Power Play: A Romance Collection

by Lauren Landish

  But her certainty is compelling.

  I hold Nathan down, my one hand tight on his throat, my gun hand cocking the hammer back and pressing it once again to his chest, right above his heart.

  “Explain.”

  Chapter 41

  Emma

  The words rush out as I try to explain fast enough to get this monster of a man off Nathan.

  The monster that’s with . . . Carly?

  What in the everloving fuck?

  Is this the guy she’s been talking about, Kyle?

  But I shake my head, focusing. Save Nathan first, exchange names later.

  “My sister is an FBI agent, and she had me come in undercover because he was meeting with Nikolai Romanov.”

  He growls, his eyes still fixed on Nathan, and his hand squeezes slightly. “That has nothing to do with Anna.”

  I try again and keep spilling. “I know, but when she wanted me to find out about the meeting business, she also told me they believed Nathan had Anna Russo killed because she may have known too much or had something to do with Nathan’s dad’s murder.”

  Kyle’s cold gaze flicks to me, angrily biting out, “She had nothing to do with it. She cared for Michael, would never have hurt the man.”

  I think he’s looking for Nathan’s reaction to my words and to his statement, but Nathan already knows the full truth of what I’m saying at least and just nods, pressing his chin against the hand holding him down.

  “Nathan knows about my sister, about why I was sent here. But he didn’t do it. He had nothing to do with Anna and has been trying to figure out who killed his dad. Maybe it’s the same person?” I hypothesize. “They killed his dad because of a gem. Did she have anything to do with that?”

  Kyle’s eyes look back to Nathan, searching, and it feels as if he’s scanning him like a lie detector.

  Nathan must get the same sense because he forces out, blood bubbling on his lips, “I swear on the only good thing in my life that I didn’t kill Anna.”

  I can see Kyle’s grip loosen incrementally. “Speak quickly, Stone.”

  Nathan takes a deep breath, fully aware that while Kyle’s hand on his throat’s loosened and he can speak easier, the gun hasn’t moved an inch. “I admit, I hated Anna somewhat. I was jealous because my Dad talked to her even when he wouldn’t give us the time of day. He had this thing in common with her, this treasure hunting. Still, I didn’t kill her or my dad . . . but someone did. I don’t know who yet. I’ve been investigating my dad’s murder, but I don’t know who yet.” The intensity of Nathan’s statement must resonate with Kyle on some level because I see his slow blink.

  Then Kyle growls, the sound an expression of grief and pain tied up in anger.

  But he pushes off Nathan, standing to pace, and Nathan staggers to his feet to block me protectively. I ignore him, pulling his arm over my shoulder and guiding him to a chair to sit down. Kyle turns, his eyes beseeching.

  “Fuck. Fuck. I knew it was you. You’re a goddamn merc, like me. Killing’s too easy for us. If it’s not you, then fucking who?” His words are muttered, more to himself than to anyone else in the room.

  But Carly goes to him, placing a steadying hand on his arm. “We’ll figure it out. I promise.”

  The tension in the room has changed, and after a few steadying breaths, Nathan stands up, moving slowly toward the bar in the corner, pouring four generous glasses of scotch. “Drink? Seems we could all use one.”

  Kyle comes over and takes one of the glasses, tilting it back in one gulp.

  Nathan nods and simply pours him another. “You were a merc too?”

  Kyle nods. “I’d faintly heard of you before this. You liked to play in the sand, mostly.”

  “I did. You?”

  “Southeast Asia, for the most part. Little bit of Africa.”

  The two men seem to study each other for a moment and reach a temporary truce. Taking a glass apiece, Nathan brings me a scotch while Kyle offers one to Carly, and we all sit on the leather couches facing one another warily.

  Carly, with all her wild weirdness, laughs and says, “Well, this is awkward. Sorry for pulling the guns on you doesn’t sound right on a Hallmark card, and I don’t think there’s an emoji for this. Uhm, would an ‘oopsie’ suffice?” She shrugs, sipping her scotch as she looks off to the left.

