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Bridget gathered her things and headed outside. She stopped at her car and fed the meter with the rest of her change. She might get a ticket anyway, depending on how long she was gone, but she couldn’t worry about that right now.
She crossed the street and headed downtown, tucking her chin into her scarf. Christmas was less than two weeks away, the first significant snow due to fall any minute now. She said a silent prayer that the situation with Seamus would be over by then, that he would be on the run or removed, that her debt would be cleared.
Do you think these sacrifices are fair?
She finally knew the answer: they hadn’t been fair — to her or to her family, who would be left to deal with the fallout if she were hurt or arrested or forced into indentured servitude at the Playpen because of her work with Seamus.
She would find another part-time job, one that didn’t put her behind the eight ball every day. It wouldn’t bring in as much money, but every little bit helped, and she owed it to Owen and her parents — not to mention herself — to limit their exposure to more crisis.
She came to Millennium Tower and entered the building. A different guard was behind the desk this time, and she gave her name and waited while he called up to Nolan’s apartment. She hadn’t even been sure he was home, but she had a feeling he was as anxious as she was about the robbery and Will’s safety.
The guard hung up the phone and handed her the sign-in sheet. “Need you to sign in.”
When she was done, he pulled the clipboard behind the desk. “You can go on up.”
She took the elevator to the fifty-third floor and headed to Nolan’s apartment. She knocked and he opened the door a moment later.
“Hey.” Concern colored his eyes. “Everything okay?”
“As okay as it can be,” she said. “I just… I couldn’t sit around at work waiting to find out what was going on.”
He seemed to hesitate before he stood back to open the door wider. “I understand. Come in.”
She stepped into the hall and waited for him to lead the way into his living room, shining with harsh December light at the end of the corridor. The first thing that struck her when they emerged into the expansive room was the wall of glass, the view of the city, and beyond it, the water.
The second was the man standing near the window.
His dark hair was thick and full, his face striking, with an elegant nose and a full mouth. He was wearing gray trousers, a crisp white button-down visible beneath a navy jacket that fit like it was made for him.
He walked toward her and extended his hand. “Christophe Marchand. You must be Bridget.”
24
Nolan read the look of surprise on Bridget’s face as she shook Marchand’s hand. It wasn’t the way Nolan had expected to introduce Bridget to the man he’d been working with, but there was nothing Nolan could do about it now.
“Christophe is a member of the Syndicate,” Nolan said. “A partner in its leadership actually.”
Bridget looked at Christophe. “I thought the Syndicate was dead.”
“It is, in a manner of speaking,” he said. “My partners and I have remade it, reorganized it you might say.”
“Reorganized it how?”
She was still in her scarf and coat, her bag slung over one shoulder. Nolan moved toward her, took the bag, and helped her slip her coat from her shoulders.
“The old model was one of thuggery,” Marchand explained. “We like to think the new model is more… refined.”
“A refined mob?”
A smile touched Marchand’s mouth. “A bit of an oxymoron, I know, but doing away with the old terminology is part of the strategy. Organized crime, as I’m sure you know, has always been in existence. Some would even argue it’s been made legal in certain sectors.”
Nolan thought about the corruption in politics and the financial sector, both of which allowed for practices that were ethically questionable but made legal by those who sought to protect their own interests.
Was it any more palatable because the immorality had been made lawful?
“You’re the ones working with Nolan to get rid of Seamus,” Bridget said.
Marchand nodded.
