by Maura Rose
They were standing close, what with the cold, and it was so easy with his hand on her arm just to tug her a little bit closer. To make his intent clear.
The spark of confrontation that they’d been fanning all night felt like something else now. An entirely different kind of spark.
Kelly made a kind of scoffing noise. “And what do you think you’re doing?”
Ivan felt a smile ghost over his lips. “What do you think I’m doing?”
“Being annoying as—”
He kissed her, pulling her in and ducking his head down to close the last bit of distance because fuck if nothing else it would shut her up.
Kelly went stiff for a moment, her mouth already forming the last word of her sentence, but then she relaxed against him, pressing forward, as though determined to show him up.
Ivan felt himself pushed backwards, his back colliding with the wall of the alley, and he grabbed at her, not bothering to be gentle about it if she was going to go around shoving him into things. He was glad it was a warm night, no coats for either of them, leaving his hands free to roam over her back. Kelly sank a hand into his hair, tugging a little, tilting her mouth so that they had a better angle, and Ivan could feel a spike of heat shoot through him as he slid his tongue into her mouth.
She shuddered against him, arching her back a little so that their hips ground together, and Ivan tightened his hold on her. Kelly gave a tiny whimper at that so he slid one of his hands down to her ass and did it again, squeezing. She gave a little moan this time, pressing the sound right into his mouth.
It wasn’t the eager, pliant kisses he was used to from all the women who’d been quite happy to be seduced by him. Kelly kissed him back fiercely, like this was somehow annoying her as well as turning her on, demanding, taking from him all that she could.
Ivan’s hand slid down to the back of Kelly’s thigh, almost instinctively, his body craving more of her, calling out for friction and heat. He hitched her thigh up around his waist, rocking into it, rewarded by Kelly pressing closer into him and making a tiny noise of pleasure in the back of her throat. She pulled back momentarily, gasping for breath, and Ivan licked at the tendon in her neck before biting down on his softly. Kelly made a strangled noise and her hips jerked.
“So, remember that spot, is that right?” Ivan asked, hearing how his voice was starting to go rough.
Kelly glared at him for a second, then yanked him in and kissed him again, her hands grabbing at his shoulders like he might be thinking of going somewhere.
Fuck, she felt good, soft and warm in his arms, making him feel like he might fall apart just a little. Kelly ground against him once, a slow drag of their bodies together, and Ivan thought he might lose his mind just the tiniest bit. A crazy, insane part of him wanted to turn her around, press her against the wall and grind into her until they were both shaking messes, chasing that high.
Of course, her car would be there in just a moment. Drivers were chosen for their discretion and their ability to be selectively blind and deaf. There might be just enough room in the back for him to lay her out, get his hands up underneath her clothes, feel all that soft, flushed skin, tug aside her underwear and dive into that tight, wet heat…
Wait, fuck, what—what was he doing, had he lost his goddamn mind? Having a one night stand with the daughter of the man who was now mentoring him—a bad enough idea on its own. Having a one night stand with the woman who still might be a murder suspect?
No matter what Kelly said, he still only had her word for things. He couldn’t clear her until he saw the paperwork, talked to others and got a better picture. He couldn’t just trust in what she told him. She was raised in the mob. They were all good liars.
He was about to pull away when Kelly wrenched herself free, stumbling backwards.
She looked wrecked, her mouth pick and swollen, her eyes bright and shining, her hair mussed. Two spots of color stood high up in her cheeks, and Ivan could see a light pink mark where he’d bit her. Nothing that would stay until morning, but for now, he could see it and it made his pants tight, seeing his mark on her skin.
“That—that was a mistake,” Kelly said, quickly fixing herself up.
“Right. Yeah.” Apparently, she’d come to the same conclusion he did about this all being a very bad idea which, thank god, he didn’t want to have to deal with a woman feeling scorned. He had a feeling that a scorned Kelly O’Gill would be even more dangerous than the usual Kelly O’Gill.
They stared at one another awkwardly for a moment.
“I don’t even know what that was,” Kelly said quickly, rushed, clearly embarrassed.
“Yeah, no, just…” The heat of the moment? Temporary insanity?
“Right, exactly,” Kelly replied, as if he’d finished the sentence.
They stood there for another moment, staring at one another. Ivan had no idea what Kelly was thinking. Hell, he wasn’t even sure what he himself was thinking. Part of him wanted to grab her and fuck her right up against the wall, all the competitiveness between them morphing into a desire to frustrate her in an entirely different way, to make her scream his name. Another part of him never wanted to see her again, never wanted to deal with her attitude and this confusion.
For fuck’s sake, women were—or had been until he’d had to take over and couldn’t waste time on things like that—the simple part of his life. His dad had been a violent asshole that everyone has had to strive to subtly keep in line, Viktor had been mentally checked out for years, and lieutenants had been jockeying for position and eyeing the throne, seeing how unhinged the old man was becoming.
Going to a club, picking up a woman, letting himself get lost in her for a night, that was easy. He didn’t have to think about that.
Now a woman was the source of all of his confusion and frustration and he had no fucking clue what to do with that.
