“If we’re lucky, he’ll be indicted for fraud, racketeering, and anything else the feds can pin on him.” For some reason, Nash did not mention the fact that he suspected Sergei Yurevich was involved as far more than Miranda Brookes’s lackey.
“Indicted,” Ralston mused. “I suppose that would be satisfying to you.”
“You wouldn’t find that satisfying?” Nash cocked his head and drank the last of his coffee. “You’re supposedly doing all of this just to find out what your father is really up to. What did you think that was leading to? Did you really believe you were going to exonerate him?”
“No.” Ralston picked at his bagel. “I never thought he was actually innocent. I suppose I always just thought he would wind up dead.”
“Dead?” It was Nash’s turn to be surprised. “Is that what you want?”
“No.” The look in Ralston’s eyes was bleak. “But unfortunately, that’s what the man deserves.”
*
Ava met with the caterer the following day to plan the menu for the faux evening engagement party. It seemed like a total waste, but Ava had to remind herself that this soiree was for a much more important purpose. This whole thing was meant to convince Stedman Hyde-Pierson that his daughter had come back to the fold, and that she had brought her father a ripe opportunity to make some quick hard cash.
It wasn’t as if the poor catering service hadn’t done business with Ava before, but this was the first time it had ever been accomplished within a twenty-four-hour timeframe. The owner of the company left Ava’s home looking harried and distracted. Ava stood at the door and watched her retreat down the front walk. To Ava’s surprise, Tegan wound her arms around her Ava’s waist and rested her chin on her mother’s shoulder.
“You think the poor lady will quit?” Tegan wondered out loud.
Ava chuckled. “For what I’m paying her? Not a chance.”
“Why so quick? Why does this fake engagement party have to happen tomorrow night?” Tegan moved to stand beside her mother, looking down at Ava with an expression that reminded Ava so much of Stedman that it was almost frustrating.
Sometimes it was a sad fact of life that the children she loved so much could look so much like the man she hated. Ava sighed. “Rushing it like this stamps the whole thing with a brand of exclusivity that sort of draws attention. Your father likes attention. He will love the fact that all of Boston will drop everything to come to this party tomorrow night. It’s a status thing.”
“It’s disgusting,” Tegan muttered. “And to imagine that I would actually consider dumping Wrath for Judson Politte is ludicrous.”
“You agreed to go along with this,” Ava reminded her daughter.
Tegan sighed. “It’s a good plan. It’s just the thought of explaining on Monday that the party I threw on Friday was fake is sort of exhausting to contemplate.”
“So, don’t explain,” Ava said drily. “Let people figure it out for themselves. Make up some ridiculous, completely outlandish excuse. It doesn’t matter what people think. Once your father is out of our lives and out of our hair, we can finally live.”
“Are you sure?” Tegan crossed her arms over her chest. She looked so tired that it made Ava want to hunt Stedman down herself and drown him. “Because I feel like no matter what happens, Dad always manages to win. He plays us against each other, or he lies, or he cheats, or he ties us up in court with a bunch of bogus legal bullshit. It’s endless!”
“It is endless!” Ava agreed. She gave her daughter a warm squeeze. “That’s why we have to keep fighting.”
There was a knock at the kitchen door. Ava spun around. There were very few people that would come to that door, and most of them were right here in this room.
“Who is it?” Tegan whispered the words with a good dose of apprehension.
Ava shrugged. “I don’t know. Stay here though. If the visitor is an unfriendly, leave through the front and go find the guys.”
“Mom,” Tegan whispered harshly. “You can’t just charge in there and answer that door!”
Ava hated how paranoid they had all become because of Stedman’s machinations. It was disheartening. She straightened her spine and offered her daughter a smile. “I’m the lady of the house, Tegan. Of course I have to answer the damn door.”
There was a shadow standing outside the door. It stretched long over the shrubbery and made Ava think fanciful thoughts of the devil coming to knock. She gave herself a mental kick for being ridiculous. It was a bright day outside and ten o’clock in the morning. There was no need to worry about boogeymen right now.
