by Katee Robert
“Oh God.”
“You like that?”
“Yes.” She pulled his head back down to her other breast, and he gave it the same treatment. She was so close, she was quaking around him, but she hadn’t reached the point of no return yet.
He hitched her legs higher and wider and was rewarded with a curse. Aiden bore down, fighting off his own orgasm in pursuit of hers. He reached between her legs and circled her clit, and that was all it took to send her over the edge. Charlie came with a sweet cry that had him seeking out her mouth in a devastating kiss. She clung to him, her pussy milking his cock until he couldn’t resist any longer. He slammed into her again and again. The sound of flesh meeting flesh filled the night, and then it was too much. Aiden came with a curse and let his head drop to rest against her neck.
She shivered a little and wrapped her legs around his waist, holding him to her. “If that’s your argument against underwear, I think I might be convinced.”
He chuckled against her skin. “I’ll keep that in mind next time I want to persuade you to see things my way.”
Then just like that, his desire disappeared. I didn’t tell her. He hadn’t meant to keep his meeting with Romanov and Halloran a secret, but he’d been busy putting things into place and …
No, that was bullshit.
He knew Charlie wouldn’t like it that they were working with the enemy, even if it was to bring down the person responsible for almost killing his sisters and her. She was in this game for Romanov, and if she wouldn’t even have agreed to date him without that in the picture, he didn’t like his chances of explaining the situation without her reacting poorly.
“What? What aren’t you telling me?”
He realized he’d gone tense and cursed himself for not watching his reactions. If he told her it was nothing, he’d be lying to her, and that wasn’t something he wanted to do. It wasn’t something he could do if he wanted to earn a place in her life. Fuck.
Aiden pressed a kiss to her neck and backed up. He couldn’t break the news to her while he was still inside her.
They dressed in silence, and the nervous looks she kept shooting him only made him feel guiltier. There was no fighting it. He’d fucked up, even if he hadn’t had a choice in the matter. I should have talked to her the second the plan changed. He could pretend that the reason he’d left her out of the loop was because he wasn’t used to having to answer to another person, but it was bullshit. “I need you to hear me out before you react. Can you promise me that?”
“What the hell kind of question is that? If you’re asking in the first place, you know damn well that I can’t promise that.”
Yeah, he did. There was no backing out now, though. So he sat down and explained the situation, trying like hell not to notice the way her face fell as the story came out.
I fucked up. I fucked up big time.
* * *
“Let me see if I’ve got this straight.” Charlie was so angry, she could barely get the words out. What he’d just told her … “You contacted me because you wanted Dmitri Romanov. That is the only reason I agreed to this.” But now, if Keira and Aiden were to be believed, Romanov was partially responsible for saving her life. That was fine. He could play the savior. That didn’t erase what he’d done to rip her life apart, piece by piece.
She paced, the deck not nearly large enough to work off her growing rage. “Now you’re working with him. Not pretending to be his ally while scheming behind his back, but actually working with him.”
“Temporarily.”
“You can say that all you want, but the more you work with him, the harder it’s going to be to finish this.”
The look of regret on his face made her stomach drop. “There might be no removing him after this.”
“Excuse me?” That was the only reason she’d agreed to this, and now he was reneging on the deal?
“The Eldridges are worse than I’d anticipated—and I anticipated them being complete monsters. Romanov is bad. There’s no question about that. But he’s also a known quantity. If he’s gone, it paves the way for another power player like Alethea Eldridge, or worse. I can’t allow that.”
Rationally, she understood Aiden’s logic, but if she’d been operating on rational, she wouldn’t have agreed to this charade in the first place. She turned and nearly ran into him. She danced back a step. “Just … give me space for a few minutes.” For longer than a few minutes.
Good sex didn’t negate this withholding of information any more than Dmitri Romanov being not a total monster to Keira negated all the bad things he’d done.
Was still doing.
“You’re talking about murder, Aiden.” Murdering Mae Eldridge because she was responsible for the drive-by. “I should have never come here. If Mae didn’t think I was your fiancée—”
“You aren’t the cause of this. If she wanted to kill you and you alone, she wouldn’t have done it like that. She knew Keira was there, and so she wanted to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.” Aiden shook his head. “This isn’t about me, and it’s not about you. It’s a political hit aimed at both the O’Malleys and Romanov.”
That was just it. Charlie didn’t know if she could live in a place—with a man—who got into bed with enemies to take out other enemies. She’d allowed herself to forget, to focus on the good that they were doing and ignore all the rest. To ignore the truth. The law had no place here, and she was mostly convinced that she had no place here. “I can’t do this.”
“Charlie …”
She dodged his reach. “Why do you even need me if you’re not going ahead with Romanov?”
He pressed his lips into a thin line. “Romanov is no friend of mine.”
That didn’t quite answer her question. It struck her that one of the very things she’d admired about Aiden was what made him so dangerous. He’d do what was good for the family, no matter the cost. A couple weeks ago, that had meant removing Romanov. But the second that didn’t fit, he switched lanes without so much as a backward glance. She didn’t work like that. She couldn’t. “I need some air.”
