by Avery Flynn
His cock stirred at the memory of being so close to her that he’d nearly given in to the temptation of nibbling a path up the narrow column of her neck. The way her nipples had tented under the thin material of her dress as he’d leaned in close to warn her not to do anything stupid had almost pushed him over the edge. Of course, that was exactly the reaction she’d been going for. It was the one men always seemed to have around her, and one she used to her advantage, according to her file.
Not that his cock was listening to the warnings his brain was sending out.
If he didn’t watch it, Lucas would become one more chump on the long list of sad saps who’d fallen for Ruby’s femme fatale charms. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—let that happen.
The sound of high heels on the marble floor drifted in from the hall outside the dining room’s open double doors. Rolling up the blueprints, he settled his features into a neutral mask that gave away nothing and rounded the long, formal table to the end where two place settings had been arranged around a trio of beeswax candles. Obviously, someone on staff thought they had a sense of humor—too bad he didn’t. First Operation Family Jewels and now an ironic romantic setting. He was going to have to have a talk with the team. He wet his fingers and pinched out the candles’ flames.
“Are we celebrating our engagement with a romantic dinner?” Ruby asked from the doorway, one hand on her hip and a smirk curling her full, pink lips.
Mads must have returned from a necessary trip to her apartment because she’d changed. Gone was the virginal white dress. Now she wore a loose white shirt casually tucked into the narrow waist of a pair of strategically ripped jeans. A bright cluster of necklaces crossed the deep V neckline of her shirt, coming to rest in the deep valley between her tits. By the time his gaze made it up from her black heels to her face, she’d paired her knowing grin with an arched eyebrow for an overall smug, caught-you-peeking look.
If he were the type to get embarrassed, he would be. However, he’d given up that useless emotion years ago, along with anything else that could get in the way of him accomplishing his goals.
“More of a working dinner,” he said, pulling out his chair and sitting down.
Following his lead, she sat down next to him. “And what is on the agenda?” she asked, her tart tone betraying the blasé expression she wore like a shield.
“Your life story.” He needed to find out the things she may not think mattered that could make the difference in whether or not Rolf Macintosh fell for the ruse or saw right through to the truth.
Her expression hardened, irritation flashing in her gray eyes. “I figured you already had a black folder filled with all of my secrets already.”
“Most of them.”
Three inches thick and detailed, his file on her held every piece of fact, rumor, and innuendo his team had dug up on her. But he needed more. As much as he discounted any kind of emotion, it was the key to creating a believable cover.
“Is this really necessary?” She sawed off a hunk of pork covered in a creamy parsley sauce, wielding the knife with more force than required.
“This operation hinges on your stepfather believing we’re an actual couple about to be married so that I can gain access to his base of operations and uncover the time and date of the arms deal.” He sliced off a bite of pork with precision. “If we can’t manage that, then we’re both in deep shit.”
“I suppose that means you’ll be spilling your guts to me?”
He almost choked, revulsion sticking in his throat at the idea. “No. I’ve used a certain cover for years now. It’s established and without even a hint of illegitimacy—at least of the kind that would make your father pause.” He nodded toward the black folder next to her salad fork. “Everything you need to know is in there. You have tonight to memorize it. We leave in the morning.”
She picked up the thick folder and flipped through it. “A little light reading, huh?”
“If you expected life to be easy, you should have stayed at Fare Island.”
“Is that what you think my life was like with my dear old stepdad? Easy?” She snorted and shook her head.
“Are you trying to tell me that living life in the lap of luxury surrounded by celebrities, servants, and guards wasn’t?”
He knew all about the Macintosh fiefdom on Fare Island. Models, the Hollywood elite, and world leaders of questionable morals coveted invitations there to indulge in all the illicit offerings the most notorious crime boss in Europe could offer. In exchange, he and his family wallowed in luxury goods from the chocolates their maids left on their pillows as if they lived in a hotel to the designer clothes Ruby wore tonight. She’d never had her stomach so empty it practically folded in on itself or learned the power of a solid, hard punch when the other kid in foster care had a good twenty pounds and three years on you.
“Do you know who the Sparrow is?” She laid her fork and knife down in an X across her half-eaten dinner with a hard clank.
“Of course.” Thin and wiry with a beak of a nose and a disturbing, nearly unblinking stare, Hamish Hansen had come by his nickname honestly.
“Let me tell you what you may not know about the most feared knife in Europe. He didn’t just lay down the law with anyone who crossed my stepfather, but with Jasper and me too.” She flipped her left hand over and shoved her palm toward him. “This was my punishment after I took one of my father’s sailboats in an attempt to get to Elskov.”
The scar had faded to pale white lines that formed a fancy capital M and I with decorative swoops and bends. According to the rumors in her file, she’d carved it herself as a show of loyalty and commitment to the family business.
“It took him less than five minutes to fillet my palm.” She flexed her hand and curled her fingers into a fist a few times, watching the carved-in brand appear and disappear without even a flicker of rage or hurt or fear appearing on her face. “Really, you have to admire his craftsmanship. He inflicted just enough damage to serve as a reminder of what happens to anyone who steals from Rolf Macintosh but managed not to maim me. I think he figured he was doing me a favor. He was, after all, the one who gave me my first sketch pad.”
