Ripped: A Blood Money Novel

by Edie Harris

  Mentally beginning to run through possible openers to the dreaded conversation—Hey, Pip, remember how our dad liked to slice up hookers? Well, now I know what that was like for him, or, I know I said the hardest drug I’d ever done was marijuana when we were seventeen but that was before a mobster held a gun to my head and made me snort a line of coke as part of an initiation rite—Chandler didn’t immediately recognize the figure who entered the foyer.

  When she did recognize him, every organ in her chest seized in terror. “No,” she gasped as she flung herself away from the balustrade, shoulders pressed to the cold stone of the opposite stairwell wall and eyes squeezing shut. No no no no no. Not here, not now, not yet.

  Compulsion driving her, she tore away from the wall, lunging again for the space between the balusters and stared in horror at the man in all black—trousers, button shirt, coat—a single shining spot of white banding his thick throat. A cleric’s collar. “No,” she whispered again, knowing her face had lost all color...and that her heart had lost all hope.

  Rolan Kuznetsov, the svyashchennik. The Priest. Also known to all and sundry in the underworld as the Polnoch’ Pulya’s top enforcer.

  He appeared somewhere in his thirties and stood nearly six-and-a-half feet tall, his dirty blond hair buzzed close to his scalp. He didn’t carry himself like a man of faith; it was one of the first things Chandler had noticed about him when she’d met him ten months earlier at Nash’s side. He stood like a stone mountain, his dead eyes seeking and discounting all who crossed his path, constantly hunting.

  And he had his brutal hands on Pippa, shaking hers in greeting as she tilted her head to smile up at him.

  Chandler heard her murmur a welcome to “Father Rolan,” heard her say Cameron was expecting him and wouldn’t he follow her out to the veranda for a refreshment after his journey? As quickly as he arrived, Kuznetsov disappeared, trailing after a chattering Pippa with his deadly giant paws clasped behind his back.

  Ah, fuck. She was going to be sick.

  With her hand pressed to her mouth, as though that would somehow keep her stomach from relieving itself of her breakfast, she typed a message into her mobile with trembling fingers, hitting Send as she stood to hustle down the stairs.

  We have a problem. Meet me in the armory.

  The armory was accessed through a heavy wooden door situated along the exterior western wall of the manor house, below grade and, once upon a time, likely a cellar before one of the viscounts Valsar had modified it into a home for his firearms. Chandler had discovered it earlier this morning when she went on walkabout to find Pippa but hadn’t had the time to explore it fully. Now she pushed open the door and stepped inside, the panic blistering her bones since seeing Kuznetsov for the first time in over a month immediately subsiding to manageable levels as she finally was alone in a room full of guns.

  Sighing in relief, she wandered the length of the room, letting her fingertips trail over the mounted rows of hunting rifles. “Hullo, my pretties.” It smelled not of must but of pine and oil and the smoky sting of residual gunpowder. Chandler felt more at home here than she had anywhere else on the grounds.

  Rifles weren’t her weapons of choice on a normal day, but she wasn’t in a position to be picky, not with the Priest on the premises. Older models hung behind locked glass, and polished cabinetry held drawer after drawer of ammunition. All manufactured for the sport of hunting, yes, but a gun was a gun, and she needed a gun. She needed a gun desperately.

  Her phone vibrated and she read the incoming message.

  On my way.

  Then, a moment later:

  How do you know about the armory?

  Ridiculously, she wanted to laugh. He made her want to laugh.

  Sliding the phone into her pocket once more, she strolled deeper into the room, studying the layout with a shrewd eye as she determined what items required a key—or a lockpick—to get at and what she could feasibly snatch right this second. Not that a rifle would be easy to conceal upon her person, but she was sneaky. She’d make it work.

  Along the back wall was another glass-paned case stained a rich cherry wood with pegged slots to hold five firearms. The cabinet door stood a quarter-inch ajar, empty of all but one rifle. “Poor little baby,” she cooed at the gun as she carefully opened the the door, “all alone in your box.” After another glance around the armory to ensure she was alone, Chandler reached for the bolt-action Remington with greedy fingers.

