by KB Winters
I managed to lift my head to look at Ava and whisper, “Don’t be afraid,” I said. “It’s all going to be okay.” Isaak began to pace the floor, listening to the mayhem erupting beyond the office walls. I could sense he was weighing the decision to go fight beside his men or stay in the safety of his office until the violence ceased. But in this life, violence, hatred and death were all around us.
As the sound of mass destruction drew closer, Isaak cocked his gun and escaped out the door, giving me the opportunity to make it over to Ava. If the war came to us, I could at least shield her with my body. There was no way in hell I was going to let her take a bullet—especially not for me.
“Are you okay?” I asked, my heart breaking as I saw bruises and dried blood on her face and neck.
I worried that whatever they had done to her had damaged her, broken her, and left her sitting there in tears. But when she looked up at me, there was a light in her eyes. Some small shred of hope.
She nodded, unable to speak with the gag in place.
“You’re going to be okay, I promise,” I said softly. “My guys are here, they’re going to save us. Just sit tight and do your best to keep your head down, sweetheart.”
As the firing ceased, I could hear the heavy thudding of boots clapping against the floor, doors smacking against walls then finally, Red and Emmett burst into the room.
“Feckin’ hell, what a bloody mess we’re in,” he snorted as he holstered his gun and set to work on the bindings on my hands. As soon as I was free, I released the gag tied around Ava’s face, all the while preparing for the onslaught of questions.
They didn’t come. I looked at her for a long moment before I started working on the knots in the rope on her wrists and ankles. “Say something, sweetheart, anythin’,” I pleaded.
Finally free from the bindings, she slowly tried to stand up from the chair, but she fell into me. I caught her, holding her head close to my chest.
“We got em,” Red said. “All of them.”
“Even Isaak?” I asked.
“Yes, that rat bastard is dead,” Emmett said, though he didn’t sound pleased. “You know, this is going to come back to bite us, don’t you? You don’t just feckin’ off a bunch of Russians without some serious blowback.”
“I know,” I said. “But it’s not like I asked for any of this. I have no idea what the fuck he was thinking. Or why he did what he did.”
“I know, Flynn,” Red said.
As soon as he said my name, I tensed. I looked down at Ava, but her eyes were expressionless. I hoped that she was in too much shock to comprehend what we were talking about, and I sure as hell hoped she didn’t hear Red using my name. I didn’t want to have to explain everything right then and there. Hell, I didn’t want to have to explain anything at all. But given the events of the day, I knew there would be a shitload of questions and eventually, I was going to have to face the music and cop to everything with her.
But not now. At the moment, we needed to focus on surviving.
“We need to get out of here,” I said.
She nodded, finally speaking, “Yes, we do.”
I took her hand in mine, and with my men, we left the warehouse behind. We passed Isaak’s body, a gunshot wound to the chest and the head. Damn, he deserved a more drawn out suffering than a quick end.
The deaths of these Russians were going to come back on us, and things around town were going to get super-heated and super ugly, real fast.
Like it or not, it looked like our deal with the Russians was off. And worst yet, they’d launched an all-out war. We were going to have no choice but to respond in kind.
But Ava was safe, and in that moment, that’s all I could think about. That was all I cared about. That’s all that mattered to me. After I’d loaded her into my car, we took off. But not before Red had pulled me off to the side.
“They’re after you, man,” he’d told me. “I don’t know why, but they think you’re the snitch. Hang low, get out of town. You and your woman get out of here for a while. Just until the dust settles.”
“Sounds like a plan, brother,” I said.
Twenty-One
Ava
“Where are we going, Flynn?” I asked.
I never saw a man turn his head so fast to stare at me. If not for the seriousness of the situation—as well as my own well-justified anger about it—it might have been funny. But he completely took his eyes off the road and stared right at me, his eyes wide and filled with uncertainty. Perhaps even a touch of fear.
“What did you call me?”
