Page 78 of Mob Bride

“Yeah, but I thought Carrie could?—”

“Carys.” He interrupts his brother and is adamant about correcting him.

It’s nice to know he wants that nickname to remain private just between the two of us. It makes me wish his name was longenough to shorten. Maybe I should find out what his middle name is.

“All right, calm your arse down. I thought Carys didn’t like you.”

“We’ve come a long way now, haven’t we?” Shane’s tone has a bite to it.

Now, it’s a third guy. “We’re just trying to understand. That’s all. The last time we heard anything about this, you wanted to intervene. Before that, it was to investigate a little more. Then you’re chasing after her and disappearing into a bedroom with her. Now, you’ve got her at your place, and you’re speaking as though you’re in a relationship together.”

Lord, there’s a lot of them. If only I knew which voice belonged to which.

“You know she wouldn’t be at my house if she and I weren’t. You saw how I reacted to Misha’s call. You saw us holding hands and how I sat with my arm around her in Dillan’s office. There’s something between us, and I think it’s the same as each one of you has with your wife.”

That makes my eyebrows shoot straight up. I’m not sure how I feel about this. Wife? Is that where he thinks this is going? Marriage? Two-point-five kids and a picket fence? I glance toward his front door. There’s no picket fence out there.

Instead, there’s a tall brick wall with wrought-iron gates and spikes on the top all the way around. But this house certainly could accommodate us and be a yuppie dream house. I glance toward the stairs.

Could I picture having a family with him? Could I picture kids running up and down the stairs? It’s actually shockingly easy for me to do just that. I force myself out of my daydream and back to the conversation.

“What can you tell me about the attack? Have you heard anything, Dillan?”

“No.”

“What about you, Sean?”

“I’ve got feelers out all over the place, but nothing’s happening. I’ve checked the taps we have on Bartlomiej and Jacek. We’re not getting anything more than usual out of them. I checked all the emails. I included the secure ones, but there’s still nothing there. Nobody’s claiming any of this.”

“Are you positive it happened?” Shane’s skepticism matches mine.

“As positive as I can be, since the news came from one of Carys’s handlers, and you no longer trust her.”

“Hold on, I’ve got something coming in. Let me read this text really fast.”

I don’t know whose voice that is, so, hopefully, Shane says their name.

“What’s going on, Cor?” That means it’s Cormac.

I wish I knew these voices better by now, but then again, it wouldn’t be an issue if I weren’t eavesdropping.

“I’m getting a text from Marek.”

Marek Nowakowski? He’s Bartlomiej and Jacek’s cousin. He was Tymoteusz’s brother. What the fuck?

“He just said there wasn’t an actual attack, per se, but whoever did it, boxed Bartlomiej in, pulled him from his SUV, and stole the cars from him and his men. Nobody roughed him up, but they left him stranded on the side of the road with some old arse jalopy and dangled the keys in front of Bartlomiej before slashing all four tires. They truly left him stranded with a giant ‘fuck you’ to go along with it.”

“Who was it?” That was Shane, so at least I can follow some of the conversation now.

“Looks like Bartlomiej was doing some deal with the BostonCosa Nostraand didn’t get Salvatore’s permission. Carmine andGabe went up there to take care of it. I expected it to be Maks or Aleks, but my informant tells me it wasCosa Nostra.”

I lean my shoulder against the wall and tilt my head against it as I try to sort through what I’m hearing. A fraction of what Angela said is true. Something happened, and the Poles were the target, but the facts are nothing like what she said. I can’t believe the intel was that wrong that she would fuck up that many details. She was testing me to see if I would contradict her or whether I would find out the truth and bring it back to her.

This line of work is about manipulation all the time, but you don’t expect it from within your own team. The people who keep you safe when your life is on the line. I’m going to have to dig more to figure out what the deal is with work. And the only way to do that is to ask Shane for help because I no longer have those resources I can trust. Even then, I would have always been skeptical about digging into colleagues. I’ve never trusted anybody not in the field with me. They don’t have the same vested interest in the investigation or my safety. Now it’s a kick in the goddamn balls—if I had them—to find out the people who were supposed to have a vested interest in me living don’t, or they’re trying to fuck me over.

And I realize my duplicity is somewhat at fault. However, I don’t think there’s any proof of it. It’s all speculation at this point. They’re testing me, which also would be fine and understandable if it weren’t my life at risk. That’s the kicker for me.

Don’t trust me. Test me. Question me. Whatever.

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