Her tears were coming faster, sobs tearing at her chest. But it was too little, too late.
“Or did he simply get tired of your pretty little ass nagging him? Did he kick you out when you became too much trouble for him?”
She tried to shake her head, but there wasn’t enough space between my face and the mattress. I was so close to her that my breath moved her hair every time I spoke, my spittle slapping her like tiny little spikes. She flinched when I moved closer to her, my lips so close to her jaw that I could have been coming in for a kiss.
“You’ll stay here. Don’t even think about coming downstairs. Don’t think about even looking at anyone in this house. Do you understand?”
She nodded.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with you. Your boyfriend is my priority right now, but—believe me—I will deal with you when this is all done.”
I got up, my gaze falling over her for a long moment, one last, long look at that beautiful body. Then I grabbed a shirt and headed out. Just as I reached the door, I heard her say, “I’m sorry.”
I was sure she was, but she’d be even sorrier later.
Chapter 25
Ash
It only took a few minutes to get everyone gathered in the office. I studied the faces of my friends, my brother, feeling the sudden weight of responsibility settle on my shoulders. Emily and David had warned me. Don’t bring her into the house, they’d said. You don’t know enough about her, they’d told me. But I delivered her baby. I believed that meant I could trust her.
How stupid could I have been?
“First,” I said, raising my voice to get everyone’s attention, “I called the hospital and got an update on Rose. She’s got some pretty serious injuries, broken bones and lacerations on top of the surgery they had to perform to remove her spleen and repair her liver. But the doctors say that, barring complications, she should recover.”
I could see the relief on their faces. I wished I could share the sentiment.
I crossed my arms over my chest and waited as they processed that information. Carrington was holding the baby, but his hand was wrapped around Joss’s. Ricki was curled in a chair, her face pale, but she managed a smile for David. Donovan whispered in Kate’s ear as he wrapped his arms around her. Kirkland and Mabel always seemed to be touching, always whispering to each other like no one else in the world mattered.
I’d thought I’d found something like they had.
What was it that made me so blind when it came to women? Why couldn’t I see this coming?
“There’s more,” I said after a few minutes.
“What more could there be?” Kirkland asked.
“I have an idea who’s behind all this.”
That got everyone’s attention. Especially David’s. He studied me with the knowledge that came with a lifelong relationship. I could see tension come into his shoulders and saw him glance at the smartphone that was attached to the programs on his computer that monitored the safety of everyone in this room.
“It’s the Bazarov Cartel.”
There were a few gasps. Kirkland and Joss exchanged a look.
“Why can’t we get away from those people?” Carrington demanded to know.
“I thought they were crippled when Joss killed old man Bazarov,” Donovan said.
“Apparently Dimitri Avdonin has taken the reigns.”
That sent another ripple of surprise through the room.
We’d come face to face with Avdonin once. During that first case, it was Avdonin who went after the client, prompting Joss to run her car into him and his buddies. He was arrested and charged with a weapons violation, but Bazarov’s lawyers managed to get him off with a slap on the wrist.
Avdonin was a dangerous man. And with the entire cartel behind him? He was a force to be reckoned with.
“He’s coming after us because of what I did,” Joss said.
I nodded. There was no point in denying the truth. Joss wouldn’t appreciate it if I did.
“We—I—assumed they would be disorganized after Bazarov’s death. It never occurred to me that Avdonin had enough clout to move into the leadership this quickly. But, not only is he in charge now, but he clearly has a loyal following.”
I picked up the pictures I’d printed from my phone and passed them around. They were the ones from the email, minus the one of Mina and Ford. I didn’t see any point in showing them that one. That was personal.
“I got these in an email today. I’d suspected that these things were connected. Now we have proof.”
“Have you told Emily?” David asked.
“I have. She informed Jack, and he’s got a patrol car out by the main gate.”
David nodded. He already knew. His program would have alerted him.
“So, now what?” Kirkland asked.
“I’ve reassigned your current cases to members of the surveillance teams. For now…” I shook my head. “Emily wants us to sit tight and let the cops do their thing. Other than up the security patrols along the fence, we stay here and wait.”
No one objected. No one complained.
I wouldn’t have blamed them if they had.
Chapter 26
Mina
I lay curled up in the center of my bed, dressed in sweatpants and a heavy sweatshirt, sobs tearing at my body. I couldn’t blame him for reacting the way he did, but it didn’t keep it from hurting as if someone had torn my heart out with a dull knife.
He thought I betrayed him. He thought he couldn’t trust me.
Was it all just a dream? Had I seen things that weren’t really there? Had I let myself dream of a future with a good man who’d treat me so differently than all the other men in my life—only to wake up in the cruel, hard world of reality?
I hated the way he’d looked at me. I hated the hurt I saw in his eyes. I hated that half of what he’d said was true.
I lied to him. I used him.
It was all true.