  In her look, I realize that it’s up to me and her to get this derailed train back on the tracks. These two men are soldiers, used to working alone, being alone, not depending on anyone or anything.

  But they’re both learning to lean on us, me and Carly.

  “Hey, Carly, remember that double-date we went on with Max and Ben?”

  She looks at me, her eyebrows almost touching her hairline. “Uh, yeah. Not really a forgettable evening, ya know. Why?”

  I can see the guys’ muscles ratcheting up when I mention other guys, the opposite of what I want to happen, but I’m going for a progressive plan.

  “Remember how we were so excited to go out with them? Thought we were so grown up.”

  Kyle interrupts, looking to Carly. “This before or after Gunze?”

  It’s my turn to raise my brows, and I sip my scotch. “You told him about Gunze?”

  She blushes, and it’s the cutest and most innocent thing I’ve seen on her face in ages. Her blush alone is enough to give me pause, but her next words make me reevaluate Kyle altogether. Looking at him with total devotion, a look I’ve caught in my own mirror recently, she says, “Before.”

  She turns to me. “He knows everything, my parents, Gunze, Europe. All of it. He beat the shit out of Robert at the Broadway gala for taking unwelcome liberties.”

  Kyle rumbles dangerously, obviously not liking Carly’s reminder about the party.

  But I smile at Kyle, a genuine one, silently telling him thank you for getting into her heart enough that she’d share that way. She needs that, needs him, apparently.

  And he jumps up a notch in my estimation. Gun ambush aside, he looked out for my girl. Besides, this wasn’t my first gun ambush . . . although I would like to make this the last, I think with a barely suppressed eye roll.

  Whose life is this?

  “So Max and Ben. What a clusterfuck that party was. Broken mirrors, a smashed TV, and two guys who make you two seem like choir boys.”

  I look around at the blood and the gun and think maybe that’s taking it a bit too far.

  “Well, in a way. Just roll with me here. We worked together and got out of there. And no one was any the wiser about what happened and we didn’t get in any trouble.”

  The party is insane. Kids going upstairs to bedrooms and drinks are flowing like water. It’s probably par for the course for a lot of our classmates, but not for Carly and me. We’re fish out of water and virtually gasping for air at the new and scary environment we’ve been thrust into.

  We’d been so excited when Max and Ben asked us out on a double-date, spending hours on outfits and deciding who likes who better. But now that we’re actually at the party, the boys are handsy and obviously trying to get us drunk.

  I keep sipping on the same trashcan Kool-aid punch cup for over an hour, and Carly poured most of hers into a potted plant when no one was looking, so at least we have our wits about us. But the aggressive touching and repeated requests to go upstairs are just too much.

  “I need to freshen up first,” Carly says finally, giving me a single eyebrow lift.

  “Oh, me too!” I exclaim, jumping up from the couch and hooking my elbow through hers. We’re barely around the corner when I hiss, “Oh, my God, what are we doing here? We have to get out. Now.”

  Carly grins, an evil one that tells me she’s up to something. “Definitely, but first, come on.”

  She drags me to the kitchen, refilling our plastic cups damn near to the brim. “I don’t want another drink. We didn’t drink the first ones.”

  But she leads me to the stairs, and like a dork, I follow her up to the second floor. She moves us to a p
oint by the railing where we can see Max and Ben below us.

  “Okay, on the count of three, dump and run to the bathroom.” She points down and then behind her.

  My eyes widen. “No, we can’t.”

  But she’s already counting, and on three, I do it.

  Our cups fall through the air, landing right in Max and Ben’s lap and splashing the very red and very alcoholic punch all over them and the couch. The very expensive-looking, antique ivory couch. Red everywhere.

  We quickly and quietly make our way to the bathroom, and where I’d slam the door, selling us out, Carly closes it silently, like we’ve been here all along. The footsteps stomp up the stairs, yelling voices rising with them.

  Then doors start opening. In the bedrooms, people cry out in surprise at the interruption. My breath catches in fear, the knowledge that we’re going to be caught already settling in.