Ava unlocked the kitchen door and pulled it open. The man standing on the doorstep smiled. “Hello, Ms. Harte. I was hoping that we might chat for a few moments. My name is Sergei Yurevich.”
Ava did not move. She felt rooted to the spot. Sergei Yurevich. She knew that name. “You’re the federal informer,” Ava whispered. “You’re the snitch!”
“The one that Analise outed to your husband, yes,” Sergei said ruefully.
“Ex-husband,” Ava corrected him. “We haven’t been married in years.”
“Of course. I’m sorry.” Sergei gestured to the doorway. “Can I come in?”
“Why?” Ava wasn’t so keen on letting this unknown wild card into her home. “What could you possibly want here? Aren’t you working for some federal agent named Miranda Brookes or something?”
“Ah, Ms. Brookes.” Sergei made a face. “Obviously, you have never met her.”
Ava wondered what that had to do with anything. “Not personally. Why?”
“You would understand that Ms. Brookes is actually the female version of your ex-husband.” Sergei stood relaxed with his feet spread and his hands held loosely clasped in front of his body. “She is far too eager to use everybody for her own ends and often plays a game that does not exactly mesh with what her superiors believe she is doing.”
“Sounds like almost everyone embroiled in this mess. Including you,” Ava retorted.
She cocked her head sideways and tried to read between the lines of what Sergei was saying. The man was dressed in a designer suit and expensive shoes. He looked like an old-school banker or stockbroker. He certainly did not look like a seedy Russian mobster. Yet if what Ava had gleaned about Sergei was true, he was actually one of those unique people who played all sides while doing anything he could to get ahead and stay there. He was very, very dangerous. Trusting him would be a bad idea. But the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And right now, Ava needed all the friends she could find. Even if some of them might cause Nash to curse and throw up his hands in total frustration.
Ava stepped back from the doorway, “Come in, Mr. Yurevich. There is no harm in a little conversation.”
“Exactly my thought, madam.” Sergei’s smile was just a little too eager and a little too oily for Ava’s comfort, but it was too late to retreat now. She had to see this through to the end.
Chapter Sixteen
Nash approached Ava’s house from the direction of the kitchen door. All things considered, it had already been a long-ass day. He’s had some of Sergei and Miranda’s flunkies arrested for squatting on a rooftop. There had been that difficult and startling conversation with Ralston and Analise that hadn’t ended quite like Nash had expected. And now he spotted an extra person at Ava’s kitchen table.
Ducking down, Nash squatted on the sidewalk just outside the door and tried to decide what to do. He needed to at least figure out who it was that had managed to trespass on Ava’s overblown sense of hospitality before he went barging inside.
Pivoting on his feet, Nash cringed as the soles of his boots crunched on the walkway. The only way to get a view was to try and find a place below one of the windows in the breakfast nook and catch a peek of who was at the table.
He carefully pushed his way through the vegetation growing around the foundation of Ava’s house. There was more than one curse that wanted to fly past his lips as he caught his hand on the thorns. Why did people have to have so
much damn landscaping anyway?
Pressing his back against the old brick wall of Ava’s house, Nash craned his neck around and tried to catch a glimpse of the table. The cursed vegetation was actually helping at this point. The leafy bushes were hiding the top of his head very nicely as he scanned the kitchen.
There were three people at the table. He recognized Tegan immediately. Ava was sitting beside her. The third person was male and seemed fairly tall. He was dressed in a suit and looked vaguely familiar though it took Nash several moments to place him.
Damn! Nash turned and sat on his butt in the flowerbed below the window. Sergei Yurevich was sitting at Ava’s kitchen table! What. The. Hell? The guy was turning up everywhere! Nash had not yet had a chance to tell Ava or the others about his suspicions regarding Miranda Brookes and Sergei Yurevich. The man was obviously playing both sides, but to what end? Now he was here? It was too much of a coincidence.