The baby woke not long after Ash left me alone. I cradled him close to me and watched his little eyes look up at me with such trust in them. I wondered how long it would be before I broke his heart, too.
Maybe I wasn’t as different from my father as I always thought I was.
My father was a cop, ironically enough. He beat my mother two or three times a month for as long as I could remember. Sometimes he had a reason. She forgot to pay the electric bill, or she left the clothes in the washer too long and they had a certain foul smell to them. Other times, there was no reason at all—except that she dared to breathe the same air he breathed. He never touched me. Not even to offer the basic affection that even the most distant parent offered their child. I might as well have not existed.
He was cold. Cruel. But my mother loved him.
Momma, he’ll kill you one day.
No, Wilhelmina. He loves me. He just loses his temper sometimes.
He hurts you.
He has to take his frustrations out somewhere. Why not on his wife?
She was old fashioned, believed that the wife was supposed to suffer in silence no matter how bad it got. And he did. He finally killed her. The doctors called it an aneurysm. But I knew the truth.
How long before I became my father? How long before I hurt my child?
And Dimitri. Poor Ford had it coming from two directions. His father was one of the cruelest men I’d ever met. When he first began to court me, he’d been gentle. Kind, even. He took me to expensive dinners, fed me steak that cost more than the rent I paid each month to sleep on a friend’s couch. He brought me flowers and jewelry, things I’d only dreamt of having. So what if he left bruises on my arms and thighs the first time we lay together? So what if he raised his voice when I wasn’t appreciative enough when he offered me a pair of diamond earrings that were for piercings I didn’t have? Men did things like that.
The first time he raised his hand to me, I was already living in his apartment. I had nowhere to go. I’d burned my bridges with my frien
ds, quit my job at the strip club, given up my money so that he could invest it for me. He wanted to take care of me. But then some guy smiled at me when he took me to a club. He was fine while we were out, but the moment we got home, the story was different. He beat me until I blacked out. I had bruises from my chest to my thighs. He was careful not to hit me where someone might see, but that didn’t stop him from cracking a rib or two.
I should have left then. But, two weeks later, I realized I was pregnant. I was stuck. Where could I go? I couldn’t go back home. My father told me if I left, I should never look back. I had no one else. What could I do?
I was carrying the laundry up from the basement when I heard Dimitri talking to three of his lieutenants about Ash Grayson. They saw a copy of some magazine with his face plastered all over the cover. Anger dripped from their voices as they talked about what a pompous ass Ash was.
“Fucking asshole thinks he’s king of the world, or something. Look at that picture! It’s like the man thinks his shit don’t stink.”
“Kill a good man like Vitaly Bazarov, of course he’d look cocky. But we’re going to wipe that smile right off his face.”
I snuck downstairs after Dimitri was asleep and found the magazine in his office. Ash had such a kind face, I instinctively knew he would help me. I knew he would protect me from Dimitri. I read the article, memorized every word. I wanted to know as much about Ash Grayson as I could before I went looking for him.
But I should have told him the truth from the beginning.
What is it they say? Hindsight is twenty-twenty? It certainly was in this case.
Two years ago, I was a stupid kid who couldn’t sit around and watch her father beat her mother anymore. I ran away before I realized just how hard this world really was. I thought I could survive on the little money I’d managed to steal, that I could take care of myself. I was wrong. And now the man I loved, the only man who had ever been truly kind to me, believed I’d betrayed him.
I couldn’t just sit here and do nothing. I had to make this right.
I had to show Ash that I never meant to hurt him.
Chapter 27
At the Compound
“Where’s Mina?”
David shrugged, glancing over his shoulder to where Ash was pacing in front of his desk. He was on the phone with Jack Warren’s people, trying to figure out what their next move should be. They couldn’t stay trapped in the compound indefinitely. McKelty had school. Carrington and Mabel had businesses to run. Kate had a job. And Gray Wolf had commitments that weren’t being fulfilled. Something had to give.
“She hasn’t been downstairs all morning.”
“Do you think she’s behind all this information Ash suddenly has?” Kirkland asked.
“I don’t know.”
“She must be,” Donovan said. “There’s something different about Ash today.”
“He’s under a lot of stress,” Joss said.
“Yeah, well, it’s like night and day from yesterday.”
“Rose…”
They all looked at each other a little uncomfortably.
“It’s more than that,” David finally said. “He was more like his old self these last few days. But now…”
Joss crossed her arms across her chest, as she watched Carrington pace with the baby on his shoulder and McKelty pelting him with questions. He caught her eye, and they exchanged some unspoken communication that made Joss sigh.
“We can’t just stand around here doing nothing. We’re a security team, for goodness sakes! There has to be something we can do.”
“Emily wants to play this one by the book this time. She wants any charges against Avdonin and his crew to stick.”
“And what if they don’t stick and we find ourselves in this same predicament in a few months?”
“We’re not in the military anymore,” Donovan said. “We have to at least attempt to follow the laws of the land.”
