“But as far as protective police detail goes, you’re pretty lucky,” Azura offered. “You had these wicked hot hook-ups with a stranger. But it turns out, he’s not a stranger and you’re staying in his house. You have direct access to him anytime you want it. Especially with everything going on in your life lately, it would definitely be a good move for you to blow off a little steam, and maybe some other things.”
“Wow…” Erica trailed off, shaking her head. “I guess good lovin’ runs in that family.”
“It must,” Juliana agreed. She’d heard Erica’s stories about Peter, and Mitch had more than exceeded her own expectations. “Azura, maybe you’re right. Whether he withheld the truth or not, a night with that guy is pretty much the perfect stress reliever. And I’ve been so wired lately.” She shot a quick look up the hallway, and wondered if Mitch would be game for another round, or six. “You’re staying with two hunky men, Azura,” Juliana pointed out. “Maybe something interesting will come out of that. Some late nights bleeding into early mornings…?” she trailed off suggestively.
Azura laughed. “Doesn’t seem likely. Joe doesn’t speak, and Steve’s been avoiding me. So this should be pretty fun,” she frowned. “Hopefully they won’t mind when I take over the TV tonight to watch The Bachelor,” she said with a shrug before finishing her wine.
Chapter 22
Mitch, Peter, Steve, and Joe looked at each other, still not saying much, but going over the events of the morning. Mitch was still filled with a righteous anger. Angry that he and the women could have been killed. Angry that he’d been taken off the job. Angry because he knew that Yuri Petrova was behind the carnage, but with the department reassigning the cases and tying his hands, there was nothing he could do about it. But he was most angry at himself. He’d known that something was off about that goddamn white van. His instinct had told him as much. But he’d ignored it and carried on. He should have gotten the women out of there, but instead he’d endangering them. Ignoring his instincts was something he knew to never do, and it had almost cost them deeply. Mitch steepled his fingers in front of his face, deep in thought. He’d let the women, his team, and himself down. The men let him sit and stew. Nobody said a word, but he figured that their thoughts echoed his.
The night before, being with Juliana had been incredible. It hadn’t been their first time together, but it was the most honest. But knowing now what could have happened to her, he realized that it was his fault that he’d been distracted. Peter had been right the night before. Love will make you lose focus. He wasn’t in love with her – was he? - but it didn’t matter. He shouldn’t have slept with Juliana again. He was supposed to protect her, keep her safe, keep his back up, but yet he’d let himself get distracted by thinking about what she looked like naked. How could he be expected to do stay focussed when all he could think about was being buried deep inside of her?
But he had enough of dwelling. “Okay guys. What the fuck do we have?”
Steve started. “It looks like your guess was correct. Nothing’s definite but the techs are leaning towards an IED.”
“And they’re after Juliana. She witnessed the murder of a member of O’Connell’s Irish mob behind her cafe, and then the Russian we turned was killed in his cell. And we can’t forget the Russian guys that attacked Juliana while she was jogging.”
“So, let’s return to the question, why are they fixated on her?” Steve asked.
“Because she’s a witness,” Peter suggested. “A loose end.”
Mitch shook his head. “I don’t buy that. It’s almost too easy.” He didn’t like referring to her as a loose end, but he thought that there was something else in play. “They could have easily just put a bullet in her skull. Why blow up a part of downtown? It isn’t very subtle, and I think there’s something else. I think they’re sending us a message.”
“Maybe you were the target,” Joe suggested. “They knew you would be sticking close to her. Petrova knows you’re trying to pin them. He’s trying to get you out of the way.
Joe sat back in his chair, shaking his head. “What is going on here? What happened to this city?”
Peter looked up at the group. “We first encountered Russians when they were trying to collaborate with the Irish mob. Taking out the O’Connells must have created a power vacuum that Petrova is looking to fill.”
“That also explains the Irish gangster murders. The Irish family can’t rebuild if the Russians are taking them down, keeping them off-balance and scrambling.” Steve added.
Mitch exhaled, and rubbed a fatigued hand over his face. “The O’Connells used to do so well at holding their own. It feels like we took them out and now we’re left with the greater of two evils. And every move we’ve made on these assholes has been blocked by Lewis and the higher ups.”
