by Tami Lund
But she wasn’t buying it. Not when it came to her, anyway. He could at least give her something, anything to indicate he still—what? Cared? What did she honestly expect from the man?
It wasn’t so much an expectation as a want. A desire.
She wanted him. All of him. She didn’t want it to be pretend anymore.
And she’d thought staying and helping him with this highly dangerous and entirely illegal operation would somehow prove that to him.
Her plan didn’t appear to be working, and now she was stuck here with a bunch of former—or maybe not—criminals, and she was about to help them conduct yet another crime.
What the hell was she doing here?
“You’re safe,” he whispered from behind her.
Frankie finished his story and beckoned Marco forward, and he stepped around Hillary to tell the group about how Davit’s father, the head of the Armenian mob, had kidnapped Shannon from her parents’ home and held her prisoner until she agreed to become his wife.
But before they were wed, the elder Grigoryan died, and Davit forced Shannon into his employ. She became his sex slave, and he used her to help him overthrow his enemies. Somewhere along the way, he’d become obsessed with her.
Hillary stepped out of the shadows. “Classic signs of an obsessive personality,” she confirmed.
Marco nodded. “He wanted to be his father, but of course, as he was second-born, his brother Tigran was the one to take over when their father died.”
“He knew he couldn’t overthrow his brother—and realistically, his father before that—but he knew he could control Shannon,” Hillary said.
“Except she proved him wrong by escaping,” Marco added. “I kept tabs on him afterward, and I can tell you that he’s pretty much spent every waking moment searching for her.”
“And he found her, a year later.”
Marco nodded again. “She felt she had no choice, so she was going to go back to him—”
“In order to protect Leo, Marco’s best friend from high school,” Frankie called out.
“Yeah,” Marco agreed, “he threatened to kill Leo if Shannon didn’t come back to him. She agreed, but then I helped her escape that time, and she and Leo are now living outside the United States, somewhere Davit can’t get to them. And he’s obviously still pissed about losing her.”
“We all know what happened next,” Hillary said, flapping her hand helplessly. She wanted to hug Marco, but this was obviously not the time and place. Not to mention, she was no longer confident he’d be receptive to her advances.
“Well, today, he approached Hillary, and gave her a message. For me,” Marco said, nodding at her.
She paused, considering. Did she repeat the man’s exact words? Or just be blunt like she was with Marco?
Tell him I’m coming for him. Tell him I’m not through yet. Tell him if I can’t have Shannon, he can’t live. Got it?
She cleared her throat and wished she still had her glass of wine. “He told me if he couldn’t have Shannon, then Marco couldn’t live.”
Conversation erupted around the table, most of it centered around one thing: that bastard. He can’t get away with this.
For a bunch of stone-cold killers, they were certainly loyal to their own. Hell, Marco wasn’t even part of their mafia, but because his uncle was, he was considered family, so it would seem.
And then they all began to discuss the various ways they would kill Davit before he got to Marco, and Hillary kept interrupting, warning them that this or that idea wouldn’t work. Not on someone as obsessed, as calculated as Davit.
She was loathe to admit it—in fact, she was deliberately not suggesting it—but the best way to lure out Davit was to use Marco as bait. Either Marco or Shannon, and since the latter was tucked away over in northern England, it had to be Marco.
But Hillary wasn’t willing to take that chance. Her heart refused to even consider it.
There was a pounding on the front door, and suddenly there was a gun in every hand.
Where the hell had Marco been hiding a gun?
Marco moved to stand between her and the door, and then Frankie nodded and two men stood and strode over to unlock the deadbolt.
“I come in peace. I am unarmed,” came a heavily accented voice Hillary did not recognize.
Marco tensed, his gun held at shoulder level, aimed at the door. Frankie stepped up so he could see who was calling, surprise registering on his face. He motioned to one of the men to open the door, and he patted down the newcomer before nodding and stepping to the side.
“Tigran,” Frankie said. “This is…unexpected.”
“May I enter?”
“You may,” Frankie said. “Please pay no mind to all the guns.”
“Tigran?” Hillary whispered. “As in Davit’s brother? What’s he doing here?”
“No fucking clue,” Marco said, not breaking stance, his entire focus on the man who walked into the room, hesitant yet full of confidence.
Whoa. Hillary blinked rapidly. This was Davit’s brother? Sure, looks weren’t everything, but Davit certainly had his fair share of smacks from the ugly stick.
Tigran, on the other hand, was nearly as handsome as Marco, except possibly in a less aggressive way, which was interesting. Wasn’t he the head of the local Armenian mob?
That perfectly manicured shadow on his jaw and those shimmering, hazel eyes. That patriarchal nose and sharp cheekbones. All that thick, dark hair, and that was before her gaze tracked south, to admire how very well he filled out a custom-designed suit.
She finally tore her gaze away to realize Marco’s attention had shifted too, and he was now glaring at her. Sheepishly, she cleared her throat.
“Why are you here?” Frankie asked.
Tigran’s gaze swept the room, stuttering when he came to Hillary, moving away and then bouncing back again until Marco stepped in front of her, blocking his view. That’s when Tigran’s eyes widened, and was that relief she saw in them?