At this point, the question was whether or not there was a way to use an alliance with Sergei to their advantage without getting burned in the process. Nash exhaled a deep sigh. Ava was smart. He needed to remember that. There was no way she didn’t at least realize in part that she had the devil sitting at her kitchen table.
AVA COULD NOT decide whether or not Sergei was blowing smoke up her skirt or not. The man seemed like he was on the level, but his story was almost too outlandish to be true. Of course, in her experience so far, those were usually the tales that were true.
She sat back in her chair and happened to glance up just in time to see Nash retreating through her flowerbeds toward the kitchen door. It was a struggle not to laugh or gasp or something! The man was actually skulking through her bushes, spying on the kitchen because he’d seen a stranger at her table. Not that she could fault him for the caution. It was just so laughable because their lives had become that uncertain and dramatic.
Ava jumped up out of her seat. “Would you like more tea, Mr. Yurevich?” She poured herself some more, using that as an excuse. Sergei shook his head as though he wasn’t quite sure what was going on. Then there was a knock at the kitchen door, and Ava was consumed with trying to seem normal as she opened it.
“Oh, Nash, what a surprise,” Ava tried to keep her voice normal. What was normal in this situation? It was difficult to say. In the end, it sounded as though she were choking on the words.
“Ava.” Nash stepped into the kitchen. He nodded at her daughter. “Tegan.” Then he looked right at Sergei. “Mr. Yurevich, I presume?”
“Jason Nash.” Sergei stood up and offered his hand. He was almost painfully polite. “We have never met, but you have been rather a thorn in my side for quite some time.”
“Is that right?” Nash murmured.
Ava touched his elbow. “Would you like tea?”
“Uh. Sure.” Nash couldn’t focus on anything else but Yurevich long enough to think about something as mundane as tea.
Nash sat down. Sergei sat as well. It was almost comical the way they stared at each other. Tegan’s gaze kept snapping back and forth between the two as though she were watching a tennis match. Then Ava sat a mug of tea in front of Nash, and he wrapped his hands around it just to give them something to do.
“Your agent outed me to Stedman Hyde-Pierson,” Sergei murmured. The words did not seem directed to Nash. They seemed directed at the table in general.
Ava was the one to answer. “Analise used an opportunity to ingratiate herself with Stedman. Considering the way you seem to do business, I would suspect that you can perfectly understand why she would do such a thing.”
“Perhaps,” Sergei allowed. The corner of his mouth twisted into a smile. “And yet I am still annoyed by the loss of a dozen months’ work.”
“A dozen?” Nash said quickly. “I doubt that. From what we can tell, Stedman has only been working with the Bratva for that amount of time.”
“Ah, but perhaps you underestimate how long I have been trying to infiltrate the Boston organization?” Sergei pointed out. He paused for a moment to give Nash a very pointed look of disgust. “I cannot abide a man who only sees the game he is playing without realizing that there are many games going on simultaneously.”
“I am not that man,” Nash argued. “And you’re making a gross assumption if you think that I am.”
NASH DID NOT like this man. That much was evident within five minutes of meeting him. Yet Nash also had a strong awareness of the fact that Sergei’s cooperation would go a long way toward making this haphazard plan work.
“The book,” Sergei murmured. “There was a book that was kept at the White Russian.”
“The bar?” Ava asked with a frown.
“Yes, the bar.” Sergei’s impatience was on display. He shifted in his seat and seemed to be making an attempt to hide what he was really feeling. He pointed to Ava. “The book was a gift from you to your husband.”
Tegan sucked in a quick breath. “That book?”
“Aloysha told me that the book was part of a cipher,” Nash told Sergei. “Why do you want it?”
“I just do.” Sergei seemed reluctant to answer. “It has notes in it that reveal information about the Boston Bratva.”
Ava made a gesture to Tegan. “Go retrieve the book from my office, please.”
Tegan jumped up, and Nash attempted to send Ava a message with his eyes. Something along the lines of what the hell are you doing? Why would Ava say she had such a thing in her possession, much less offer to go and get it for him?
