Page 50 of Chasing Danger

“Shut up.”

I’d been so busy dealing with the Russians, and Caprice, and Oliver that I couldn’t remember when I last got a decent night’s sleep. Although, I would never admit such a thing. I’d much rather let Eva think that my fatigue was a result of overindulgence. I had a reputation to maintain, after all.

“Ashes!” Oliver’s familiar voice shouted as he ran into the shack.

I cast a glance at Gavriil, who stood in the doorway.

The man merely shrugged. “What. You said keep him safe. You’ve taken out all the enemies. It’s safe now.”

I frowned at him but didn’t argue.

Kneeling by his friend’s side, Oliver pulled the gag from Ashes’s mouth. “Are you okay? You’re not hurt, are you?”

Ashes spit the gag out with such force they nearly bit their own tongue. “What the hell, Oliver? What’s going on?”

“It’s okay,” Oliver tried to reassure them while removing the rest of the ropes. “You’re safe now. Everything’s being handled.”

Ashes tried to immediately jump to their feet, but they were obviously dizzy and stumbled. Oliver caught them before they could fall.

“Okay?” Ashes continued to shout, though they let themself be guided to sit on the mostly untouched couch. “This is not okay. Oliver. Your boyfriend just killed a guy with my soldering iron. Everything is far from okay.”

“There’s an explanation. I swear. It’s just that...” Oliver trailed off, looking pensive for a moment, before he turned to me. “Actually, why did they attack Ashes? My friend isn’t connected to you.”

I retrieved my knives from where they had fallen and checked the blades for damage. “No, but you are, and through you they could control me. Since their plan to kidnap you failed, they went after your friend to try and lure you out.”

“Ah, I see...” Hazel eyes suddenly widened. “But, if that’s true, then what about my family? They’re in just as much danger as Ashes.”

“Yes,” I said, putting my knives back in their proper places. “Which is why we need to move quickly. Come on. Bring your friend. You can explain everything to them in the car.”

CHAPTER 21

Oliver

Ashes came with us,clinging to my hand so tightly that I was losing feeling in my fingers. They had accepted my explanation about D’Angelo and the Mafia surprisingly easily, though I wondered how much of that acceptance was simply shock.

The sun had fully set by the time the car pulled to a stop a few blocks from my house. Everything looked exactly the same as I remembered. None of the houses seemed disturbed, not even my own house, but that didn’t guarantee anything.

Ashes’s place had also looked fine from the outside.

Gavriil was sent out alone to scope out my house and see what was going on. As much as I wanted to just charge in and make sure my family was all right, the incident with Ashes demonstrated how dangerous that could be.

A few nerve-wracking minutes later, Gavriil returned to report that my family seemed fine and even the security that D’Angelo had assigned to guard them hadn’t seen anything suspicious.

If it weren’t for the close call with Ashes, as well as my own attack, I would think we were being paranoid.

“I’m going in on my own.”

“Oliver, no,” D’Angelo immediately argued.

I was already reaching for the door handle. “My family isn’t in immediate danger right now. How do you think it’ll look if you bust into the house, guns blazing?”

D’Angelo sniffed like he was offended, but his hand twitched toward the gun strapped to his hip. “I was planning on being more subtle than that.”

“And what? You’ll just show up and start demanding answers about my father and my family? They don’t know you. They have no reason to tell you anything.”

From the front seat of the car, Eva’s voice was even colder than usual. “We have plenty of ways to convince people to talk.”

“And I’d prefer that you don’t threaten my family.” I had no idea where the confidence to challenge someone that had previously tried to kill me came from. It was like, from the moment I’d been thrown into this strange world of murder and Mafia, some part of my brain had just turned off. The rules of normal life had been thrown out. We were playing a whole new game now, and I was free to do or say anything I wanted.

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