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“Take all the time you need,” I reply, leaning my head back into the seat and closing my eyes. “I’m not in a rush.”
28
Jasha
Hundreds of miles and a quick refuel later, we arrive at a secret Bratva-controlled train station in Texas. It’s about fifteen miles from the house, but that’s about as close as anything gets to our estate. It’s nice to have some space between yourself and the rest of the world.
But even now that we’ve arrived, my mission is far from over. I took this train for a reason, and I intend to follow through with my original intention – finding our family heirloom and returning it to the estate.
Lola waits beside the train, idly playing with her fingers as the bodies are moved off the train for disposal by a hazmat team. The sun is high in the sky, warming us both as we stand with our backs to it.
There’s still snow all the way down here in Texas, though it’s melting quickly as the temperature rises. It never snowed much since I moved here, but in recent years, things have changed. Some years, we even get a few feet of snow.
But I’ll be happy when the weather warms up again and we can enjoy the pool that we have in the backyard. Granted, Lola will be too pregnant to do much of anything besides waddling around, but it’ll be nice to see her in a bikini.
I won’t tell her right now, but her pregnancy is a bigger turn-on than she could possibly imagine. I never thought about a pregnant woman in such a way, but imagining her fertile, glowing body in front of me gives me chills.
I glance over at her, smiling as she looks up at me. She has no idea what I’m thinking, but I know what’s on her mind. She’s cold, we’ve been standing here for half an hour, and we both just want to get home and take a nice, long, steaming hot shower.
“I’m going to start looking for the cargo,” I say, giving her arm a gentle squeeze. “Just some preliminary scans. You can come with me if you want to see what we use to see through walls.”
“You can do that?” she asks, looking surprised and a bit skeptical.
“Oh yes, we have the tools. It’s a blend of a few different things, but we have access to military grade tools when we need them. I already had this from when we were trying to locate a local politician who was buried in concrete by the Pessolano Family.”
“Wow, they really do that kind of stuff?”
I nod. “Yep.”
“And did you find him?”
“Also yes,” I say with a smirk. “But we weren’t about to do the police’s work for them. We just wanted what was in his pocket. Access cards for certain buildings in the capital are pretty hard to come by, so we found him, dug him up, and encased him right back where he belongs.”
“He’s still in a building?” she asks, more curious now than anything.
“Sure, but you wouldn’t believe which one even if I told you. Perhaps when we’re married, though. I can’t speak on too many Family secrets until then,” I say, watching her expression slip into an unreadably blank one at the mention of marriage.
“So… youreallyweren’t joking about that?” she asks, though she already knows I wasn’t.
“We should check the train first, and Nikolai knows more about the marriage stuff. He’s already done it,” I say, trying to slip out of the conversation before it gets too real.
I’m more than happy to marry Lola, but I want to give her time to digest everything. There’s no point in freaking her out this early on. She might get cold feet, and I need her in my life. I have to keep her.
Lola shrugs. “Whatever you want to do. You’re the boss.”
I take her passive acceptance as permission to bring her with me to watch the scanner as we go from section to section of the train looking for the stashed cargo from the outside.
I’d look like a complete fool if there turned out to be nothing on this train, but it couldn’t be so. Lorenzo gave his life trying to get this train back. It must have something in it.
“Six, seven, eight,” I count as we walk slowly down the train with the scanner. I’m looking for any difference between the cabins. It doesn’t have to be big, just enough to tell me there’s something there.
“Nine, ten… eleven?” I stop, studying the reading on the large, boxy display for a moment before showing it to Lola. “What does this look like to you?”
“Bathroom,” she says with the utmost certainty.
Shit, she’s right.
I sigh, continuing down the train. “Twelve, thirteen… Wait a second.” I look up at Lola, feeling a surge of electric excitement. “This is it. Lucky thirteen.”
