Page 1 of The Enforcer’s Pawn

1

PROLOGUE

CARA

Boston, five years ago

Dmitri Antonov makes me want to be a very bad girl.

This is inconvenient for several reasons.

First, I’m not a very bad girl. I’m a reasonably good woman who pays taxes, changes passwords every ninety days, and can spot a phishing email before the scammer finishes ruining the subject line.

Second, I came to Patrick’s party under protest, wearing jeans I’d decided were nice enough because black denim is the Swiss Army Knife of clothing.

Third, the man currently making my common sense curl up under a table and beg for mercy is standing across Patrick’s penthouse like he already knows where everybody would fall if the night went wrong.

Which, given Patrick’s guest list, is not a crazy thing to know.

My brother throws parties the way other people set traps. Expensive liquor, soft lighting, and enough catered food to make everyone pretend this isn’t a business meeting. Patrick calls it networking. I call it a felony aquarium.

“You’re staring,” Patrick observes beside me.

I turn my head and give him my sweetest sisterly smile, the one that says I know where your bodies are buried because you once made me encrypt the spreadsheet.

“I stare at idiots too, but I try not to make it obvious.”

Patrick laughs because people are watching us, and Patrick never misses a chance to look charming in public. He’s handsome in the clean Irish way that makes older women forgive him before he even lies. Dark blond hair, sharp blue eyes, a smile that can open wallets, doors, and occasionally, disaster. Tonight he’s wearing a navy suit and the expression of a man who thinks he’s three clever moves ahead of everyone.

He isn’t. Patrick is often one clever move ahead and two reckless drinks behind.

Across the main hall, the Russian watches us.

No, not us.

Me.

He doesn’t do it like the others. No lazy scan from face to chest to hips. No little smirk. No pretending he isn’t interested while giving himself neck strain.

Dmitri Antonov looks at me once, directly, and I feel naked.

He’s tall, broad, dark-haired, and entirely out of place here, standing near the windows beside two other Russian men, holding a glass he barely drinks from, wearing a black suit that makes every other suit in the place look rented.

Patrick tracks my gaze, and something shifts at the edge of his smile. “Careful,” he says.

I look back at him. “That’s rich coming from you.”

“I mean it, Cara.”

“Wow. A brotherly warning. Should I put it in a scrapbook or forward it to the FBI?”

His mouth tightens before he fixes it. Patrick hates when I joke about federal agencies at his parties. This alone makes it one of my favorite hobbies. “He’s not one of mine,” Patrick says.

I take a sip of champagne I don’t want. “Nobody here is one of yours. They just let you pretend because you keep buying the good liquor.”

“He’s a Volkov.”

Even in Boston, even around Irish families who think history began when their grandfather learned to swing a bat, the Volkov name has weight. Freight. Security. Money routes. Russian men who don’t appear in headlines because headlines are for people who made mistakes. Patrick has been circling that world for months, pretending he’s offering introductions while begging for relevance in a nicer suit.