“Presumably dead,” Nash muttered. He was staring at the screen. Then he pointed to an area outlined in red. “This is Sokolov’s presumed territory.”
“So, we were very near that area,” Wrath mused. “Maybe we just got too close for them to be able to resist taking a shot?”
“That’s not enough to bring mafia out of the shadows in the middle of the day. This isn’t even how Sokolov normally does business.”
“What’s the rumor on the street?” Wrath wanted to know. “Has anyone talked about outsiders coming in to take contracts? The Russian mafia usually has its own made men.”
“Vor v Zakone,” Nash murmured. “You’re right. They generally do not bring in outsiders to do Bratva work.”
Wrath rubbed the back of his neck. This was frustrating. “So why now? What’s different about this job or this problem that makes them deal with it like a whole new animal?”
There was a knock on the door. The back of the truck swung open and Analise appeared. She refused to look at Wrath. “I just got a text from Quinten. He says that Stedman has made a request that Bridge and Jinx remain with him at all times as his personal guards. Apparently the three of them are just buddy-buddy now.”
Nash snorted. “That should make Quinten happy. He hates Stedman. I’ll have to redo the assignments, I guess. That means a new schedule.”
“And paychecks?” Analise cleared her throat. “Yesterday was payday, boss.”
“Right.” Nash already sounded like he’d forgotten anything but the puzzle of the Sokolov involvement with Stedman Hyde-Pierson.
“Have you ever thought about hiring someone to take over the business side of things?” Wrath asked Nash. As soon as the words were out, he wished he could reel them back in. Analise and Nash were both looking at him as though he’d grown a second head. He shrugged. “I don’t know about Analise, but I like getting paid on time. Not only that, but I don’t know how you could possibly be scouting for other jobs or lining them up when you’re knee-deep in this one.”
Analise grunted and folded her arms over her chest. “The boy has a point.”
“It was just a thought,” Wrath murmured.
Of course, for him, it was a thought that the entire problem could be solved by bringing Tegan on board as the manager of business operations or whatever else bullshit title they wanted to put on it. Then Tegan wouldn’t have to worry about a job after graduation or working for her asinine father. She and Wrath would always have a reason to talk to each other or…
What was he thinking? Yeah. Love really wasn’t the name he would put on this thing he had going with Tegan. Yes. He very strongly suspected that he loved the woman. That much was pretty obvious. But it went farther than that. He was actively searching for ways to make a life for the two of them work. Logistics, finances, the whole thing was starting to take up space in his thought processes, and if he stayed true to form, he would not stop thinking about it until he had a solution.
“What’s your problem?” Analise kicked his chair. When had he even sat down? Wrath didn’t remember sitting down. Now Analise was smirking. “Are you dehydrated or something? You know you should drink more water.”
Wrath narrowed his gaze at her. “You know, someday you’re going to need my help in a similar situation, and I’m not going to give it, because you’re being such a bitch.”
“Whatever!” Analise scoffed. Her expression was every bit of smug. “I’m not ruled by my freaking hormones. And I can safely promise that I will never mix business with other.”
“Okay, you two,” Nash growled. “Analise, you’re in charge of the new schedule. Stedman has added a few more targets. Apparently, he has a niece that lived with him during her growing-up years who has received death threats in the last few days. The son is already on our list, as is the ex-wife.”
“This is getting bigger and more complicated by the second.” Wrath motioned to the map. “Look how spread out these targets are. They’re nowhere near Sokolov territory, and they have nothing to really connect them to Stedman other than his belief that they’re in danger and some strange and vague death threats.”
“Analise, I want you to collect the letters that the niece received. Make sure they get sent to our contact at Boston PD. I want them analyzed for viability. Someone could be using this situation to increase the strain on Stedman and keep him busy for an entirely different purpose.”
“Espionage on a whole new level,” Wrath commented. “Interesting possibility.”
