Chapter 21 #2
Erel’s dark glare should have made a sane woman shake in their slippers. Maeve smiled and cooed another few, even more ridiculous, nicknames. Love nugget. Sugar booger. Mudbug. My candy man. I spit out some coffee at the last one.
“Never change,” he whispered and kissed the top of her head.
Damn their cuteness.
I picked up the first knife and, out of habit, balanced it on my fingertip to test its weight distribution. With one beautiful throw, it thunked into the center of the wooden target set up at the other end of the garden.
Erel didn’t pull punches. He tossed his five knives, one after another, in rapid succession, each with perfect release, rotation, and speed. All five whammed into the center circle, each within millimeters of the others. Big surprise.
Erel circled his arms around Maeve from above.
“Franc cleared all video of you last night,” he told me, “but he cannot keep this up. Not if you keep going out this often.”
“Is my new ID firmly in place?”
“Depends how much digging O’Leary’s team does. It is only a matter of time before he figures out who you are.”
I pictured Cillian’s chest on the second throw, right where his heart would be. The knife landed a little wide. I pinched my lips shut. That throw shouldn’t have missed.
“You are usually better than this,” Erel commented unhelpfully. “Does this mean you want him to know?”
“What? No…Maybe…Probably. Fine. Yes, I do.” I picked up a third knife. “I want him to realize who I am. On his own, not from a file.”
Maeve hissed. “Yikes. Don’t hold your breath there, babe.”
“I just find it hard to believe he never once, in the last seven years, checked up on who he married.”
“Emotional constipation. It’s a thing.”
“Far from the eye, far from the heart,” Erel voiced in French. The idiom had never hit truer.
Knife number three gouged through the center of the board, exactly where I wanted it.
“Him assigning a tail is a good thing,” I said in an effort to convince myself. “A little protectiveness never hurt if it means I’ve melted his stone heart even a smidge.”
“If there were any truth behind that, my guess would be because the Urabá cartel worries him.” Erel squeezed Maeve’s hand. “Pardon, mon ange, but it is easier to say this in French.”
“Work stuff. I get it. Go at it. Just make sure to bring that sexy voice in the bedroom later.”
“Promis, juré.” I swear. He kissed her upside down on the forehead.
I tossed the fourth knife to give them a little privacy.
“So, tell me. Why the cartel?”
He leaned back against the table, legs crossed. “There’s been an increased amount of chatter across Endgame’s channels. Some rumors say that the O’Learys killed a few of theirs. Others that the cartel plans to take full control of the Boston market.”
“We’re talking about a possible gang war?”
“Or not. I had Franc take a look at the cartel. Apparently, the O’Learys owe the cartel a large sum, and they’ve been paying it back every three months, starting six months before you got married and the O’Learys received their first deposit.”
“So, it’s all about money.” I clicked my nails on the glass tabletop.
“I say we let them fight it out. A dead husband is the same as no husband.”
I wanted him out of my life, sure, but dead?
That seemed a little extreme for a man who came to my rescue last night, then fucked me into godhood.
I definitely wanted a few more turns on that ride before I quit it.
Plus, there was also the added headache of dealing with the O’Leary clan if we killed their leader and they found out about it.
“There’s another option.” I massaged my palms together. “We help him pay off his debt to the cartel, and then Adrien makes an annex to the contract, canceling the fifteen-year marriage provision.”
“What? By forcing him at gunpoint?”
“Violence isn’t always the answer.”
“Hasn’t he already proven you’re nothing special to him?”
“You don’t have to be a dick about it.”
“Hey,” Maeve snapped and pointed a finger at us. “I’m making a new house rule. Neither of you is allowed to piss off the other. In any language. Doesn’t matter if I can understand you or not.”
“You are stealing my little pleasures, mon ange.”
She slapped away his snaking hand. “None of your sweet-talking. Be good to my girl, or the couch will be your new best friend.”
I bit back a grin at the troubled expression on his face. Had to hand it to her, she had him trained well. Their relationship was proof that the best way to a man’s heart was never his stomach but his dick, and from the noises often coming from their bedroom, she worshipped the damn thing.
“What I meant,” he restarted in French, forcing a smile. “He refused your previous offers. Nothing’s changed. Why would he accept now?”
I threw my last knife. It hit dead center, sticking out between a pair of his.
“He refused because of pride. The money Adrien sends, he accepts because it was part of a business exchange, but he’s far too prideful to accept charity.
I wager he probably doesn’t want to owe favors either, but if we phrase it as business, I’m betting he’ll take it. Business with me specifically.”
“You sure you want to give the O’Learys access to your products? You won’t have control over them if they resell.”
I shrugged. “I’ll be the seller and pose as the buyer, with the O’Learys as the intermediaries. That way, the product stays with me.”
“Exposure’s a high risk.”
“Worried?”
“Adrien will kill me if anything happens to you.”
“Doubt that. Besides, there’s no reward without risk.”
“So getting involved is your solution?”
“A little push. A little advantage.”
“You start down this path, it’ll be hard to get out. The O’Leary cartel problem will only get worse. They’re cockroaches. Once they scamper over some turf, they’re almost impossible to exterminate. Kill one, and a thousand more are ready to take their place.”
“What if I asked Endgame to handle it?”
“We’re not your private task force.”
“You are if I’m a paying customer.”
“We’d have to accept the contract, and the cartels have never been a problem Adrien and I want to take on.”
“Not even to help family?”
His whole face closed off. I shook my head and exhaled hard. One by one, I shook the knives loose and plucked them from the board.
No matter how much of myself I put into the family business or contributed to Endgame’s arsenal, it didn’t go both ways. Something always mattered more: a person, an opportunity, a purpose. It was never me. Whatever. I was used to handling things myself. It was just one more on the long list.
Maeve teed her hands. “Let’s time-out, and step back a little. How about this? I have some spare vacation days. We take a flight to Chicago, visit your sister for a bit, have some spa time, clear our minds, then we can rethink this situation calmly.”
“No.” Visiting my spoiled younger sister and her arrogant husband once a year was more than enough for me, and that quota was filled for another four months at least. “That would be breaking my momentum here. I’m close to a breakthrough. I can feel it.”
“You better have a killer plan, babe.”
Biting my lips together, mouth tipped up in a smile, I waggled my brows.