Page 18 of Walking Red Flag

They were dangerous men.

They protected their own, too.

If Asher became a problem, one or the other would take care of it.

I just hoped that Asher was smart enough to realize that and not make contact.

“I’m fine,” I admitted. “I should’ve gone with my original gut instinct and stayed away from him. Everyone hated him, even your husband. I went against my gut instinct and stayed when I should’ve left.”

“So does that mean I can set you up with the man from the police department I’ve been telling you about?” She batted her eyelashes at me.

I shook my head. “You know this life that Shasha and Dima lead isn’t really conducive with that occupation. I know that you bury your head in the sand and all, but you have to realize how hard it is for us to not share everything with you. Auden is a great guy, but we’d never put y’all into that kind of position. And I definitely don’t want to be doing it with a man that I’m supposed to share everything with.”

She frowned. “But Nastya does it with her husband.”

I thought about Nastya’s husband, Haze Hopkins. He was a detective for the Fort Worth Police Department.

I opened my mouth to tell her why it worked, then closed it.

I knew that Maven would hold our confidences, but I didn’t want her to have to.

Haze was different.

He was burned out on life as an officer.

He no longer believed in the system.

Years before he’d met Nastya, he’d started to go a little darker and darker until he met her.

After Nastya, all sense of duty he felt toward his oath to the citizens had vanished.

Everything that the system had done to her, paired with her almost dying and the police doing nothing, solidified his belief that there had to be something more done.

So, he’d joined forces with my brother. My brother who righted wrongs and made no apologies for how he had to do it.

Haze was an inside man and fed Shasha any information that he needed. He also kept his ear to the ground for any rumblings on Shasha’s side that might make him a target of police attention.

Meanwhile, Haze’s help allowed Shasha to do his job better.

His job as the Pakhan of the Russian Bratva.

“Nastya and Haze have a relationship that I would never be able to balance,” I admitted. “I’m sorry, Maven, but I’m just not interested in sharing that kind of life with a police officer.”

Maven sighed right before her phone buzzed on the counter between us.

“Duty calls.” She stood up. “Send me the designs when you get them. I’m excited that you’re finally getting this place exactly how you want it. Oh, and good luck with your interview today.”

I grimaced.

I was meeting with the carpenter at eleven and a possible new hire at eleven-forty-five.

Hopefully the two didn’t overlap.

I tried to make the interview appointment for earlier, but the woman coming in had said that she couldn’t get there any earlier. Which didn’t bode well for me, but I chose not to doom the interview before it’d actually happened.

“Ugh,” I grumbled. “I actually forgot about the interview.”

“I was going to suggest you talk to a girl I met recently. I’ll send her your info. She’s a good kid. Her daddy says she needs a job, and he’s pretty particular about where, because she’s sort of high-profile.” She looked back at my bodyguard—Bogdan, one of my brother’s men—and said, “She has her own bodyguards.”