  But when she tried to remove it from its slot, the rifle stayed firmly put. “What the...” Closing her fingers around the barrel, she tugged gently. Then yanked. Then wrapped both hands around it and grunted with the force of her pull, but the gun would not budge.

  Stepping back with her hands on her hips, she studied the case and the steadfast gun within. Weird. Really weird. An avid hunter like Cameron Nolte wasn’t the sort of man to desecrate a firearm with glue or screws simply to mount it for decorative purposes. There were weapons in this room dating back to the eighteenth century, and they were all well-cared for, cleaned and oiled; the groundskeeper’s doing, most likely.

  With a frown, Chandler leaned closer to the stuck gun. Yup, there it was—a clear line of what appeared to be glue binding the body of the rifle to the wooden braces that would normally hold it upright. She ran her fingers over the braces, trailing down the panel they were attached to, and paused when something cool and metallic touched her fingertip. A button of some kind, hiding in the shadow of the rifle.

  She grinned, momentarily forgetting the urgency of her situation. Chandler liked buttons. Huge fan of buttons, actually. Pressing them always produced such interesting results. So it really wasn’t a surprise that she pushed—yes—pushed the button.

  And talk about results. The entire rear of the cabinet slid away to reveal a steel mesh panel mounted with several modern handguns and two semiautomatic rifles. Below the panel was a drawer filled with bullets and magazines for each weapon, along with a manila envelope. “Cameron the Liar, indeed.” Manila envelopes were catnip to Chandler, along with buttons. This was more fun than she’d had in months. Just as she lifted the envelope and thumbed open the tab, the armory door creaked behind her, and she whirled.

  “This must be your version of a toy store.”

  She glared at Tobias, the envelope clutched in one hand. “Oh, look. It speaks.”

  “You’re mean when you’re mad.” His stance casual, he studied the rows of polished rifles. For the third day in a row, Tobias didn’t wear one of his three-piece suits and, for the third day in a row, Chandler was thrown by his appearance. Standing across the room, he looked so approachable in his fitted khaki trousers and pressed white dress shirt, sleeves rolled up to casually reveal strong, dark forearms and unbuttoned at the throat.

  She was a fool if she believed a costume change made Tobias approachable. Neither did one or two kisses. Good kisses. Ground-shaking kisses. And looking at him with his approachable attire sent resentment flaring through her. She scowled. “I’m not mad. I’m concerned.”

  “About whatever this new problem is, I assume.” Tobias rolled his shoulders, unwittingly drawing her attention to them and causing her fingers to flex. “Care to share?” He sauntered forward, but instead of touching the weapons, as she had, his long fingers trailed over the trestle table in the middle of the room, dividing one side from the other.

  She stepped forward to drop the envelope on the table between them, still itching to snoop its contents but knowing her problem was bigger. Badder. “Have you ever heard the name Rolan Kuznetsov before?”

  “No.”

  “How about...the Priest?”

  Recognition sparked. “Enforcer, high in the Midnight Bullet hierarchy. Known for preferring hand-to-hand violence as opposed to weaponry.” Tobias recited the facts as though he were reading from a compiled datasheet. “Chandler, why
are you asking me about the Priest?”

  Sucking in a steadying breath, ignoring the trickle of nervous sweat at the back of her neck, she met his narrowed gaze. “Because he’s here.” Her hands folded over her middle, applying pressure in hopes of easing the roiling within. “Pip just met him at the door and said Cameron was expecting him.”

  A frown tightened Tobias’s angular features. “The Noltes aren’t Russian Orthodox.”

  Chandler shook her head. “No, they’re Church of England, but Victoria was raised Catholic.” Information she’d learned when Pippa and Cameron had first started dating. “Kuznetsov isn’t Orthodox.”

  “Explain.”