“Paddy Boyle might have been right,” Joe said. “This definitely goes higher, doesn’t it? And now you’re off the job indefinitely.”
The room again descended into silence.
Mitch had an idea. “What if there was some way to take out the Russians?” Mitch asked. “Outside of the realm of police work? If we could take out Petrova, it would help the Irish rebuild. Maybe push this conflict to a stalemate so that there isn’t any room for the Russian mob to get further entrenched.”
“What are you talking about?” Peter asked with a scowl.
“What if there was someone else who could rebuild the Irish family?” Mitch pondered aloud, not liking the train of thought, but it was something that needed to be said. “Just stay with me. We haven’t been able to stop the Russians. Petrova somehow has support from inside the department. Fuck, I’m on leave and the cases have been reassigned. Our hands are tied; how else can we handle this?”
“Fuck man,” Joe interjected. “I don’t see why we don’t we pick up some of these assholes? Bring them to the warehouse? Get some information and retribution that way,” Joe suggested casually, as if he wasn’t referring to secretly detaining and beating information out of suspects. “It’s why we have it.”
Mitch normally would have agreed with the man, it was one of the ways that they had in the past, blurred the lines of the law for their own purposes. It wasn’t right, but sometimes they had to do what they had to do. But he shook his head. “If the Russian mob has the ear of the captain or city hall, then there’s no way we could keep it secret.”
Joe shrugged indifferently, leaving Mitch to believe his normally silent colleague would have no problem disposing of the problem, given his mysterious background as a covert ops soldier.
“So what are you saying, Mitch?” Peter asked him, his eyes, the same shade as Mitch’s, darkening with rage.
“What if we find somebody associated with the O’Connell’s family. We help build him up. He rises to power, and takes down Petrova and his dirt bags for us. It keeps our hands clean.”
“What the fuck?” Peter yelled, standing.
“Keep it down, goddammit,” Mitch scolded him. The women were in the living room, and he didn’t want to alarm them. “I know how you feel about the Irish. We all feel it. But the Russians are seriously dangerous. They could have killed us this morning, as told by the van-sized crater on Duckworth Street where Brewed Moon used to be. They’re murdering people, and causing violence and chaos all over the city. They need to be stopped, and no one will let us do it.”
“You want to stop Petrova by starting a mob war?” Peter asked. “It doesn’t make sense.
“No, it won’t be a mob war. This is something we’ll be able to control. If we help raise the guy up, we’ll be able to keep an eye on it, put pressure on the Russians from two fronts. We can make sure it doesn’t get out of control.”
“So, you want to install a puppet leadership for a major crime family,” Steve summarized quietly.
“I know it’s crazy,” Mitch insisted. “But I don’t know another way to fight these guys. I’m not sure what else we can do. We’re bound by the law and our badges. Colin O’Connell and
his family aren’t.”
“I don’t like it,” Peter shook his head, his mouth a firm line. “This is such a bad idea.”
Mitch understood Peter’s reluctance to align with the group that had kidnapped Erica. “I know, man. I don’t much like it myself. I know your history with the O’Connells. I know what they did to Erica, but right now, we don’t have much of a choice. The bodies are piling up and there’s nothing we can do to stop it on our own.”
“It could go badly in a lot of ways.”
“Not if we stay above it,” Mitch assured him. “And we will,” he completed, hoping to God that he was right.
Chapter 23
Juliana looked around Mitch’s empty living room. Both Erica and Azura left with the rest of the men, who had all walked out looking tense and angry, especially Peter. But Mitch still remained in his office. The wine had worn off and her stomach rumbled with hunger, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten since that morning, and she was certain that Mitch hadn’t either.
She picked up the empty wine bottle and the glasses and brought them back to the kitchen. She looked into the fridge and checked his pantry, noting that his well-stocked kitchen contained everything she would need to make one of her favourite meals, fettucine alfredo. Even though she couldn’t be in her own apartment, she could at least make herself home in Mitch’s. She gathered everything together, picked out a couple of pots from the cupboard, and got underway cooking dinner. Maybe if she cooked a romantic dinner for them, she might be able to persuade him to go another round of tension-reduction therapy.
She was concentrating on whisking the creamy sauce, making sure it didn’t burn, when she heard Mitch walk into the kitchen. She took a quick look at him. He looked weary, tired. He grabbed a beer from the refrigerator and opened it. “Cold one for the hot chef?”