*
He said that he would come, so Tegan rested her head on her pillow and snuggled deep into her covers to wait. Spring in Boston wasn’t exactly the warmest time of year. Sometimes it felt more like winter all over again. The house felt cold, and she couldn’t seem to shake off this chill.
“I’m coming up!”
The voice was most definitely Wrath’s, but she appreciated the fact that he wasn’t sneaking up on her. Lately, that wouldn’t have gone over that well, all things considered. Sometimes she still felt as if this whole thing hadn’t really sunk in. She was being targeted because of her father. That much made sense, until you factored in the notion that her father was not the doting sort. Sometimes it seemed as though he would rather she just leave him alone.
Wrath stepped through the doorway of her bedroom. His expression wasn’t warm and fuzzy, but she wouldn’t have expected that of him anyway. He looked rather intense. He perched on the edge of her bed and very gently took her hand in his. Lifting her fingers to his lips, he pressed a kiss to her knuckles.
“How are you?” he murmured softly.
She pursed her lips. Well, that was a loaded question, wasn’t it? “I’m confused.”
“About?”
“This whole situation. It should be easy, I suppose. My father is important and rich, so I’m a target for a business associate who wants to pressure him into doing something.”
Wrath cocked his head to the side. “What’s the hang up?”
“My father would find it far more convenient if I were dead. I want to talk to him. I want to ask him why this is happening.” Tegan sighed. “All my life I’ve pretended that I’m daddy’s little girl. I’ve tried to play it off like he’s a loving, doting parent who wants me to succeed.”
“That’s not the truth.” There was no question in Wrath’s tone. He was simply stating a fact that he knew to be true.
“No. It isn’t,” Tegan admitted. “So why all the bullshit? Why bother? Is it because of looks? I could almost believe that. My father is very concerned with his image.”
“We’ll ask him tomorrow then,” Wrath soothed. He moved all the way onto the bed and put his legs up. Bracing his back against the headboard, he put out his arm as though inviting her to snuggle. “For now, can you just rest enough to relax?”
“I have an Econ test tomorrow,” she said sleepily. “I’m not ready.”
“You’ll do fine,” he predicted.
Tegan snorted. “You don’t know that. What if I suck at Econ and I fail the test because I didn’t study and I’m actually not that smart anyway?”
“That’s bullshit.” He was sounding growly and more than a little grumpy. “You’re smarter than is good for you. Look at all of the problems it causes. If you were a stupid person, you would not care that your father is using you like a pawn in one of his games.”
“I wish I was stupid.” She yawned. “I wish I could just be the girl I’ve been pretending to be for all these years. I want to worry about what clothes I’m wearing and whether or not my shoes are in season or too last year to wear in public anymore. I want the most pressing thing in my day to be the shade of eyeliner I choose to put on. I want to be happy and frivolous and completely oblivious to everything that happens around me.”
“Except you would hate yourself,” Wrath muttered. “And if you were really like that, I wouldn’t love you.”
Wait. Had he just said that he loved her? Tegan tried to rouse herself, but she was just too tire
d. She was certain that she had heard him wrong. He could not have possibly just tossed that verbal bomb into the conversation. Love was a very serious matter. People knew each other for a really long time before they made declarations like that. They knew about the other person’s faults and strengths. They made a conscious choice to forgive the faults and enjoy the benefits. It was a serious decision—loving someone.
Of course, that did not explain why Tegan loved Wrath so much. She didn’t even know his proper name! What if it was something horrible like Francis or Archibald or Reginald?
“What’s your name?” she managed to murmur.
It was a long time before he answered. “Dante Wright.”
“Dante.” She could not have opened her eyes if someone had told her the house was on fire. “I like that. Why does nobody use it?”
“One of my commanding officers gave me the name Wrath after a particularly ugly skirmish overseas. He said that I was like some vengeful spirit. So he started calling me Wrath and it stuck.”
“Sometimes people need a little bit of vengeance on their side,” Tegan mused sleepily. “I think it’s fitting. But the name Dante fits too. Of course, I happen to think you’d be good with any name.” She sighed. “Except Reginald. I’ve never met a sexy Reginald.”
