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Had Boris just gotten himself shot?Fuck!I got there as fast as I could, only to see him breathing heavily as he stood over the crumpled figure of our quarry. The man was still, and a puddle of blood spread around his head. His eyes were open and staring.
I turned to Boris, who still had his gun hanging from his hand as he watched Ivan’s killer bleed out. He looked up as I arrived, that stupid blank look on his face again.
“Are you shot?” I asked him, and it took a few beats to sink in before he shook his head.
“Damn it, Boris, we needed him alive! What the hell happened?”
He looked startled at my raised voice. “He got the drop on me. I had to shoot him. I’m sorry.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, reaching for my self-control, then bent down and checked the man’s clothes for anything distinguishing. The only thing I got was a nursing ID that was probably faked. “Rodrigo Narvaez Colon. One of the Puerto Ricans.” I was almost certain of it. The dead young man was a Pueblo member. He had to be.
“Give me the badge.” Boris held his hand out for it. “I’ll have my computer guys dig up info—”
“No, thank you.” I tucked the badge into my pocket as I kept eye contact with him.You’ve fucked up enough for one day.I didn’t say it, but when his eyes widened in surprise, I just smiled benignly.
“I’ll be handling this one myself, start to finish. I’ll let you know if I need any help.” Which right now wasn’t likely. On Boris’s watch, in the span of less than thirty minutes, we had lost Ivan, and he had killed the one man who could have confirmed the connection to El Luchador.
His face fell slightly, and his eyes took on an angry glint. “It’s not my fault that Ivan’s dead.”
I stared back at him coldly. “An assassin got in right under your nose, Boris. Possibly multiple times. You can’t claim you were in the toilet the entire time. So explain to me who you think I should hold responsible for this?”
“El Luchador!”
I stared at him in disgust. “You’re really doing this now?” He had sometimes dodged responsibility when we were both younger, but nothing like this. “El Luchador may have called in the hit, but you’re the one who was supposed to be on watch for any attempts. You failed.”
His chest heaved and he glared at me. He hated it when I had to call him out. I hated it almost as much. It had rarely been necessary, but he seemed to think our friendship should absolve him of any screw-up automatically. And so when I had to call him out for a mess he’d made, he acted wounded, like I was crossing some agreed upon boundary.
But this time his mistakes had cost us dearly. “We’ll discuss this elsewhere. For now, let’s get out of here before the police cordon off the place.”
We managed to slip out, and Boris immediately walked away toward his car while I made for mine. I felt the separation keenly. That was my best friend, my strong right hand, who had suddenly gone weak, distracted, and incompetent on me when I needed him most. And he was sulking because I’d had to call him on it.
Let him stew. He knows I’m right.And right now, I had bigger fish to fry. Boris was right about one thing. El Luchador was our most likely suspect in all of this crap, and if he was, he had just declared war by killing Ivan.
And if he wanted a war this badly, I’d give him one.
Chapter 10
Olivia
Idrove back to the auction house in a daze. My hair was back to perfect, my suit unrumpled, every button in place—and yet beneath it, I was hiding all the marks Viktor had put on me. All the marks I had loved receiving. Marks I was now desperate to keep hidden. My arms were still a little stiff and sore from my time hanging onto his bedframe, but I managed to keep control of the wheel as the traffic got progressively crazier, the closer I got to Boston. But my mind was racing.
I wasn’t mad at him for being so seductive. He hadn’t made me do anything I hadn’t thoroughly wanted to do. No, I was mad at myself.
There were no excuses this time. No blackout to hide his tattoos. No ignorance to excuse my time in his bed. I knew the man was a career criminal. I knew he’d probably killed people. I knew my life was already complicated by his being Michael’s biological father. But here I’d done it again, running upstairs with him to his bedroom like I was sixteen, and had no thought of consequences.
I’m messing around with a criminal, I thought as I slowed for a traffic jam up ahead.I have a son with a criminal, and I still have to tell him about it. And I don’t think I know how to let anyone else in my life know about this.
And the worst part of all of it was that none of it changed the thrill I felt deep inside. None of it made me crave him any less. Of all the men I had ever encountered, Viktor was the only one I absolutely had to have in any way that I could get him.
“What the hell is wrong with me?” I mumbled as I entered the stop-and-go traffic inching past an accident up ahead. Was I just sick somehow? Reckless? What was it about this one guy?
He was spectacular in bed, which really didn’t help me fight my obsession with him. He was a cool customer in any situation, no matter how tough. He was brilliant, imaginative, and always in control. The hotness only made it all worse.
But he lived and worked on the wrong side of the law. That had always been a dealbreaker for me, ever since I had dumped my first boyfriend for selling weed to junior high school students. I couldn’t afford to compromise my own standards just because something in me was thirsty for bad boys.
Except that was stereotyping Viktor, and not from what I had seen of him so far. The man was a paradox—criminal, but honorable and strangely kind. Probably capable of great violence, but I’d never felt anything but safe with him.
“I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do about this,” I muttered as I scooped up my phone to text the auction house while I was stuck. I’d use the shitty traffic as my excuse, but I knew that wouldn’t work every time I was late getting back from Salem.