“Flynn,” I said with a sigh. “That’s your name, isn’t it? I heard the others calling you that, so I’m just assuming that’s your real name and that you’ve been lying to me this entire time.”
Nice save, Ava. My brain was fuzzy from everything that had happened, and I wasn’t exactly thinking straight. But I knew I needed to pull it together and get my head in the game. I needed to be extremely careful. As of that moment, Flynn had no idea I worked for the FBI. And he had no idea I’d known who he was the entire time we were doing whatever it was we were doing together.
Flynn. I rolled the name around in my head a little bit, and even though I knew that was his name all along, it was still weird calling him Flynn out loud. Silly, and maybe even as stupid as it sounded, there was some small part of me that had wanted to believe he really was a different man—the sort of man I could see myself with.
But now the curtains had been pulled back, and the illusion had been shattered. Given all that had happened, I was forced to accept that Ian didn’t exist anywhere but in my own mind. Only Flynn O’Brien existed, and we were currently rushing away from the scene of a crime in his car. Even worse—I had no idea where the hell we were going.
I had to play it cool, though. My life depended on it. Although I knew Ian to be a kind, gentle man, I knew what sort of man Flynn O’Brien was and what he was capable of.
“I’m sorry, Ava,” he said at last, letting out a big sigh. “I know I have a lot of explaining to do.”
“Yeah, you do,” I said. “But first, I’d like to know where you’re taking me.”
I was pretty confident that Flynn wouldn’t hurt me. Of course, that might have been misplaced confidence since he still had no idea who I was, or so I thought. If he knew me to be an FBI agent, that could change quickly. But as far as I knew, he only knew me as sweet, little Ava, and I believed that he genuinely cared for me. It was something I could use to my advantage if it came down to that.
Reaching down, he took my hand in his, kissing the knuckles. “Somewhere safe, sweetheart,” he said softly. “Away from all this. Until we can fix things with the Russians, I can’t trust they won’t try and kidnap you again. The last thing I want is for you to be hurt because of me. I won’t have you put in harm’s way ever again.”
I let out a small breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. It was a relief to hear him say that. It meant that I wasn’t going to end up in a shallow ditch somewhere. At least, not anytime soon. Of course, there was the fact that no one knew where I was, and that made me a little uneasy.
Not even my boss knew how close I’d gotten to Flynn O’Brien and this case. It was something I had to keep a secret since I was never authorized to go undercover. Going into this whole fiasco, I’d had no intention of getting this deep into it. But here I was. In way over my head. I was in a car, being driven to God knew where, with the head of the Irish Mob—the group who’d killed my dad all those years ago.
Flynn tossed something in my lap without saying a word.
“What’s this?” I asked, staring down at a passport.
“It’s your new identity, for now,” he said. “Hopefully it’s only temporary. But at least I know you’ll be safe.”
I looked at the photo on the passport that bore a name I didn’t recognize. Wait, was he—
“Are you sending me away?” I asked, flipping through the passport again, not quite believing what I saw.
Whoever had made it was an absolute pro. It looked like the real deal. There was my photo, expertly applied. Or rather, a woman who looked just enough like me that even I struggled to tell the difference. My name, however, was listed as Lisa Winchester.
“Not at all, Ava,” he said, tossing me a second passport.
“Paul Winchester? So you’re my husband now, is that it?”
He shrugged. “It’s the most logical story I could come up with on the fly,” he said. “Easier to explain than anything else. Not that anybody would ask any questions.”
“Are we leaving the country?”
My heart raced as I thought about what he was suggesting. I had a career—one I couldn’t just put on hold on a whim. I had a life here. If I left the country with Flynn, would I ever be able to get back? And if I did get back to it, what would it look like then?
“Not yet, we’re just going to lay low for a night or two,” he said. “But if needed, we’re ready to hop on the next plane to Bermuda or wherever the fuck we wanna go.”
