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“Shit, sorry,” I said, closing my eyes once more. I took a deep breath, trying to calm down. I was almost afraid to open my eyes again. When I did, I looked quickly to Adrik, who smiled at me.
“Normal again,” he said, kissing my forehead. He stepped in front of me, glancing at the guys. “Apologies, but I need to do this,” he said to them as he wrapped his arm tightly around my waist. He pulled me against him firmly, his lips finding mine forcefully. His anger quickly turned to passion as he kissed me deeply. I felt my knees go weak. I wrapped my arms around his neck, pressing my body to his even tighter. Just when I felt my lungs objecting to the lack of air, he stopped the kiss, his forehead pressed to mine as he regained control. He pressed his lips to mine gently once more, then pulled me to one of the couches to sit. Usually, kissing me like that would calm him down, but I felt like he did that for me this time. It was effective. I found myself wanting more, no longer so angry I was having trouble seeing.
“I picked the worst person to be wrong about, it seems,” I said, as I felt Adrik’s arms slide around me.
“We don’t know for sure you were wrong yet, spider monkey. He could still be telling us the truth, just maybe not the whole truth. That seems to be what he does,” Andrei said.
“Not telling us that he knew Mike before was a big fucking omission,” I said. “Just like not telling us that Sal was the one behind brawn all along was a big fucking omission.”
“Maybe he’s trying to play both sides,” Ivan said. “Essentially, that’s what he’s always done. He worked for Sal, but fed you information. The big question is whether he’s feeding Sal information while he’s here.”
“We took his phone. He has no way of contacting anyone outside the building. The guards that are assigned to him are always with him and have reported nothing. I’m going to speak to every single one of them, however,” Viktor said. He was just as frustrated as I was with this situation. He felt like it was his responsibility to keep us safe and this was a potential breech of his airtight defenses. Viktor usually stayed calm and we rarely saw him angry, but he was angry over this one. He felt directly responsible for missing that Mike had worked for Anthony.
“What about Chris and Keith?” I asked. “I think they’re both telling the truth, but now I’m not sure I trust myself, so I don’t know if you guys should trust me.”
“As far as I can tell, they’re telling us the truth now,” Misha said. “If Andy recognized Mike, that means they’d seen each other before. Not necessarily that they’d worked together before. And we were expecting them to be followed when they went to Armando’s house that night. I thought it was weird that they weren’t. It might not be as bad as we think it is.”
I hoped Misha was right. Not just for us, but for the people of the city. We were trying to do this quietly, with as little fallout as possible. I didn’t want to reach the point where chaos was necessary.
Chapter Eighty-One
Adrik
While the information we’d just discovered was important, I was having trouble keeping my mind from thinking about Sephie and how much I could feel her anger feed into mine. But also, how much control she had over hers, compared to me. My anger always felt like a ticking time bomb, just under the surface. I would have to struggle to keep it contained when it reached a certain point. I had learned over the years to keep it just under that point, so I could use it to my advantage when I needed to intimidate someone. Sephie, however, could raise and lower her anger at will.
I’d seen her get so angry that her eyes went dark a few times since I noticed it in the ring with Mike that day. But the few times it happened before, she was visibly angry. Tonight, she looked and felt like she was calming down, but when she opened her eyes after Chris left the office, they were as dark as I’d ever seen them. It surprised me. It was like her anger was cloaked. She didn’t look like she was about to lose control, but her eyes told a different story.
While we waited on Keith, I let my anger rise to the point where I knew it was still easily controlled. I needed it to intimidate Keith into telling us everything. Before, Sephie would feel me get angry and would try to help keep me calm. I’d learned that it actually helped me increase the level of anger since I knew I had her to help mitigate it. But tonight, she didn’t try to keep me calm when she felt it. I could feel her anger feeding mine, but also controlling mine. I was at a level that it would have been difficult to control previously when Keith walked into the office, but with Sephie by my side, I felt a mastery of it that I’d never felt before. We’re going to need to discuss this later.
I squeezed Sephie just a little tighter in my lap, as she was worried that she’d made a huge mistake. I knew she was going to worry over this for a while. “I don’t think Chris and Keith are a problem either. I will admit to wanting to just kill Andy and be done with it, but he seems to provide valuable information periodically, so I’m torn on wasting that resource. Maybe we should restrict his movements in the building until this is over, just to be safe. Either keep him in his apartment or keep him in a room,” I said.
“Room” was a nice way of saying holding cell. It was my own psychological trick I played on people.
“I will say that Keith has talked extensively about his hatred for Mike since he’s been gone. I’ve heard a few stories about when they worked together before moving here and they weren’t pleasant stories. There is clear hatred there,” Stephen said. “And Chris has talked to Keith about his mom being sick. I might’ve checked that one out already. It’s legit.”
We all looked to Stephen, somewhat surprised that he’d checked Chris’s story already. “What? I have trust issues,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.
“Okay, so Keith and Chris check out, which actually makes life easier. That means less work for us with Armando’s security and it also means I don’t have to look at Giana as much, which makes me happy. I vote for putting Andy in a room. He can still get messages outside the building with access to windows. If he is getting messages outside,” Ivan said.
One of Ivan’s strongest traits was being able to think like the enemy. He could put himself in their shoes, think like them, and be able to predict what they would do next. It was a useful skill to have.
“Agreed. Have him moved right away. Chris and Keith can go back to their apartments,” I said. Viktor stood up to take care of the arrangements, his phone in hand as he left the office.
Keith stopped by the office on his way back. He looked visibly relieved. “Um, sir, in the interest of full transparency, there is one more thing.” He noticed the look on my face and immediately put his hands up in defense in front of him. “No, no. Not about Andy or Mike. This one is about Giana.” Chris walked up beside him as he was talking.
“What about her?” Misha said. He was still harboring extreme anger toward her, so it didn’t take much to set him off when her name was mentioned right now.
“She does feel bad about what happened and she wants to apologize, but she thinks you all are really intimidating. We overheard her talking to Armando at his house this past weekend,” Keith said.
Misha cursed under his breath while Sephie just laughed. “Keith, I appreciate you trying to help her out and put in a good word for her, but she needs to learn how to be an adult and realize that we’re not intimidating. She’s just intimidated. If she would grow a pair, she might get some respect, but having the men in her life speak for her is not going to gain her any favors. Not with me and I feel fairly confident in saying not with any of these guys either,” she said.
“Definitely not with me,” Misha said. He looked disgusted to even be talking about this.
“I basically told her as much last night, Keith. She knows what needs to happen to get back in our good graces. She will either choose to do it or she can continue to live in the Hell she’s created for herself,” I said. My tone was short, in hopes that it would end the conversation. I was growing tired of any extra drama that affected Sephie.
“She will eventually realize that she’s made this into an even bigger issue by acting the way she has,” Ivan said. “She’s the only one that can correct it.”
“You’ll do her a bigger favor by telling her that than you will by trying to smooth things over for her,” Andrei said. “She’s chosen to learn this lesson the hard way, so get out of her way and let her learn it.” Even Andrei’s tone was short. We were all stressed and this topic seemed ridiculous and trivial comparatively.
