Ripped: A Blood Money Novel

by Edie Harris

  Beth had nearly died because of what she’d done for the family, and the events surrounding her kidnapping and torture had opened Tobias’s eyes to the truth of their existence. He wanted his family out of this life, but it wasn’t something that could be accomplished in broad strokes or fell swoops. Little by little, he needed to show his siblings they could be more, do more, live more. Beth had nudged open the door, and Tobias was determined to ferry the rest of them through, in time.

  And when they followed Beth—as they would—Tobias would quietly absorb the responsibilities they now shared and take over the roles his father once singularly held when they were growing up. He was built for this; he’d proved it at age twenty-one, sitting in the Oval Office and telling the president why a team led by Casey Faraday was the only viable option for extracting a trio of captured journalists in North Korea.

  He’d proved it again now in room 202 at the Dauphin Inn & Pub in central Wolverhampton, no matter that he didn’t run interrogations—it wasn’t in his job description, or his nature, but if he wanted his family to be free of this bloody legacy of theirs, he needed to prove capable of any and everything.

  It was why he needed to go to Russia. Why he was the only one who could see the Kedrov situation to a close, because to let Casey handle it, or even Raleigh Vick seeking vengeance for his woman, was to send the message that Tobias wasn’t able to keep the family safe from harm, both now and in the years to come.

  He shifted into Drive and donned the cool mask he showed the world every time he entered a boardroom. His prisoner wanted to escape her bonds for the evening? Fine. But she would do well to remember that those bonds hadn’t disappeared, only loosened for the time being.

  And he was the man who held the key.

  Chapter Six

  “You’re not dressed like someone who—” hiccup “—sings karaoke at a dive.” Chandler sat belly-up to the Mandarin Melody’s battered wooden bar, holding a tumbler of neon-green liquid in one hand as she squinted at her sister.

  “No, you’re not dressed like someone who sings karaoke at a dive,” Pippa retorted with a lopsided smile, her chin propped inelegantly on her hand as she leaned against the bar. “Wait, what am I dressed like, then?”

  Chandler somberly studied her twin, absorbing features strikingly similar but not identical to her own. “Like a lady. A lady lady.” Pippa’s pale hair was caught in a sleek twist, her slim form clad in a flowing jumpsuit of royal-blue silk and pearls at her ears and throat, the silver stiletto heels on her swinging feet adding three inches to her diminutive height when standing—er, swaying. Delicate and ethereal, the future viscountess was undeniably beautiful, if Chandler did say so herself. “What am I dressed like?”

  “Like my sister. Whom I love.” Pippa lurched forward to grab Chandler’s face in both hands, smooshing her cheeks. “I love you, sister.” She dropped a smacking kiss between Chandler’s eyebrows before sitting back on her barstool with a satisfied grin. “You look pretty.”

  Chandler had permitted her twin to play stylist with her this afternoon, when they were lounging in Pippa’s massively ornate bedchamber drinking hard cider like bosses and gossiping about inconsequential, totally-not-spy-related stuff. Her hair was now loose around her shoulders, and she wore a cream blouse, flirty gray skirt and ruby flats, with her lips painted a daring red to match. It was the most feminine she’d felt in months, and she relished the opportunity to just be a girl for a night. To just be Pippa’s sister.

  In hindsight, they probably shouldn’t have started down the path to drunkenness so early in the day, but Pippa had insisted, since Chandler had been MIA during the official hen night a few weeks ago—Thanks a million, keeper—and now here they were, at the local watering hole, listening to Irene Nolte belt out a horrendously off-key rendition of Hall and Oates’ “Maneater.”

  Chandler winced. “I think I used to like that song.”

  “Be nice.” Pippa stole Chandler’s drink from her hand, sipping liberally before passing it back. “That’s my future sister-in-law. So technically she’s my future sister. Which means she’s technically your future sister.”

