by Elle Kennedy
And then Vince would earn a permanent place at the boss’s table.
* * *
“Good morning,” Kathleen said softly when Olivia entered the kitchen.
“Morning.” She padded over to the counter to pour herself a cup of coffee, then joined her mom at the table. “Sleep well?”
“I slept better than I have in a long time.” Her mother arched her brows. “I imagine you did too.”
Olivia shot her a quizzical look. “Why do you say that?”
“I might be bald, but I’m not deaf.” Kathleen gave a crooked smile. “So when do I meet him?”
Heat scorched her cheeks. “Meet who?”
“The man who’s been sneaking into my daughter’s bedroom the past couple of nights.”
Oh boy. Talk about embarrassing. The two of them never spoke about Olivia’s love life, but that was probably because she didn’t have a love life. She’d only been in one serious relationship in her life, back in freshman year at NYU, but that involvement had been a fluke. Normally she was far too busy for trivial matters like dating. Or love.
Not that she and Luke were dating. Or in love.
“It’s nothing,” she said quickly. “Not a big deal at all.”
“Really? Because I can’t recall the last time you invited a man home.” Her mother wrapped her frail hands around her coffee mug, pretending to think it over. “Oh, I know why I can’t remember. Because you’ve never done it before.”
“Like I said, it’s no big deal.”
“Does Mr. No Big Deal have a name?” Kathleen prompted.
The faint chime of her cell phone saved Olivia from having to answer. She jumped out of the chair, left the kitchen, and hurried into her bedroom, answering the phone just before it kicked into voice mail. “Hello?”
“Hey, it’s me.”
An involuntary streak of happiness surged through her. Luke’s lazy drawl instantly had her remembering everything they’d done last night. Her mom was right—she had slept great. She’d gone to bed sated and relaxed, drifting off the moment Luke climbed out her window to meet up with his team and—
“How did it go last night?” she blurted out. “Did you find the agent?”
“Yeah. Yeah, we did.” He paused. “The guy was already dead when we got there.”
Olivia gasped. “They killed him?”
“Afraid so,” he said flatly. “Either way, it’s done. We found Dane, so our job is over. Now it’s time to return the favor, darlin’.”
Hope skated up her spine. “You’re really going to help me?”
“I promised you I would,” he said gruffly. “I’m stopping by in an hour or so if that’s all right with you. I need to take a couple of photographs of you and your mother so we can line up your new documents.”
Her mother. Olivia’s heart jammed in her throat as she realized she would finally have to tell her mom the truth.
“Liv? You there?”
God, how was she going to explain everything to her mom? She’d been lying about her job for the past twelve months, pretending to work at a restaurant on Broadway. She’d even gone into the place and asked if she could buy one of their aprons, just so she could bring it home every now and then to give her bullshit some credibility. And six months ago, she’d explained away her attack by claiming she’d been mugged on her way home from work and that the surgeon who’d worked on her face had done it pro bono.
Now she had to confess that it had all been a lie. That she was actually a stripper at the Diamond Mine who’d been attacked by a would-be rapist and had become indebted to a mobster who paid all their bills.
Tears of shame stung her eyes. “She’s going to be disgusted with me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“My mother.” She blinked through the onslaught of tears. “She’s going to hate me when I tell her everything that’s been going on.”
“She’s not going to hate you,” Luke said firmly. “And she won’t be disgusted. I promise you, your mom will understand. If anything, she’ll be upset with herself for putting you in a position where you had to do all this to take care of her.”
“I put myself in this position.” Olivia hesitated. “But I’m getting us out. You’re getting us out, right?”
“Right.” His voice became husky. “I’ll be over in an hour, darlin’. Do you want me to be there when you talk to your mother?”
The offer warmed her heart, but she knew this was something she had to do alone. “No, that’s okay, but thanks. I’ll see you soon.”
