Page 61

“No. No, you’re fine. But maybe we can talk more about it later,” I said, spotting Paloma behind him. “Because it looks like someone’s got something for you.”

“Ready to go outside?” she asked, all smiles, looking like the god-grandmother she wanted to be. With a wide-brimmed hat in one hand and a bucket of water toys in the other, she invited Brady to go play in the shallow kiddie pool.

Once he was gone, Louisa turned to face us. She bit her lip and sighed. “Thank you for, um, avoiding the details.”

Adrik scoffed. “We’re not heartless.”

She raised her brows as if she still had to remind herself of that fact, stuck with those old biases. “But since he brought all of that up, it makes me wonder if you might want to discuss that topic.”

I furrowed my brow. “Huh?”

She looked between me and Adrik, licking her lip. I knew that to be a tell of her preparing to say something she thought was risky. Or it was a tell that she wanted to suck my dick. That wasn’t happening here, though.

“I was thinking about working again,” she admitted.

I shook my head immediately.

“No, not like before. But I was wondering if—and hoping—I could do something for you. For the Bratva.” She started to smile, like this idea was enough to brighten her spirit. “I don’t want to be idle.”

“How the hell can you say you’re idle with that wild child running around?” Maksim joked.

“Brady sure does keep me busy,” she agreed, “but it’s not the same. I’ve been getting a little listless lately. Wishing I could have a project. Or that I could contribute.”

“How?” Adrik asked.

“Well…” She lowered her gaze. “Elena does the books. Carina helps with the Cartels and smuggling, um, product. Mila seems to go with Lev on missions and stuff. And Wren is clearly busy as an agent.” She shrugged. “I could help her. I have a background in computer science. Even if it’s something like trying to get into Pickering Inc.’s database again, I’m confident I can do something.”

“You’d be interested in helping us?” Adrik asked.

I reached for her hand. “Louisa, no one’s expecting you⁠—”

“No, I know.” She smiled. “No one is pressuring me into feeling like I need a job. I just want to contribute.”

“You hated your job,” I reminded her.

“Yes, because I worked with an asshole like Owen Bilsen. Because I hated spending hours in that office when I could be with my son at home instead. But I’m actually very skilled at what was expected of me there.”

“Like what?” Adrik asked.

He seemed interested in her offer and I was hesitant to accept any kind of a formal agreement.

“Hacking. Database management. Coding.” She shrugged again. “Nothing too in-depth like what Trojan seems to know, but I could help him.” For the next several minutes, she detailed more of what she’d practiced with. I didn’t need her to give me an oral version of her résumé. We’d looked into her—before and after that hit was placed on her—and all the details of her life were provided to me. Hearing her postulate on what she could do was different, though. She ran through tasks that she could try to take on.

“I could attempt to get into Pickering’s database even though they changed it up. I could do a sweep around the area of that one building that was in the video footage someone wanted to keep hidden. Oh! I’ve also done some work with facial recognition programs. If that could be something to try to utilize for finding Gregori’s location, I could tackle that.”

You’ve thought about this.

These weren’t impulsive, random offers she was tossing out. She’d put some serious thought into the matter. While I hated to think that she’d been so idle that she could’ve gotten bored here, like a kept woman, I imagined that wasn’t the case.

She was fitting in so well. With me. With Paloma. With the rest of my family. The label of her being a protected witness had faded a while ago. Now, she was just… one of us?

“I’m glad that you’d be interested in something like this,” Adrik said.

I nodded. “Me too.” I leaned back and ran my hand over my strip of hair. “At the rate we’re going with finding him or concluding anything else… I would say that we’d be foolish not to accept additional help.”

She sat up, smiling wider. “Really?”

“Really. But I don’t want you to have to overwork yourself.”