Give me one goddamn reason why I shouldn’t shoot you in the face and be done with this mess.”
Dmitri sighed. “Again with this? You won’t kill me, because not only would it upset your sister, it would destabilize the power structure in New York and allow the Eldridges to capitalize on it—and become more of a threat than they already are. Then you really would have a war on your hands.” He pinned Aiden with a disdainful look. “But you already know that, don’t you? Don’t take your frustration out on me, O’Malley.”
“It’s not frustration I want to take out on you.” Aiden’s entire body was tensed as if he fought to hold himself back from attacking. For a man who had renowned self-control, he wasn’t exhibiting much of it lately. He leaned forward. “You married Keira.”
“I told you I was going to.”
A muscle in Aiden’s jaw jumped. “You also told me that you’d give her a choice, or was that a goddamn lie, too? You had to have broken every single fucking speed limit to get to Boston ahead of me, and then you took her like a thief in the night.”
“I did not take your sister. I offered her a choice. She chose me.” He waved a hand through the air, feigning nonchalance. “It’s a moot point now. She’s my wife. I will not relinquish her, and she has no desire to be relinquished. There are more important matters to discuss.”
“There’s nothing more important than my family.”
He and Dmitri could agree on that, though who they termed family varied significantly. “In that case, you’re about to renew our alliance against the Eldridges. Officially.” He paused. “Have you received any gifts from Mae?”
Aiden hissed out a breath and sat back. “She sent me a set of women’s hands with a ring almost identical to the family heirloom Charlie has on her finger.” His gaze sharpened. “Why? What did you get?”
“The head from the body I assume the hands were once attached to.” He waited a beat. “The dead woman bears a startling resemblance to your sister.”
“Fuck.”
“My thoughts exactly.” Just remembering the feeling that had coursed through him at the sight of that head—something akin to fear—pissed him the hell off. “She’s changing the game and isn’t playing by the rules. No one is safe, Aiden. Not Charlie, not your sisters, not your nieces and nephews. The only way to remove the threat is to remove it. Immediately.”
For the first time since he’d walked through the door, Aiden looked at him like he was a person rather than shit on the bottom of his shoe. Progress. “I suppose you have a brilliant plan.”
“You give me a lot of credit.” Credit where credit was due. He permitted himself a small smile. “I have my best man working to find them. Someone is running their business in their absence—either that, or they haven’t gone far.”
“If they were close, you would have already found them.” No credit there, just a statement of fact.
“Da.”
“What do you need from me?”
Now we’re getting somewhere. “Your man Mark is highly motivated to see Eldridge blood run.”
“If you already know it for a fact, there’s no reason to say it out loud. I’m not going to pat you on the back for having spies in my house.”
Dmitri snorted. “Please. There’s no need for spies when human nature is so predictable. Mae Eldridge shot Mark’s cousin, so he’s uniquely situated to want vengeance, and he’s got a skill set that makes him useful. Send him to New York to eliminate the person holding the power in the Eldridges’ absence, and I’ll have my men accomplish the rest after the first domino falls. If my man hasn’t found Alethea by then, the resulting events will draw her and Mae out.”
Aiden drummed his fingers on the desk. “I’ll think about it.”
“Think fast.” He rose. “We want the same thing, Aiden.”
“No, Romanov, we don’t.” He didn’t move, just kept up the damn drumming. “My sister tells me that you’re fucking on every available surface.”
Did she, now? He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “She’s a beautiful woman. We’re married. I would think it’d be stranger if we weren’t fucking.”
Aiden’s expression didn’t shift. “You’ll be having a wedding reception.” Not a question, but not quite a command, either.
You’re learning, O’Malley. “Invitations went out today. It’s set for next Saturday.”
“We’ll be there.” He waited for Dmitri to take a step to continue. “All of us. O’Malley. Sheridan. Halloran. Every single one of us have a vested interested in Keira’s health and happiness.”
Smarter to keep his mouth shut and allow Aiden to hold the high ground, but Dmitri couldn’t let that comment stand. It was all well and good to crow about family loyalty and their beloved youngest sister, but not a single fucking O’Malley had stepped in to stop her free fall after Devlin O’Malley’s death. Not one.
