces. “The plan was to destroy the Bratva from within. Attacking from the outside is risky. We wanted to reduce casualties on our side.”
“How was Cara supposed to destroy us from the inside? She’s one person who won’t kill anyone,” I reply with a shake of my head, not understanding.
“She didn’t have to kill anyone. She just had to turn you against the Suyunovs,” Brendan says.
My eyebrows lift in realization. “She pushed me to end the arranged marriage with Annika after listening to me rant about how I didn’t want to do it.”
Brendan nods. “She encouraged you to light the alliance on fire like she was supposed to.”
She’s good. Damn good.
And her own father doesn’t believe in her?
A small part of me is a little impressed. She was sly, but maybe she didn’t have to do as much work as she expected because I already had my foot out the door before she even came along.
She nudged me where I was already leaning. I didn’t want Annika. I wanted something else.
I wanted her.
“Cara said that what she did still wasn’t good enough for her father,” I say after shoving the other pill into his mouth.
Brendan swallows it down. Once he gets high on the opioids, he’ll have even less control over running his mouth. “Well, he wasn’t happy to find out that you fucked her.”
I’d imagine not.
“And she was close to you, so he told her to kill you,” Brendan continues as he starts to relax more and more into his chair.
“He expected her to kill me?” I ask.
“He can be an angry guy. That’s why she gave him the meeting location,” Brendan replies.
“She gave up details of the meeting after refusing to try to kill me,” I mutter to myself. She didn’t offer it up until she had to.
After considering that for a moment, I ask him, “Cara did tell me that you took a stack of cash from her. Is that true?”
“Yeah, yeah, fine. I did that shit,” he replies. “Fifteen grand. What does a dead woman need cash for?”
He really thinks I’ve already killed her.
“Did she tell you exactly how she earned the money?” I press him.
Brendan shrugs. “She said you paid her under the table, that it was like a week or two’s pay working as your assistant.”
“Right.”
I run my hand over my face as I turn away from him, my mind racing.
He didn’t smirk about her earning it on her knees. And Sean was furious when he found out we slept together.
That wasn’t part of the plan.
She fought it. She fought me.
And when Cara said she was in love with me…I think she meant it.