by Elise Faber
The man took a step toward them, and every nerve in Jackson’s body went on red alert.
“Privyet,” the man said, leaning toward them.
Russian for hello.
Fucking hell. Where was the security Dan had promised? Jackson shifted to the side, slowly backing away, nudging Molly away from the man, closer to his condo. If he could get her inside, she could be safe and call for help.
“Mr. Davis,” the man went on, Russian accent heavy. He came close enough for him to smell the expensive cologne, see the fine stitching on his suit jacket. “My boss would like to—”
The elevator doors dinged open.
The man’s head swiveled in that direction.
Jackson didn’t look to see who was on the car, who’d inadvertently interrupted the man’s sentence, and he didn’t delay, just nudged Molly toward his door, shoved his key in the lock, and got her inside.
Wine box he somehow still held on the floor. The door shut. Locks engaged. Dead bolt thrown. Cell in hand to call Dan.
Knock-knock.
“Go into the bedroom,” he ordered. “Lock the door and call—”
Before he could finish his sentence, a familiar voice penetrated the wood. “It’s me.”
Dan.
“It’s okay,” he told Molly, checking the peephole before opening the door enough to peek through the gap. When both showed no sign of the mafia member, he shut the panel, pulled off the dead bolt, and opened the door.
Dan slipped through, gun at his hand.
In another few seconds, the door was closed, the bolt back in place, and his gun was back in his holster.
He pulled out his phone, pressed a button, lifted it to his ear, and said, “Shit’s getting spicy. Let’s call in another team. Report back on their ETA.” Then he hung up, glanced between Molly and Jackson. “Should we order a pizza?”
Fucking unbelievable.
Jackson shoved past him, going over to where Molly was standing, her face pale. He slipped an arm around her waist and gently pulled her trembling body against his.
“Who was that?” she whispered.
“That was Maksim Petrova,” Dan said, “Underboss of the Mikhailova clan, and a guy you really don’t want to meet in a dark alley.”
“I don’t give a fuck who that was,” Jackson growled. “You told me it was safe to bring Molly here.”
“It is.”
Jackson snorted.
Dan pocketed his cell. “We have cameras along every stretch of the hall, in the elevators, the parking garage, the stairwells, and guards stationed in the condo next door, watching the feeds,” he told them. “Plus, I was there the entire time, ready to step in if there was an issue and me bringing in another team at this point will mean double the manpower.”
“I think a fucking mafia guy getting in the face of my woman is an issue,” Jackson snapped and felt Molly stiffen. “He could have—”
“I’m okay,” she said. “It’s . . . I’m not going to say fine—”
“It’s not fine,” he snapped.
She squeezed the hand around his waist. “That’s why I’m not going to say it’s fine, but he”—she nodded at Dan—“said he was there, that we were safe the whole time.”
Jackson forced his grip on Molly to stay light, when all he really wanted to do was yank her against him, hold her tight, and pretend the rest of the world didn’t exist. He glanced down at her instead, took a breath, and kept his voice even. “That’s what he said four years ago before I got that fucking photograph.”
Her lips parted. A long breath slipping free. Clarity dawned on her face, and she leaned a little more heavily against him, rested her head on his shoulder.
And he . . . settled.
His terror at her being in the same space as that man, as Maksim, faded enough for him to think clearly.
“If you want this over with then we need intel,” Dan said. “We need to figure out where they’re going next, how they managed to sidestep our net. If we can find out how high this goes, who’s working with them in our government, then we can take them down.” Dan came toward them.
“You’ve been trying to take them down for more than four years,” Jackson said. “And it’s not working. Give me one reason why I shouldn’t just pack us up, fly us to some deserted island, and hunker down until the threat passes.”
“What?” Molly exclaimed. “The bakery. I can’t just—”
“Because they will find you, and they will do anything they have to in order to get you to give them what they want,” Dan interrupted, blue eyes icing over. “And if you’re in the middle of fucking nowhere instead of here then I’m not there, and your chances of getting you and Molly out of this situation alive are nil to fucking zero.”
“He’s scary,” she whispered.
Dan’s expression warmed, lips twitching. “I don’t like the fucking Russian mafia. I don’t like not getting the job done. I especially don’t like not getting it done for four fucking years.” He leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms. “And I really don’t like people getting hurt or threatened when they’re under my protection.”
“I still stand by my statement of saying you’re scary,” Molly said, her voice wobbling just slightly, and Jackson knew she was forcing the lightness in her tone.
But he was still so impressed with her all the same.
He hadn’t been nearly so composed the first time he’d come face-to-face with one of the Mikhailova, or the Vory as they were sometimes called. He’d been a wreck, and here she was cracking jokes with a federal agent, laughing when he stuck out his hand and said, “Oh, I’m Dan, by the way.”
She smiled. “I figured.” A beat. “So, you’re the one who’s been spying on me at the bakery and trying to steal my secret recipe for my rolls?”