“My brother,” he said.
“Yeah, he’s not exactly our favorite person right now,” Frankie said.
“I understand,” Tigran said with a nod. “My condolences on your loss. That is why I am here.”
“You’ve given your condolences, now you can go. We are having a meeting.”
“A meeting, no doubt, to plan my brother’s demise.”
Frankie didn’t say anything. The silence hung in the air for long seconds.
“I understand your frustration and pain,” Tigran said.
“I don’t think you do,” Frankie replied.
“He killed our father.”
Hillary gasped and clapped her hand over her mouth. Holy crap! Davit killed his own father?
No one’s stance relaxed.
“What makes you say that?” Frankie asked.
Tigran raised his hands, palms facing out. “You’ve already checked me. I am not armed, and I came alone. This is a difficult story for me to tell. Perhaps you could be hospitable and offer me a drink?”
Frankie glanced over his shoulder and arched his brow at Marco, clearly leaving the decision to him. Marco gritted his teeth for a few moments before finally lowering his gun and biting out, “What do you want?”
“I suppose you do not have Armenian wine, so some of your Italian red will be fine. A large pour, please.”
Marco turned away, snagging Hillary’s arm and practically dragging her along with him. When he stepped behind the bar, she shook him off.
“What was that for? You don’t need me to pour a glass of wine.”
“I need you in my sight at all times. Especially while that guy is around.”
“That guy isn’t the one you’re after.”
He twisted the cork out of a bottle of Chianti and filled the glass to the rim, sloshing a fair amount onto the wooden surface in his obvious agitation.
“What is it, Marco?”
“Nothing,” he muttered, and he stormed back to the main dining room, t
his time without dragging her along. Probably hoped she’d stay back here, out of sight.
Not a chance.
Chapter Sixteen
The fucking head of the Armenian mafia.
The brother of the man who killed Marco’s parents.
And he was exactly the sort of man Hillary had been trying to turn Marco into. Which she’d obviously failed miserably. Because he could never be as suave, as polished as Tigran fucking Grigoryan.
If he needed a sign that they weren’t meant to be together, he’d most definitely found it.
It was entirely possible he was looking for an excuse to be pissed off at her, but whatever. It was working.
He returned to the main room without making sure she came along—oh look, another sign her training hadn’t worked.
He strode forward and handed Tigran his glass, confident that nothing would happen to him since there were at least two dozen guns pointed at the guy at the moment.
Tigran accepted the offering graciously, which pissed Marco off because Hillary probably noticed, was no doubt thinking, see, here’s a man I don’t have to train to be a decent guy.
Son of a bitch, he needed to get out of his own head and focus on the task at hand. Find out why the hell Tigran was here, and then go find the man’s brother and kill him. Simple, straightforward.
Not like his relationship—or lack thereof—with Hillary.
Focus.
Finally finding his center, Marco stood slightly behind Frankie, at parade rest.
“I will not apologize for my father’s choices,” Tigran started out. “To be honest, I did not realize he had kidnapped Shannon until well after she’d been set free and had moved into his bedroom, was planning their wedding.”
He sipped at his wine, lifting it in salute to Marco. “Excellent choice, thank you.”
Man, Marco really hated this guy’s manners.
“That was when I became aware of my brother’s obsession with her. As I was familiar with Davit’s…volatile nature, it worried me, the way he watched her, had begun spending far more time at our father’s house than he had in years.
“I tried to divert his attention by throwing other women at him. But all he did was use them and toss them to the side and refocus his attentions on Shannon and her relationship with our father.”
Another sip of wine. Get on with it, man.
“When our father died, Davit was out of town, in Vegas, actually. Because of that, it initially did not occur to me that he might be responsible.”
“But you knew it was not a simple heart attack,” Frankie said.
Tigran nodded. “I did. Or at least, I suspected as much. He was in excellent health. Cholesterol, glucose, blood pressure, none of it was an issue. Although yes, there was stress from being the Armenian don. And his bitter past with you all.”
“Tigran’s daddy’s form of income was drugs,” Frankie said. “Which Gino didn’t appreciate. For all his other faults, Gino had a hard stop when it came to slinging cocaine and heroin.”
“I do not blame him,” Tigran said. “It’s a messy business. Requires far more brute oversight than I am willing to give. Once my father died, I shut down that business and focused on…other things.”
He sipped his wine and Marco waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t.
“So yes,” Tigran continued, “I suspected his death was not from natural causes. I quietly had an autopsy done before he was laid to rest. I didn’t tell anyone about it. And as it turned out, I was right. He was poisoned.”
This pause, Marco assumed, was for effect. Several people around the room nodded knowingly, and most had lowered their guns, including Frankie and Marco. But Marco still had a firm grip on his, and he was ready should Tigran make any wrong moves.
“I spent a very long time determined that it was one of you,” Tigran admitted. “Which is why I did not rein in my brother when he was trying to take over your cousin’s club.” He tipped his head at Marco, who scowled in return.
“When Shannon disappeared three years ago, Davit went a little crazy. I knew he was obsessed with my father’s relationship with the woman, but I did not realize how truly fixated he really was.