“What do you need it for?” Nash pressed. “Tell me or you’re not going to lay a finger on it.”
Sergei gave a heavy sigh. “With the information in that book, I can access the accounts that Stedman uses to transfer the money from one account to another. The account information and the key can be used to direct the money. Do you see why it’s so vital that I get that book?”
“I can see why you would believe it’s vital,” Nash agreed. “What I can’t understand is why you think we would want to help you drain those accounts.”
Sergei shrugged. “If Stedman is broke, he is a desperate man.”
“He’s pretty desperate at this point anyway,” Ava said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Why would we give you the opportunity to get away with all of that Bratva money?”
“Because it rightfully belongs to the Bratva!” Sergei burst out. He seemed to realize that he had overstepped himself just a bit. He sighed and seemed to deliberately sit back in his chair.
Tegan reentered the kitchen with Ava’s book in her hand. Nash watched the man’s gaze seem to focus in on that book. The hunger in that gaze indicated a very dangerous individual. And yet for the moment they were allied in a way. It was disconcerting.
AVA TOOK THE book from her daughter’s hands. She held the very familiar thing and thought about how much trouble this one innocuous little volume had caused over the years. It was shocking, really. It was just a book. Why Stedman would have used this for his silly cipher was beyond Ava. And yet she could see him doing such a thing out of pure arrogance.
“Why would we care about helping you get back something that you think is yours?” Nash asked Sergei.
Ava watched the careful way Nash sat in his seat. He was the studied picture of nonchalance, but only if you were unaware of his typical behavior. He was so very alert in this moment. It was as though he were holding a live snake in his hands.
Sergei spread his hands and pressed his lips into a thin line. Something about his dark looks brought to mind Rasputin. Ava wondered if the old, crazy monk from the Romanov era had been this convincing. She suspected that he had been.
“I apologize for my overeager behavior,” Sergei murmured. Then he turned to Ava. “Your ex-husband stole much from us. He schemed to take over the Boston portion of the organization almost from the beginning. And I will admit. Anton most certainly helped Stedman fleece the Sokolovs. The old man needed to step down. The council was aware of that. We had addressed it. The next thing we knew, Sokolov
was dead. Exactly how it happened is still unclear. What is also unclear is how Stedman managed to convince the gang members that he was still alive but had travelled back to Russia. For quite some time, we believe he actually purchased plane tickets and paid someone to go back and forth with the passport in order to keep blame from himself.”
Ava’s mind was racing. It was a lot to take in. It was outrageous to think that Stedman Hyde-Pierson—a man who had never truly wanted to work hard for something—had been handed the reins for a Fortune 500 company at eighteen. The list of injustices in the world was great.
“Okay, fine,” Nash said firmly. “So, you and your colleagues—whoever you’re working with—are attempting to finish off a man who cheated you. I suppose that’s normal in your world.”
“Any world,” Ava added. “I’ll give you the book. But only after you help us get the information we need on Stedman. I’m not giving it to you until Stedman Hyde-Pierson is in jail. If you can use it to get your money back after that, then you may do so with my blessing.”
She could see Nash from the corner of her eye. He was getting ready to protest. She could practically feel his discomfiture with what she was about to do. But in the end, this was her book and her mission, and it was her life. She wanted it back. She wanted Stedman gone.
“And what happens to Stedman?” Sergei asked, his gaze narrowed. “What happens to the man who has caused so much misery and so many problems?”
“He’s going to jail,” Ava said firmly. “For the rest of his life.”
Sergei cocked his head to one side. His arms were folded over his middle, and he looked every inch the sullen mobster who has been thwarted in a way he does not like. “I suppose I will have to agree, then. There is nothing more to be said.”
“Oh, there’s a lot to be said,” Ava told him with a laugh. “But for now, the only thing you need to do is get ready to attend a party tomorrow night.”
“Tomorrow?” Two frown lines appeared between Sergei’s eyebrows. “A party?”
“My engagement party,” Tegan piped up. “The groom is a real bastard. Believe me.”
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