Page 87 of The Fighter

Andrei Sidorov moves into the room and sits down in the chair across from Malinov. “Where are your men, Damir?” he asks conversationally.

“Gone.” He downs his whiskey and pours himself another glass from a shaky hand. “D’Este called my father and gave him a choice. If Gregori wanted to keep doing business with him, he needed to disown me. Naturally, the bastard chose to protect himself. He called off his soldiers and told me to go honorably to my death.” He laughs bitterly. “Paternal love, what can I say?”

Sidorov doesn’t sound surprised. “If it makes you feel better, Gregori won’t survive this either.”

“It does, actually.” Malinov turns his attention to me for the first time. “You’re not one of Sidorov’s people. Who are you?”

“My name is Tomas Aguilar.” I don’t take my eyes off his hands. “Your sniper targeted my fiancée.” Ali and I haven’t talked about our engagement. It might have started out as a ruse, but no more. I want it to be real. “In La Llotja a couple of hours ago.”

“Oh, her. The bastard daughter of Vidone Laurenti.” He laughs without humor. “I didn’t know she was engaged.” He gives me a dismissive once-over. “I also didn’t know that d’Este would get so bent out of shape about an attack on a nobody.” He lifts his glass to me. “A bad miscalculation, as it happens.”

I almost shoot him right then, but I have one more question. One more thing I need to understand. “Your contract with Laurenti would have had an exit clause. If you didn’t want to marry his daughter, why didn’t you just buy him out? Why target an innocent woman?”

Malinov looks genuinely confused by my question. “The exit clause would have cost ten million euros,” he says. “The sniper cost ten thousand.”

I ease back the safety. “The woman you targeted has a life,” I say quietly. “She has people she loves and people who love her back. She didn’t choose to play this game. She’s an innocent.”

Malinov’s mouth twists into a sneer. “She’s a nobody.”

“Not to me,” I reply, my voice as cold as ice.

And then I put a bullet between his eyes.

57

ALINA

Tomas is okay. That’s what Cici tells me. Malinov is dead, Tomas is safe and unhurt, and they’re on their way back to Gabriel’s mansion.

I run outside. I’m waiting in the driveway when a Land Rover pulls in twenty minutes later. Tomas gets out, and I immediately throw myself onto him, my hands around his neck. “You’re here,” I whisper, my tears wetting his collar. “You’re not hurt?”

“I told you I’d be fine.” He holds me, his touch warmly reassuring. His heart beats in his chest, steady and unhurried.

He’s alive.

I cling to him like a barnacle to a rock. “Is it over? Please tell me it’s over because my heart can’t take much more of this.”

“It’s over,” he says. He pulls back and looks steadily at me. “I’m the numbers guy, Ali. This never happens. I usually leave the fighting to Dante, Leo, and Joao. But this time…” He cups my cheek with his callused hand. “This time, it was personal.”

I stare into Tomas’s gray eyes. He went to war for me. So that he could protect me. I love this man so much. “Want to go back home? After all, you did promise to show me your private gym.”

“I always keep my promises.” His expression turns grim. “I want to see Laurenti first.”

My father. That reminds me of Cici’s revelation. I tell Tomas what Cici said about how Vidone has known about my existence since I took the DNA test two years ago, and he nods, unsurprised. “You knew?” I ask.

“I suspected.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

His face softens. “You wanted him to be a good person so badly, cara mia. I wanted it to be true for you.”

“Cici also implied that my mother wasn’t with my father of her own free will.” I look up at his face. “You knew that too, didn’t you?”

“Again, I didn’t have any proof. But the difference in their ages suggested it. Plus, your mother chose to live in Rome, the most crowded and anonymous city in the country, and she never once talked about your father. None of that suggests a happy story.”

“I don’t want you to kill him.”

“I’m not planning to. I want him to live to regret every decision he’s ever made.” His voice is a block of ice. “I’m going to take great pleasure in ruining him financially.”

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