AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I need time to think.” I sighed and put my head in my hands.
“We don’t have much time, honey. Ryzen has his own band of dirty cops looking for you. As far as we can tell, he believes Voledetti has you. You need to get back to him before he realizes Boy Wonder over here was the one who nabbed you.” Dobbs scowled at Cian, then gave me a pointed look. “Twenty-four hours. Then we need to set the wheels in motion.”
“What happens when Goodacre figures out Voledetti didn’t take her? You think of that, genius?” Cian stood with his legs spread, arms crossed over his chest. The look he was giving Dobbs was enough to even make me nervous.
Delove held up his hand to stop whatever Dobbs was about to bellow. “Like we said, we have someone on the inside. We’ll make sure Goodacre stays oblivious to your little rescue mission.”
We watched them drive off in their sedan a short time later. They left me their files and a warning not to flee. Twenty-four hours, that was all the time I had to make a decision. Of course, it wasn’t really a choice, only an illusion of one. Unless some magical arson fairy showed up with a video of Ryzen setting my warehouse on fire, I was one hundred percent royally fucked.
Cian ran his fingers through his hair, his eyes piercing mine. “We can run. We could leave tonight. They wouldn’t find us, Nova. I will make sure of it.”
We.
I shook my head. And, what, be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life waiting for the FBI to find me—or, worse, for Ryzen to find me? No, I couldn’t live like that. “I can’t leave Juliet, and you can’t leave your family. They need you.” I sighed and sank into the couch. “I don’t want to drag you into any more trouble either, Cian. I appreciate you saving me, but I’ll have to deal with this on my own.” I couldn’t do that to him. Not after everything Ryzen had put him through. The last thing he needed was to be constantly worrying about me.
Cian dragged me up from the couch and I gasped as he held me tight against him. “Do you think I’m ever letting you out of my sight again, little mouse?” He weaved his hands through my hair, tugging my head back. “I will not let anything happen to you.” His soft lips kissed down my jaw and I tried to fight the moan from escaping. “You’re mine, Nova.”
His lips crashed into mine and I lost myself instantly. I gripped his shirt in my fists, keeping him in place. This was wrong, and I knew it, but you couldn’t have paid me to stop at that moment. All the frustration, all the sadness, all the anger I had felt over the past few weeks seeped out of me and into that kiss. His tongue was like velvet, and I moaned when his teeth dragged down my neck, the sensation sending a direct signal between my legs. “Fucking mine,” he growled. He lifted me up and I wrapped my legs around him, the length of him pressing into me. I had forgotten what this felt like, this carnal urge to devour someone. He pressed my back against the wall and ground his hips into me, making me moan out. Yes, this was what I needed. My whole body was on fire, burning for him. I reached down to unbutton his pants when a knock at the door had us both freezing in place.
Crap!
“Fucking hell,” he muttered and lowered me down.
“You guys all right in there?” Eros called through the door, jiggling the doorknob.
I pulled my shirt down and ran my fingers through my hair just as he walked in.
“Oh.” He chuckled as he looked between the both of us. “Orin wants to talk.” He nodded his head down the hall and Cian let out a deep breath. He grabbed a folder from inside his desk and followed Eros down the hall, but not before promising me that we weren’t finished with our talk. Or his punishment. And I knew I shouldn’t want it, but the thought of him bending me over his lap and spanking me was almost enough to make me forget for just a moment that my life was in utter shambles.
Thora was out back with Juliet, showing her how to use her camera—probably the same one Thora had used to take all those pictures of Ryzen. Juliet asked me a hundred questions, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her. Not yet. Not before I knew for sure what I had to do. She didn’t need to carry that burden around when she had been through hell and back already.
I spent the next few hours looking over the files Delove had left me with, my fingers constantly wandering to my lips, touching them, thinking of Cian. I knew I needed to be careful with him—it was too risky and too stupid to put my heart on the line again, especially in the middle of this disaster—but my body and mind were not on the same page. One was in shell shock trying to adjust to the fact that prison was a definite possibility; the other was a horny teenager looking to escape through a mind-blowing orgasm. I couldn’t blame either of them, to be honest.
