The Boss

by Melissa Schroeder

  She gave him what she hoped was an understanding look. “Help me understand what’s going on.”

  His eyes widened. “You don’t know?”

  She shrugged. “I’m confused on your motives behind all of this. You’ve never played any games like this before.”

  “Yes. You said my life was boring.”

  No, what she had told him was she would die of boredom being married to him. It had nothing to do with the lifestyle of a diplomat. It had to do with the man who now held a gun on her.

  “I was young and stupid.”

  “No, not stupid. Distracted.”

  She frowned, even more confused by the conversation. “You don’t need the money.”

  “What the hell do you know about what I need?” he said, his voice rising. “In all the years we have known each other, you’ve barely paid attention to me.”

  She frowned. “We were lovers. I’m pretty sure I paid attention to you then.”

  He waved that away with his drink. Some of the amber liquid spilled over the edge. It wasn’t good when Simon drank. He could be cruel. Drunk and holding a gun? Definitely dangerous.

  “Only when he wasn’t around.”

  She tried to follow the conversation, but it was difficult. Her need to get Millie far away from Simon warred with her trying to understand just what Simon was talking about. She had to at least play along for a little bit to sidetrack Simon from thinking about Millie. If he forgot about the younger woman, Mac had a chance to save her.

  “He?”

  “That American.” He took another long drink. “What did you see in him, anyway?”

  She blinked. He was talking about getting back at Vic?

  “You aren’t making sense.” Maybe he was drunker than she’d thought.

  “I am making perfect sense, if you’re paying attention. Dammit.”

  His temper was getting the better of him. She knew he had good control over it most of the time, but when it let loose, there was always something broken in his path. The fact he had a gun in his hands did not bode well for her or Millie.

  “Sorry,” she said, using a softer tone. In her head, though, she was trying to figure out just how to get the damned gun out. Any sudden movements would tip him off, and he was too close to Millie. He wouldn’t think twice about using the younger woman as a shield or hurting her for payback.

  “I never understood what you saw in him. What did you see in him?”

  She didn’t know how to answer that without offending him. Not honestly, at least.

  “I knew I could never be your wife.”

  “Bollocks. You could handle being my wife, but it was always about the American. Always him. What was so special about him?” He took another drink. “Your father didn’t understand your fascination with him. He told me I had failed to bring you up to snuff.”

  “What? You discussed me with my father?”

  He nodded. “Why do you think I asked you out in the first place? Your father didn’t like you being in MI6, but he couldn’t do much about it, not without looking like a total bastard. So he looked me up.”

  The pieces all started to fall into place. She had always assumed it had been a chance meeting again. Her bastard of a father had arranged it all.

  “And he told you to ask me out? Did he offer you something in return?”

  “Yes. That’s how I got to go to the embassy in Russia. Oh, don’t look at me like that. I only remembered you from our childhood, and I knew you really weren’t my type. Or I thought you weren’t.”

  She opened her mouth, but he was apparently not paying any attention. He was lost in his own rhetoric—which could be good for her. It gave her time to get closer to Millie.

  “I knew that I needed something to get him out of your life,” Simon said. “I wanted you all for myself, and with him around, you would never see what a great couple we could be. We were at one time, remember?”

  They hadn’t been. She had used him, for sex and information and not much else. She had thought he had regarded her the same way, until the proposal.

  “I’m sorry, but I thought you were married.”

  He sighed and took another healthy sip of alcohol. “She’s divorcing me.”

  “Oh, Simon, I’m sorry.”

  He waved his drink around. “No. We weren’t meant to be. That is, she and I. We are meant to be.”

  Okay, he was as mad as the hatter. What was she going to do? She needed to move him away from Millie and put herself between him and Millie. It was the only solution.

  “I just don’t understand why, Simon. All the elaborate planning, people who were hurt… It is a little out of character for you.”

  “Yes. See, you understand. I wanted you to see I was just as exciting as that American.”

  He had planned all of this to get her back. Yep, he was definitely mental. No sane man would have spent all this time organizing an elaborate plan like this just to get a woman. And it had nothing to do with love, she knew that. It was his ego that was talking. She had turned him down, and Simon wasn’t accustomed to being rejected.

  She had to get that bloody gun away from him. Worse, his slurring of words was getting worse. It was easy to see how much the alcohol was affecting him. He was a damned mean drunk, but even inebriated, there was always a chance he could shoot either her or Millie.

  “Why don’t we sit down, and you explain everything to me?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “You’re up to something. You’re always up to something. So clever. That’s what I told Felicity.”

  Oh, great. Now his soon-to-be ex would want her dead. Nothing like throwing comments about a former lover to your wife.

  “I’m not that smart. It took me a long time to figure out it was you behind everything. Why don’t you tell me how you did it?”

  She didn’t wait for him. She walked over to the chair next to the sofa.

  He hesitated, but after glancing at Millie, who was still unconscious, he followed her. He didn’t sit, though. He paced like a bloody maniac.

  “I didn’t mean for people to get hurt.”