Joss groaned. “It’s not right. We’re the ones who are moving targets on the streets. We should be allowed to take care of ourselves our way.”
Kirkland slipped his arm around Joss’s shoulders. “Ash will make sure we get through this, Joss.”
She looked over to where he was still pacing, still talking animatedly into the phone.
“I trust Ash with my life. With my family’s life. But if this thing goes south…”
Everyone understood what she was saying—even David despite the fact that he’d joined the FBI instead of the military out of college. He’d worked with them long enough to appreciate their more barbaric way of doing things. To even count on them.
There was the legal way, and then there was the efficient way.
“I’m going to take Mina some food,” he said. “Maybe she’ll enlighten me on what’s going on with Ash. We need him to have his head in the right place.”
Joss nodded, but Donovan hesitated. “I don’t think Ash would want us to get involved in his personal stuff.”
“David found Alexi for him,” Joss said. “How much more involved could he get than that?”
“That was your doing?”
“I got tired of watching him torture himself with every little lead that came in.”
Donovan nodded. “I never would have guessed Alexi was capable of that sort of thing.”
Donovan was the only one of the four of them who’d known Alexi well. David had met her a few times, but the others only knew of her in the aftermath. But Donovan actually ran a few ops with Ash and Alexi. He knew her almost as well as Ash.
“I never saw it coming. She was a good actress, but I thought I could tell the difference between the persona and her true personality. I can’t believe I didn’t see it.”
“I’m sure Ash has been saying the same thing to himself for a while,” Kirkland said.
Silence fell at that thought.
David shook himself, reminding himself that he had a purpose outlined for himself.
“Somebody distract him so he won’t see me go upstairs.”
“Not a problem,” Kirkland said, picking up a tennis ball he’d been rolling on the counter. “Hey, McKelty!”
There was a crash, and David didn’t look back.
***
Mina was curled up on her bed, her shoulders shaking as he paused in her doorway, a tray of food in his hands. He cleared his throat, and she sat up quickly, disappointment in every line of her face when she saw him.
“Thought you might be hungry,” he said.
“He wouldn’t be happy if he knew you were up here,” she said, almost instantly confirming his suspicions. She and Ash did have some sort of falling out.
“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
David set the tray on top of the dresser and approached the basinet, looking down at the peacefully sleeping baby.
“How’s he doing?”
“Ford’s fine. To him, the whole world is perfect as long as his diaper is clean and he has food in his belly.”
“That’s true, I suppose.”
“If only our lives were that easy.”
He turned to her, trying not to look at the evidence of her tears.
“I assume this new information Ash has about the Bazarov Cartel came from you.”
She didn’t admit that he was right, but she didn’t deny it, either.
“I’d guess he’s upset with you because you weren’t honest to begin with.”
She shrugged. “He thinks I betrayed him.”
“You understand why his mind would go straight there.”
“I do. I just…I was scared.”
“I’m sure you were.”
David sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand in his. “I have a way you might be able to make it up to him. A little, at least.”
“How?”
“We need information…”
Chapter 28
Ash
My head was spinning. I had to get out of there, to get a little fresh air. I felt like I was suff
ocating, having so many people around.
I’d begun to miss the crowd. Now I wished they would all disappear for a while.
I stepped out onto the back porch, the memory of the barbecue we’d so recently had there fresh in my mind. I remembered watching Mina, glad to see that Joss seemed to be taking to her. Finally. We were all untrusting people. We had seen too much, experienced too much, to trust outsiders. For all this time, they tolerated Mina, but they never really let her in. But Joss, she was beginning to adjust.
And now I was going to have to tell her what Mina had done. I’d have to tell her that part of the reason we were in this situation was because of Mina.
I did this. I let this woman into our lives and now…
I wanted to regret it. I wanted to hate Mina, to blame her for everything. I wanted to kick her out of the gates and never think twice about it. But I couldn’t.
And that really sucked.
I sat in one of the chairs and leaned forward, resting my head in my hands. It amazed me how easy it was for me to put Alexi behind me after I saw her. To be honest, after she’d been the only thing on my mind night and day for three years, she was suddenly gone. Like a magic trick. Poof! One second she was there, the next she wasn’t.
I suspected it wasn’t going to be that easy with Mina.
I loved her. That was the real rub. I think I fell in love with her the instant she slid her arm through mine, doubling over in pain, but not crying out, not panicking. It wasn’t until Ford was already on his way into the world that she finally decided she couldn’t do it. Up to that point, she was the bravest woman I’d ever met.
I fell in love with her, and it was a love that went beyond anything I’d ever felt for Alexi. Why did it take me so long to realize it? Was it because the idea of her with Dimitri Avdonin killed me? Was it because I knew that a small part of the reason she never told me the truth was because I held on too tight? I gave her no options. I took her in and provided her with everything because I couldn’t bear the idea of seeing her go. And that left her with no options.
ASHFORD (Gray Wolf Security #5) Page 11