His head said she was lying, but his gut said something else. There was just enough…nothingness in her calm voice and unlined face to give her—and the truth—away.
“And your father accepted this?” he asked, working hard to keep his tone neutral so as to not betray the sudden flash of fury tensing his muscles.
“Accepted?” She laughed, a joyless, brittle sound that bounced off the dining room’s high ceiling. “No. ‘Encouraged’ is the word I’d use.”
“Your mother? Another adult? No one stopped this?” Her story moved around the pieces he’d jammed together to solve the puzzle of Ruby Macintosh—spoiled mobster’s daughter, jewel thief, and manipulative liar—leaving him with curved peg to fit into straight hole.
“Is that how it worked when you were growing up?” she asked, a knife-sharp edge to her question. “You had a mummy and dadums who loved you and looked out for you? Not all of us were so lucky.”
An image of his mother with a belt tightened around her upper arm until her tired veins pressed against her pale skin flashed in his mind before he could drive it back into the darkest recesses of his subconscious where it belonged.
Focus, Bendtsen. Don’t let her drag you down that path.
He folded his napkin in half and then half again before placing it over his empty plate. “You managed to get away from him. Why not make a clean break?”
“Do you really think I got away?” She rubbed her thumb over the initials etched into her palm as if it was still healing. “That would be a good trick.”
“You’re saying you didn’t?”
“No, he simply indulged my wish to leave until he decides that he won’t anymore.”
Now that fit in with the information in her file. Rolf Macintosh was like a spider with a very large web. He’d let the little flies roam out to the edg
es, but he’d never let them go.
“What does he hold over your head?”
“The only two people I love.” She let out a long, shaky breath, her chin trembling and her shoulders slumping forward for a fraction of a second before she snapped back up and replaced the moment of vulnerability with a blasé expression so bland it bordered on hostile. “My brother, well, you know all about Jasper and his determination to work his way up to become my father’s right hand man. As for my mother, she’s…not herself. She’s totally dependent on him for everything, so when he asks for information, an introduction, a favor, I have no choice but to say yes, or they will pay the consequences.”
If he didn’t have a long list of people who’d been robbed or died under mysterious circumstances after meeting with her, he’d be sympathetic—or as close as someone like him could get to that. “And murder, is that something you’re forced to do?”
“Oh yes, that’s right.” She toyed with the mix of long silver and gold chains that lay draped across her cleavage, her gray eyes mocking him when his gaze made it back up to her face. “I’m a bejeweled black widow.”
“Did you kill them?” It was a stupid question to ask, never let a target know even the slightest bit of doubt existed, but the words were out before his brain had a chance to filter them.
She shrugged her shoulders and then took a drink of wine, watching him over the edge of her glass as if she couldn’t believe he’d asked the question so many simply wondered about silently or whispered about behind her back. Whether that was a good or bad thing—and why he even cared enough to wonder—he couldn’t pin down.
“In a way, I’m as responsible as whichever of my stepfather’s lackeys actually did the deed,” she said as she sat her glass down. “I know the rules. I have my freedom, but it’s limited. You’ll have to watch yourself if you’re going to make it off Fare Island. Rolf picked out my future husband years ago, and it’s not…” Reaching over to the folder, she flipped it open and ran one pink-tipped fingernail across the name written there. “Luc Svendsen.”
“The others, the ones who died or were robbed, were your lovers?” The idea bothered him more than he wanted to admit, even to himself.
“Some of them. Then I realized what my father was doing, and…dating lost its appeal.” Ruby closed the folder and pivoted in her seat so she faced him and tilted her head to one side before raising an eyebrow in question. “What makes you think the same fate won’t befall you once you step foot on my Fare Island?”
He could tell her, explain about Luc, the man he used to be—the one he brought out when the need arose, the one who’d turned into exactly the kind of man all the social workers in the juvenile system had predicted he’d become if he didn’t straighten his life out. Instead, he pushed his chair back and stood up. The less she knew about how much truth was in that folder, the better—for the operation’s chance of success and his own sanity.
“Read the file, and you’ll find out exactly why Rolf Macintosh will welcome me with open arms.” Without waiting for her inevitable questions, he turned and strode to the door. However, he couldn’t shake the one question that had been gnawing at him as he tried to piece together the new puzzle of Ruby Macintosh, so he turned back toward the table where she sat, her hand resting on the unopened folder. “Your brother is an adult, he’s made his choice about participating in your father’s business. Presumably your mother has made her choice to stay with him as well. If you want to go, why not just disappear and leave them all behind?”
She started in her chair and blinked in surprise. For a second, he didn’t think she was going to answer him, but then she shook her head slowly and something that looked a lot like pity crossed her face.
“I take it back,” she said, her voice soft and a little sad. “I don’t think mommy or daddy did love you. If they had, you wouldn’t have had to ask that question.”