Oh, Aiden tried after he’d taken control of the family, but by then it was too late, and his attempts weren’t nearly strong enough to breach Keira’s walls. Understandable, perhaps, but unforgivable when taken hand in hand with his holier-than-thou attitude. Dmitri smoothed down the lapels of his suit. “Really, Aiden, if her health and happiness were so important to you, I would think you’d have acted much sooner to try to get through to her. You forgot about her while in pursuit of your own goals—every single one of you.”
He didn’t flinch. “We’ve all made some mistakes when it comes to Keira—even you, Romanov.”
“Without a doubt, but if there’s a villain in this piece, it’s not me.” This conversation had just confirmed what he already knew—Aiden would never stoop to using Keira against him. The man still saw her as the baby sister she’d been while they were growing up, making no allowances for the formidable player she could become in her own right. “I’ll be waiting for your answer.” He walked out of the room before his temper could push him to say something he didn’t intend.
All these Irish, so fucking superior in their moral high ground. They were no different than he was, save that he was better at the game. That was the problem, though. They were so busy blundering around, thinking with their hearts instead of their heads, that they were sometimes tricky to predict. It changed nothing—they had blood on their hands, same as he did.
He stopped into the library to say good-bye to Hadley, all too aware of the man at his back, shadowing his every move. Aiden was too smart to let Dmitri wander his house unwatched, but the muscle had stayed further back before their meeting.
He stepped out of the library. “You have something to say.”
Mark Neale shifted out of the shadows. “Aiden will work with you. I’ll be in contact.”
That didn’t take long. The damn man knew what his decision would be before Dmitri arrived here. It wasn’t much of a delay, but it irked all the same. He itched to be back in New York again, away from these goddamn Irishmen.
But he let none of that show on his face. “I look forward to hearing from you.”
“Keira is upstairs.” He made no move to back away, so Dmitri walked past him to the main stairway curving up the inner wall. It was ostentatious in the extreme, but he was hardly one to throw stones. His home wasn’t humble in the least. Both were designed to make an impression, and he climbed the stairs with a strange feeling taking up residence in his chest.
This was the home Keira had grown up in.
He’d known that, of course—the whole O’Malley brood was raised between here and a secondary country residence in Connecticut—but somehow walking these halls brought that truth home.
He knew which room was hers, and walked past the other closed doors without so much as a sideways glance. If Mark hoped to catch him snooping, he was in for a disappointment.
Keira’s door stood ajar, and he took it for an invitation, using a single finger to send it opening the rest of the way. His wife sat on her bed across from Charlie Moreaux—formerly Charlotte Finch, daughter of the fed who had let Mae slip his cage. The blond woman looked up and froze at the sight of him. “Romanov.”
“Charlie.” He had no interest in digging at her further. Aiden was more entertaining to bait, and the actions of Charlie’s father a few short weeks ago had proven exactly where she was on the totem pole. The woman’s only political value now lay in her pending marriage to Aiden O’Malley. It was just as well—nothing good came from meddling with cops.
Keira closed the suitcase before he had a chance to examine what she’d packed. “I’m ready.”
“No need to rush on my account.”
She sent him a censuring look. “I’m relieving my family of your presence. It upsets them.” Charlie snorted and Keira rolled her eyes. “What? You know I’m right.”
“That was almost political. I’m proud of you.” Charlie pushed to her feet and crossed to stand before Dmitri. He knew what the move must have cost her, and something akin to admiration pulsed when she lifted her chin. “I’m sure Aiden has already said it, but if you fuck with Keira, we’ll bring everything in our arsenal at you. You’ll end up behind bars for good or…” She trailed off and shrugged one shoulder. “Or.”
“I see that your fiancé’s bloodthirstiness is rubbing off on you.” It made him like her more, which was damn inconvenient. His life would be a whole hell of a lot simpler if he could mark the entire O’Malley clan as enemies and remove them from the earth.
Her grin wasn’t happy in the least. “Or maybe I’m rubbing off on him.”
Keira lugged the suitcase over. “Stop threatening my husband, Charlie. It’ll make for awkward holiday meals.”
Charlie’s blue eyes went a little wide. “Holiday meals.”
