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Laurel’s offer echoed through her mind. Gabriella wasn’t anywhere near ready to abandon the D.A.’s office. Even with all of its drawbacks, she loved her job.
Didn’t she?
Panic filled her chest. She'd failed at marriage, and sometimes felt she was failing at motherhood too, pawning Leo off on Bea while she worked sixteen-hour days.
Her job was the one thing she knew she was great at. She was just feeling out of sorts, disoriented by the gorgeous California light and the magic of the ocean, by the warmth of found family and laughter and the possibility of having Logan by her side after all these years.
She couldn’t let any of it pull her off course, not when she was on the brink of the biggest trial of her career.
She had to stay focused, finish the Vitsin case.
Then she’d think about the future.
32
Logan looked out the window and watched Chicago pass by on the other side. The late afternoon sun was sliding behind the city, reflecting fire off the steel and glass skyscrapers downtown, and the streets were clogged with commuter traffic.
It was strange to be back in the city without Ella. She knew he was here, but he’d explained the trip as planning for her return, an effort to make sure security was in place for the trial.
The half-truth had stuck in his throat, but he didn’t know a way around it. If he told her what he was thinking, she’d shut it down before he even had a chance to explore it.
Exploring it gave her options, and whether she realized it or not, she needed options when it came to dealing with the bratva and keeping herself and Leo safe.
She could say no. That would still be her prerogative.
But he was going to play out every possible scenario, give her every option, even the ones she didn’t think she’d want to use.
He thought of her as she’d been when he left the house that morning, sleepy and soft in his bed. She’d wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him long and deep, told him she wished he didn’t have to go, and he thought if he could have that every day of his life there was nothing else he’d ever need.
“You sure we don't need more men?”
Mauz’s question, posed from the driver’s seat of the Land Rover, pulled Logan from his thoughts.
“Pretty sure,” Logan said.
Mauz grunted. “That’s comforting.”
“Ronan Murphy set it up. Antonov isn’t going to burn that bridge.”
There was more than one criminal game in every town, but the Italian mafia and the bratva were two of the three most powerful, the third being the Irish mob. Their business dealings were fraught with tension, carefully balanced on a series of give-and-takes that enabled leadership in all three parties to feel powerful and keep their enterprises profitable.
Logan had been surprised to hear Ronan Murphy had joined the Syndicate. He’d only met the guy a couple of times, but he’d struck Logan as a lone wolf, and he’d turned a pretty penny killing people for money with his brothers, even though some of the work they did was pro bono.
Not to mention the last name: by all rights Murphy should have been a member of one of the Irish gangs. Logan wondered what had happened to bring him to the Syndicate instead.
“Probably right,” Mauz said. “But I”m not gonna lie: these Russian assholes make me nervous.”
It was understandable. The Syndicate, run by Nico Vitale, was an iron fist in a velvet glove. The Irish mafia, brutes. They didn’t have the same rules as the Syndicate — Vitale’s takeover of that organization had remade it into something unexpected, something unique — but their honor code prevented them from being total monsters.
The bratva was different.
Savage and loyal to no one but their own, they were an organization that took pride in the violence they were willing to visit on others.
“We’ll be okay,” Logan said. Hawk had offered to come along, and Logan could have pulled as many of the other men as they needed, but according to Murphy, Lyonya Antonov had agreed to a four-person meeting: Lyonya and one body man, Logan and one body man.
They’d entered the northwest side of the city, and Mauz started looking for a parking garage. They found one, left the car, and started on foot toward the 606, an elevated walking trail built over a defunct rail line.
Antonov had picked the place, which was fine with Logan. He didn’t know the city well anyway, and it was a concession he was willing to give Antonov in exchange for what was an unusual meeting.