Flynn seemed almost thrilled at the prospect of the two of us running away to another country. And while the idea of packing up my bags and jetting off somewhere exotic and fantastic sounded appealing in theory, I knew the reality of it was much, much scarier. We’d be on the run. Always having to watch over our shoulders for trouble.
“One step at a time, Flynn,” I said. “You’re kind of freaking me out.”
“I’m sorry, Ava,” he said, his voice softer now. “I’m getting a bit ahead of myself and should be more understanding. This has been a rough, scary day for you. But just know, I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure you’re safe and happy, wherever and whatever we do, okay? You’re my biggest priority. Nothing else.”
“Okay,” I muttered, not sure what else to say as I stared down at the passport in my hand.
In a way, I saw the passport as a ticket to freedom. To a new life and a whole new world. In another way—I saw it as a prison. As a shackle connecting me to the man and the organization who murdered my father.
“Do you trust me?” he asked me, watching me from the corner of his eye.
I nodded and answered, “Yes, yes I do.”
And that was the truth. Even though he’d lied to me from the very beginning about who he was, part of me wondered if the only lie he told me was his name and occupation. I had the feeling that it was and that perhaps, the real Flynn was the one I’d seen. The one I’d gotten to know. The one I’d come to care for. I had the feeling that I got to see behind the curtain, to the real man, though he wore a mask with the rest of the world.
Yeah, it sounded naïve even to myself. It sounded like the childish longings of a schoolgirl with a crush. But the way he held my hand and looked at me—I saw something in his eyes that made my heart flutter and my breath catch in my throat. Even with all I’d been through and everything I knew—I still had that reaction to him. And as I stared into his soulful eyes, I had to wonder—were this man’s feelings for me as genuine and pure as my feelings for him?
Would he still feel the same way if he knew who I was?
Twenty-Two
Ava
We drove for several hours through highways that cut through the cornfields of Illinois. It was a long, monotonous ride, to say the least. The scenery outside the window was boring as hell and kept lulling me to sleep. More than once, I’d had to snap myself back awake.
When I asked Flynn where we were going, he told me, “I don’t know, yet. I’m just kind of winging it right now. We’re just going to keep driving until we find a little town where no one knows us, and no one will ever think to look for us.”
Considering the fact that we were in the Midwest, I figured that was going to be pretty easy to do. Besides Chicago, there weren’t that many big cities around. There were, however, plenty of small towns. Plenty of places we could lose ourselves where people just didn’t tend to ask a lot of questions. It was up to us to choose one.
I had to admit that there was something exhilarating about picking some random town in the middle of nowhere. About just operating on the fly and not having any plan in place. Even if the drive itself was mostly boring, filled with nothing but flat land for many miles, knowing that anything and everything was open to us was still something of a rush.
We were headed toward Missouri, I knew that much. But St. Louis was a big city, so I had a feeling we wouldn’t be going there. Missouri has plenty of small towns, so I figured it was going to be pretty easy to find one.
“So tell me about yourself, Flynn,” I said, deciding to make the most of the car ride. “Since obviously, I know nothing about you. I didn’t even know your name. So surely, there is a lot about yourself that you haven’t told me.”
He cringed when I said that, looking like I’d just slapped him across the face or something. They were just words. Cutting words, I had to admit. But really, they weren’t even close to a lie. I knew a lot more about Flynn than I let on. If anything, I was just as guilty as he was about putting up a fake front—and yeah, there was a small part of me that felt guilty as hell about doing it, too. It made me feel like a big hypocrite. It was a feeling that surprised me. He was, after all, the bad guy, and I was doing my job—which was to bring down the bad guys. No, I wasn’t the bad guy in all of this, and my deceptions had been necessary in order to do my job properly. Though, in all honesty, Flynn didn’t seem like an exceptionally bad guy. I really believed there was a good man hidden somewhere inside of him.
“Besides my name, the rest is true, Ava,” he said. “Everything I’ve told you from day one was the God’s honest truth. I promise you that much. I know I haven’t given you a lot of reason to believe me, but I hope you do because I’m being completely honest here.”
