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Vegas was a mistake. I should have went home.
The baby coos, and I smile down at my son.
Vegas had one upside.
“Who are those men that showed up?” Ana asks me.
My eyes drift from my son to Darragh.
“Tell her, Cor. Or I will.”
The enabling stops…
“Before the car accident, I got dragged into a penthouse at the Millenium Plaza,” I say, remembering how polished those Italian mafia fuckers were.
All while I smelled of piss and wore rags. They were a reminder of how far I’d fallen. It was a smack in the face.
“A man, who I figured out was the Borgia underboss, showed me your picture, Ana. They figured out who you were and that your father was looking for you.”
“How?” she asks, softly.
I quirk a smile because this one wasn’t on me.
“Lachlan gunned down a high-ranking Russian who your papa paid to find you. There’s some crazy sh…” I temper my curses for Sophie’s sake. “Stuff happening in our world. But that doozy made its way from Astoria to the West Coast. The Borgias did their digging. Who was this Russian guy, that an Irish enforcer would gun him down and steal his beat-up bride?”
“That beat-up bride was my sister,” Ana spits out bitterly.
“Alexei Koslov didn’t carpet bomb the mafia world looking for you, Ana. It made him look bad, weak.” I take a breath. “When the rest of the underground world realized there was a Bratva princess on the loose with a bounty on her head…”
“My father put a bounty on my head?”
“Not specifically.” I wipe my mouth. “Your father pledged that Russian millions of dollars to find you. Surely, he’d pay a ransom of the same amount. If not more, especially if he knew you were in danger.”
“You might as well have been kidnapped,” Darragh says, bitterly.
“And you wanted those millions?” Anger flares in her blue eyes.
A look I’d seen plenty.
“I have millions. Somewhere. Waiting for me to straighten up and fly right.” I rub the back of my neck. “But only your father, Ana, could give me something no one else could. Something I needed.”
“What?” Ana snaps.
“He was going to offer to work for your father, if he promised to keep him alive,” Darragh says.
Ana’s astonishing eyes gives me a once-over. “You would hurt your family like that?”
“To keep mercenaries from manhandling you before giving you back to your father?” I whisper in her ear, so Sophie doesn’t hear me.
The hitch in her breath tells me she’s imagining being passed around on a private jet heading to New York.
“Christ,” Darragh says. “You didn’t mention that.”
“That’s only an assumption. Why wouldn’t those animals…” My eyes drift to Sophie, and I stop. “Then we got arrested. And I went to jail.” I stare at Darragh. “I tried to talk to you. I tried to warn you.”
Darragh blushes. “I took care of her. I protected her.”
“But they found me,” Ana whispers.
