Ripped: A Blood Money Novel

by Edie Harris

  In the weeks Tobias had held her captive, he’d never seen her so agitated. Within the confines of her Underground cell, she had maintained her focus, her routine—her sanity. But mere hours trapped in a bedroom, knowing her enemy was down the stairs and her sister unwilling to come up them, had sent her spiraling.

  Her distress picked at the edges of his control. “My people will be here shortly,” he assured her from his seat at the window.

  “Taking them long enough.” Her tone was waspish. “Where’d you have them fly in from—Tokyo?”

  “They took the train out from London this morning.” Before retiring last night—before Chandler’s nightmares stole sleep from them both—Tobias had made a phone call to Keir, pulling him off his detail keeping tabs on Pinney, the scummy investigator. “I need you here,” he’d told his cousin from the privacy of the ensuite bathroom, where Tobias had perched on the edge of the tub. “We have a situation, and I can’t get resources from Boston here as quickly as I can you.”

  Keir hadn’t asked any questions save one. “What about Pinney?”

  Though Tobias had hated pulling eyes off the PI, the immediate physical safety of Chandler and Pippa was more important. “We’ll just have to hope he doesn’t realize you’re gone and take the opportunity to make a call to Victoria Nolte.” After telling Keir to bring his sister—the more backup the merrier—he’d hung up and flopped down on the settee.

  Only to be woken a short while later by Chandler’s panicked gasps, her begging murmurs to stop please stop please no don’t make me inspiring the same awful, helpless sensation he thought he’d managed to subvert in the weeks since Beth’s rescue. That sensation threatened to choke him if she’d kept up those terrible mewling noises—as though she were dying inside her mind.

  As though her mind was killing her.

  He’d used his touch to bring her pleasure, dispelling the remnants of her nightmare and sending her into a quiet, dreamless sleep. But Tobias hadn’t slept. Ohhhh, no, he hadn’t slept a wink.

  Her scent had lingered on his fingers, and he’d sniffed, covertly, filling his head and lungs with the essence of her as his eyes rolled back in his head. His hips moving restlessly under the thin blanket, he had sucked those fingers into his mouth and tasted the truth of her.

  And woke this morning to an unsettling epiphany: Chandler McCallister was in his system, and she didn’t look to be leaving anytime soon. Worse, he couldn’t say he wanted her to.

  Now, watching her slowly lose her mind as the wedding day crept closer, he saw the fortress that was Chandler in desperate need of help but with no clue how to request it. Did she not know that all she need do was ask him? Ask me, Chandler. Ask me to get your sister up here. Ask me to get rid of the Russian Hulk downstairs. Ask me anything, goddamn it.

  Or perhaps she did know. His pulse sped as she halted midstride, appearing to steel herself against rejection as she folded her arms defensively over her chest, her brilliant brown eyes fixed on his in silent appeal. “Toby—”

  A light knock on the door before it swung open and in filed Keir, Freya and Freya’s partner from MI6, Dare Hadad. “Hey, cuz,” Freya greeted him, adjusting her black-framed glasses atop the bridge of her nose, and moved immediately to lounge on the settee—aka his bed.

  “Hey, yourself.” Tobias glanced at Dare as the younger man strode to the second set of windows near the bed, nodding in welcome but saying nothing. “Keir, I don’t believe I mentioned involving MI6.” He kept his voice mild.

  Grunting, Keir positioned himself at the door of the suite, his tall frame a buffer against any potential intruders. “Freya’s acquired a shadow of late.”

  His dark eyes on the movement of the event staff in the garden below, Dare added, “Don’t worry, this is off the books. Yang thinks I’ve got the flu.”

  Somehow, Tobias doubted the MI6 section chief had bought that particular falsehood. He glanced at Chandler, who had propped a hip against the bed’s footboard when the cavalry arrived, her knuckles white around her cell phone. “You okay with Hadad’s involvement?”

  Her shrug was negligible, her expression unreadable. “Don’t think I have much of a choice, keeper.”

