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We get downstairs, and he plops me into a chair outside the room Papa has been using as an office. I look around, thinking of ways to escape. I’ll run all the way to Ivan’s apartment on the other side of town if I have to.
For all I know, these Irish monsters have my father tied up. This whole neighborhood has gone crazy.
Someone kidnapped Stasia Koslov.
Someone killed my mother.
“Wait here,” Lachlan says. “Do not move, little one.”
“Uh-huh,” I answer as another man in a suit appears from the shadows.
“This is Calder. He works for me.” Lachlan points to the man dressed similarly to him. “If she runs, you have my permission to hold her down.”
I have no doubt he’d enjoy that. “What am I waiting for?”
“My brother, Kieran, is making a deal with your father.”
“Deal for what?”
“For you, little one.”
CHAPTER THREE
Kieran
OutofrespectforGabriel Parisi’s poor dead wife, I gave him an extra week to mourn after the funeral. He finally accepted my offer to meet. I was coming today anyway, with or without an invitation.
I play with Gabe a little at first by appearing to be on his side. I rattle off a dozen possible suspects who work for him, men evenIknow are shady.
“Who gave you those names?” Gabe turns red in this shite office, in a shite rental house.
“Ewan Quinlan does all of my investigations, and you know my brother Balor has eyes and ears all over Astoria.”
“Our people are none of your business, O’Rourke,” Dante Caruso, Gabe’s underboss, sneers from behind his brother-in-law. The man’s sister died almost two weeks ago, but you’d never know it.
The door opens, and Lachlan enters, his hair a bit out of place. “She’s here.”
I stiffen, thinking of Isabella on the other side of that door and what it took to get her down here, if my brother let a woman get her hands on him. That vision immediately gets my blood pulsing under my skin.
Gabe stands up and barks at a clueless guard behind him. “You let this monster wander around my house?”
Blinking and turning white, the guard stammers, “He…he said he needed to use the bathroom.”
Gabe moves to the door, but Lachlan blocks it. “She’s fine. Calder is with her.”
Dante just whispers to the guard, putting me on alert.
“Get on with whatever the hell it is you really want, O’Rourke.” Gabe stomps back to his desk.
“You pissed off Koslov, my old friend,” I say to him. “He’s ready to go to war with you.”
“You’re also in debt,” Eoghan, my Harvard Law School valedictorian brother, adds. “That’s motivation for kidnapping a Russian princess and asking for a hefty ransom.”
“Stasia has been gone for six months,” Dante argues. “If she’s been kidnapped, someone would have asked for money right away.”
“The timeline does work in your favor. I’ll give you that.” I pace in front of Gabe’s desk. “Unless the plan is to keep her long enough to up the payout, knowing Alexei will be so unhinged—”
“How do I knowyoudon’t have her?” Gabe interrupts me, irking the shit out of me.