After spending some time looking through the reports, a definite pattern emerged regarding Kaviathin and Althazair Voledetti. Informant A provided intel to the FBI regarding illegal gambling; Informant A went missing. Informant B told the FBI Voledetti was rigging bids for a million-dollar construction project in downtown Chicago; Informant B went missing. Informant C said the brothers were expecting a shipment of drugs to be brought in on a cargo ship at Lake Michigan; the FBI seized the boat and found no drugs, just the dead body of informant C.
There was no doubt in my mind that these people were dangerous. Killers. Drug dealers. Kidnappers. Had they taken me and Juliet, who knew where our bodies would have been found. It was enough to make me sick to my stomach. I rubbed my hands over my face, my eyes squeezing shut as dizziness rocked through me. How the FBI thought I alone was going to take down this crime family was beyond me. But I guessed that wasn’t what I needed to do. All I needed was to get Ryzen to slip up. Find the evidence. He had to keep paperwork somewhere. I thought back to when we’d first met, how I’d found it odd that he had so much security around him. It was all starting to make sense.
I picked up a folder labeled ‘Goodacre’ and thumbed through the documents. Ryzen was clever, but not as clever as Voledetti. The FBI was right. He was their best option at taking them down. The documents went back over ten years: pictures of Ryzen at dinner with the family; shaking hands over drinks; passing of envelopes one could only assume had cash in them. What wasn’t in the file, though, was how it had all started. How the hell had Ryzen gone from promising real estate mogul to a pawn in the Mafia’s hands? It didn’t make sense. But I guessed you never knew what was going on in someone else’s mind. Picture-perfect on the outside, dirty and greedy on the inside.
My heart fluttered when I came across a picture of Cian and Ryzen together at a ribbon-cutting ceremony at their first official office. It wouldn’t be too long after that picture was taken that everything would fall apart for Cian. I ached for him, the anger and frustration he must have felt after being betrayed. The documents didn’t say who in Ryzen’s circle was feeding the FBI information, but whoever it was was giving them a lot of intel—wiretaps on his cell phone before Ryzen got paranoid and threw his phone into a river, copies of new construction projects where the union leaders’ names were highlighted. The same leaders were controlled by Voledetti. And so much more.
It wasn’t enough evidence though. Even I could see that. It was pure speculation. A hint at illegal activities, a rocky foundation. One that I could only imagine the DA didn’t want to risk prosecuting without a guaranteed win.
Cian came back some time later and found me on the floor rubbing my neck, surrounded by pictures of Ryzen. His eyes darkened as he took me in, a crease between his brows as I flipped through the rest of the pictures.
“It’s hard to imagine this is real.” I held up the pictures and scrunched up my nose. “That Ryzen is this… terrible person capable of the things they are saying.”
Cian walked over and stepped on the pictures, stuffing his hands into his pockets. I gulped at the look on his face, knowing I had hit some type of nerve. “He’s good at hiding the monster inside of him. After all, he was able to fool you. Even after you were warned, you still didn’t believe.” There was a hint of bitterness in his voice, and I sighed. “You have no idea who he really is, Nova.”
“And who are you?” I snapped and stood up from the ground. “Huh? Are you some secret FBI agent, or an informant?” My hands trembled and I balled them into fists to get it to stop. He didn’t have to keep reminding me that I was the biggest idiot on earth. I was already well aware of that.
He lowered his eyes, his jaw clenched. “I have an arrangement with Delove, that’s all you need to know. I have never lied to you, Nova.” He took a step closer, not caring that he was getting dirt all over the photos. I knew what he meant by that.Hehad never lied to me, butI, on the other hand, was a big fat fibber.
I threw my hands in the air. “I had no choice! I already told you that. Just stop. Please. Let’s not do this right now.” My shoulders sagged, the weight of the decision I had to make crushing me. “Do you have a computer I can use?”
He walked over to his desk and pulled out a laptop from a locked drawer, then sat down on the sofa without another word. Good. I knew he hadn’t given up on the argument, but I was relieved he was respecting my wishes to not continue fighting.
I searched through my emails, looking for my lease with Goodacre Corporation. Something had been nagging at the back of my mind all day, something to do with the lease, but I couldn’t figure out what.