  Without warning, the door to the suite opened and shut quickly, a pale blur whirling around with worry in her bright brown eyes. “Chandler, what’s going on? I saw three strangers come in here and—” Pippa stumbled to a halt in front of Keir, gaze narrowing as she stared up at the man who towered a foot over her diminutive height. “Who the bloody hell are you?”

  One thick brow arched, Keir’s mouth twitching in apparent amusement. “Quinn.”

  Pippa dealt him a magnificent scowl. “Well, don’t you take up more than your fair share of space. Get out of my way, big man.”

  Surprise held Tobias immobile halfway out of his chair—no one sassed Keir, not unless they had a death wish—but a choked laugh from Freya had him and everyone else in the room relaxing. After another moment, some sort of silent battle of wills playing out between the waifish blonde and the scruffy oaf, Keir stepped aside, waving Pippa through with a sardonic, bowing flourish.

  Sniffing, Pippa lifted her chin and marched past him, until she caught sight of Chandler leaning against the bed, arms locked tight around her middle. “Chan, darling.” Wasting no time, Pippa rushed to her twin and cupped Chandler’s face in her elegant hands. “Who are these people? What’s going on?”

  It was as if Tobias and the others weren’t in the room at all. Chin wobbling, Chandler pressed her forehead to Pippa’s and heaved a watery sigh. Crying? Tobias watched as the toughest woman he’d ever met revealed a fragility he would never have guessed her to possess, not until last night. Fists clenching, the ache in the knuckles of his right hand more pronounced now, he struggled against the visceral need to gather her in his arms and tuck her body into his lap. He’d wanted to hold her ever since waking that morning and seeing her red-rimmed eyes, the smudge of shadows purple and bruising beneath them. Denying that need now ripped him apart inside.

  Still, he didn’t move, standing in front of the window as he observed the sisters’ moment, settling instead for devouring Chandler with his gaze.

  “It’s...it’s a long story.” Chandler sniffled. “I need to tell you about where I’ve been for most of this year. And wh-what I did there.”

  Pippa stroked a hand through Chandler’s mussed toffee-and-sunlight hair, engagement ring flashing on her third finger. “You don’t have to tell me anything, darling, you know that.”

  “But I do this time, b-because I put you in danger.” Lower lip trembling before she scrubbed the heels of her palms over her eyes, Chandler straightened. Her gaze flitted over to Tobias, then to the others in the room. She gestured expansively. “The man at the window is Dare, the woman is Freya and the other man is—”

  “Quinn, yes, I know,” Pippa interrupted. “Who are they?”

  “MI6, like me.” She frowned at Keir. “Though I actually don’t know your affiliation.”

  Quinn said nothing, so Tobias intervened. “He’s family. I asked him to be here.”

  That earned him a suspicious stare from the bride-to-be. “What did you get Chandler caught up in, Tobias? I warned you to tread carefully.”

  “No, Pip. Toby, the others, they’re here because I did something wrong, not the other way around.” Chandler’s sigh was heavy, tired. “It goes without saying that this is confidential information and cannot leave this room. Not that it really matters anymore,” she mumbled, which for some reason made the back of Tobias’s neck prickle in warning, but when she spoke again, her voice was strong, her words directed solely at Pippa. “Last May, I was placed on undercover assignment in Moscow in an effort to infiltrate the inner circle of an illegal arms ring. The organization had been run by a man named Karlin Kedrov before...before someone blew him up, and MI6 wanted whomever took ov
er for Kedrov to be sympathetic to British interests. My job was to ingratiate myself with one of the key power players, a man known as the Accountant, stay by his side until he gained control and then sway him into becoming an official asset of British intelligence. If I succeeded, we would have had the world’s biggest black-market arms outfit under our thumb.”

  Pippa frowned. “That’s an awfully large task for one small woman.”

  “I know, right?” Wry humor tugged at Chandler’s full lips as she tugged Pippa’s hands from her face, linking their fingers between them. “The thing is, the best way of getting in deep with the organization was to...use my notoriety.”

  Tobias’s stomach sank even as Pippa asked, “What notoriety?” Then, almost immediately, “Oh, no. Chandler, you didn’t.”

