Page 20 of Mob Bride

I wait. My eyes scan our surroundings to see if anybody hears the car and shifts their attention toward us. Thank God nobody does, at least not that I can see. At least we’re out of Jacek’s sight.

“Come on.” She’s impatient now.

I jog past her to get to the driver’s side. There isn’t enough time for her to argue with me as I pull the door open and slide in. She changes course and goes to the passenger side. I have the car on and in drive before she even closes the door. My family has always claimed I have a lead foot, and here’s why.

I’m the one who usually drives one of the SUVs on missions. Maybe I was born with a lead foot, and that’s why I’m a driver. Or maybe it’s the other way around, and I got my lead foot from being behind the wheel. Either way, I get us out of there. I’ll have to send one of the men for my car later, or I’ll have to go back for it.

“Carys, you are going to give me some answers. What are you doing here?”

She again refuses to speak. I accept the silence for now. I take us to another part of Yonkers where I’m certain nobody will follow us. I pull into a parking lot behind a sporting goods store and turn off the engine. She’d dropped the fob into a cupholder, so I put it in my pocket. We’re not going anywhere until she answers my question.

All I want is the answer to that one question. What is she doing here? I twist in my seat and reach across her as she moves to unfasten her seat belt. She tries to fight me, slapping my hand out of her way, but I grab both of her wrists and pin them to her lap. If she really tried hard enough, she could break free. I wouldn’t do anything to add to her bruises, but she knows the struggle is futile. She’ll wear herself out before I’ll give in.

“Carys, just answer the one question. What were you doing there?”

“The same thing as you. Watching.”

I was hoping for a more specific answer since that states the obvious. “Why were you watching?”

“You said you only had one question, and I answered that.

“Don’t be obtuse.”

“I’m not being obtuse. I’m being awkward.”

The grin she shoots me is mirthless. She knows she’s not humorous. She knows she’s riling me up. She’s goading me, and I don’t know why other than she doesn’t trust me, which—considering the circumstances—I suppose is a rather understandable reaction. After all, she’s just watched Polish mobsters get shot up by Russian bratva while a senior leader of the Irish mob had his gun drawn, also watching them.

“Carys, you can guess why I’m here. I still can’t guess why you are. Until you give me an answer to that question and any other ones I have, we’re not going anywhere.”

She pulls and yanks her hands as hard as she can from me. I release them, worried she’s going to end up jabbing her elbow into the door. I’m only letting go because I want to avoid giving her more bruises. She glares at me yet again—or maybe it’s still—as she reaches over and reclines the seat. She crosses her arms and closes her eyes.

You’ve got to be kidding me. Really? This is how she wants to handle it? All right. I recline my seat as well, cross my arms, and close my eyes.

“If I didn’t know better, I would think you just snorted. But that couldn’t possibly be true since you’re ignoring me.”

She says nothing in response to that comment, and I don’t want to fight her any further. At least not right now. This isn’t a battle I’m going to win, and it’s going to be a war of attrition, anyway. I can wait her out because if I lose this early battle with too much of an obvious victory for her, then there’s no chance I’ll even the score.

I keep my eyes open just enough to see what’s going on around us. There’s no way in hell I would ever close my eyes and keep them shut somewhere so exposed. Especially not when we’ve just witnessed a shootout and not when Jacek Nowakowski saw us together. It’s bad enough he saw me. It’s bad enough he saw Carys. The fact we were together will make her a target for a man she doesn’t need to meet.

Then again, maybe she has met him. She was there to observe just like me. She had to have known who she went to watch. Does she know him in person? I look at her, and my blood boils as I take in her bruises yet again for the umpteenth time, but something clicks.

“Jacek did that to you, didn’t he?”

Her face shows no expression, no reaction. It’s completely void of anything. She appears relaxed, and if I didn’t know better, she’d look like a corpse.

“Carys, answer me. I am not joking. I’m not playing around anymore. Did Jacek Nowakowski beat the shite out of you? You better answer me because otherwise I will take you to my cousin’s house. I will drop you off there. I will have them put you under lock and key, and I will go shoot that fecker.”

She finally opens her eyes and turns her head to look at me.

“That would not be a wise choice, Shane. You and I both know that. You won’t touch the second-in-command of the Polish mob. They might not have the power and influence you do, but you were there to observe what’s going on with the Russians. You need to know what they’re up to just as much as I do.”

“I need. You want.”

Her eyes narrow at me. “So you say.”

She has one of the most expressive faces I’ve ever seen when she allows her emotions to show. When she doesn’t, she’s as stoic as anybody in my family—as any syndicate member.My grandfather, uncles, and dad trained me to be this way. Considering the shock I witnessed on Meredith’s face, I doubt she knew someone trained her daughter to be so emotionless.

There’re so many more questions with this woman than there ever are answers. We fall back into silence for the next twenty minutes. Shockingly, there’s no tension between us. It’s actually companionable silence, which is not something I expected. I finally feel like it’s safe for us to go somewhere.

---