“We’re standing on the porch.”
She shot him a look. “You know what I mean.”
“It’s not safe.”
He kept saying that, which meant he was completely missing the point. She started for the stairs leading down the back of the town house. “Unless you plan to put me under house arrest, I’m leaving.” She held up a hand when he moved to follow her. “Space, Aiden. You just dropped a lot of information on me that you’ve been withholding, and I need some time to process. If you’re serious about making a go of this, you have to respect the fact that you can’t keep me on a leash.” It was a low blow, but she could feel panic boiling up inside her. If she didn’t get out of here now, she’d say or do something that they’d both regret. “Please.”
He stepped out of her way, and she felt his eyes on her as she descended the staircase. It was too much to ask for him not to send some protection detail to follow her, but as long as she could put some distance between herself and the O’Malley house, she didn’t care. Charlie picked up her pace, the comforting feeling of her shoes hitting the sidewalk allowing her to draw her first full breath since Aiden asked her to withhold judgment.
Withhold judgment. How am I supposed to do that?
He’d had more than one chance to tell her that things had changed. When Romanov contacted him initially. Before he went to meet the man who was supposed to be the enemy. Immediately after the meeting. He’d decided to keep his plans from her every single time, and then turn around and talk about dating for real. About marriage.
He was out of his goddamn mind if he thought she’d tolerate this kind of crap from a boyfriend, let alone a husband.
No matter how much she cared about him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Charlie’s phone rang and she jumped, having taken it with her by reflex. She sighed when she recognized the number. As if my night could get any
weirder. “It’s not a good time, Dad.” She had nothing to say to him at this point. What was there to say? He wouldn’t approve of her choices for the last two weeks—he’d made that explicitly clear—and he certainly wouldn’t understand how conflicted she felt about Aiden. To him, Aiden and his family were criminals who needed to be in prison. There was no nuance. No give.
Her life would have been much simpler if she could view them the same way. But it was too late for that. Charlie had already spent days on end up close and personal with Aiden and everyone in the house. She knew that he cared about the people around him, no matter how tightly he kept those feelings locked down. She knew that Cillian was a great dad and loved both his wife and stepdaughter to distraction. She knew that Keira had a bright future ahead of her if she could just get out of her own way.
She knew that the O’Malleys had a whole hell of a lot more loyalty than her father did.
“Listen very carefully.” He spoke low and intense.
Charlie stopped, straining to hear him. “What?”
“There’s a car coming. It will be at your side in fifteen seconds. Get in the backseat. I can get you to safety.”
Safety?
Just like that, it clicked into place. “We talked about this. I’m where I want to be.” She wasn’t sure if that was true anymore, but Aiden O’Malley hadn’t kidnapped her and locked her up in his house. She’d agreed to go. If she changed her mind and left, she was reasonably sure that he’d let her leave. He wouldn’t be happy, and she doubted it would be the last time she saw him, but he’d let her walk out the door.
“That bastard is using you to get to me.”
She turned to look down the street, eyeing the cars that approached. “Dad, Aiden could give two fucks about you.” He’d tracked down her real name, and Aiden wasn’t the type of man to leave anything to chance, so she had no illusions that he hadn’t put two and two together about who her father was. But he hadn’t said anything about it, and he hadn’t tried to press her for potential information … and she had bigger fish to fry in the form of Dmitri Romanov.
“You really went into that house knowing that he was using you.”
Anger rose, black and ugly. “At least he’s doing something about his problems instead of just ignoring them and pretending like they never existed. I want justice. Aiden is going to give it to me.”
“You are so goddamn naive, Charlotte. Someone within the O’Malley household is an informant. Their identity is classified information, but Aiden O’Malley picked you in order to get back at me for what he perceives as a betrayal.”
The fact that he was telling her this now meant that either the information was compromised … or he was so worried about her that he was doing whatever it took to get her to safety.
She wanted to believe it was the latter. She wanted to believe it so badly, she almost got into the car that pulled up next to her, its tinted windows and nondescript coloring marking it as government-issued.
But she knew her father too well. John Finch was all about the bottom line, and the bottom line included every member of organized crime he could get put behind bars. The only reason he’d admit that there was an informant in the first place was because Aiden knew and had taken steps to cut off his contact. “How long has he known?”
“I can’t be sure …”
Which was an answer in and of itself. Aiden was a planner. Despite some astronomical differences of opinion, he loved the hell out of his siblings. Someone like Dmitri Romanov wouldn’t hesitate to make an informant disappear—permanently. But to do that to a sibling? Aiden would hesitate. He would gather information, and he would plan, and when he moved, it would be to shut down the threat without harming his sibling.
In this case, the threat was Charlie’s father.
