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“I deal with these situations a lot, and when I tell you to wait in the car, I need you to do that.”
I shook my head. “I couldn’t let you do it alone. If something had happened, I would have never forgiven myself.”
He glanced at me again, looking almost intrigued by my words. He looked me up and down before huffing and shaking his head. “You go into a near panic every time you see a damn gun. I don’t even wear my sidearm around you to make sure you’re more comfortable, so you going and doing something like this makes no sense to me.”
I opened my mouth to argue again, but I caught on to his words and looked down, finding the gun he’d used at the apartment missing. He didn’t wear it, and I thought back to all the time I’d spent with him. He hadn’t worn a visible gun around me after our first encounter.
Ever since I told him about my fear, he’d kept guns away from me.
I stared at him, shock and warmth spreading through me as I considered the only reason he would have made that sacrifice. He had a dangerous job, and carrying a gun made sense. But with me… he didn’t.
I closed my mouth, unable to comment on his words as I realized that Viktor really was more than what he showed the world and me. He acted hard and brutish. He was controlling and frustrating at times, and I considered punching him far more often than I was willing to admit.
But him intentionally not wearing a gun in my presence told me something about him that I knew he tried to hide.
Viktorcared.He cared more deeply than I had initially thought.
Chapter Thirteen
Viktor Nikolaev
I spent hours trying to get the new Irish boss on the phone, yet the underboss had been the only one available to talk. The conversation got us nowhere.
“I had strained relations with the last Irish mob boss, and those relations caused a lot of discomfort for that man. Do you want to be in that position?” I asked him.
He laughed on the other end of the line. “He was weak, and that’s why my boss managed to take over the position after his death.”
“I took over this position, too,” I reminded him. “And I can promise that I have a much more brutally unhinged reputation than your boss. All I ask is that you call off the hit on my wife, and we will start on the right foot. Youdon’twant to be on the wrong foot with me.”
He seemed entirely unfazed as he said, “As soon as your wife is no longer a threat, we’ll call off our order to have her killed.”
And then he ended the call.
I stared at the phone, surprised that he’d declare such an outright challenge. My next call was to the Italian mob’s Commission chairman, and he assured me that they wouldn’t interfere in this dispute so long as they were left out of the situation. They wouldn’t risk the danger of retaliation from either side, and while I’d hoped that their hatred for the Irish would outshine their caution, it was good news that they wouldn’thelpthe Irish.
“How far will they take this?” Andrei asked after hearing the entire conversation.
I shook my head. “They have the option to take it all the way, but they have to realize that by doing so, they’re risking a war with us. It’s why you married Ciara in the first place.”
“You didn’t get ahold of the boss himself?” Damien pushed. “Is it possible the underboss is overeager about this? Maybe getting ahold of him will change something.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so.” I leaned back in my seat and clicked my pen. “Ciara is a threat to their businesses and empire, and if she remains alive, they risk looking weak. She also left her father’s ranks after refusing to marry for an alliance, so anyone privy to that information would see this new boss as weak if he allowed that deceit to go unpunished.”
“But going to war with you is reckless.”
“All of his options are reckless and dangerous,” I acknowledged. “He’s picking and choosing what will be the least dangerous option right now. We need to make sure that treading on us is the worst of the options.”
Both Damien and Andrei nodded in agreement.
“What are the next steps?”
“We need to put as strong a front forward as possible. Each attack on Ciara needs to be followed by an execution and a strong follow-through. We dumped a man’s body in the river for touching her,” I reminded them. “From here on out, we mutate each corpse and dump them on his doorsteps. We show that we’re more of a threat.”
“I can go into the city and get information on his movements and his weaknesses. I’m sure I’ll be able to uncover something useful,” Damien said. “I can sow distrust in his decision to come after Ciara knowing the risks, and maybe that unrest will sway him to call off his lackeys.”
“I can—”
I cut off Andrei with a raised hand. “You can continue guarding her.”