After they hung up, she walked into the bathroom to splash some cold water on her face. When she lifted her head to examine her reflection in the mirror, she had to wonder what Luke Dubois saw in her. Yes, her face was technically flawless—high cheekbones, full lips, straight nose, and smooth skin. But her eyes . . . they were full of shadows, as Candy Cane had noticed.
Now she was about to bring shadows to her mother’s eyes, and as she left the bathroom, she prayed that Luke was right and that her mother would understand.
Her mom was still at the table when she returned to the kitchen. “Everything all right, sweetheart? Who was on the phone?”
Olivia’s legs shook as she lowered herself onto the chair. “A friend,” she said vaguely. She took a long sip of coffee, then set the mug down and mustered up some courage. “I need to talk to you about something.”
Kathleen frowned. “All right.”
“We need to go away for a little wh—”
The phone rang again. The landline this time, and Olivia gritted her teeth in irritation. For the love of God.
“Hold that thought.” She sighed and grabbed the cordless from the counter, answering with a quick hello.
“Is this Olivia?” an unfamiliar female voice asked.
She wrinkled her forehead. “Yes. Who’s this?”
“This is Maureen. Maureen Malcolm.” A pause. “Cora’s mother.”
Olivia’s chest squeezed. “Oh. Mrs. Malcolm. I . . . I’m so sorry about Cora. I know I should have called, but—”
“It’s all right, dear. I understand.” The woman hesitated. “Cora spoke of you often.”
“She spoke of you too.” Olivia swallowed the lump in her throat. “She loved you very much. How is Katie doing?”
“She misses her mom, but she’s a tough little girl. She’ll be okay. Eventually.”
“And you?”
“I miss my daughter,” Maureen said simply. “I . . . Lord, I still don’t understand any of this. Was she . . . did my daughter confide in you . . . about the drugs?”
“No. No, she didn’t.”
Olivia felt like someone had shoved a knife into her heart, especially when Maureen continued in a bewildered tone, “Cora was a good girl. A smart girl. I don’t understand why . . . how . . . she got involved with drugs. I never knew.”
The soft sobbing tore Olivia apart. She wanted so desperately to assure the woman that everything she’d believed was true—that Cora wasn’t a drug addict. To tell her that her daughter had been murdered.
But she couldn’t do it. Vince wouldn’t have risked killing Cora unless he’d known he wouldn’t be leaving any evidence behind. If Olivia told Maureen Malcolm the truth, she might be placing Maureen and Cora’s daughter in danger.
“I’m so sorry,” Olivia said.
The sobbing stopped, replaced by Maureen’s dull voice. “The funeral is Friday afternoon at St. Joseph’s Church. I thought you should know.”
“I’ll do my best to be there,” she promised.
After they disconnected, Olivia turned to find Kathleen’s unhappy green eyes fixed on her. “That was your friend’s mother?”
She nodded. “She was calling about the funeral.”
“The poor woman must be devastated. Imagine, finding out your daughter is an addict when you didn’t have a clue.”
But she wasn’t an addict!
A rush of anger flooded her belly. These last couple of days she hadn’t
allowed herself to think about Cora’s death, but the memory returned now in full force. Vince had killed Cora. He’d killed an innocent young woman just because she wasn’t being cooperative during his private sex parties, and now a little girl was an orphan because of it.
And Vince was still doing it. Distributing his heroin, doping up dancers when his associates requested their company.
Her anger escalated, turning into an eddy of rage. And he was just getting away with it! Nobody was bothering to interfere; nobody was trying to stop him. Not even Luke, who certainly had the skills to put Vince Angelo out of commission.
“Liv?” Kathleen said cautiously, heading for the counter. “You want another cup?”
She shook her head, hoping the fury she was feeling didn’t show on her face. She watched as her mother dropped a spoonful of sugar into her coffee, and was reminded of the spoon she’d seen on Cora’s bedside table. The powder lining that piece of tinfoil. The fucking syringes strewn on the floor.
Another shipment was coming in. Vince had mentioned it during the conversation she’d overheard in her stairwell, and those two goons from the club had spoken of a shipment too.