Dan chuckled. “The mafia would be smarter to do that. One of my team bought a box of them yesterday. I’d be five hundred pounds if I had access to that recipe.”
“If you can get Jackson and me out of this, you have a lifetime of anything you want from the bakery on the house.”
“Sweetheart—” Dan began, but cut off when Jackson narrowed his eyes at the other man. The idea of him posing a threat to the agent was probably right up there with him suddenly possessing some superhero skills, but the other man wasn’t a dick. He’d cooled it on the endearment and said, “That’s kind of you to offer, Molly, but I’ve always paid my own way.”
“You just want to keep your six-pack,” she teased. “Now”—she clapped her hands and pulled out of Jackson’s hold—“Jackson is going to show me where the kitchen is. You boys are going to plunk your asses in chairs, and then we’re going to figure out how to take down these mafia guys, once and for all.”
Dan grinned then glanced from Molly to Jackson.
And Jackson didn’t have to be a superhero to read what was in the other man’s mind.
Molly was incredible.
Molly was special.
Molly was . . . his.
Something that Jackson knew he communicated to Dan, lack of superhero skills or not.
Molly, not waiting for him to point out the kitchen, started down the hall, and so Jackson did what he had to after his woman had worked her ass off for twelve hours then had faced off with a mafia man, followed by joking with a federal agent—he scooped her up, cradled her against his chest, and told Dan, “Get on ordering that pizza.”
Then while they were waiting for the delivery, the three of them hashed out a plan to keep Molly and Jackson safe while Dan’s teams hopefully worked their magic.
Because they all wanted this thing done.
Jackson just hoped that during the process he could figure out a way to win Molly back.
Unfortunately, he didn’t think he’d be able to do so without laying absolutely everything on the line.
The question was: could he man up enough to actually do it?
Fifteen
Molly
She watched Jackson walk Dan t
o the door, the two of them continuing to talk about the additional security from the company that Dan recommended.
Apparently, they were a mix of former government agents and military personnel who specialized in tricky situations like this. Not at all like a celebrity seeking a bodyguard, which Molly would have probably ended up with if she’d done the hiring, but people who had serious experience in dealing with bad guys like the mafia.
The pizza had been delivered—well, picked up by one of Dan’s team to make sure it was safe—and they’d eaten as they’d discussed the additional security measures.
Jackson was going to continue to stick close to her, working from the bakery so Dan’s team only had to cover one place. They were going to hire some additional protection and keep the microphones and cameras in place. And she’d given over her keys so his team could install some devices there, just in case the mafia came looking and happened to reveal something useful.
She liked the idea of cameras and microphones in her business and home about as much as she liked burning a batch of rolls, but it was a necessary inconvenience and so she was going with it.
Some part of her kept expecting to break down, to freak out about the fact that, for all intents and purposes, she was being followed by the mob.
A scary, Russian branch of it.
And yet, she was somehow holding it together.
Probably because Dan and Jackson had looped her in. She knew as much about the ongoing investigation as Jackson—which was basically that they wanted his program so they could use it to support their illegal businesses by selling private information and blackmailing prominent users. But just as Jackson had refused to allow the government backdoor access to the data, he wasn’t letting the mob have it.
He’d turned everything physically to do with that program—all the servers, the computers, the storage—over to Dan’s group, and any work was conducted remotely, carefully shrouded behind some seriously intense firewalls.
She had to admit that she hadn’t quite understood all of what Jackson’s company did until that point.
She’d known it was technical, knew that four years ago while he and his team had begun garnering more attention in the tech world, that it was valuable. She just hadn’t understood exactly how much so.
He’d basically figured out a way to glean tiny bits of data from users and to monetize that.
Most of the time it was fairly innocuous, like whether or not someone was thinking about purchasing a specific brand of shoes, or if they preferred a pug to a corgi when searching for puppy videos. But it could also be used to follow other user trends—was someone at risk of being radicalized or thinking about hurting themselves or someone else.
Information that was valuable and could save lives.
But also some intense big brother shit, especially if someone who didn’t have their users’ best interests in mind got involved and starting gleaning data that was a serious breach of privacy.
The program was a dangerous beast, but it was safe, and Jackson’s company was focusing on other ventures—including several security products that consumers could use to protect themselves from just the type of data gleaning that everyone who was after the program wanted to exploit.
“Basically, the consumer product would have fail safes to capture and delete information that might put people in danger before it can be picked up and sold. Kind of like armor for your online habits,” Jackson had told her when she’d asked him about the irony of designing programs that would counteract each other. “But I’ve learned that protecting a consumer’s data is more important than me making a few bucks from selling it to companies or governments—”
“Or the mafia,” Dan had chimed in.
Jackson nodded. “Definitely that. So yeah, similar programs are already out there. Maybe mine is more efficient at stockpiling data, but I also don’t want to be the face of a company that wants to exploit people or their personal information. I want to be proud of my work.” He shrugged. “So, it was a no brainer, we made the shift.”
