AllFreeNovel
Share Us
His shoulders tense as his gaze darts to Sandesh. He shakes his head. “I heard about it after. Dusty—the guy with the USA hat—even tried to stop that from happening.”
Dusty, a.k.a. USA Ballcap. “How the hell did you develop a bromance with that guy?”
Tony crosses his arms. “He’s legit FBI. Met him by accident at a bar. Believe that?”
He’s talking so fast his South Philly has taken over.
“No, I don’t believe it.” You don’taccidentallyrun into an FBI agent at a bar who wants to help you do covert ops. I’ll look into that later. “So, you join forces with some FBI guy. What? You had money, and he had skills?”
“Basically. He was sick of human traffickers getting ignored for drugs. Took what the government calls a hiatus. Came to work for me. He got in here as the new head of security. Helped keep everything running smoothly, so we’d be better able to implement my plan.”
I snort, a sound that tightropes between anger and disgust. “Maybe my plan would’ve worked, if you’d been behind half as much as your own plan.”
His dark eyebrows crash together. “It would’ve worked until that shit at the massage parlor. After that, Aamir, the smart one, stepped in. He figured Walid had a leak here. It got dicey. Dada’s informant was almost found out. Still, with Dusty’s help, I had it covered. Know how hard that was? How much I had to work? I covered for your mistake and saved that Sean guy for Dada.Idid that.”
“Oh. Well. Bravo. Way to go. Would you like your silver star pinned to your chest now or would you like to wait for the ceremony?”
“Smartass,” Tony says, and he says it like it’s a compliment. Like it’s love. “It should’ve ended with them going to Jordan. Only an unfeeling, uncaring lunatic would send her daughter to Jordan without backup, knowing the brothers were suspicious.”
He spits the last. Literal spit flies from his lips. He’s furious and not just at Momma. At himself, at his inability to see what she’d do. “I hate her.”
“Watch it, Tony. I might still shoot you.” My hands tighten on the rifle.
He begins to laugh. “I wish you would. That’d make it easier.”
Cold runs down my body; he’s serious.
He lets out a long gust of air, sucks in an even longer breath, then leans a hand on the back of the couch. “She was gonna let you get yourself killed, like you didn’t matter. Well, fuck, you matter to me.”
He turns away. Tears are falling down his face. He’s shaking. Sad. Broken?
My anger is giving way to pain, grief, and confusion. I love him. He’s my brother.
No. Stay angry. Stay sharp. “If I matter so much, why bring in Cooper? You and Bridget conspired with him, told him what I do. That bit of brilliance almost got me killed, gave Cooper, a man you knew was an addict, a way to make money off me and betray me.”
“Damn, Coop.” He seems confused now, unsteady. “I don’t know why he would tell Walid you were in his room. It makes no sense.”
Actually, it makes sense if he didn’t know I was in the room and thought he could stop the murder. I’d left the necklace in my room at the hotel. Cooper could’ve thought I was still in my room. He could’ve thought warning Walid would’ve kept me from my job.
I don’t say this. Can’t.
“You have to see though that when it came down to it, he died to protect you. He was trying, J. Been sober for years.”
“No, he was high as hell every time I saw him.”
His gaze drifts away. His hands shake against the couch. He fists them. “Nah. Think I’d have let him within a hundred feet of you if he was still using? No f’in way.” Tony’s eyes slide over to Sandesh, then back to me. He sighs like he has nothing else to lose. “I love you, J. Loved you from the moment you rescued me.”
Something in my chest cracks open and pain floods in. I try to hold it back, try to make it stop, try to damn it back up. “Liar! You love me? Like the way Cooper loved me? He left me to be tortured in that basement. He left Hope to die.”
“No. Hell, no. Didn’t you ever wonder how Mukta found youse? Some rich woman in the Northeast found two girls in Virginia?”
“The Guild.”
Tony leans heavily on the couch. He’s really trembling now, like a sudden fever has overcome him. Adrenaline backlash? “Come on, you know better. The Guild isn’t all-powerful. Cooper went to her after being forced to leave you with his mother-in-law.”
“Forced?”
“Court gave her custody. Man didn’t have a chance. A brown-skinned drug addict versus a middle-class white woman who’s also your grandmother. No contest.”