  “Nope. That is not how marriage works.” Chandler didn’t want another sister. Watching over Pippa was already a full-time job, and she couldn’t afford to care for—or worry about—someone else’s well-being. Not that she’d automatically care about Irene once Cameron and Pippa tied the knot, but Pippa was all Chandler had. Sharing her with people who were mostly strangers gouged at Chandler’s heart.

  Suddenly quite serious, Pippa reached out to lay a hand over Chandler’s. “Where have you been, really?” When she didn’t respond, Pippa sighed. “I’ve always respected your rule—the don’t-ask-you-about-the-007-stuff rule—but this was almost a year.” A watery sniffle. “We can’t go that long without seeing each other.”

  “I know.” Nine months in Russia, a couple of days in London before flying to Chicago and the subsequent four weeks in Faraday custody had choked her ability to see her twin. The occasional text, a phone call from Moscow—where she most certainly hadn’t revealed she was in Moscow—and that was it. Not nearly enough for two women who had been the other’s rock since birth. “I’m sorry it was so long this time.”

  “But...you’re not going to tell me what you were up to.”

  “You don’t want me to tell you.” If Pippa knew the truth of the atrocities Chandler had committed while undercover, she would never look at her the same way again. A mirror had been placed in front of Chandler in Moscow, and it was Reggie’s bloodstained face with his glowing brown eyes reflecting back. Nausea threatened, so she set aside her drink. “It’s nothing you should know.”

  Pippa scowled. “Do you know who said the exact same thing to me the other day?”

  It didn’t take a genius. “Cameron.”

  “Cameron,” she confirmed with an expansive gesture, her gigantic engagement ring clinking against Chandler’s discarded glass and nearly upending the contents. “It was the strangest thing, Chan. We barely see one another these days—I’m working, he’s working.” Pippa’s frown deepened. “He’s working a lot, actually. It was right before we closed up the townhouse to come here, and I was in the study looking for a spare USB cord in his desk.”

  Oh, dear.

  “I’m looking through the drawers and what do I see? A mobile.”

  That didn’t bode well. “Okay. A mobile.”

  “A mobile I hadn’t ever seen before. I know what Cameron’s phone looks like—I know. Because I bought it for him when he dropped his old one in the toilet last year, and this was not that phone. The new one. Or the old one.” To make her very tipsy point, Pippa poked Chandler on the nose and giggled before sobering again. “So I take the mobile and go to ask him what it’s for. And what does he say?”

  Chandler really needed a clearer head for this. She signaled the bartender for a water. “It’s nothing you should—”

  “It’s nothing you should know!” This time, Pippa hit the tumbler, spilling Chandler’s drink across the bar. Murmured apologies and ineffective blotting with napkins led to the bartender taking charge with a towel and setting two large glasses of water deliberately in front of them. But Pippa hadn’t lost the conversation thread. “You know who keeps extra secret mobiles? Liars.”

  Squeezing her eyes shut, Chandler sipped her water and tried to process what her sister was saying. “So...if he’s a liar, why are you getting married?”

  “Because there are thirteen major news outlets covering my wedding this weekend, and one does not cancel one’s wedding when said wedding is set to appear in a Vogue feature. Besides—” Pippa stared forlornly over at Irene as the young brunette finished up her song “—it’s just a mobile. I want to have a family, Chan, and Cameron is willing to share his. Even if his mother does hate me.”

  The unintentional sting of Pipp
a’s words faded when Chandler remembered what lay in store for her. If she died in Russia, Pippa would have no one except for Cameron, and Irene, and, begrudgingly, Victoria. Together, the Noltes would look after Pippa, whatever that meant. Chandler could never knowingly leave Pippa vulnerable. Under other circumstances, she might have tried to talk Pippa out of her choice—she’d never much liked Cameron, anyway—but who else would her sister have after next week?

  No one. Pippa would have no one. Because Chandler...wasn’t going to survive Moscow.