  But Carly drops to her knees in front of the toilet and spits thickly into it, a hint of red from the punch she did sip.

  When the door opens, she moans. “Oh, God, I don’t feel so good.” She looks up, somehow faking glassy eyes at Max and Ben. Their pastel polo shirts are covered, dripping in punch. “Oh, no, you too? What was in that?”

  Surprisingly, the guys buy Carly’s lightweight drunk act and keep looking around for who did this to them. In the mayhem, I shuffle Carly out into the night. She got us out safe and sound, although at the crash of broken glass from somewhere in the house behind us, we did break into a sprint. Odd looks be damned.

  I’d kept waiting for someone to rat us out, for us to have to pay for the expensive couch. But no one ever did. And with a bit of teamwork and some ingenuity, we’d gotten away scot-free.

  “And Max and Ben never talked to us again,” I finish. I look over at her, offering a high-five. “We’re a good team, girl.”

  She smiles back, smacking hands. “Yeah, we are.” And then I see her swirl her drink and mouth, “One . . . two . . .”

  “No! That’s not what I meant!” I call out, stopping her just as Kyle catches on and starts to bail out of his seat.

  Her brows lift, and she huffs in mock disappointment. “That’s obviously what the moral of that story means. Dump the punch and run.”

  She spreads her arms wide, palms up, telling me ‘duh’ without a word.

  I look pointedly at the guys and repeat, “We are a good team. Maybe it’s about time we try that now too. What do you say?”

  Nathan’s and Kyle’s eyes narrow, obviously not onboard with the plan but not negating the idea outright either. So I agree for all of us. “Good, that’s settled then. Let’s lay all our cards on the table then, shall we?”

  There are a few grumbles, but I dive in full-steam ahead. “Here’s what we know. Michael and Anna worked together. Michael was killed here in the States, Anna a few days later in Italy. The only connection between the two is their work together. The FBI thought Nathan killed them both to inherit the company. The power.”

  Nathan growls, his hands tightening around his tumbler. “I would never. I wasn’t even in the country when that happened.”

  Carly hums, working it out in her brain, “But if you didn’t, someone else did. Who? Didn’t you look into your own dad’s death?”

  Nathan looks to me, questioning whether he should share, and I tell him with my eyes that I trust Carly implicitly. And if she trusts Kyle, I trust her assessment of him.

  “I said we did . . . are, but we’ve come up empty. Admittedly, we didn’t have a great relationship, so it’s not like I was a grief-stricken zombie. What I was, was pissed. Angry that even in his death, he’d gotten his way, what he always wanted. Me at the family business. He died, and I had to leave a life I enjoyed, come home to be the dutiful son and do a job I knew nothing about and wanted nothing to do with. So yes, I investigated and paid others to investigate. But when they turned up with hands outstretched for more money with no leads, I just let it go so I could focus on what my life had become.”

  Kyle asks, “And Anna?”

  I can see the sharp stab saying her name causes, and I wonder if Carly has gotten herself tied up with a man who is unavailable to her. But that’s something we’ll have to figure out later since the guys are finally talking.

  Nathan frowns. “The Italian police called me but didn’t think it was related to her work for my dad. They were the ones on the frontline with all the intel there, so I trusted it when they ruled it a random act of violence. For all I knew, with her area of work, she could’ve had all sorts of expensive things in her apartment and was a robbery victim. Or some guy could’ve followed her home from the market. It didn’t seem connected, even though the timing was suspect. But now, knowing more about the work they were doing . . .”

  Kyle nods, his mind letting go of his anger at Nathan temporarily as he focuses on trying to find his real target. “It’d have to be a big player to hit both in the US and in Europe. It’s not like your friendly neighborhood accountant with a wetwork side gig can jet halfway across the world for a contract.”

  Now that the gates are opened, even a small bit, the waters rush in as the words rush out. The guys talk, sharing information and rehashing the same stuff over and over from different angles. They’ve got similar backgrounds, but I can tell as they discuss things . . . they’re different.

