Page 71 of The Promise

Roman quieted—he didn’t know what to say. Well, shit, he would be having a word with the bulls to make sure they were careful about what they said to each other. Especially when they thought no one was listening.

Clearly, someone was.

He didn’t want Karine overhearing anything else. Every piece of news she learned would come from his mouth alone. This was fucking bad enough.

“Things sound dangerous, Roman,” Karine told him, her tone turning shy when she added, “I just want everything to be over ... so you can be here with me again.”

“Me, too, but I can’t make the world move faster, Karine.”

“Funny.”

Roman arched a brow. “What is?”

“It definitely feels like you make my world go faster.”

Maybe so.

It just wasn’t the same thing.

Unfortunately.

• • •

Marky dropped him back off nearing midnight at the Astoria Hotel where he’d been staying the last two nights, and they had spent most of the day driving around doing fucking nothing. Roman was imprisoned in his own city. A place he had once felt was his kingdom had become a constant reminder that he wasn’t free to do as he wished.

The cloud of the FBI and the Chicago bratva hung over him after he’d said goodbye to his friend and headed for the hotel’s entrance, but Karine wasn’t too far from his thoughts, either. A few more nights and he was going to move to a different, random location. That was the plan so far.

Roman intended on heading to the bar first before he went up to his suite. He wasn’t doing much drinking in public, but he planned to bypass the wait staff bringing him up a bottle. Why not get it himself?

Drinking himself to oblivion seemed like a good way to get his mind off things. Even if it was just another way to deflect his own feelings. Roman had come to learn he didn’t really deal well with his own pain. No matter the reason for him feeling it, he just wanted to bury it.

However, his plan came to a screeching halt when he walked into the lobby and found his father waiting there. Demyan stood with two men whom Roman knew as lawyers the family had on retainer. Affiliated men who knew the cost, and benefits, of defending criminals. If his father had lawyered up, it could only mean one thing.

The law was somehow involved.

“Say as little as you can,” Demyan opened the conversation when Roman walked up.

Trouble had arrived.

He nodded at the stoic, sharp-dressed lawyers literally on standby next to them. “What’s going on?”

“There are two FBI agents waiting in your suite.”

“And you just let them go up there?”

“I gave them the key for the room, actually,” Demyan replied.

He started walking in the direction of the opening elevator, followed on his heels by the lawyers. So, Roman had no choice but to follow them, too, getting more pissed off with every step he took after his father.

“Do you want to tell me what the fuck this means?” he called, barely below a shout, at his father’s back.

Roman was done being keeping calm.

“It means that you’re going to have to meet with the two bastards, but it doesn’t mean you’ll be talking to them.”

Ah.

That said a lot.