  The reality of this had been a loop in her brain since she and Pippa had started drinking hours earlier. Her usefulness to Tobias Faraday extended only insofar as she got him within spitting distance of the Polnoch’ Pulya inner circle. But he didn’t, couldn’t possibly know who awaited him there. The second Chandler brought him to the warehouse along the south riverbank, she’d have a bullet in her brain courtesy of any number of bratva enforcers. After that, Faraday’s survival was up to him.

  Her survival depended upon whatever plan Faraday had cooked up. She knew he had the resources at his disposal to wage a full-scale assault on the warehouse; she could only hope the man was smart enough to utilize those resources. Once they saw Pippa married, she would talk him through the schematics and what she knew of patrol schedules—that was all she could do, besides walking him straight into the lion’s den. Which, of course, was what she’d agreed to do. But only an idiot walked into that den without a plan.

  She doubted Faraday had plans to self-sacrifice. Men who controlled majority shares of the United States weaponry contracts did not rush off to Russia without a plan that got him out of there alive.

  Pippa snagged a bendy straw from the other side of the bar and stuck it in her water glass, slurping loudly. “You promise you took care of it?” Worried eyes identical to Chandler’s focused briefly before dropping to glare at her water, as though just realizing what it was she drank.

  It being the private investigator. “Yeah, I promise.” Shortly before leaving for Chicago back in February, Chandler had one of the resident tech nerds at MI6 track down the PI who Pippa had seen tailing her: Ollie Pulaski, “independent detective” and troublemaking stalker. One visit by Chandler had convinced Pulaski to not only admit that Lady Valsar had hired him to monitor Pippa’s movements, but to quit her employment once and for all.

  Losing one’s soul paid dividends, it turned out. “He won’t be bothering you anymore. Turns out, he hadn’t learned anything her ladyship could use against you.”

  “Thank you. You’re always looking out for me.” Again, Pippa’s eyes welled with tears. “I’m so happy you finally have someone looking out for you. And that he’s ridiculously sexy.”

  “He...is, isn’t he.” Too bad Faraday was only looking out for his prisoner, not for her person. But that wasn’t something she could share with Pippa, as it would lead to questions about why she was Faraday’s prisoner in the first place. “You like him?”

  Pippa thought about that. “I like how he looks at you.”

  Chandler’s stomach fluttered. “How does he look at me?”

  “Like he’s worried if he takes his eyes off you, you’ll disappear.”

  Fluttering over. “There’s a good reason for that,” she muttered, unwilling to admit that she wished Tobias Faraday looked at her for the reasons, good or not, that her sister believed.

  Pippa didn’t seem to hear. “He’s scrumptious, darling. I think it’s the suits.”

  It was definitely the suits. He was an attractive bastard, but cold-blooded, and her reaction to him yesterday, when he’d pinned her to the dresser, was completely inappropriate. Not because of their dynamic—jailer, jailee—but because being attracted to Faraday was literally the dumbest thing she could do this week. He intended to hoist her up on a silver platter to the Russians in exchange for a chance at avenging his sister’s capture; who in their right mind fluttered for a man like that?

  But she had fluttered nonetheless. Yesterday, today—all the fluttering. And it was starting to annoy the fuck out of her. “I’m glad you approve,” she murmured quietly, picking up her half-empty water.

  “Of course I approve!” Pippa exclaimed gleefully, all trace of earlier sadness gone. “But tell me again how you met? I—oh, my God, Chandler.” Her gaze was fixed on the door. “He’s here.”

  Tensing, Chandler glanced over her shoulder. Framed in the doorway, expression foreboding, stood the source of her annoyance. “So he is.” The fluttering started up once more, an uncontrolled tickling of butterfly wings in a stomach she once believed to be merciless steel.

  Faraday caught sight of her at that moment and schooled his features into a facsimile of friendliness as he strode to the bar, his smile no doubt for Pippa and for show. “I hope you don’t mind me crashing your evening.” His accent curled around the vowels as his lips curved, but his clear gray eyes remained assessing. “I don’t like being apart from this one.” He settled his hand on the counter at her back, trapping her between the length of his lean body and Pippa’s delighted wiggling, and speared Chandler with a very deliberate look.