  “Of course you didn’t. You’re a good man.”

  He nodded. “We’ve kept tabs on Walter George for years. He has always had a dodgy record. You know he couldn’t make a star because of his connections to warlords. So we watched him. I watched him. When he hired the wunderkind here, I knew he was up to something.”

  “The Russians.”

  “Yes. They so desperately want to be taken seriously again. The only way to do that, especially to the Americans, is be a threat to their safety. And to do that, they have to hack into the info.”

  “But Walter George didn’t do that.”

  “No, but he had the hacker.”

  “So you set up the buy of Millie?”

  “No. That was already in motion. I have a very good…friend at the NSA.”

  Another lover. How did this man have time to plot nefarious deeds with all the shagging he did? And he had the nerve to say they were meant to be when he had been shagging an agent.

  “She helped?”

  “She tipped me off that they’d picked up on something. She knew they wouldn’t be able to get congressional approval fast enough, so she asked me for suggestions. That is where you came in.”

  “Let me guess. You knew about Michael’s need for money. Were you the one who set him up with the Russians?”

  “Indeed. He’s a right bastard. Michael would sell his own mother to feed his habits. Once he’d taken the job, and my friend came to me, I suggested your firm be hired.”

  “And with that, you got me tangled up in this business.”

  “As soon as I heard you’d been hired, I knew it would all work out.”

  “It bloody didn’t work out, Simon. A lot of people died. And for what?”

  “For you to understand that we are the same.”

  She blinked. “What?”

  “You said we were too different to be married. I wanted to prov
e you wrong. I think I did a fine job of it. You were always the clever one. You could deal with any situation, and you thought yourself too smart for me. What was it you said to me? Oh, yes. I didn’t like to get my hands dirty. I was a diplomat who didn’t understand your life and never would. But see, I do. I really tried to understand everything.”

  Bloody hell. The man had lost it.

  “So, the FBI set up…General Blake—”

  “I had nothing to do with Blake. That was George who killed him.”

  “But you killed George.”

  He shrugged, as if it wasn’t that big of a thing. “Yes. He was a means to an end. He was also a loose end. I couldn’t have him going to the media. He was a right bastard, but he was starting to feel guilty. Or so he said. I think it was more that he felt the noose tighten around his neck. And then there was Dimitri.”

  “Dimitri?”

  “One of the Russians I hired to follow you and that man. He was in charge of the mission, and he failed. He had to die.”

  She had only known a few true psychopaths in her life, but none of them compared to the man standing in front of her. The idea that she had let him touch her, had slept with him…it made her sick to her stomach.

  Swallowing hard, she tried to push away those thoughts. “You did everything to cut me off from help. And you were the ones who told the FBI about the initial kidnapping plot. If I were caught up in the mess, the NSA would deny everything.”

  “Yes. I thought you might call me for help.”

  Again, she had to wrap her mind around his comments. “You set me up to possibly be arrested and deported just so I might call you?”

  He stopped pacing and pinned her with a glacial stare. “I know it seems a little extreme, but you understand now, don’t you?”

  Then, he smiled. It wasn’t a normal smile—because how could anything be normal about this nut? It was something out of a Stephen King novel—like right before the killer lost all sense of reality.

  “You do realize what a complete cock up you devised, right?”

  His insane smile faded. “What?”

  “Vic and I were on the outs. We were broken up and probably would have stayed that way. Your bloody plan brought us back together. I hadn’t even spoken to him in six months.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You would have never come back to me. I needed to prove myself to you. Now you can understand why we should get married.”

  She shook her head. “No. I would never marry you, for one important reason.”

  “What? What is the reason?” he screamed.

  “I don’t trust you, Simon.”

  He blinked. “What?”

  The look of utter confusion on his face should have been amusing, but it was not. Not in this situation. He didn’t know her at all. If he did, he would have understood there was no way she could allow all these people to die for a game he had devised.

  “I don’t trust you. I never have. I never will.”

  “But you slept with me.”

  She shrugged. “Sleeping with a person has nothing to do with trust.”

  “And you trust this American? He’s betrayed you, again and again.”

  That was putting it over the top. She and Vic had used each other from time to time before they became business partners. Those in the spy business understood that.

  “He never did anything I didn’t know about.”

  “Trust.” He spat the word, as if it were the worst thing in the world. “What the bloody hell does trust have to do with marriage?”

  “I guess you can ask Felicity about that.”

  His eyes bugged out, and his face flushed. With a scream, he threw the glass against the stone hearth, shattering it into thousands of shards.

  Okay, maybe she shouldn’t have mentioned the wife.

  “Felicity never understood the connection you and I have.”

  “We have no connection, Simon. We slept together now and again.”

  “You know your father wanted us together.”

  “My father could teach Attila the Hun and Hitler how to control people. That is not helping your case.”

  He scowled at her. “I don’t understand how you are not agreeing with me.”

  It was time to make a decision. His anger was up and down as he started to lose his grip with reality. Millie was in her line of sight. She was waking up, and there was a good chance Simon would hurt her. She could rush him, but she had to make one more attempt at reason.