That had taken her breath away.
She didn’t think she’d ever heard Jackson so passionate about something. Yes, he’d always been driven, wanting to make his place in the world, always seeming like he needed to prove himself worthy.
But this was different.
He’d changed, too.
And she began to wonder what it might be like to be with this Jackson, what it might be like to have this man want the woman she was now.
Because he ticked all the boxes—protective, honest, passionate, thoughtful.
If only he didn’t have people willing to hurt him in order to get their hands on his program.
“I thought they were done with me,” Jackson said. “It’s been almost two years.”
Dan nodded. “We thought they’d turned their attention to other things, too. But the Mikhailova clan was recently caught up in a big sweep in Spain, and several of the higher ups were arrested and jailed,” he told them. “That’s why we have the oh-so-pleasant Maksim on our hands now.”
“He’s expanding their investments,” she guessed.
“Seems likely,” Dan agreed. “Many of their assets are tied up in Spain. They need money.”
“And data, especially blackmailable data, sells at a premium.”
Dan tapped his nose in agreement then changed the subject back to their safety, and while she could appreciate that was probably the more appropriate topic at hand, it was also more worrisome.
It was much more fun to be contemplating the mafia’s assets than considering how their expansion of them was going to impact her life.
Case in point, the conversation Jackson and Dan were wrapping up.
She should probably be over there, going over the final details, making sure she understood every single thing she could. But it was nearing nine at night. She’d been up since three-thirty that morning, and her eyelids felt like they had concrete blocks attached to them.
Relaxing back into the cushions, she let them slide closed for just a second.
Then felt like they’d barely closed when she felt Jackson scoop her up into his arms.
“Couch,” she murmured, so tired but also knowing that she’d promised herself she wouldn’t take his bed. “I’m sleeping on—”
“Shh,” he said.
Maybe she was weak, maybe she had just hit her limit on stressful scenarios for the day, or perhaps the long, emotional hours had just finally caught up with her. Regardless of the reason, Molly didn’t protest further. Rather, she relaxed against Jackson’s chest and let her eyes close again, not protesting when he set her on the bed and tugged off her shoes then her jeans. She didn’t even make a peep when he reached under her shirt and unhooked her bra, slipping its straps down one arm then the other before tugging it off.
Her head hit the pillow, blankets were tugged up to her chin, and she swam out of the fog of her sleepiness to summon a response to his hushed, “What time do you need to wake up, babe?”
“Three-thirty.”
Then she let the darkness swarm back over her and sleep tug her under.
She woke up to her cell blaring too damned early.
But that was what happened when someone got up in the early hours of the morning . . . or really, the late hours of the night before.
It took her several long moments to remember she wasn’t in her bed, her condo.
It only took one more beyond that to realize she wouldn’t have her coffee.
God. No.
Coffee . . . she needed. She wanted.
Regardless, she slipped out from beneath the covers, flicking on the light that had her blinking against the brightness grumpily. The bedroom was larger than hers, nicer than her. Same went for the condo.
It might be nicer, but it didn’t have her carafe of coffee.
Rolling her eyes at herself, she stumbled over to her bag, which was sitting on a bench at the foot of the bed then slipped into fresh clothes. A shower would
have to wait, considering she’d seen what looked to be a dozen knobs inside the glass-enclosed space, and she wasn’t fucking with all those knobs at three-thirty in the morning.
Knobs.
Heh.
Also, three-thirty brought out her inner innuendo.
Tugging on a sweatshirt, she slipped her feet into her sneakers, zipped to the bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face then spent several minutes attempting to contain her hair in a ponytail.
By the time she came out, she was in desperate need of coffee.
But, it would have to wait until the bakery.
At least then she’d have a vat of the stuff.
Feeling marginally better at the thought of copious amounts of the glorious, steaming beverage, Molly quietly slipped from the bedroom. The plan was to text Dan, who would drive her over and stay until Jackson came over at a more reasonable hour.
Jackson hadn’t been thrilled.
But he also wasn’t used to the hours. He needed sleep to keep running his business.
So compromise.
Except, the second she strode out of the bedroom, she realized that his agreement had been a means to end the fight.
Because Jackson was awake and dressed . . . and he held out a cup of coffee in her direction.
She took it, sucked back a huge sip.
Then another.
By the time the caffeine hit her blood stream and she opened her mouth to tell him to get his butt back to sleep, Jackson had her carafe in hand, his jacket on, and he was striding to the door while texting someone—presumably, Dan, because a few seconds later there was a knock on the door.
Jackson checked the peephole then crossed back over to her, switching the mug for the carafe. “Time to go, sweetheart,” he said and set the cup on the side table.
“You should—”
He cupped her cheek. “You’re there. I’m there.”
Her heart skipped a beat and she wanted to ask him if it was because he wanted to be, or because he felt he had to be.
However, instead of that question coming out from between her lips, “You know how I take my coffee?” emerged in its place.