“The day he figured out she was gone—which, coincidentally, was the day all those nasty rumors about us lying about Nina Sarvilli coming back into town surfaced—he showed up at my house and accused me of taking her. Which was ridiculous, of course. She was a charming woman but not at all my type. Not to mention, I’ve no interest in sleeping with the woman. Not the least of which was because she had slept with both my father and brother.”
He actually shuddered. If the guy was acting, he was damn good at it. Most of the room was hanging on his every word.
“While he stood in my living room ranting, he was so worked up that he said some things I don’t think he even realized he was saying. Things that led me to suspect—”
He sipped at his damn wine again.
“I began to fear he would do something terrible in his quest to find Shannon. At the same time, I also began to wonder about my father’s death, again. I had found nothing to lead me to believe any of you lot had done it, and at the time, I had come to the conclusion that it must have been one of my father’s associates in the drug trade. It seemed a logical conclusion.”
“Do you have proof it was your brother?” Frankie asked. “Or are you assuming based on the way he went nutso over Shannon?”
“I found proof. Just today, as a matter of fact. It’s the reason I am here. Oh, and to warn you.”
“Warn us of what?” Marco asked at the same time Frankie said, “What’s your proof?”
Tigran sipped his damn wine again. He was the king of anticipatory pauses.
“When I found out about the unfortunate situation with your parents,” he said, nodding at Marco, “I went to my brother’s house to check on him. I was hoping he would be there so that he could laugh at me and tell me he had nothing to do with it.
“He was not home when I arrived. I called and texted and even emailed him, and I’ve not been able to locate him all this time. I happen to be…friendly with someone at the police department, who called me earlier today to inform me that he’d done his own investigation at my behest, and he did not believe the car accident was an accident at all. He believes someone ran your parents’ vehicle off the road.”
It was one thing for Marco to believe it himself; when a third party said it point blank, well, it took everything in him to remain upright when what he really wanted was to double over, drop to the floor and curl into a ball, and maybe even have a good cry.
“Between that phone call and my brother’s disappearance, it seemed pretty obvious what had happened. I went back to his house this morning, which was once my parents’ home and the house I grew up in, so naturally I knew exactly how to sneak in and out.
“I slipped inside and began searching the rooms. I honestly had no idea what I was looking for, beyond substantial enough proof that would give me the power to ensure Davit was taken care of appropriately.”
He was talking about killing his own brother. Marco glanced at Hillary out of the corner of his eye. She stood by the entrance to the bar, staring at Tigran, her mouth slightly ajar. She certainly didn’t look smitten anymore.
Of course, Marco had told her earlier that he, too, was planning to kill Davit, so he probably ought not feel so smug right now.
“I found a recipe,” Tigran said. “Well, a piece of paper that looked like a recipe. In reality, it was directions as to how to discreetly poison someone. And one of the suggested poisons was what was discovered in my father’s body.”
Holy shit. That had to have been a bitter pill to swallow. Like Marco had just experienced, it was one thing to feel it in his gut and entirely another to have evidence of his suspicions.
“What about the warning?” Hillary said into the silence that had descended. “You said you also came here to warn us about something.”
“Oh, of cour
se,” Tigran said. “I also found a handwritten note, detailing his plans to kill this young man.” He nodded at Marco.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Hillary blurted.
The entire room shifted their focus to her.
She shook her head. “Davit is clearly a psychopath. Someone of that nature would not leave a note detailing his plans. It doesn’t fit. Psychopaths are impulsive, have no guilt, but they don’t want to be caught.”
Tigran frowned. “I suppose it is strange that he would write all that down and leave it lying on the dining room table. Almost like he was setting me up.”
Every occupant of the room glanced at the person next to him, as an uneasiness fell over them like a blanket. Tigran glanced down at himself. Probably wished he’d kept a gun on his person. Or maybe he did have one, concealed somewhere that Frankie’s guy hadn’t checked.
Marco lurched forward, raised his gun, and flicked off the safety.
Tigran’s eyes widened, and he lifted his arms into the air.
Crash!
Marco turned sharply to the left and watched a bottle fly through the shattered window next to the main entrance. The bottle exploded against the floor and a scent that felt like it was burning the hair in his nose filled his nostrils a scant moment before flames burst to life in the middle of the restaurant.
“It’s a fucking Molotov cocktail,” Frankie yelled. “Everybody out! Kitchen entrance! Go! Marco, get the fire extinguisher!”
Marco was already rushing across the room to Hillary, who had ducked into the bar area.
“Grab the extinguisher behind the bar,” he shouted once he saw that she was uninjured and mostly unshaken.
She immediately bolted to do his bidding, and he glanced out into the main room to see how big the fire was. Disregarding Frankie’s command to head to the kitchen, Tigran ran out the front door, and a scant moment later, there was a popping noise.
Gunfire.
Marco lurched forward, running toward the entrance.
“Marco, no!” That was a high-pitched voice, so he assumed it was Hillary, but he didn’t have time to reassure her now; he had to check on Tigran, see if he’d been hit.