She swayed on her feet, feeling sick to her stomach. “Did he threaten me?” She couldn’t wrap her head around it. He was ruthless, yes, but the man who’d taken her to bed and told her that he wanted a real relationship was not one to coldly use her for his own gain. Except … her own father had allowed her to walk into danger because it served his purposes. He might not have liked it, but he hadn’t given her any warning, because he didn’t trust her.
Because the bottom line mattered more.
If her dad would do that, why wouldn’t Aiden? They’d known each other only a couple weeks, after all. Her instincts told her that he’d never hurt her, but she’d already established that her instincts couldn’t be trusted.
Her dad hesitated long enough that she knew he was considering lying to her. “Not directly. But he threw your relationship—if you can call it that—in my face and threatened untoward things if I didn’t do what he said.”
Untoward things. For her dad, that could mean anything from murdering her to dating her. She sighed, suddenly so tired that she could barely form words. “What did he want from you?”
“That’s not important.”
Traffic had the car in front of her veering away from the curb and back into the stream of cars in the road. Good riddance. “It’s important to me.”
Her dad cursed, his legendary patience having apparently run dry. “He wanted me to be at a dock in New York at a specified time and date. It’s obviously a trap, and I’m not in the business of jumping when mob bosses tell me to jump.”
A dock at a specific time and date—likely when he’d orchestrated for Romanov and the Eldridges to be in the midst of a gunfight. Despite everything, she almost smiled. That was really smart of Aiden. If the two enemies didn’t kill each other off, the FBI would be there to clean up the mess.
But getting them there in the first place was the problem. Her father wasn’t the type to respond to anonymous tips without a whole bucketful of doubt. He’d be so busy looking for the trap, he might miss the opportunity to see justice done once and for all.
“You should go. His tip is solid.”
“You’re just saying that because he said it. The only reason you believe him is because you’re sleeping with him.”
She jerked back and almost ran into a man walking past. The stranger gave her a dirty look and kept walking, but she barely paid him any attention. “Do you really think that little of me?” Sure, she’d gotten carried away with Aiden, but she was also an adult and in possession of most of her common sense. He might try to tell her the sky was pink, but that didn’t mean she’d believe him, no questions asked.
That her father thought she was so stupid—so easily swayed—stung more than she wanted to admit. But then, she shouldn’t be surprised. It was just more of the same, after all. Bitterness clawed its way up her throat and emerged from her mouth. “When your daughter is a dirty cop, all her decisions are subject to criticism.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.” She’d seen it time and time again, every time he’d looked at her for the last two years. She was so tired of it. If John Finch had a family, it was the FBI. Not Charlie. “Good-bye, Dad. Please don’t try to send anyone for me again.” She hung up before he could say something to make the emotional bleeding worse.
A car pulled up next to her, and the back door opened. She cursed. “Tell my dad …” Charlie trailed off as she registered the gun pointed at her. Distantly, she heard running and yelling, but there was no way whoever was on her protection detail would reach her in time.
Mae smiled, her dark lipstick stark against her pale face. “Get in the car, bitch.”
Charlie weighed her odds, but even at this hour, there were other people on the street. She’d get someone killed if she tried to run—Mae didn’t seem the type to spare innocent bystanders if she thought she could shoot Charlie in the back. And she was too far away for Charlie to rush her without getting shot at least twice, maybe three times, depending on how fast Mae could pull the trigger.
“This isn’t going to get you what you want.”
“Maybe what I want is you—dead.” Mae motioned with her free hand. “Either get in the ca
r or I’ll put two in your chest right here. Your choice.”
Rule number one in any hostile scenario was to never get into the car and be transported to a secondary location. Charlie didn’t have that option. Mae would definitely be true to her word, and she liked her chances of escaping better if she could lull the other woman into underestimating her.
She lifted her hands slowly. “No need to shoot me. I’m coming with you.”
She was almost to the car when Mae’s smile widened. “You may be, but I’m not a fan of your men.” She grabbed Charlie’s arm and hauled her into the backseat as she pulled the trigger. Charlie twisted around and caught a glimpse of Liam lying on the ground, blood leaking from his chest. Then the car shot away from the curb.
Oh my God, what have I done?
* * *
Aiden’s heart stopped when he heard the sound of gunshots. Too close. He ran down the porch steps, sprinting in the direction Charlie had taken just moments before. He wanted to chalk it up to a car backfiring, but here in the upscale Beacon Hill neighborhood, where he’d lived his entire life, he could count on one hand how many times he’d heard that sound and still have fingers left over. It was too much of a coincidence.
He picked up speed. There weren’t many people out this late, but a small group had gathered halfway down the block. No. Not Charlie. To have narrowly avoided this exact thing mere days before and then find her bleeding—dead?—on the street … If he lost her, it had damn well better be because she walked away on her own strength.
Not because she was dead.
He slid between two men who were shifting nervously, like they knew they should be doing something but had no idea what. Aiden nearly tripped over his own feet as he went to his knees. “No.”
Liam had a hand pressed to his chest, but even in the low light, it was easy to see he was covered in blood. “Mae took her.”