His low laughter was the last thing she heard before she slipped off to sleep.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Tegan’s resolve to get some answers from her father lasted right up until the moment Wrath pulled the car up to the front of the estate house in Brookline. At that point, she reconsidered everything and came up with the opinion that she was probably much happier not knowing her father’s actual motives and reasoning about all of this.
“What?” Wrath glanced over at her as he put the car in park.
Tegan suddenly realized that they were driving yet another car that seemed to have appeared with little to no fanfare. “Does Mr. Nash ever get tired of replacing your cars because you wreck them?”
“I don’t wreck them!” Wrath looked affronted. “I’m not the one who smashed us to smithereens yesterday. That was the other guy’s fault.”
“Oh, of course.” Tegan warmed to the argument. It was a perfect way to avoid the conversation with her father. Maybe she could sit out here with Wrath for so long that her father would have left for the day. “I mean, why would anyone consider it your fault that you bashed that one car and made it flip around? Then, of course, there was the part where the vehicle spun and you hit it again.”
“It could hardly be avoided,” Wrath reminded her. “I couldn’t just let them have you, could I?”
“I suppose not.” Tegan pursed her lips. “But from a cost perspective, you must be very difficult. You’ve gone through three cars since that first night you protected me from the fake bum.”
“Most of them were just missing windows or had a few bullet holes,” he pointed out.
“Because that’s such a minor thing,” she shot back sarcastically.
Wrath raised his eyebrows. “Are you going to get out of the car and go talk to your father? Or are you just going to sit here wasting time and pretending that’s not what we’re here to do?”
That stung a bit. Mostly because it was true. Tegan sighed and got out of the vehicle. She made her way up the front steps. Ringing the doorbell felt a little odd, but she didn’t live here anymore. And, really, she had never lived here. Perhaps just walking in had always been her way of establishing her desire to belong to this place.
“Hello, Miss Tegan!” Constance beamed as she opened the door wide. “You come on in. Your father is expecting you!”
“Thank you, Constance.” Tegan felt Wrath’s presence at her back as she moved into the house and headed for the steps. “Is he in his study?”
“Yes,” Constance said with a warm smile. “You come on down when you’re done, and I’ll get you a snack.”
“Okay, thank you.” Tegan shook her head. Constance still treated her like she was eight or ten years old, coming to see her father for one of the rare custody visits.
“I want a snack,” Wrath murmured from his place behind her. “What does she have? I bet it’s good.”
Tegan could not be howling with laughter when she walked into her father’s study, so she bit her lip to keep from giggling like an imbecile. It was difficult to imagine the hard-edged Wrath down in the kitchen eating one of Constance’s blueberry muffins or a turnover.
This trip through her father’s house was much different than the last one had been. Before, she had been worried to death about discovery. Now she was just trying to pretend that she had it all put together.
Tegan knocked on the door and waited until she heard the grunted invitation to enter. Pushing her way into the study, she was a little daunted to see two huge mountain-sized men flanking her father’s desk. They had to be the guards assigned by Mr. Nash to see to her father’s personal safety, but they looked like they’d spent most of their younger years playing football.
“Now.” Her father steepled his fingers in front of his face and stared at her over the top of his desk. That did not bode particularly well. “What is it you so desperately needed to see me about this morning?”
Tegan swallowed. Her throat was suddenly dry as cotton. She searched for the speech she’d had all ready to go earlier that morning. It was gone. She had nothing but her wits now, which pretty well meant she was screwed. “I want to talk about this perceived threat from the mafia,” she finally managed to say.
“Perceived?” Her father frowned. “If I say that there is a threat, there is a threat. Do not misunderstand me.”
His words stoked the fire of irritation and let her find her words. “Let’s be candid,” Tegan began. “Shall we? Because both you and I know that my brother, Ralston, is the only one you really care about. I’m nothing more than a nuisance that would have been more useful as a boy. You wanted me to accept Judson Politte’s offer of marriage. That tells me that you neither care about whether or not I’m happy, or even if I’m safe. That man is a horrible person. I would be miserable in a marriage with him. He’s a complete moron. I don’t even think my mother would speak to me after that kind of marital decision.”