Kelly’s car pulled up, her driver getting out to grab the door for her. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” she said, snappy, almost like she was using crankiness to put more distance between them.
“I want to see all the paperwork,” Ivan told her. “Not just some of it. No secrets, I don’t give a damn about your personal pride or family issues.”
Kelly flipped him off as she got into the car.
The arguing felt normal, safe, like backing off from the edge of a cliff.
Just what cliff he’d been about to jump off of, though—Ivan had no idea.
Chapter Twelve
Kelly sank back into the seat, squeezing her thighs together. Fuck, she could feel how wet she still was, how wet she’d gotten, all just from getting kissed by Ivan fucking Sokolov.
She was not some blushing virgin or randy club girl who was looking for a night of fun. She didn’t need a bad boy to help her feel like she was living her life on the edge. Her brother was clinging to life support after a mob hit, her life was dangerous and ‘bad’ enough, thanks. And she definitely wasn’t desperate enough for a good fuck that she was just going to spread her legs for a guy no matter how good of a kisser he was.
But, fuck, the way his voice had gone all dark and sinful, the way his hands had grabbed at her, hauling her leg up, rutting into her. She wasn’t sure he’d even been aware of how wild he was driving her, how much she’d wanted to just writhe against him, find the angle that rubbed just right against her clit and fuck herself on him until she came.
She hadn’t been kissed that hard or that desperately in ages. She’d been a little busy helping her father run things and helping out her brothers—not that she ever got a word of thanks but whatever—to go out and find some anonymous guy to help her out. She’d made good friends with her vibrator instead.
Besides, when your family was involved in things like smuggling and controlled a part of the docks, you couldn’t exactly just go out and find some guy at a coffee shop to date.
That was all it had to be—just pent up frustration from how long it had been. Ivan wasn’t special or anything. They’d
been sniping at each other all evening, it only made sense that as two red-blooded adults they’d find another way to vent that frustration out on each other.
But, fuck, she couldn’t erase the memory of the way he’d kissed her, sliding his tongue into his mouth like he owned her. She couldn’t forget the way he’d wrapped her thigh up around his waist and thrust into her, like he was already thinking about all the ways he could get her screaming on his cock.
She could’ve done it. Could’ve hauled him into the back of the car and spread her legs, told him to make it good or he’d get kicked out while the car was still moving. He’d have done it, too, if she said it with her eyes hooded and a challenge in her voice. Ivan didn’t seem like the kind of person to back down from a challenge, any challenge, but especially not one like that.
But could’ve didn’t equal should’ve. There was no way that would have not blown up in her face. They couldn’t actually stand each other. They’d barely stumbled into a truce halfway through dinner and she suspected that for all her protestations and logic, he still thought she might be the traitor.
Kelly kind of wanted to punch something in frustration. She wasn’t supposed to be attracted to the guy, for crying out loud. It could only complicate an already delicate situation—she didn’t care what her father said.
And she wasn’t about to let someone who thought she was a traitor go around doing the investigation all by himself. She’d get him his papers, all right, but she was going to do a little digging of her own. What her father—and Ivan—didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. And maybe, even, she’d figure it out fast enough that the whole thing would be solved, and she could get Ivan out of her hair.
And if she did get home and pulled out her vibrator and thought of dark hair and a forceful mouth and that thick, dark accent—well, that was just between her and her vibrator, wasn’t it? It was just getting the guy out of her system.
It didn’t actually mean anything.
Chapter Thirteen
Ivan was determined to put last night—or rather the last few minutes of last night—behind them when he showed up to start going over the O’Gill records. He got to the bar, talked to the bartender Sal for a bit about the family, what people were like, and so on.
He learned that the five lieutenants were: O’Malley, Flannery, Higgins, Doyle, and Bates. Higgins had no luck with women, and O’Malley had a drinking problem that was causing Sean to give him fewer responsibilities and rumor had it that O’Malley was going to be retired soon or put on the back burner.
Ivan made note of that. Nobody liked to admit when they had a problem, and nobody liked being taken away from the action, stripped of their hard-won position in the family.
Doyle, Higgins, and Bates were the three remaining from when Sean had taken over from his cousin Shane. All three of them had been miffed at the time, Doyle especially—and the man had a temper.
Maybe too much of a temper, though. Sal told Ivan that Bates was the patient type and could wait months before getting back at someone. That sounded more like the kind of person that they were dealing with now, someone who was willing to wait until the time was right to strike. Doyle sounded like the kind of person who’d have come at Sean fists flying way back when the whole thing had first happened. But maybe he’d managed to hold onto his rage and wait it out.
Flannery and O’Malley were brought in by Sean after the power transition. Flannery was the most loyal, or at least in appearance. But an excess of loyalty could hide the most treachery. Ivan knew plenty of stories of supposed brown-nosers who’d secretly been planning the demise of their boss the entire time.
In short, all five of them were suspects. Any one of them could be holding a grudge. When he asked Sal if any of them had any reason to bear Sean a grudge, if there’d ever been any bad blood, Sal had just laughed.