  The smile Chandler gave her twin was weary. “I went in as Mary McCallister, birth certificate in hand to prove I was who I said I was. MI6 built a criminal backstory for me, and I claimed to have killed someone back in London and be seeking sanctuary. I...I told the Russians I had urges similar to our father’s, and then—” She dropped her sister’s hands as though they were hot coals, wrapping her arms around her midsection and very deliberately not looking or touching Pippa. “And then I proved it.”

  Pippa reached out and grabbed Chandler by the shoulders, shaking her lightly, her voice low and fierce. “What. Did. You. Do.”

  “What I had to.” Her jaw clenched. “Please don’t make me tell you, Pip.”

  Silence fell over the room, every ear, every eye now attuned to the conversation playing by the bed. Tobias’s mind raced as he processed the new information. Her nightmares made sense, her certainty that she would die upon returning more than just words now—words he’d spoken lightly, thinking only of casualties in private wars and not of the very real, very wrong dangers a woman in Chandler’s position faced in going back to a place where it had literally been kill or be killed. He’d assumed—inaccurately—that she had stood in the shadow of John Nash’s cloying evil, observing but not participating. “What about Nash?” he couldn’t help but ask, his throat tight as he stared at the top of Chandler’s bowed head.

  Pippa turned. “Who’s Nash?”

  “Nash was my partner,” Chandler explained quietly. “He’d already been in Moscow for several months acting as an interrogator since before Kedrov’s death, and we used him as my ‘in.’ I acted as his, I don’t know, apprentice? I was his torturer-in-training.” She swallowed, hard. “It was sick. He was sick. But MI6 said I couldn’t come home until the hierarchy structure was solidified again.”

  MI6, meaning Colleen Yang. That woman still has much to answer for. The muscles in his arms felt pummeled as he fought the animalistic need to close the distance between them and carry Chandler away. Now he knew. Now he understood.

  Now, now, he forgave. Completely.

  “And...what happened to this Nash person?” Pippa asked, tone cautious.

  Tobias shoved his hands in his pockets to keep them quiet. “A month ago, John Nash kidnapped and tortured my sister for four days. She killed him and escaped, thankfully, but we have since learned that Nash hurt her at the behest of Polnoch’ Pulya—the arms ring,” he clarified for Pippa’s sake.

  Pippa’s face went pale. “Oh, Tobias. I am so, so sorry.” She glanced at Chandler before returning her attention to him. “This is how you really met my sister, isn’t it? Because of what happened to yours?”

  He nodded but added nothing. He didn’t want to tarnish Chandler any further in Pippa’s eyes, especially since he recognized that Chandler had simply been in survival mode. She had attempted to protect herself by withholding the location of the bunker where Nash had kept Beth, and it had taken Tobias threatening to out Pippa’s connection to Reggie McCallister to get her to spill.

  He couldn’t regret the measures he’d taken to save Beth, but that he had used the tactic of risking Pippa’s future no longer sat well with him. Hell, it had never sat well with him, but at the time it had been his usual—insinuation instead of threat, leverage instead of literal arm-twisting. But now he knew Pippa; worse—or better—he knew Chandler. Past and present, Chandler had put her sister’s happiness and safety before her own, knowing she faced certain death in returning to Moscow. She was constant. She was loyal. She was brave.

  She was incredible.

  Chandler visibly braced herself and continued with brusque determination. “The Polnoch’ Pulya is beyond dangerous. They are bratva—mafia—and all that entails, and they supply terrorists around the world with weapons.” She paused, gripping Pippa’s wrists where her sister held her shoulders. “Pip...the priest who’s here to officiate. How well do you know him?”

  “Father Rolan? We did our Pre-Cana with him. He’s come over for supper once or twice—Cameron knew him at university.” Frowning, Pippa disentangled her arms from Chandler’s hold and stepped away, her gaze abruptly cautious as she took in the other individuals in the room. “Why are you asking about our priest, Chandler?”

