“It’s a mistake to do this today,” I say, renewing a well-worn argument. “I need more time.”
“You’ve barely left your computer in the past two days. If Viktor had a major flaw, you would have found it by now.”
“I don’t want Breagha used like this.”
“Complaint already registered,” he says. “Three times, in fact.”
“She’s not tough enough?—”
“She’s a Lynch. Like you.”
As if my sister is listening in, my mobile buzzes with a new message.
Breagha
Caught in traffic
Five minutes out
I stare at the panda emoji, fighting the urge to reply with a warning.Turn around. Go back to Baltimore. Save yourself before it’s too late.
Instead of typing, I scan back through the string of messages we’ve exchanged over the past two days. It was disturbingly easy to convince my sister to visit her beloved pandas at the zoo. After that, all the pieces fell in place easily enough. Da forbade Breagha to leave the family compound. Mam argued Pyotr could keep her safe.
I want to know if Mam enlisted the bratva brigadier because she knows exactly how much I’ll hate the shitehawk’s presence.
No. I don’t actually want to know that at all.
In any case, Cole was right. It’s easy to get people to do what you want when they think it’s their idea. Breagha and Pyotr will arrive at the zoo in minutes. And then we’ll convince the bratva gobshite to accept a thumb drive holding the Viktor code.
“There’s no way Tarasov will fall for this.” I’ve said the same thing a dozen different ways just since dawn.
“He will if you act your part well enough.” Cole repeats his standard reply.
“I’m a hacker. Not an actor.”
He snorts. “You can be both.”
“Easy for you to say,” I grumble. “You just have to act like an overbearing, demanding shitehawk. Not straying too far from the truth, are you?”
“Careful, my dear,” he warns with a toothy grin.
My dear. He hasn’t called me that in days. Something flips deep inside my belly, and heat rises from my chest to my throat to my cheeks.
He laughs.
I jab my fist toward his biceps. When his fingers close over my wrist, I blush even harder. Holding my gaze, he brings my knuckles to his lips. I gulp at the brush of his kiss.
“Who’s that, Mommy?” a small girl shouts. “Is that somebodyfamous?”
I follow the child’s pointing finger to the curb on Connecticut Avenue, where the longest stretch limo I’ve ever seen has just pulled up. It’s black, with polished chrome fittings. A uniformed chauffeur scurries around the massive vehicle, rushing to open the door.
Da would give both his bollocks for a car like that.
Cole’s eyes turn to stone as Pyotr Tarasov climbs out of the limo. The bratva brigadier poses on the pavement, shooting his cuffs like he’s heading to a business meeting and looking around through his dark sunglasses. His blue suit is a shade too bright, a bit too tight, a tad too short. His feet are bare inside his brown shoes.
The eejit probably thinks he looks young and hip. Instead, he looks like someone’s desperate bachelor uncle.
Breagha scrambles from the car with the help of the chauffeur’s hand. She blinks as the sunlight sets fire to her blonde hair, emphasizing her cornflower-blue headband. Her matching dress has tiny flowers embroidered at the hem, the same dusty pink as her ballet-slipper flats. She looks like a fairytale princess, the type who talks to magical animals.
