Page 99 of Forced Proximity
His voice went soft as he said, “No.”
His absolute sureness in that single word had me saying, “As long as it doesn’t ever hurt or touch you, then yes. A thousand times yes. But I will not trade him for you. I’m not willing to do that.”
He growled. “That’s good to know.”
I picked up my coffee and went to the sink to dump some of it out so I could get my copious amounts of cream in it before saying, “I’ll always choose you, Finnian.”
He grumbled something under his breath before he said, “I wish I wasn’t hours away from you right now.”
I closed the fridge and filled my coffee up with as much creamer as I could get into it before replacing it and saying, “Finnian?”
“Yeah?”
I took a hesitant sip and said, “Where’s all your Christmas stuff?”
Twenty-One
OMG guys, that’s not what I said.
—Apollo to Doc
APOLLO
“Hello?”
I switched lanes, getting behind a slow person doing at least twenty under the speed limit before the person on the other end deigned to speak.
“I hear you’re getting new identities for a few friends.”
I paused. “What’s it to you, Semyonov?”
Of course, I knew it was him. There were only so many people who had this number.
“Can you pull out one more?” he asked.
I flicked on my blinker and pulled off at the next exit that would lead me to my home.
“Who?” I asked hesitantly.
“Another of The Seven,” Sascha Semyonov, the leader of the bratva, stated. “Campbell Reid.”
“How’d you know I was getting out Romeo?”
“I’ve kept tabs on Romeo since he’s a member of The Seven,” he murmured. “Plus, nothing happens in my town without me knowing it. You used one of my favorite forgers for his papers.”
I sighed. “So much for confidentiality.”
“He’s mine,” he admitted. “Will you get Campbell out?”
“Why should I?” I asked. “You have a computer guru. Why can’t you?”
“Because they watch me too closely as it is,” he said. “They’re going to put a lot of eyes on me the moment that you break Romeo out anyway, since he was a known associate of mine.”
I’d found that out during my research.
I had let Dru know that her brother was into organized crime, and that was likely the reason that the government threw the book at Romeo, and not because he’d nearly killed a man in a crime of passion.
“What’s Campbell in for?” I asked.