  Nathan’s a born leader, an officer in military parlance. He thinks strategically, mapping out objectives. Kyle’s not a follower, per se, but a loner. Or maybe their circumstances have made them into what they are.

  Ironically, if Caleb were here, I'd say they’d have a complete team, all three complimenting each other in their own way. Although if he were here from the start, things may have gone badly. He’s definitely quick to act, so we’re probably lucky he wanted to escape to his apartment in the city for some ‘alone time’ to deal with the ‘aftermath of Dad’s shit’, as he’d called it. After our plane landed, he’d left with his trademark two-fingered wave, which is probably a good thing or tonight would’ve been very different.

  My eyelids are getting heavy. I didn’t get enough sleep on the plane, but I do hear Kyle ask, “You really didn’t kill your dad to take over a billion-dollar company?”

  Eyes closed, I hear Nathan answer. “I never wanted his company. I was finally happy with my life, Caleb by my side, the two of us taking on the world. But now that I have it, I’m determined to grow it in ways he was too small-minded to consider, ways he couldn’t make work because he was too busy jetting off to chase some storybook Infinity Stone bullshit. No, I didn’t kill him, and certainly not for the albatross of a company he slipped around my neck with his death. But I’ll bear it and thrive, not just survive him.”

  My heart swells with pride.

  Not at what he’s done for the family business, I had no doubt about his leadership skills there, but at his openness in talking about it all.

  That’s new.

  That’s progress.

  That’s healing.

  And that’s my man.

  I try to stay awake, but their voices lull me to sleep.

  Chapter 42

  Nathan

  It’s been a long night, full of revelations and painful memories, for both me and Kyle.

  Somehow, we’ve both been in mission mode, and while I didn’t know his name from the merc world, it’s a wonder our lives never crossed.

  If we were still in that line of work, I’d have chastised him that he should have shot me while he had the chance. It’s only fate, and maybe luck, that he wanted a moment of verbal vengeance and hands-on justice last night because if he’d fired his gun, I’d have been dead.

  He wouldn’t have missed.

  We’ve been holed up in my office for hours, hushed murmurs as we share everything that we know, interweaving our intel and stories but keeping it down so as not to wake the girls who crashed out on the couches after what seemed like mere minutes.

  I can’t blame them. From what Kyle’s told me, it’d been a
long day for Carly, most of it spent with nervous imaginings of what awful things I was doing to her friend. And I know Emma was trembling on the edge of exhaustion when we got off the plane. Another round of adrenaline crash, when we’d just left the dangers of the jungle, was more than enough to put her out of commission, though her quiet snores have been a balm as my conversation with Kyle has kept us both on edge. The information has been a hard share on both our parts.

  “Coffee?” I offer, hoping the ubiquitous equalizer can help keep us on the same side and awake long enough to figure out what the hell is going on.

  We’ve managed to plot out that my dad and Anna were working on finding the stone I just recovered, though I keep that tidbit to myself, and that my dad made a secret trip to Brazil, though it doesn’t appear that he went into the jungle.

  Most likely, it seems he was getting the map that progressed Anna’s understanding of what and where the stone was.

  That’s the tie between them both.

  The stone. The map.

  So if someone wanted the stone, they needed the map. And to get the map, they’d need to get it from either my dad or Anna.

  It’s the best motive we can come up with and it seems to fit all the elements. It’s ironic that two soldiers have done in a few hours what two international agencies and countless private investigators couldn’t accomplish. But they didn’t have the pieces we do. More importantly, they didn’t have the motivation to see this through and get answers. Those investigators and agents probably shrugged their shoulders and closed up the files on Michael Stone and Anna Russo, simply moving on to the next case. But for me and Kyle, there was no ‘next’. These questions have weighed on us. Maybe even more than we realized.

  But who knew about the map? It wasn’t like it all came from one source. Dad used researchers, geologists, and more to compile the whole thing into one unit.

  And who knew about the stone’s existence? The stone isn’t exactly as famous as the Holy Grail. There haven’t been ten thousand assholes tramping around the Amazon looking for it.