Yes, today was a fine day indeed.
88
Becky
I’d been at water aerobics when the call came.
Missed it, of course.
But after I got out of the pool, dried off, and headed into the locker room, my phone blasted a message from Victoria Paige.
Victoria: Give me a call as soon as you can. Michael’s in the hospital.
Terror ripped through me. I nearly rushed out of the locker room in my one-piece. Instead, with my heart lodged in my throat and fear eating me up, I called her back right away.
Fought like hell to hold in the tears as she told me what happened.
“I’ll be right there,” I said to Victoria.
“It’s pretty crowded. Why don’t I call you when we know more?”
“Okay, but I want to see him. And you,” I said, desperation coating my voice.
“He’ll be okay. No one is tougher,” she said, but there was someone who was—her. She was the toughest. She’d had to be. After everything she’d gone through. And now this.
“Let me know if I can do anything,” I said, but the words felt hollow. What could I truly do? All I’d been able to do was support my husband when he became an FBI informant.
And I hoped the information he’d given them over the last few months was enough.
Every day I’d hoped that it would be.
That it would bring justice.
The call ended, and I sent up a prayer, tugged on my clothes, and called my husband. “We’ll wait in the coffee shop by the hospital. We can be there if they need us,” I told him.
And we waited.
And waited.
Until later, when another call came.
This time, Victoria told me her grandson was okay. And I wept.
“Michael’s okay,” I said to Sanders, as tears streaked down my cheeks.
His too.
I set down the phone, wrapped my arms around his neck, and kissed his cheek.
“Best news I’ve ever had,” Sanders said, and I heard the gratitude thick in his voice. It matched mine.
We stayed like that, in an embrace, for the longest time.
I’d stood by my husband through the last few months, just as we’d supported each other over the years, faithful and true, through life’s ups and downs.
He took a deep breath, and I felt him relax for the first time in months. He wasn’t perfect. He wasn’t above reproach. He’d made mistakes. But I hoped Michael and the Sloans would understand, would forgive him.
“I still can’t believe the men I worked for had wanted Thomas dead and had used Dora to make that happen.” He shuddered. “She was a pawn.”
"She was absolutely a pawn,” I echoed. “But she made her choices, and she’s living with them.”
“I can’t forgive her for taking my friend from us. From his kids. But at least they’ve got the others. Finally, Beck. Finally.”
I cupped his cheek. “It means we can breathe easier, knowing that all her accomplices at last have been rounded up.”
“That’s all I’ve ever wanted. To live out all my days with you.”
“Same for me, sweetie. It’s always been the same for me.”
I stayed there in his embrace for a long time.
Later, we’d go see Michael.
We’d always do our part to look after Thomas’s kids. Always. We were his friends. Then and now and always.
That was part of our vow.
89
Special Agent Laura K. Reiss
At last.
Months of poring over evidence.
Endless days of interviews.
Countless hours of investigations.
All worth it.
I couldn’t even sit. I was so jazzed. We’d taken Curtis Paul Wollinsky into custody this morning, hours after Charlie Stravinsky was declared dead.
Today was a damn fine day in my line of work.
As soon as Detective Winston came to my office, I said, “Let’s go for a walk.”
We strode along the sidewalks of Las Vegas, this city I loved. A city I wanted to hold up. To elevate. To make better.
“It all started rolling once we had the intel from Doyle. That’s how we were able to focus in on West Limos,” I said, and rattled off the details.
Energy raced through me, powering my breath, my feet, my mind. “I’ve been looking into local racketeering activity for some time,” I explained, but that barely covered it. Breaking up mob activity was my passion, one that had grown even stronger since I’d gotten married and had kids of my own. My people to protect, to look out for. Busting the mob was in my blood too—my father had been a federal agent before me, and his father had too. The family business, we joked, because that’s what we aimed to do. Keep the city safe, not just for our kids and spouses, but for everyone, and we did it by breaking up crime families. The Stravinsky one was mine to bust. I’d been tracking Charlie for years, trying to find a way to topple his empire, to destroy his army on the street. Who knew the opportunity would begin with a speeding ticket?
God bless state troopers for doing their job. When Sanders Doyle was brought in for so much more than speeding, for transporting illegal firearms, he’d become the linchpin in the feds’ case against the local crime ring that ran guns and drugs across Nevada.
“He didn’t know what he was transporting, Winston,” I said, that thrill of the bust zipping through me.
“He just took money and did the jobs with blinders on. Some of them are like that,” Winston said as we turned the corner, the sun shining brightly overhead.
“And that was a good thing. Because I could give him immunity. And he gave me details about who he worked for and the runs he’d made over the years, and bit by bit that helped us narrow in on one company.”
I stopped in my tracks, meeting Winston face to face, my expression deadly serious as I pictured the criminal mastermind. “Charlie was so good at what he did. His company appeared squeaky clean. It was owned by a supposed West Strauss. But as it turns out, West has been dead a long, long time.”
“The guy in Canada?”