  Everyone in the Polnoch’ Pulya knew the Priest’s story. It was why no one messed with the scary beast. “He was orphaned at age five in Odessa but adopted by a single Italian woman who moved him with her to Rome. She worked in the household of a cardinal, so Kuznetsov spent his formative years heavily involved with the Church. His education was conducted by the clergy.”

  “So how does a boy with a happy new life wind up a killer for the Russian mob?”

  “Oh, you know—the usual. Mum dies tragically in a mafia shooting after boy enters seminary. After taking his vows, boy discovers he was the product of Mum’s clandestine relationship with the cardinal, the cardinal having sent him away as an infant to the far-flung reaches of Mother Russia. Boy exacts revenge on cardinal for his transgressions, killing his own father with his bare hands, and goes on a rampage to destroy the mafiosos who stole his mother from him. Essentially decimates an entire family from Italian mafia history. Returns to Russia. Falls in with a ‘bad crowd.’ Ta-da.” She waved her hands in a weak finale finish.

  Tobias stood quietly for several moments, staring not at her but at the manila envelope. “Is he here for you?”

  Her shrug was a jerky, uncomfortable thing. “Honestly? I don’t know. It seems like too much of a coincidence for him not to be.”

  “And he knows you, from your time in Moscow?”

  “Yeah.” Kuznetsov knew her, all right. Half her tutelage in the fine art of physical violence had been undertaken by Rolan—the other half by Nash, of course. She’d followed the hulking priest who never took off his cleric’s collar from one “home visit” to the next, observing him deliver the punishing messages of the Midnight Bullet and occasionally—when he wrapped a hand around her throat to threaten her into submission—delivered the messages herself, under his watchful dead eyes.

  “I am capable of protecting you, Chandler.” Tobias’s tone was serious, his gaze direct and utterly sober. “If nothing else, the shooting contest in the garden proved that.”

  It had, and the reminder of his prowess with the rifle—skill unlike any she’d seen before in her lifetime—had her studying him again now, seeing the warrior barely leashed beneath his skin. His physicality radiated power, for all that he was built along lanky lines. He didn’t need the brute musculature of his older brother Casey to own the space he presided over. His straight spine and direct gaze demanded an obedient, near-subservient response from those he encountered.

  She wondered how many of his opponents, business or political, failed to recognize the power steeling his very bones. “I’m fully capable of protecting myself, thank you.”

  “You sound like my sister, Beth.”

  Chandler rolled her eyes. “I can only presume you mean that as a compliment, but forgive me if I don’t take it as one.”

  Tobias changed the subject abruptly. “If the Priest isn’t here for you, then why did he come?”

  Hands fisting atop the trestle table, Chandler frowned. “Pippa called him Father Rolan. She knew him, said Cameron was expecting him...but how is it that, of all the Catholic priests in the world, Kuznetsov is theirs for this ceremony?” Nodding over her shoulder, she shifted aside to reveal the cheesy action-movie display of artillery at her back, then gestured to the envelope between them. “Toss in this mess, and I don’t know what the fuck we’re dealing with here, Toby.”

  “Let’s find out together, shall we?” He dumped the contents onto the wooden surface. Passports in varying colors spilled out, along with credit cards, stacks of euros and pound notes, and a simple mobile phone, likely a burner. It was a spy’s stash...or a criminal’s.

  Chandler reached for one of the passports, glancing at him suspiciously. Tobias’s face was utterly calm. Her stomach sank. “Why don’t you seem more surprised by all of this?” The pad of her thumb caught the edge of the passport cover but she didn’t look inside, not yet. Not until Tobias shared what he knew, because he definitely knew something.

  He told me it’s nothing I should know. Pippa’s voice rang in her ears. The secret mobile. You know who keeps secret mobiles? Liars.

  Tobias didn’t hesitate with his answer. “I had your sister’s fiancé investigated. The results were...illuminating.” Taking the passport from her, he read the cover, flipped it open. “German—and Nolte’s photo inside.” He flashed it at her.

