18. Nick
NICK
Russ leaves first, his SUV kicking up gravel as he pulls out of the driveway. Alex follows a few minutes later after exchanging a look with me that says everything without words. They have business to handle. I'm staying here.
I expect Marla to panic the moment we're alone. Maybe throw things or demand I leave. Instead, she stands in the middle of her living room with her arms crossed, staring at me like I'm a puzzle she's trying to solve.
"So you're the babysitter," she says, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
I lean against the kitchen counter, watching her pace back and forth across the small space.
She's still wearing yoga pants and an oversized sweater, her red hair falling loose around her shoulders now that the messy bun has come undone.
Her feet are bare, and she moves with restless energy that fills the cottage like static electricity.
She paces for another minute before dropping onto the couch and opening her laptop with more force than necessary. Her fingers fly across the keyboard, then stop. She deletes whatever she wrote and starts again. Then stops. Deletes. Her jaw tightens with visible frustration.
I watch her struggle for twenty minutes before she slams the laptop shut and stands again, resuming her pacing. She doesn't look at me. Doesn't acknowledge my presence. Just moves back and forth like a caged animal testing the boundaries of her enclosure.
The consolidation between me, Alex, and Russ was supposed to simplify everything. The three of us already work together and help each other with business across our territories. We've been coordinating for years, sharing intelligence, backing each other's plays when necessary.
And we're friends. True friends who can trust each other.
In the mafia world, that's not something that happens very often.
Making it official means real power with unified operations.
One chain of command instead of three separate organizations that sometimes cooperate and sometimes compete.
It means presenting a single front to everyone else in the city, making it clear that challenging one of us means challenging all of us.
But consolidation requires absolute trust. We have to share everything, reveal weaknesses, and expose vulnerabilities. One leak, one betrayal, or one captain with divided loyalties, and the entire structure collapses before it's built.
And now there's Marla. A woman connected to all three of us simultaneously. She appeared during secret negotiations that only our most trusted people know about. A woman whose timing is so perfect it looks deliberate.
Is she loyal? Is she working for someone? Can the other families trust her when she's sleeping with all three pakhans at once?
These are the questions that will poison trust if we don't answer them quickly. The captains are already suspicious. The men who need to believe in the consolidation are already watching for signs of weakness or deception. Marla's existence raises questions we can't afford right now.
I watch her move to the window and stare out at the darkening woods.
Her shoulders curve inward slightly, and she wraps her arms around herself like she's cold.
The sweater slips off one shoulder, exposing pale skin and the curve of her collarbone.
Her hair catches the fading light, turning copper and gold.
She's beautiful when she's frustrated, when she's angry, and when she's scared. That's the problem. I'm just too attracted to her. And so are Russ and Alex. Why does this one small woman hold so much power over us?
Hours pass in tense silence. Marla tries working again, and manages maybe fifteen minutes before giving up.
She makes tea she doesn't drink. She stands at the window watching shadows lengthen across the trees.
She avoids looking at me directly, but I catch her glancing in my direction when she thinks I'm not paying attention.
The cottage grows darker as evening falls. Marla turns on a lamp in the corner, casting warm yellow light across the space. She's pulled her hair back again, twisting it into a knot at the base of her neck that exposes the line of her throat.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, shattering the silence. I pull it out and see Alex's name on the screen. "What is it?" I answer.
"We found the second truck," Alex says without preamble. "Abandoned about thirty miles outside the city. It was stripped completely clean."
"Casualties?"
"No bodies, but there's blood. Whoever was driving either got away or was taken."
I process this quickly. "What else?"
"One of the guards finally talked," Alex continues, his voice dropping lower. "He admitted someone inside the organization ordered security reassigned the night of the attack. Whoever did this knew exactly when and where to hit us because someone with authority told them."
"How high up?"
"High enough to access shift schedules and security protocols," Alex says. "This isn't some low-level soldier acting alone. This is someone with real authority who deliberately weakened our defenses."
"Find out who," I say flatly. "I don't care what it takes."
"Already working on it." There's a pause. "How's the situation there?"
I glance at Marla, who's turned away from the window and is watching me with wide eyes. She heard enough. I can see it in the way her face has gone pale, the way her hands have stopped moving.
"Complicated," I say.
"Call if you need backup."
Alex ends the call, and I slide the phone back into my pocket. When I look up, Marla is staring at me. The sarcasm and defiance from earlier have drained away completely. What's left is genuine fear.
Not the angry kind she showed when we first arrived. Not the defensive kind she threw at us during the confrontation. Real, cold fear that makes her look younger and more vulnerable than she did even an hour ago.
"Things are getting worse," she says quietly. It's not a question.
"Yes."
She sinks onto the couch, her hands twisting together in her lap. "Someone inside your organization is working against you."
"Yes."
"And you still think I might be involved."
I don't answer immediately. The truth is more complicated than yes or no. "I think you're connected to something dangerous, whether you meant to be or not."
The tension that's been simmering between us since Russ and Alex left suddenly becomes impossible to ignore. It fills the space between us, heavy and electric. I can see it in the way her breathing quickens and how her eyes follow my movements when I push off the counter.
I cross the room slowly. Marla watches me approach, her pulse jumping visibly in her throat. When I reach the couch, I don't sit. Instead, I brace my hands on the back of the couch on either side of her head, caging her in without touching her.
"We need to blow off some steam," I say quietly, my voice dropping lower. "You need to relax."
Her breathing quickens. "Nick..."
I lean in closer, my mouth near her ear. "Tell me to stop."
She doesn't, and I kiss her.