I nodded, a satisfied smile on my face. “The guy not in Canada. West Strauss is an alias for West Stravinksy, the brother of Charlie Stravinsky. He was killed by an unknown assailant in a poor neighborhood in his country more than four decades ago. After that, Charlie moved to America and has been laundering his money through companies he set up with a fake identity in his brother’s name.”
John let out a whistle. “Holy shit.”
“Apparently, West Strauss had many assets around the United States—a car wash in Texas, a dry cleaner in San Diego, a limo company in Las Vegas, a gentleman’s club in San Francisco. And after some time in California, he came here and established White Box with the guy we brought in this morning on racketeering charges, his cousin and business partner, Curtis Paul Wollinsky.”
A knowing grin spread across his face. “I take it that’s not always the name he used though? Let me guess. I bet he was once just Paul.”
I tapped the air with my finger, punctuating the point. “You guessed right. Years ago, he was simply Paul. The guy who managed the limo company. Seems all the questions Paige had asked about missing rides tipped off Paul, who tipped off Charlie, who decided he wanted Thomas dead.”
John scrubbed a hand across his jaw. “And I imagine the task of ordering the hit was made all the easier because Thomas’s wife was in love with the man who ran Charlie’s army on the streets—the Royal Sinners.”
I licked my lips, nearly bouncing on my toes. “I’d always wanted to know why they were so powerful.”
“One of the most powerful street gangs in the country,” Winston echoed. “Because they had access.”
“To criminal masterminds, to men adept at both violent and white-collar crime. Luke was the head, giving orders on behalf of Charlie and paying the Sinners better than average money for selling and dealing.”
“Did he offer health in
surance too?” he asked with a derisive scoff.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” I said. “They were good, Winston. Damn good. But . . .”
“But we got ’em.”
He didn’t say we were better.
And I was glad. You couldn’t get cocky in our line of business. You simply had to be smart, fearless, and ready.
Being suspicious as hell helped too.
And that’s why our paths had collided.
When things didn’t add up, you kept going and you called others.
You asked for help, and you put your heads together.
That’s what truly made today a damn fine day indeed. Working together to get the job done.
And send the bastards where they belonged.
90
John
Funny that our investigations had been on parallel tracks for a few months, never meeting until all of a sudden they merged.
That moment occurred when Annalise remembered the term that Thomas had heard years ago, still a favorite of Charlie’s today. White Box. While waiting for Michael to wake up, Annalise had told me what happened at the diner, how someone from Charlie’s ranks had likely overheard her conversation with Michael as they’d put two and two together courtesy of that term.
“‘White box.’ What do you make of that?” I asked Reiss. “Supposedly, according to what Annalise said, it meant something related to Charlie’s dead brother. Everything Charlie did circled back to his brother.”
Reiss’s jaw dropped. “Oh . . .”
And I realized it too at that moment. “Do you think…?”
“I do.”
“Charlie’s last words. Annalise told me what he said. ‘You know nothing about my brother. Nothing about how he was buried.’” My blood chilled as I realized Charlie’s brother, at age nine, must have been buried in a white coffin.
“Because he was a child. Because his brother died an innocent child.”
“And so Charlie named his businesses after him, and after the way he left this earth.”
It was oddly commemorative and terribly twisted at the same time. Which described the man who’d built, raised up, and run the Royal Sinners. Terribly twisted.
The ways in which people remembered the dead could turn them into killers or into lovers.
I chased away the philosophical thoughts, pushing my sunglasses up the bridge of my nose as I refocused on what we were discussing. “Crazy to think this all started with a speeding ticket,” I remarked as we headed the other direction.
“Right? But that’s how it goes, like I was telling my husband the other night. Nothing happens for a long time, and then one misstep and all the dominoes fall.”
They were falling indeed. In the last few weeks, the most notorious street gang in the city’s history had been effectively dismantled. And I would never have been able to do my part without the help of the Sloan family—each one of them had played a role.
That was fitting.
After we finished and said goodbye, I stared briefly up at the sky, the sun poking through clouds.
Today was something like justice, and that was all I could ask for in this line of work.
91
Annalise
Gently, I pushed open the door to Michael’s room, nerves thrumming through my body. Instantly, his eyes swung to me, the blue irises sparkling as he lay in the hospital bed.
“Hey,” he said, his voice scratchy from the anesthesia.
“Hi,” I said, unable to contain a crazy grin, or the relief that flooded my heart. I crossed the few feet to his bed and drank in the sight of him. An IV drip snaked out of his arm, and his chest was bandaged. His face was tired, but a gorgeous smile tugged at his lips.
“You look beautiful,” I said.
“I’d laugh, but it would hurt too much.”
“Are you okay?” I asked, wonder in my voice, still amazed, still overjoyed that he was here.
“Yes, and that’s what they tell me too. But I suspect the morphine helps that feeling.”
I smiled once more and raised a hand, wanting to touch his face, his arm . . . him.
“You can touch me,” he rasped, answering my unspoken question.
