“Hold on. Just tell me what they told you.”
Her voice rises. “They threatened my dad and my siblings. And Nat, Declan. They threatened Nat. I can’t risk their safety. And I won’t go through something like that again.”
She stops to take a breath. “So I’m going to take you up on that promise you made that you’d let me leave if I asked you to.”
The floor drops out from under me. My entire body goes cold. When I speak, my voice is rough with pain. “Just like that?”
“It’s like that Sun Tzu quote you told me when you found me watching TV after you were gone for three days. ‘The wise warrior avoids the battle.’ I’m gonna sit this whole battle out.”
She turns her head and looks me square in the eye. Looks at me with piercing intensity.
My heart skips a beat. The cold in my body thaws, then turns boiling.
That wasn’t the quote I told her. I know it. She knows it, too.
She’s trying to tell me something.
But I need more information to understand what it is. I need to ask her more questions.
“Where will you go?”
“To see Nat first. After that, I’ll go back home to Tahoe.” A flicker of laughter shines in her eyes, but her face remains impassive. “It’s time for me to settle down with a real boyfriend, not one of you mafia types. Someone a little more boring.”
Boyfriend? Boring? She hates both those words. What the bloody hell is going on?
She sees my confusion. Moving casually, she encircles her right wrist with the thumb and index fingers of her left hand. The other three fingers she spreads out like a fan.
I recognize the sign instantly. It’s a tactical signal members of the military use to communicate silently with each other.
She’s making the sign for enemy.
When my gaze flashes up to meet hers, she tugs on her left earlobe.
I put it together: an enemy is listening.
Then I remember Grayson telling me that the deputy director was impressed with her, and it all clicks.
That bloody cunt tried to make my woman turn on me.
But he doesn’t know my lion like I do. He doesn’t know how much she hates to be told what to do. How strong or fearless she is. How impossible it is to make her bend to your will.
She only bends willingly. Even then, she’s still holding a sword.
Adrenaline floods my veins. My clever, clever girl. I want to laugh out loud, but that urge is cancelled by the rage I feel when I think of what I’m going to do to that son of a bitch.
Only, I have to be careful. I have to assume he’s got ears everywhere. Maybe eyes, too. Kieran did a full security sweep before we moved in, but I don’t know if he’s been doing them every day, as he should. Over the past few days, I haven’t exactly been on top of my game.
The only thing I could think of was Sloane.
Playing along, I say solemnly, “If that’s what you really want.”
When she exhales a slow, relieved breath, I know she can tell I understood her. She says, “It is.”
“All right. I’ll make the arrangements.”
I stand, lean down and kiss her cheek, then whisper gruffly into her ear, “I adore you.”
I leave the room without looking back. I go into my office, lock the door, and remove a small radiofrequency detector from a bottom drawer in my desk. I take my time sweeping the room for bugs. When I’m satisfied the space is clear, I take my cell phone from my pocket and dial a number I’ve memorized.
When the line is answered, I say, “Hello, Kazimir. This is Declan. I have a proposition for you.”
39
Sloane
Almost a day passes before I see Declan again.
In the meantime, I sleep. I shower. I dress. I eat the food Kieran delivers. We don’t speak to each other, I simply open the door to his knock and watch as he sets the tray on the coffee table. He leaves without meeting my eyes.
I have no idea what’s happening, except that Declan is taking care of whatever needs to be taken care of. I know the message I was trying to transmit was received loud and clear.
If it wasn’t, he never would’ve agreed to let me go so quickly. There would have been a fight, long and loud.
Because he’s as stubborn as I am, the beautiful bastard.
On the morning of the second day, he appears in the doorway to the bedroom after a light knock. Dressed in his customary black Armani suit, he looks somber and so handsome it hurts.
“The flight to New York leaves in ninety minutes. We need to leave here within fifteen.”
“I’m ready. I packed a bag. I hope it’s all right that I’m taking some of the clothes you bought me. I left all the jewelry.”
His eyes flash. They flash again when I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear and the diamond tennis bracelet he gave me sparkles on my wrist. I smile and pull the sleeve of my sweater down to hide it.
“It’s fine,” he says, his voice tranquil. “Shall we go?”
“Let’s.”
I don’t know who we’re playing this polite pantomime for, or if the black-haired man telling me he’d know if I told Declan about our conversation was only a hollow threat. But every game has its rules. I’m sure the spy game has plenty that involve covert surveillance. Better to play the part to a T than be caught unprepared.
We take the helicopter to the private terminal at the airport. Declan’s jet waits on the tarmac, the engines already running. He whisks me from one to the other with emotionless efficiency, like he’s delivering a package for UPS.
At the bottom of the airstairs of his jet, he kisses me formally on both cheeks.
“Goodbye, Sloane.”
He turns and walks away without a glance.
Pretending his cool demeanor doesn’t hurt, even though it’s a ruse, I trudge up the airstairs and take a seat in one of the big captain’s chairs in front near the galley. On the table between the chairs is a book.
The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran. One of the pages is dog-eared. When I turn to it, a single passage is highlighted.
“Love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.”
My throat constricted, I whisper, “Me, too, gangster. Me, too.”
The cabin door closes. The plane takes off. I buckle my lap belt, close my eyes, and do box breathing until I realize that stupid shit never works.
Then I raid the booze cabinet in the galley and get drunk on a five-hundred-dollar bottle of champagne, because I miss him already.
40
Nat
Kage refused to let me go to LaGuardia to pick up Sloane. He wouldn’t go, either. He said it was too dangerous. Said everything was too volatile right now, and until it all settled down, I wasn’t leaving his sight.
I put up a fight, of course. She’s my best friend, I said. She needs me.
He said the only thing Sloane needs is a container big enough to keep all the broken hearts she collects.
Then I realized it could be a trap. Declan has already killed off every other mafia boss Stateside over the last few weeks. Drawing Kage out into the open would be the perfect way to get the last one standing.
I only agreed not to go because of that. Because the thought of losing Kage is as terrifying to me as the thought of losing Sloane.