It had to be drugs. More drugs were being smuggled into the city. Drugs that Vince put in the hands of dealers and in the veins of the girls he decided to pimp out.
Olivia fisted her hands so tight that her knuckles turned as white as the plastic table beneath them. She couldn’t let it happen again. The thought came swift and hard. She knew she couldn’t bring Cora back to life, but damn it, she could at least try to stop Vince from hurting any more of the girls at the Diamond.
“So what were you saying before the phone rang?” her mother asked, settling back in her chair.
She looked up to meet her mom’s gaze. “Oh. It was nothing.”
“You said something about going away?”
“No. Well, yeah, I was thinking about taking a trip, you and me. But . . . I just realized how impossible it would be to get the time off.”
“A trip does sound nice, but it might be best to hold off for a while. I don’t know if I’m up to traveling just yet.”
Olivia reached across the table and grasped her mother’s hand. “Don’t worry. We won’t go anywhere for the time being.” She set her jaw. “We’re staying right here.”
Chapter 15
Luke sat on Olivia’s bed, gaping as the words she’d just uttered registered in his brain. “Are you serious?”
She nodded. In her bright blue leggings and loose black T-shirt, with her long hair tied up in a high ponytail, she looked much younger than twenty-five. The youthful attire was completely out of sync with the deadly look in her green eyes.
“Why?” he demanded, shaking his head in bewilderment. “Why on earth would you stay in this city and continue working at the club?”
“I already told you—I want to stop that shipment.”
He continued to gawk at her. The stubborn jut of her chin told him she meant business, yet he still couldn’t wrap his mind around it. “And how exactly are you going to stop it?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “But it’ll be easier if you help me.”
Disbelief pounded into him. “Are you listening to yourself? You’re a college student, a civilian—how the hell do you plan to intercept a heroin delivery? Do you have some secret knowledge about drug smuggling that you didn’t tell me about?”
She bristled. “No, that’s why I need your help.” Her ponytail swung back and forth as she began to pace the hardwood floor. “You’ve got experience with this kind of thing. I’m sure we can come up with some sort of plan. I can’t let Vince get his hands on more drugs.”
Oh, for the love of . . .
Luke drew a calming breath, resisting the impulse to grab her by the shoulders and shake some sense into her. “Olivia. Be reasonable. Even if we find a way to intercept and destroy the shipment, do you honestly think you’ll be winning the war on drugs? You know how many dealers are out there? How many suppliers, distributors? Are you planning on taking down every drug cartel too? Ridding the globe of the entire trade?”
She glared at him. “Of course not. I’m not interested in the global drug trade. Just this one shipment. If it doesn’t reach Vince, then it won’t reach anyone who works at the Diamond.”
“Jesus.”
“Cora is dead,” she burst out. “Her little girl is motherless now! Katie’s never going to know her mom. Cora won’t be there for Katie’s high school graduation, or her wedding, or at the hospital when she has a child of her own. Vince pumped Cora full of heroin and had her killed because she didn’t do what he wanted. What if it happens again? What if another dancer dies at the hands of that bastard?”
“Fine, then we’ll go to the cops. Let them handle it.”
“You’re the one who told me Vince and De Luca have dozens of cops on their payroll. Nobody is going to investigate Cora’s death, and if I tell the police about this shipment, nobody will investigate that either.”
“We’ll go to the DEA then,” he said in frustration.
“So Vince and his fellow mobsters can murder another one of their agents? Or so that mole you were telling me about tips off Vince?” She stopped pacing, visibly angry now. “I don’t trust law enforcement to handle this. You said so yourself—they’ve been giving De Luca a free ride for years.”
“Oh, so you trust yourself to take down the Mob,” he said sarcastically.
“No, but I trust you.” She marched over, sank to her knees in front of him, and looked up with imploring eyes. “Please help me do this.”
