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17
Ian
Jensen’s face was buried in the screen of his phone as we sat outside of a nightclub, waiting for our target to show up. Without any sort of warning, I slapped him upside the head before reaching for his phone and snatching it from his grip.
“What the fuck, man!” Jensen snapped, rubbing at the sore spot on the back of his head.
“Pay attention,” I barked. “We’re here to do a job.”
“I was just making sure Archer got Mare.”
“Don’t worry about her,” I said. “You’ll see her later.” I was such a fucking hypocrite. I’d already texted our other teammate to ensure that he’d picked up the brat.
It’d been different when she didn’t know we were watching her. We could take a job and leave one behind to watch after her. She hadn’t ever gotten into any real trouble, but something had put me on edge, and I couldn’t explain it. As if coming back into her life had suddenly made it all so real; we weren’t just hidden in the shadows anymore. That connection with Mare made the distance right now harder than it had been before. I fidgeted in my seat, trying to smother the dissonance swirling in my mind.
I knew we shouldn’t worry, keeping our eyes on the job because, by all accounts, the PIs I had on her father said that the man had gone back to business as usual after she’d disappeared into the system. But I knew better. I knew men like Jason Perelli didn’t let anyone nearly get the better of him and live.
His daughter had more than gotten the better of him. She’d nearly sent the bastard to jail, and it was only by the grace of the man’s fucking bank account and criminal connections that he’d managed to get evidence thrown out and a jury to find him not guilty. Yet, after five years, he still acted like he didn’t care. To let Mare go after that disaster of a fucking court hearing, where she publicly called him a murderer, was more than a blow to his ego. It was a fucking war cry, a betrayal. No one betrayed a mob boss like Jason Perelli. Especially not his own flesh and blood.
America didn’t know it, but I’d done more than a background check on her when we’d first met her. It was a simple name, but unique enough that it had pinged all sorts of red flags. Oh, sure, she’d seemed like a young and innocent college student, but she had no clue the amount of surveillance that had been on her when we came into her life. The feds and a whole slew of other criminals had been watching her. After we’d looked into the girl who’d captivated us that night at the bar, we went down the rabbit hole. Her family was a gold mine of secrets.
First off? Her mother.
That was the initial thread we’d found and pulled on. From there, everything else unraveled. We’d found that we weren’t the first people to look into America Perelli’s family. The feds have been keenly interested in her mother’s death—her mother’smurder—and more specifically, thereasonbehind it. Corrine Perelli had been a piece of work. Subservient to her husband for many long years. Jason hadn’t given a fuck when she’d started imbibing. Alcohol had been her starter, but it certainly hadn’t been her ender. Cocaine. Xanax. Heroin. The woman had tried it all, and in her long list of mistakes, she’d fucked a couple of low level drug dealers, and her mob boss of a husband had not taken too kindly to the insult.
My muscles tensed as a barrage of questions filtered through my mind. What would Mare say if she knew? What would she do? It wouldn’t matter. What we had looked into didn’t mean a damn thing. All she needed to know now was that there was no fucking way we’d leave her. She was ours. She wasmine.
“Yo.” Jensen sat forward, drawing me out of my thoughts and memories. “Target’s here.”
I turned my head and caught sight of a spindly little man with a scruffy shadow of a beard and a balding head as he walked into the club across the street. Shifting forward, I pulled my gun from the holster at the small of my back, rechecked the clip, and shoved it back into its position. It was time to go to work.
* * *
Hours later,with a fresh set of cuts and bruises across my knuckles, I drove back towards Mare’s apartment. Jensen sat in the passenger seat, his head back as he snored lightly. Yeah, we were both more than a little tired. The clock on the dash flipped past four a.m. Despite how easy the job had been, it felt like it’d been a long night. I pulled up outside of the old Victorian and stared at the bottom most window. The lights were on. She was still awake. I sent a quick text to Archer as I quietly turned off the car and got out.
A shadow moved in my periphery, and without even thinking, I dodged the fist that flew my way, grabbing my assailant by the wrist and jerking him over my head until his back landed on the concrete at my feet. Two seconds. I suppressed a smirk but arched a brow as Archer groaned and rolled over, getting back to his feet. Instead, I lifted a brow.
“You were too slow,” I said. “If I can catch you, then you can be damn well sure someone else can.”
“No one is as trained as you are,” he grumbled as he dusted his hands off and straightened.
I frowned. “There are far better trained men than me, Archer,” I corrected him. “Don’t ever forget that. Maybe we should up your training regimen.”
“And let you beat the shit out of me even more than you already do?” He scoffed. “Yeah, no thank you.”
I sighed and let him dismiss the topic, instead, choosing to refocus on Mare. “How is she?”
Archer moved to lean against the car. “She’s fine.” It was a simple answer, but the edge of his mouth curved upward as if he was hiding a secret.
“What did you do?” I demanded.
He shrugged. “We went for a drive.”
“I asked you to keep an eye on her while we worked,” I pointed out.
“I gave her a lift home,” he said, his tone innocent.
I didn’t believe the act for a second. “Archer.”