“Yep.” Keira shoved the suitcase at him. “Thanksgiving here and Christmas in New York. It’ll be a real treat. Totally enjoyable for everyone.”
She shook her head. “Honey, you’re out of your damn mind.”
“It’s one of my many charms.” She pushed him toward the door, and he allowed himself to be herded down the hallway and stairs to the front door. Aiden was nowhere to be seen, which was just as well. Mark and Charlie were more than enough of a good-bye party. He stood back while Charlie hugged Keira tightly.
Dmitri waited for the blonde to release her and nodded at the door. “Let’s go.”
He scanned the street as he paused on the front step. Pavel leaned against the town car and nodded—nothing was amiss. Knowing Mae’s fondness for drive-by shootings, that didn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things, but at least no one had tampered with the car in the meantime. Dmitri handed over the suitcase to be stowed in the trunk and then held the door open for Keira.
She didn’t look back as she strode down the steps and climbed into the car, and he wasn’t fanciful enough to see it as a sign. Keira was his. She might not have made her peace with that—yet—but it was the truth. The sooner she accepted it, the better for both of them.
He joined her in the backseat and waited tensely for Pavel to drive them away from the town house. It wasn’t until they left the Boston city limits behind that he relaxed against the seat.
“You thought he’d do something.”
“No.” He hesitated and then relented. “Your brother has a long history of doing the logical thing as long as one remembers that he puts his family above all else. But there are never any guarantees.”
Keira watched him closely, her hazel eyes narrow. “You must have been desperately lonely as a kid, huh?”
He had to fight not to react. “What makes you say that?”
“No one becomes that good at observing other people unless they spent a whole hell of a lot of time shoved in a back corner by themselves. The other reason is if they’re victims of abuse—their life can depend on reading people right.” She didn’t move. “Andrei never laid a hand on Olivia. I’d bet good money on that, though he had other ways of terrorizing her—both of you did. Did he hit you?”
She’d been closer to the mark with the first assumption. “Nyet. My father wasn’t a good man, but he wasn’t abusive.”
“Lucky you.”
There it was again. There’d been a few times where he’d wondered at the extent of Seamus O’Malley’s crimes against his children. Andrei Romanov was hardly father of the year, but he never raised his hand to either of his children. “Did your father hurt you, Keira?”
She shut her eyes, closing him out. “It doesn’t really matter what my father did or didn’t do. I’m more out of his reach now than I’ve ever been. The past is the past.”
“The past shapes us.” A person was an accumulation of all that happened to them. Knowing the past meant Dmitri had a better than decent chance at predicting the future—or at least future actions. People could change, elements could change, but the core of a person remained the same.
“If you say so.” Keira didn’t look at him.
She looked younger than her twenty-one years with her face relaxed and the knowledge she kept in her hazel eyes hidden from view. Even knowing she was far from innocent, he found himself wanting to…What? Protect her? The very idea is laughable.
And yet it dug down deep and refused to budge. Dmitri slid closer to her and picked her up to tuck her into his lap.
Keira shot straight up, and it was only some creative maneuvering that kept her from slamming her head into the roof of the car. “What the hell are you doing, Russian?”
“Hush and let me hold you for a little while.”
She stared at him like he’d grown a second head. “Did my brother slip you some drugs while you were in his office?”
“Nyet.” It stung more than it should have that she thought he had to be drugged to want to hold her. Dmitri forced himself to relax his grip on her. “Let me hold you, moya koroleva.”
“Tell me what that means.”
He permitted himself a small smile. “Another time.”
She glared, but didn’t move away. “Why?”
There was no misunderstanding her question, and he didn’t bother trying to pretend. “You are my wife.” Something so simple and yet infinitely complicated.
Keira sighed and it was as if the strength left her body. She melted into him, nestling her face into his chest. “It’s criminal how good you smell. What cologne is that?”
“No cologne. I dislike them.”
She lifted her head enough to frown. “That’s just wrong. No one should smell this good naturally.”
“Lucky you for marrying a man who does, then.” He shouldn’t keep pushing her on that fact, but her insistence on thinking the worst of him irked. He wanted her as his wife in truth.
Patience. You’ve waited this long. You can wait a bit longer.
He just hoped like hell that Keira didn’t make him wait forever.