  There it was in black, white and incredibly realistic forgery: Cameron’s face with a completely different name. Rage boiled, and her hands fisted on the tabletop. “Who the fuck is Pip marrying?” She had vetted Cameron when he and Pippa began dating three years earlier, thoroughly, and no red flags had caught her notice. He’d hired a couple of escorts during university, but once he joined his father’s investment firm, Cameron had acted the proverbial straight shooter. Cameron the Liar. How could she have missed...whatever this was? Rugers and assault rifles and fake IDs were not the property of innocent parties. “Tell me what you know.”

  Tobias flicked through the other passports and moneys before wandering toward the steel panel and its assorted weaponry, looking but not touching. “My younger brother Adam ran a background check on Nolte at my request. Nolte’s firm has no employees and no active investments and, until a short while ago, several accounts were in the red. Embezzlement, perhaps, or extremely poor management.” He turned to face her. “A shell company absorbed the firm’s debts and funded the severance packages for the terminated employees, but the acquisition remains active. Money is funneling in and out, with no one but Nolte in the office five days per week. I’ve requested a Faraday agent enter the offices there—”

  “You mean break in.”

  One dark brow arched. “Call it what you will. I want to know what Nolte has been doing in there, and for whom. The main concern, besides who controls the shell company, is the utter disappearance of Nolte’s family wealth. The current viscount had a stroke a few years ago, and now lives in a nursing-care facility, correct?” Chandler nodded. “There are entailed properties throughout England that Cameron is not permitted to sell off, due to inheritance laws, but everything not tied to the title has been liquidated within the past year. He can’t draw an income from the firm aside from a regularly deposited balance by the shell into his bank account every month.”

  “So he’s bankrupt. And probably laundering money for some illegal organization to pay the bills, am I right?” She skirted the corner of the table, heading straight for the armory door. “I need to find my sister, right this second.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  Moving quickly, he caught her, strong fingers wrapped firmly around her upper arm. “You asked me to protect Pippa. This is how I protect people.”

  “By not telling them when they’re marrying lying assholes?” she sneered. “Pip needs to know who and what Cameron is.” Before her twin was legally bound to the rat bastard forever—something Chandler simply could not allow, not if she wasn’t going to be around much longer to protect her.

  “And she will know.” His thumb stroked downward, the unthinking caress a vibrant brand through her thin sweater. “But we would be smart not to throw a tantrum and cause a public uproar by calling off the wedding last minute. Three hundred guests will be on th
e grounds starting tomorrow morning. If your only goal is saving Pippa from a terrible marriage—and believe me, Chandler, I understand how that might be your only goal—then by all means, tell her what you found, tell her what Adam found, and have her cry off. But, but...” His grip tightened, drawing her close until he practically loomed over her. “If you want Nolte to be held accountable for his actions, whatever the full extent of those actions may be—”

  “Check the phone,” she snapped, thoughts racing as she fought her enjoyment of his nearness. Because, goddamn it, she shouldn’t enjoy his nearness. “Check the bloody phone, Toby!”

  With a harsh frown, he released her to snatch the mobile from the table, turning it on. “What am I looking for?”

  Dread, swift and sure, numbed her from her fingertips to her toes. “Incoming or outgoing calls to any numbers in Russia. Any number starting with a seven.”

  A split second later, Tobias exhaled. “Every call. Every call is to Russia.” He looked over at her, his expression for once open and all too revealing. Concern clouded his lovely eyes. “The shell company is the Polnoch’ Pulya. That’s how Nolte knows Kuznetsov.”

  Chandler shoveled an agitated hand through her hair, halting when she ran into the barrier of the elastic holding her loosely bound ponytail in place. “One of Kuznetsov’s responsibilities within the organization is to act as a handler with high-value assets.” Cameron must be one of those assets.

  “We need to make a call.” Withdrawing his own phone from his pocket, he settled it on the table and dialed, hitting the speaker with the volume on low. A male voice answered the other end of the line, and Tobias greeted his younger brother. “Adam? I’ve got Chandler with me.”