“Boy, if you want the list of that, we’ll be here all day,” the bartender had said, slapping the bar top as he chuckled in amusement.
“Right, but anything really big,” Ivan had pressed. “A raid where one of them lost a family member, a disagreement that resulted in heavy losses, a public embarrassment, even stealing one of their women?”
Sal shook his head. “Sean’s one of the rare ones that married for love. Stayed loyal to his missus until her death—and after that he wasn’t in much condition to be chasing tail.”
A mobster who actually loved his wife. Hilarious, almost, in its rarity. Lower down on the ladder, the grunts, they married for love. But higher up? The dons and their heirs? Marriage was still a game of politics. European royalty tended to have more freedom in who they married than mob bosses.
But Sean had been married before he was summoned to the United States by his cousin. And if he had cheated on his wife, Sal didn’t know it and he didn’t know of anyone else who might know. Nobody’d made accusations.
“I guess my far-fetched theory of an illegitimate child wanting to claim the title of heir is a bust, then,” Ivan joked.
“If that was your theory, you have fewer brain cells than I thought,” came Kelly’s voice from behind him.
Like Ivan had said to himself this morning, he wanted to put last night behind them.
Kelly did not seem so inclined.
She dumped the paperwork in front of him. “Have at it. I’ve already translated it for you.”
He supposed that was a bonus—he wouldn’t have to put up with her and she wouldn’t have to put up with him—but the way she said it made it sound like she’d just done this Herculean task or something.
“Thanks.” He took the paperwork. He wasn’t in the mood for another fight, especially not now that all he could think about was what she felt like pressed up against him.
Pavel was wrong—having a girl in his life would clearly only be a distraction when he needed to focus on pulling his family up out of the mud.
Kelly hovered for just a moment, like she might say something more. For the first time, Ivan saw a look of uncertainty cross her face. Then she shook herself, her look growing stern as though silently chastising herself, or him.
“See you around, Sal,” she said to the bartender, and then she was out the door.
Ivan moved all of the paperwork over to the corner booth where he could spread it out. At least now he could research—in other words investigate—Kelly without her being there to see it.
The paperwork, other than having to translate some of it into English, was methodical and straightforward. The O’Gills kept good records. Better records than the Sokolovs had kept, actually. Things had been a mess when Ivan had taken over. Pavel had assigned a couple of the potential lieutenants to work through it as a sort of test and also because they couldn’t really move forward until it was all taken care of.
He started with Kelly. It seemed she had her finger in just about every pie. When he asked Sal about it, the guy nodded.
“Practically runs the thing, or as much as she can. Her brother relies on her a hell of a lot more than her old man does. I think when Shane takes over that he’ll make her a lieutenant.”
Ivan could see that in the notes—Shane routinely signed off on Kelly doing things. Tax papers, records, money counting, all done by Kelly with a post-it note or something stuck to it with Shane’s signature authorizing her. It could’ve been faked, of course. Kelly could have been doing it all on her own and then faked Shane’s signature—and then he found out and so she had to kill him. But why fake her brother’s signature when it would be easier to fake her father’s? And if Shane had been her target, then he’d be dead by now instead of still stuck up on life support. Kelly was the one watching his bedside, she could’ve done it at any time.
He didn’t see any signs of Kelly doing anything underhanded. She wasn’t pre-cooking the books before they got to the accountant, something that was often done when a lieutenant was skimming off the top and was hoping to fix things so that the accountant wouldn’t notice when the time came.
After about two hours,
he had to admit defeat. If Kelly was planning something against her father and brothers, she’d done a good enough job covering it up that Ivan couldn’t find it. Normally there would be signs, like men being bought off, moved around or missing money, something in the paper trail that suggested that she wasn’t doing what she claimed she was. But everything matched what Kelly had told him.
However…
All phones that were owned by members of the family had to be given out by the family, and all phone conversations and text messages could be recorded that way. Paranoia was the name of the game in the mob, not that anyone could be blamed for it.
It looked like O’Malley had made a suspicious number of calls and texts to some unknown numbers, asking about prices and asking for discretion. It could’ve been just an order for a stripper or something, but Ivan’s curiosity was piqued.
He looked up the number. Turned out it was for a cleaning company.
‘Cleaning’ having a completely different meaning than someone coming in to scrub your bathtub.
There was only one reason that O’Malley could want to order a hitman company and that was to take someone out.
Someone like the two heirs that stood, in his mind, between him and ruling the family. Or, conversely, to bring pain to the man who had benched him, was threatening to take away the lieutenant post that O’Malley had put years into getting.
That was a solid lead. Nothing too incriminating was said over the phone, the details, including the name of the victim, would’ve been done face to face. But this was enough to start out with.
But then, Ivan read Shane’s monthly reports.
As the heir, it seemed that Shane had been checking up on this on Sean’s behalf and making reports for his father to read. He’d gotten into an altercation, at least according to the report, with Doyle over something. Connor seemed to be involved as well, Shane’s report mentioned him a few times. Shane’s report was vague as to what the altercation was about, exactly, but he mentioned going to see their accountant so it had to be about money or budgeting.