He shook his head again, stunned by this sudden turn of events. He’d come here prepared to organize the necessary identity papers for Olivia and her mother, and instead of snapping a few pictures and assuring her that everything would be all right, he was arguing with her about intercepting heroin deliveries.
With a sigh, he reached for both her hands. “Look, I know you’re upset about your friend’s death, but this is . . . this is insane. You need to leave town, now, while Vince is distracted with this drug bullshit and the discovery of Dane’s body. The longer you stay, the more time you give him to regroup—and focus his sights on you again.”
She yanked her hands away. “I won’t let him hurt anybody else.”
“But you’ll let him hurt you?”
“He won’t.” She sounded sure of herself. “He told me that he won’t have time for me until Wednesday. So that means the drugs will be delivered before then. Tuesday probably, since he said he has a big meeting that night. I think that’s when the shipment is coming in.”
Luke cursed under his breath, wondering how the hell to talk some sense into her, but she wasn’t done speaking. “Ask your team to stick around. We’ll figure out when and where the shipment will happen, I’ll keep working at the club, and if something goes wrong, I promise I’ll leave town.”
“Goddamn it, Olivia.”
“Please,” she pleaded. “Just have my back when I’m at the club, and help me gather information. Once we have something solid, we’ll turn it over to the DEA and they can handle the bust. But I won’t tip them off before the delivery. If there is a mole, Vince will be warned and the delivery won’t go through.”
He dragged a hand through his hair, frustrated beyond belief. He could see in her eyes that she wasn’t going to drop this. She would go through with her ridiculous plan, no matter what he said or did. And if he walked away, she’d do it alone. With no one to watch out for her.
But damn it, this was foolish. He had no idea how Angelo and De Luca secured their drugs, what cartel they were mixed up with, how they smuggled the shit in. And he had no desire to get involved in the drug trade. The people who dealt in drugs were bad news—they wouldn’t hesitate to kill anyone who got in their way.
Like a pretty coed from the East Village.
Letting out a heavy sigh, he slowly got to his feet. “You really need to reconsider this,” he said in a low voice.
“Which will only happen if he’s caught red-handed. What if he’s not there when the transaction goes down? Did you think of that?”
“He’ll be there,” she said confidently. “He said so himself—there’s a lot of money riding on this deal. If it goes wrong, he’ll be in trouble with De Luca, and he won’t leave something so important in the hands of his goons. He’ll want to be there himself to make sure everything goes smoothly. And he’ll be arrested right along with everyone else when the cops show up.”
She moved toward him and touched the center of his chest. “Please,” she whispered. “Help me.”
“I . . . don’t know,” he said roughly. “I’d need to clear it with my boss, talk to the team. I’ll be honest—I don’t think they’ll be on board.”
“But what about you?” she pressed. “If your team leaves, will you stay?”
Would he? He stared into her big green eyes, then pictured her at the Diamond Mine, sticking that pretty nose into Vince Angelo’s heroin business. Fuck. How the hell could he let her do this alone? If he couldn’t dissuade her, he could at least make sure she didn’t get herself killed.
He cleared his throat. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll stay.”
A smile broke out on her face. “You will?”
Luke nodded. “Let me talk to my team, okay? I’ll run this by them and see if they want to stick around too.”
Olivia threw her arms around his neck and hugged him. He inhaled the lemony scent of her hair, wondering why it was so frickin’ difficult to say no to this woman.
“Thank you,” she murmured, tilting her head to kiss him.
As their lips met, his pulse sped up and his knees felt weak. Yep, Olivia Taylor definitely had a hold on him.
“I’ll call you after I talk to the guys,” he said, brushing his lips over hers one last time.
A few minutes later, he descended the fire escape, releasing the frustrated groan he’d been smothering during the entire conversation with Olivia. As he strode toward the Range Rover, he sent Sullivan a quick text telling him he was taking off and to keep watching the building. Olivia’s decision to single-handedly fight the war on drugs wasn’t something that should be discussed via text message, so he decided he’d fill Sully in later.