I bent forward, touching him first with my lips, brushing them across his cheek. A quiet sigh escaped him. “I thought you were going to die,” I whispered, the words spilling out with a fresh round of tears that fell on his cheek. I’d hoped to be strong. I’d told the other women in Michael’s family that I would be. But it was hard, so damn hard, and now all the relief and happiness bubbled up and poured out of me in these salty streaks.
“Evidently, a lot of people did,” he said wryly, his sense of humor as robust as ever. “The doctor said she wasn’t sure I was going to make it through either. Can’t say I’m bummed that I don’t remember a thing that happened after I hit the parking garage floor.”
“Do you want me to tell you?”
He nodded, and I pulled back. He patted the side of the bed that wasn’t tangled up with his IV. “Sit with me, and tell me about the last six hours of my life.”
I didn’t need to be asked twice. I perched on the side of his bed and held his hand in mine. I cleared my throat, took a breath, and met his gaze.
Then I told him everything that had happened.
92
Michael
My mouth fell open as I took in the enormity of what had happened after Charlie shot me. But that moment when Charlie’s gun had aimed at Annalise still played before my eyes. I gripped her hand tighter. “He was aiming at you. My only thought was to protect you.”
“I know.” She ran her finger across my hand.
“And then you . . . you finished it,” I added, wonder in my voice.
She winced, her face squeezing as if in pain.
“Are you okay?”
She nodded. “Yes. Just processing it all still. But I’m more than okay.”
I shook my head, trying to make sense of everything. “You killed the man who tried to rip my family apart.”
She nodded, tears slipping from her eyes. “You’re the first man I loved, and the last man I’ll ever love. I wasn’t going to let anyone take you away from me.”
Even though it hurt, even though I wasn’t supposed to move, I lifted my arms, reached for her face, and held it in my palms. “I’d die to save you,” I whispered softly, reverently.
With fierce eyes and a strong voice, she answered, “I know you would. And I wouldn’t let you. Because I’d kill to protect you, and to protect us. I’ve got plans. I’m planning on loving you for the rest of my life.”
As she pressed her soft lips to mine once more, I felt her love deep in my bones, all the way to my soul.
Love had once been an all-or-nothing thing to me, but with her, love was more than all. It echoed across time, deep and intense, reverberating in the past, soaring to the future, and living vibrant and bright in the here and now.
93
Michael
A month later
I leaned against the bar, drinking a scotch and surveying the scene. The waterfalls at Mandalay Bay hummed, splashing down gently along the rocks, while a man at the black baby grand piano played a Billie Holiday tune. The man was Sophie’s ex-husband, who was still one of her closest friends, and I thought it was pretty damn cool that the guy was at her wedding.
What was also fantastic was that the piano player was just a piano player, not a camouflaged front man for crime.
Well, at least I was as sure as I could be that Holden was one of the good guys. Everyone here was, even Sanders, who was grabbing an appetizer from a waiter. He handed it to Becky, and she nibbled on it with a smile as he brushed a kiss to her cheek.
I turned to Colin, who nursed a Diet Coke next to me at the bar. “Think you’ll be next down the aisle?” My brother shrugged, but he had a sheepish look in his brown eyes. I stared at him. “That seems like a yes.”
Colin laughed and set down his drink. “Maybe,” he said evasively
.
“C’mon,” I teased. “I got myself shot. The least you could do is get married.”
Colin frowned. “Wait. What does you getting shot have to do with me getting married?”
It was my turn to laugh. “Nothing whatsoever. I just like milking this for all it’s worth,” I said, tapping my abdomen where the bullet had gotten acquainted with my body one fine day a month ago.
“Bastard,” Colin muttered with a smile, as we scanned the crowd once more. Over in the corner, John snagged what looked like tuna sashimi on a fancy potato chip from a waiter’s tray. Nearby, Ryan and Sophie chatted with a group of his hockey buddies from the league he played in. Sophie looked stunning, like a ’50s movie star, all Marilyn Monroe and radiant, while Ryan looked like the happiest guy on earth.
Annalise snapped a photo of them. She’d taken the official wedding photos, and was also shooting candids throughout the day, from Sophie getting ready, to her arrival at the hotel, to the reception.
I nudged Colin with my elbow. “Seriously though. Are you thinking about asking Elle?”
“I’d like to know the answer to that question too.” Colin’s eyes widened when he realized Elle had just appeared by his side. I cracked up—I hadn’t seen her coming either.
Colin pulled her into an embrace. “Would you say yes if I asked you?”
Her eyes sparkled. “You’ll have to ask and find out.”
Colin pressed a kiss to Elle’s neck, then turned to me. “What about you? Want me to go ask Annalise if she’ll marry you?”
I gestured in the direction of the woman who’d saved my life, in more ways than one. “Be my guest.”
I had no worries in that area. We’d get married on our own terms and timeline. But I didn’t need a ring or a piece of paper to know she was my forever. I had the confidence in my heart and the faith in my soul that I’d always find a way to be with her and give her everything she’d want and need. “But hey, maybe our little bro will be next.”
My Sinful Love (Sinful Men Book 4) Page 27