“Your mother is hardly the expert on good marital decisions,” her father said drily. “And what’s all this nonsense about me not caring?”
“Don’t try to play it off. We all know that you would find it far more convenient if some Russian mobster bumped us all off. What’s in this for you? That’s what I want to know.”
“Excuse me?” He stood up. “I don’t have to listen to this kind of lip from my own daughter.”
“I’m not your daughter,” she shot back. “Not really. You may have been the sperm donor, but you were never there and you never cared either. So why care now? What’s in this for you? I’ve got men chasing me all over Boston. Why? Why would they even care about your family when the whole world knows that you don’t? Are you the one paying them to kill us? Is it because life would be far more convenient without us?”
WRATH WAS STUNNED by Tegan’s words. They weren’t just candid, they were below the belt and absolutely lethal. They hit Stedman Hyde-Pierson right where it hurt, and they left a mark.
Then Hyde-Pierson made a vague gesture toward Wrath. “Is he putting these ridiculous notions in your head?”
“Is it inconceivable that I can think for myself?” Tegan retorted hotly. “He’s a good man, but he doesn’t think for me. I don’t need any man to do my thinking for me. And I especially don’t need you!”
“Yes, you do, you little snot,” her father said vehemently. “You’re working for my company. Remember? That means you do as I say or you’ll be in the mailroom for the rest of your life.”
Tegan only laughed. Wrath’s belly tightened with fear for her prospects. Was she sure about what she was doing? He shifted from one foot to the other and widened his stance. That was when he noticed that Bridge and Jinx were not even vaguely interested in
what was happening in the room. They seemed utterly untouched. Why? It had to be a surprise to them. Right? They hadn’t even spared Wrath a glance. The three of them were supposed to be on the same team, but at the moment, Wrath was feeling rather isolated and confused as to why.
Tegan pointed at her father. “Do you honestly believe that I got no other job offers?” She took a few steps forward and glared down at her father. “I had tons of offers. Seventeen, to be precise. Most of them offered more money, but at the time, I was dead set on working at Pierson Financial. Now I’m not so sure. It seems like I could have better opportunities—honest opportunities, by going elsewhere. Is that true?”
“You wouldn’t dare!” Stedman Hyde-Pierson leaped up from his chair.
He was gripping the edge of the desk so hard that his knuckles turned white. Wrath carefully moved closer to Tegan. If Hyde-Pierson exploded, he wasn’t going to do it on Tegan.
Then Stedman turned his gaze to Wrath. “Are you actually trying to protect her from me? You moron! You’re as useless as you are idiotic. You think that you can defile my daughter and just walk away? I think I’m going to have you removed from your job. It’s pretty simple, really. Bridge and Jinx here will take you out back and give you a beating to remind you that touching a woman so far above your class has a price. Then they will politely remind Mr. Nash that all employment decisions must go through me.”
Wrath snorted. “Sorry, Stedman, but you need to realize that your influence doesn’t hold quite that much sway. We have a contract with you, but I don’t work for you.”
“No,” Stedman agreed. “You fucked my daughter. There’s certainly a difference!”
Stedman snapped his fingers, and to Wrath’s shock, Bridge and Jinx moved forward as though they were actually going to attack Wrath. Wrath held up his hands. “Come on now, guys. You know this isn’t going to end well for any of us.”
They kept coming. Wrath sighed and held his hands out at his sides nice and loose. Jinx reached for Wrath first. Wrath grabbed the man’s arm and twisted his wrist at a horrifying angle. Jinx snarled and broke the hold. He reached out and grabbed Wrath. They wrestled back and forth. Small tables and knickknacks went flying. Finally, the bigger Jinx managed to pick up Wrath and throw him into a glass-front bookcase.
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