Chapter 11 #4
“She will. She is already watching, I can assure you.” I click my tongue.
Saoirse is a highly trained and capable woman, as visible as a cloud of dust, and she has worked for me ever since I took the reins.
Matt introduced us. They worked together in the Middle East when he was in the army.
Labeling her a private investigator would be an affront.
Anything that Matt and Brenton can’t do, she does.
I would say she can slide into anybody’s skin and dig out their darkest secrets.
Although her services are not easy to catch, as she is indeed a spider, playing hide-and-seek until she finds a good enough reason to come into plain sight.
Brenton is much more reliable, even if his approaches are far more conventional.
My phone vibrates as I hear Nate’s voice behind me, pacing as he makes calls.
Ella: Home. Yes, why? Aren’t you?
A weight lifts off my shoulders.
Me: What are your plans today?
Ella: I’ll be downtown after lunch. My stepmother wants us to go on a shopping spree together.
Mara Brooks, what game are you playing? One does not go from ice to fire without a reason. Is she truly trying to make peace with Ella or drag her into her depths? On the other hand, if she is downtown, then…
Me: Meet me after.
Ella: I don’t know if it’s possible. I told you I’d be there tonight after my shift.
Is it safe for her to come here? Am I thinking clearly? If she cannot work here tonight, then when will I see her? My head spins, and I shake my arm, as if shaking away a cramp. Those migraines have the worst timing.
Me: Please.
Begging. I have never, ever begged a woman in my life.
Ella: I’ll see what I can do. I promise.
I imagine her little hands typing away, unsure of who the monster she is speaking to really is and whether she can truly trust me. And still, she keeps writing. Bold and brave.
Ella: Tristan?
Me: Yes, Ella.
Ella: I liked being with you last night.
I take a deep breath, towering over my city; no amount of mergers or acquisitions is capable of matching the effect her few words just had on me.
Me: I liked it very much too.
“All set,” Nate rasps, sliding his phone into his suit and crossing his arms. “So, what do you want to do?” I drift away, running my fingers over my chin, another move playing in my head.
Knight takes king. Think. Think. Sauntering to the sailboat photograph, the black-and-white one that seems, today, to show more ocean than boat.
I slide it to the right and unlock the secure vault.
“Cole wants war. Until now, we have been at each other’s throats, playing battle after battle.
It never became this…personal,” I state, glancing at my reddened chess set.
A flash of Ella covered in the same substance cuts through me.
Stop. This is not happening. Ella and I are not…
official. Yet. Yet. There are things in life that are not worth sacrificing, and I have the disturbing feeling that Ella is one of them.
Finding the file I was looking for, I close the vault and place the pile of paper on my desk.
“Money laundering?” Nate asks, surely building his speculation on the considerable amount of evidence and dirt we have gathered on the Vodianovs for years.
“The worst kind.”
“You’re sure you want to go there?”
“It’s time, Nate. We have waited long enough.”
“I’m just saying, once we get there, there is no going back.”
“Is that not the whole purpose?”
“I know… I know.”
He looks down at the first sheet of paper, Cole’s face photographed as he walks through the streets of Westhaven at night.
“I have already set in motion all the moves to make his enterprise collapse. Now we need his name to fall into the abyss.”
“How far are we going?”
“We make it public.”
“You would want to spend the rest of your life in jail to avenge our father?”
“Who is talking about jail, Nate?”
“Instinct.” I shake my head, hands in my pockets, circling the desk until I face the bloody mess on the table.
“He has been laundering money and making people disappear for high-profile public figures for years. Knowing this,” I explain, pointing at the files, “the amount of leverage it gives us…”
“And risk.” Which is why, until now, I’ve kept this option away from the realm of possibilities.
“There’s a lot of people who would not want things dragged into the light, people who may take care of him before we even do.”
“What if there is backlash, and they find a way to spin everything on us? You could spend the rest of your life in jail, or worse.”
“Not too thrilled to lead the ship, I see.”
“Maddie needs me.” An appreciable flinch of his shoulder betrays his care for his daughter and the obvious weight of responsibility neither of us can ignore. Getting caught is not a possibility.
“I know, and it will not happen. The Vodianov clan will vanish from the earth, their people exiled from the region, their businesses sold to us, and Cole… Cole will be mine to decide. You know he will never stop until one of us…” Somewhere deep inside me, I know that it will be him or me, and that at some point, one of us will have to die for the other to live.
Whether that makes me like my father or not, some things in life are not ours to choose.
“I know, Tristan.”
“All in good time. All in good time. For now, let’s wait for Matt, Brenton, and Saoirse, and then we will find out how to target him at the heart.
” I spread out the sheets covered with maps and architectural drawings of his warehouses, his schedule, his men, and the photographs that come along with them, until there is not an inch of the desk visible.
His heart, not a person, nor his family, but the heart of his engine, of his organization.
Aiming at his heart.
Just like he is aiming at mine.
The only question is who will be the fastest to reach the target.