“Funny, I never knew there was so much kidnapping and murder in the import business,” I replied. He cut me a serious glance and realization dawned on me. To be such an intelligent woman, I was a dumb fuckin’ bitch in this situation. “Ahh, I see. I guess I’m not as smart as I considered myself,” I sneered, growing even more frustrated that I’d let my emotions impede on such a monumental case.
He cringed again. “Yeah, that wasn’t entirely a lie if you read between the lines,” he said, shrugging. “It is what it is, sweetheart.” The cocky, conniving bastard that Flynn O’Brien was known to be throughout Chicago was finally sitting before me, a satisfied grin set upon his devilishly handsome face. I could feel the muscles in my back growing tense as fury charged through my veins, and I wanted nothing more than to smack the fuckin’ smirk off his face.
“The only truth I withheld from you was my name. It’s uncommon for anyone in the city to not know who I am, and when you didn’t recognize me, I saw an out. The chance to be someone else. Just to pretend that I could be a better man, if only with you, for you.”
Taking a breath and making sure to check myself, I bit down on my tongue. Fuck, he rebound quickly. Flynn veered off the road, pulling into a desolate rest area. I hadn’t even realized we’d turned off the interstate. I quickly took in my surroundings, unsure of where the fuck we were.
“And how am I supposed to believe you?” I challenged.
“Well ask me anything, and I’ll tell ya the truth as long as I can.”
“Like you told me the truth about your name?” I tossed back at him.
Yes, I was feeling a bit snarky, I couldn’t deny that. But there was a small part of me that argued that I’d set myself up for it. What else did I expect—for him to be honest about everything from the very beginning? He was a fucking mobster. A gangster. I knew what I was getting myself into, and yet there I was, mad at him for lying to me when I already knew the truth. I came into this expecting him to lie, and it seemed a little silly for me to be so pissed off about him doing exactly what I’d expected him to do.
Despite that, I felt the need to put the screws to him and really make him suffer. And he hadn’t squirmed nearly enough just yet.
&nb
sp; “Ava, I’m sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t explain it all because I was afraid that it would have put you in danger. You see the people I deal with? What they’re capable of? They wanted to hurt you to get to me, and I was doing everything I could to protect you. To keep you away from all that. That’s the only reason I lied to you, sweetheart. To protect you. Your safety means more to me than my own, and I was only trying to make sure nothing could harm you.”
“All for me, huh?” I shouted, my emotions quickly getting the best of me. I didn’t want him to see the effect his mistrust had had on me, but there it was, glaringly obvious for all to see. Perhaps it was for the best? “Fuckin’ bastard!” I seethed, feeling the tears prickling the back of my eyes. “And none of your lies were meant to protect yourself?” As determined as I was to not back down and fight him tooth and nail, I knew once the tears started to fall, I’d crumble.
So I let my fight or flight instinct take over, and without giving it much thought, I swung my fist back and aimed for Flynn’s square jaw. He caught my wrist within his hand, mid-air and yanked me across the console and into his lap. Roughly, he took my face in his strong hands and observed me with a murderous glare in his piercing blue eyes. He sighed and rested his forehead against mine, looking genuinely defeated. “Maybe a lil’ bit, aye. But only because it’s all I know,” he said. “You don’t know this life, sweetheart, you don’t live it. It’s a fuckin’ cruel and ruthless world. I can’t tell you everything that goes down in my business, Ava. I just can’t. You have to understand that. I will always do what’s necessary to protect what’s mine, regardless of the consequences, because I love you, sweetheart.”
My heart stopped and I stared at him, open-mouthed in shock. H-he l-loved me? I was stunned mainly because I believed him. Believed every word he’d just said. The cop in me rebelled and tried to reject everything and I didn’t want to believe him because it made my job that much more difficult. It made wanting to take him down a much stickier task. It was going to be very emotionally complicated. But God help me, I believed him.