  Stupid, idiotic fluttering. She was mildly crestfallen as she surveyed his two-piece navy suit with the checkered blue dress shirt and gray tie that made him look like money on a stick. “Toby! Where is the rest of your suit?”

  His mouth had been open as though he were about to speak, but he glanced down, appearing mildly confused. “I’m not sure I follow.”

  “Your waistcoat.” Chandler gestured with the water glass, liquid sloshing before she brought the rim to her mouth and swallowed the remaining contents in a single gulp. “Barely recognize you without your corset, Cheekbones.”

  He eyed her glass, Pippa’s, too. “Have you ladies been drinking?”

  “Heavily,” Pippa intoned solemnly, then giggled. “This is what happens when we go months and months without seeing one another. Loads of drinks.” She signaled the bartender, who almost immediately placed another neon-green concoction in front of her. “Drinks and talks.”

  “Are you all caught up on the months missed?” His forearm brushed against Chandler’s shoulder blades, the minute tensing of his body indicating the touch to be accidental. Except he didn’t shift away, and the heat from his arm scalded her through the thin silk of her blouse.

  “Mostly. Though she hasn’t quite caught me up on you, not to my satisfaction.” Over Chandler’s aggrieved groan, Pippa threw him a conspiratorial smile. “I ran an internet search on you, Tobias.” She shook her head. “What sort of world are you dragging Chandler into?”

  “A rubbish one,” Chandler mumbled as she set aside her empty glass and stayed the attentive bartender with a shake of her head.

  Ignoring her, Pippa’s smile hardened, a surprising transformation to a face usually so open and warm. “Your family is different than ours, am I right?”

  Tobias’s expression was considering as he gave Pippa his full attention, though his arm at Chandler’s back didn’t move an inch. The nearness of him was wreaking havoc with her insides. “Yes.” Unspoken was the very different that Chandler knew to be true.

  “But I’m certain you can see how families, regardless of how different they seem on the surface, carry similar values to the bone, correct?” Loyalty and love lay fierce in Pippa’s no-longer-slurred voice, sobriety finding her for this exchange.

  This time, his smile looked genuine. “You don’t need to threaten me, Pippa. I won’t hurt Chandler.” He paused abruptly, turning to look down at Chandler with faint surprise tightening the corners of his intelligent eyes, and she froze.

  Looking at Tobias Faraday caused her pulse to speed, which she absolutely positively planned to blame on the abundance of alcohol she’d imbibed this evening. It had nothing to do with the spice of his scent stinging her nose or the intensity of his stormy gaze, nothing to do with the strength s
he’d felt when his hands fell to her hips, as gentle then as it had been fierce the day before during their sparring session with the pocketknife.

  She remembered the steel of his grip around her wrist and wanted to feel it again. Feel him again. Falling asleep in the same room with him last night had been more than a little unsettling. The lights had already been out and her tucked in to the chin under the bedcovers when he’d settled onto the settee. Then had come the rustling as he shifted his too-long frame on the uncomfortable piece of furniture, followed by the eventual deepening of his breaths as he drifted toward sleep. And, as she had lain awake, hearing him murmur in his dreams, low and hoarse, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

  How she found her voice, she didn’t know. “You won’t hurt me, hmm?” The words came out teasing, for Pippa’s benefit, but her question was real. The trust between them remained tenuous, and there were so many ways in which a man could hurt a woman. In which Faraday could hurt her.

  The arm at her back disappeared as he straightened, his hands moving to tug at the pristinely pressed cuffs extending perfect centimeters past his jacket sleeves. “You have my word.” As she mourned the loss of his touch—and kicked herself for so mourning—he spoke directly to Pippa. “I know what a Google search turns up on the Faradays. It’s better to be our friend than our enemy, and I assure you, Pippa, you will always be our friend.”