  “I just don’t think I could ever be the wife of a diplomat.”

  “I think your skills would help me.”

  “How so?”

  “You could definitely get information that would help my career.”

  “Excuse me.”

  “You know, by sleeping with people. It’s what you do.”

  Anger flashed through her as she stood. The smarmy bastard actually thought he could use her that way?

  “Did you just imply I am a whore?”

  He apparently didn’t realize he’d pissed her off until this moment. Her approach had him taking a step back. But before she could act, she had a little help from Millie.

  “Mac?” Millie asked. When Simon turned in her direction, Mac knew it was probably her last chance. She hurled herself toward Simon, catching him by surprise and throwing him off-balance. They tumbled to the ground together, Mac’s hip hitting the side of the massive coffee table. Simon grunted when she fell on top of him. His hand fell hard against the wooden floor, causing him to release the gun. They both scrambled for it, fighting each other to reach it first. She pulled her elbow up and hit him in the chin to gain an advantage. Simon grabbed hold of her hair and yanked her back, the bastard.

  He reached the weapon first, but she wasn’t willing to give up the fight. Mac wrapped her hand around his fist as he tried to point the gun toward Millie. She was winning the fight, pulling it back toward her when it went off. Icy-hot pain hit her in the shoulder.

  “You bastard,” she muttered.

  Simon gasped at his own actions but didn’t relinquish the gun.

  “Look what you made me do, you bitch.”

  He was just about to hit her on the head with the butt of the gun when the front door of the cabin burst open.

  …

  The moment Vic heard the gunshot, his fucking heart stopped beating. The idea it might be Mac, that he might have lost her forever…he didn’t want to think about it.

  He didn’t know how he made it up to the front of the cabin. He just knew he was there and had kicked the door down. The scene in front of him had his blood heating. Thankfully, his brother and Rock had taken care of the two guards at the front entrance. He had barely taken notice of them. He kicked open the door. Simon held a gun up, as if to strike Mac again.

  “You fucking bastard,” Vic growled, as he charged. Simon tried to stand and run, apparently ignoring the fact he was holding a gun.

  Vic caught up to him in two strides and tackled him. They rolled over the floor until Vic was on top of him. He got ahold of Simon’s gun and tossed it aside. He grabbed the bastard by the collar and punched him. And he didn’t stop. He just pummeled the son of a bitch until Jay stopped him.

  “Vic, Mac’s shot.”

  He looked over his shoulder and saw her lying on the floor. Rock was holding onto her shoulder, and Millie was on the phone. He punched Simon one last time, but the man barely noticed, because he was unconscious. Vic tossed him aside and hurried to her. He pushed Rock out of the way and grabbed the towel.

  She was so damned still, and there was so much blood. “Mac. Dammit, wake up.”

  For a long moment, she didn’t respond. His heart almost stopped for the second time in less than five minutes. Her eyes fluttered, and relief poured through him.

  “Vic?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

  “Yeah, babe. I’m here. You’re going to be okay.”

  She licked her lips and looked up at him with pain in her eyes. “I’m sorry
.”

  “You should be.”

  Someone cleared his throat. He was sure it was Rock.

  “I mean, it’s not your fault.”

  “It is. He did this because of me. All of it. That smarmy slag.”

  He smiled. “There’s my woman.”

  “I’m so sorry about everything.” Tears filled her eyes and spilled over on her cheeks. “But I fixed it.”

  “You did, and we will work it all out.”

  She nodded, as her eyes slid closed again.

  “Don’t fade on me, dammit.”

  Her eyelids fluttered again, and she lifted her hand. When she placed it against his cheek, he felt something damp. He realized it was her blood.

  “I love you, you know?”

  Joy and fear twisted in his gut. “Yeah, I know.”

  She smiled as she dropped her hand, then it faded as she passed out.

  “Mac. MacKenzie Maria Donovan.”

  No answer. He felt for a pulse. He found it easily. It wasn’t strong, but it was definitely there. He heard sirens in the distance and just prayed help got there in time.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Trust is more important than love and happiness, because without it, you can’t achieve the other two.

  —Mac Donovan

  Blinding pain and the smell of antiseptic greeted Mac when she woke up. There was a siren blaring and lots of talking and beeping.

  “Hey, there you are, sweetie. Can you tell me your name?” asked someone. She blinked and tried to focus.

  “Her name is Mac. I told you that already,” Vic shouted.

  “He’s right. Mac. MacKenzie.”

  “That’s good. MacKenzie, we are taking you to the hospital. Can you tell me what happened?”

  “I told you what happened.”

  “Sir, if you cannot shut up and behave, I will kick you out of this ambulance.”

  “Vic, wait, where’s Simon?” she asked, as she sat up. She instantly regretted it. Her head started to spin, and pain in her shoulder intensified and spread.

  “Whoa, there, Ms. MacKenzie,” the EMT said. “You need to take it easy.”

  The woman eased her back down, but Mac couldn’t let it go. Not now. If Simon got away, she would never forgive herself.