Venom. Frustration. Snark. All of that he expected and could take. The brutally honest mirror she held up instead threw him off stride. A flash of defensive anger sizzled up his spine, and in a split second, he was once again the scrawny kid in worn hand-me-downs who hated the world. The rush of fury felt good, like the best kind of powerful high that was almost worth the nasty, bone-snapping hangover when he came down. But he wasn’t that kid anymore—he never would be again—so he squeezed the emotion into submission.
“We leave first thing in the morning, you have until then to memorize everything in the folder,” he said, the words clipped and precise. “And remember what I said in my study. You try to sabotage this operation, and I’ll make any threat your father has made to you look like a love letter.”
Elskov had saved him from becoming Luc Svendsen. Now, Lucas Bendtsen would save it right back.
Chapter Four
Ruby didn’t realize her stomach could fit inside her throat, but there it was gagging her as the small four-passenger plane hit yet another air pocket, jiggling her in her seat as Lucas piloted them closer to her own personal hell.
Fare Island sat in the middle of the North Sea, a green and gray oval of lush grasses and stony fjords that jutted out into the deep blue, daring the water to try to break it. Her stepfather couldn’t have chosen a better headquarters for his operation. Out in the middle of miles of water, dotted with unexploded ordnance from World War II and the occasional shark, it wasn’t a place the uninvited would stumble upon. Its isolation made government surveillance difficult, always a bonus when negotiating the sale of kilos of cocaine, arranging transport for human smuggling, or selling caches of arms to the world’s despots and thugs hell-bent on doing serious damage. As the island grew bigger in the jet’s front window, all she could think about was that here she was, right back where she’d started. No matter what, she never could shake the place for long. Even with all of the shit that came along with it, Fare Island was home—a criminally dysfunctional home populated by the twisted and the deranged, sure, but home nonetheless.
The slash of white cutting through an otherwise green scene came into view. The landing strip was well monitored and only a few miles from the main house.
“We’re cleared for landing.” Lucas’s voice came in through her earphones. “We have to operate under the assumption that someone is watching and listening at all times. Our objective is to uncover the time and location of the arms exchange, which is expected to go down soon, so the Silver Knights can be in position and stop it. If you have questions about the plan contained in the folder, about how we’ll do that, or our cover story, now is the time to get them out.”
The Luc Svendsen she’d read about in the file last night wasn’t her father’s equal, but he was a right bastard of a powerful villain who dealt in secrets and blackmail. The treasure trove of scandalous information he supposedly had access to would be unbearably appealing to Rolf—and he’d be willing to kill to gain access to it. The idea of Lucas ending up on the wrong end of her stepfather’s 9mm shouldn’t bother her. Hell, it would be karmic justice. Still, she couldn’t squash the bitter unease building inside her.
Confusion about his cover or the plan wasn’t the problem. She was certain that it was all going to go horribly wrong. “What about concerns?”
“Keep those to yourself.”
She bristled, her uneasiness gone in a flash of annoyance. “You know, you really are an asshole.”
His eyes were hidden by the reflective aviator sunglasses, and a day’s worth of dark scruff roughed up his jawline. Still, he didn’t have any problem letting her know exactly what he thought of her statement when he turned his head and grinned at her. “Abso-fucking-lutely.”
If her stomach had been in its rightful spot, it would have done a loop-de-loop at the cocky badassery of the smirk. As it was, her pulse started dancing the conga and a flush warmed her cheeks. Dammit, he shouldn’t be able to unsettle her like this.
Unsettled? Is that what we’re calling it?
Ignoring the question that could only lead to total idiocy,
Ruby turned her gaze back to the island runway. As the plane’s tires touched down on the tarmac, she let out a deep breath and focused on what really mattered. Not the asinine attraction toward the man in the pilot’s seat, but on her commitment to surviving the next few days so she and Jasper could finally be free of her stepfather’s poisonous talons and the Elskovian Silver Knights’ schemes because neither of them would let her or Jasper go after this operation.
If everything went wrong, her father would kill them without a second thought. If everything went right and the Silver Knights were able to stop the arms deal, they wouldn’t want to let her go. Her stepfather had his hands in enough other criminal enterprises that that she and Jasper would make valuable secret operatives. She’d be a double agent for the rest of her days with Jasper’s life hanging in the balance.
There had to be a way out. She just had to find it.
…
Standing inside the jet’s open doorway, Lucas glared at the brick wall of a man standing at the bottom of the plane’s steps blocking their path. Dressed in head-to-toe black like a comic book villain, he didn’t have a neck, an ounce of body fat, or a visible weapon. Taking the goon down wouldn’t come without a lot of pain, but it could be done. Lucas had done it before, but he wasn’t going to this time. In addition to the probable snipers with their guns trained on him at that moment, he needed to let this play out. The plan wasn’t about force. It was all stealth.
“Claude, how nice to see you again,” Ruby said from a few steps behind him, her voice polite but cool.
The ’roided-up goth kept his focus zeroed in on Lucas. “You know Mr. Macintosh doesn’t like surprise visits.”
Using the cover of his aviators, Lucas scanned the area, searching for the telltale glint of the sun hitting a rifle scope. He clocked two on the roof of the hanger. In addition, a man almost as large as Claude stood next to a Jeep parked at an angle on the tarmac.