  Tobias decided this was his moment to take control and alleviate some of the visible strain he could see on Chandler’s drawn face. “Pippa, your fiancé didn’t attend university with Father Rolan. Father Rolan works for the Polnoch’ Pulya.”

  Hands fisting on her hips, Pippa speared him with a dark look. “No, Cameron told me they went to school together before Rolan enrolled in seminary. They’re friends.”

  “They’re not friends,” Chandler interjected coldly. “Rolan Kuznetsov is no one’s friend. He’s the organization’s top enforcer.”

  “Enforcer?”

  “He delivers messages for the inner circle.” Chandler’s expression darkened. “Forcefully.”

  Panic sprinted across Pippa’s face. “Is he delivering a message now?” Her hands lifted toward Chandler. “You’re not safe, are you? We have to get you out of here without him seeing—”

  “Pip. I’m not leaving.”

  “But you have to! I won’t let you stay if this...this priest is hunting you down to deliver one of his forceful messages. You don’t have to be at the wedding, darling.” Pippa blinked rapidly, sniffling once. “You’re in my heart, always.”

  Tobias felt like a voyeur, and he could tell Keir, Freya and Dare felt the same, but it was obvious Pippa wasn’t quite connecting all of the dots. He gently cleared his throat. “We don’t know whether or not Kuznetsov is here for Chandler, but we are certain of one thing—his connection to your fiancé.”

  Pippa shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. There is no possible explanation for Cameron to know someone in the...the mafia.”

  Time for the big guns. “Pippa, are you aware of Cameron’s financial problems?”

  Her expression went blank. “What financial problems?”

  “His investment firm is without employees and bankrupt.” Or it would be, without the shell company.

  “You’re kidding.” Pippa appeared stricken. “He works all the time. All the time. Chan, I was just telling you about this,” she said as she turned imploring eyes on her twin. “There’s no way he’s broke. He’s not living like he’s broke.”

  “He’s drawing an income from a shell company that holds the firm’s assets, so he’s not technically without funds. It’s where those funds are coming from that’s concerning.” He watched the color drain from Pippa’s delicate face. “Yesterday, Faraday Industries confirmed that the shell company is owned in consortium between the Polnoch’ Pulya and a pair of other international terrorist organizations. As the new owners of Cameron’s investment firm, they have him funnel money from their illegal operations into accounts held by various partner organizations. Everything looks on the up and up from the outside, but with an individual broker—in this case, Cameron—directly monitoring the amount reported versus the amount invested, it’s easy to control the money flow across inter
national borders without investigation or taxation. It’s money laundering, Pippa, and at an incredibly high level.”

  “And you have proof that this is happening?”

  “Yes.” Reaching for the tablet he’d set on a nearby side table, he pulled up Adam’s report and handed it to a trembling Pippa. “Your fiancé has been lying to you for the past year.”

  “The secret mobile,” she whispered, eyes wide and unblinking as she scrolled through the report. “What am I supposed to do with this information?” She lifted her head, numbness creeping into her shattered voice, and stared at Chandler. “I had him in my house, Chan. I had a criminal—a killer—in my house. And Cameron—” Her breath hitched unevenly as she handed back the tablet.

  Tobias took it without a word.

  Chandler eased carefully toward her twin. “Pip, you can’t marry Cameron.”

  “No.” But it wasn’t agreement.

  “Pip—”

  “No.” Hands up, palms out, she cut off any objection. “You’re wrong. You have to be wrong. I can’t say that I know everything about Cameron’s job, because to be honest, we lead very separate lives when we’re not at home. But we’ve been together for three years, and I think I’d know if my fiancé were a mafia criminal.”

  Tobias had no response, and neither did anyone else in the room.

  “God, could anything else go wrong?” Pippa scrubbed her hands over her face. “First the caterer ruined the vegan entrée for tomorrow, then Irene came down with a sore throat, and apparently, our priest is a murderer! Not to mention this awfulness that you want me to accept about the man I’m supposed to marry tomorrow but I find I just...I just can’t.” She shook her head violently. “You hand me that tablet and ask me to read those words but they don’t make any sense to me. None of it does.”

  “At least the Pinney thing’s not a problem.”