She held up a finger. “Just a sec,” she said, and continued whisking until the sauce thickened.
“Smells great,” Mitch told her, setting the bottle down beside the stove and getting one for himself. “But you should be resting, not cooking.”
She could feel his eyes on her, and wondered while she stirred if his mind was on their kiss that morning while she sat on the cupboard.
“I can still cook. And thanks. Just wait until you taste it. I’m a really good cook, if I do say so myself,” she said with a wink over her shoulder before mixing the sauce with the pasta. She doled it onto two plates and she brought them to the table she’d already set.
Mitch brought her drink over and took a seat kitty-corner to hers. He twirled several strands of pasta around his fork and he brought it to his mouth. He chewed, then his eyes closed, and a lusty moan emanated from behind his lips as he swallowed. “Damn, that is good.”
Juliana smiled and started eating her own. “I’m glad you like it, because there’s a lot of leftovers. I can never make a normal amount of pasta.”
“I don’t think a normal amount of pasta is even possible,” he assured her with a smile, before eating more.
“So, how was your day?” She inwardly cringed. The question sounded so casual and normal. Like they were a real couple, and he wasn’t just her protective detail. Like she wasn’t asking about who had destroyed her café with a car bomb that had almost killed them both, and one of her best friends. “I mean, do you have any leads who attacked my café? Was it those Russian guys? The men who accosted me on the running trail? The ones who visited my café?”
Mitch put down his fork and watched her. The hard look in his eyes frightened her a little and she sat back away from him. “Men visited your café? What are you talking about?”
“I didn’t tell you? I’m sure I did. These two men, the ones who found me at the lake stopped by the café on the same day and wanted to sell me insurance, or something ridiculous like that. I told them I wasn’t interested and they left.” She gave the run-down of her first encounter with them.
“Jesus. And you didn’t think to tell me this?” Mitch’s voice was raised, angry, and Juliana recoiled.
“I thought that I did. But I guess I forgot about it with everything that had happened when they stopped me during my run. And then last night, we didn’t do much talking, if you remember,” she gave him a pointed look. “I’m sorry it slipped my mind. It just seemed like some silly shake down from a mob movie, and I didn’t take it seriously, and I guess I forgot about it pretty quickly after everything else that happened.”
Mitch took a long swallow from his beer bottle and watched her. She watched his eyes do little movements, as if he was thinking about what she’d told him. He lowered the bottle and reached out and took her hand. “I’m sorry I reacted that way. I shouldn’t have. I know you’re going through a lot right now.”
“It’s okay. My brain is kind of foggy lately.”
“For good reason. This can’t be easy for you.”
“I’ll be fine,” she whispered, looking down at her plate. In the first quiet moment she’d had that day, she surrendered to the wave of sadness that had been threatening to break through all day. She sniffed and blinked quickly, trying to ward off the tears that she felt pooling in her eyes. But it did no good, as she felt a tear escape and trail down her cheek.
He reached out and took her hand, and rubbed the backs of her knuckles, stroking them with his thumb. She took comfort in the small gesture, and closed her eyes, accepting his touch. “Jules,” he murmured.
She wanted to collapse against him, but it wouldn’t have done any good. It would not repair her café, undo the attempts on her life, punish those responsible for threatening her. She took a deep breath, pulled her hand away from his and quickly wiped at her eyes. “I’m fine,” she maintained, but she knew that he didn’t buy it.
“Jules, you don’t have to be strong all the time. You aren’t alone here. I’m with you. Everything is going to be okay.”
“What do you mean, I don’t have to be strong? I do, though. Falling apart isn’t going to help anything. It’s not productive in the least. I just don’t understand why this is happening. What did I do to deserve any of this?”
“You didn’t do anything,” he told her, scooting his chair closer to hers so that they sat face-to-face. “None of this is your fault. And I promise you that I’m going to find these motherfuckers, and I’ll make them pay.” He crouched on the floor in front of her chair and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer. She closed her eyes and allowed herself to settle into his embrace. Maybe he was right. It wasn’t just up to her to solve the problem, and she knew that she could count on Mitch.
After several minutes of being curled into his chest, she broke away from him. She composed herself, and wiped her wet cheeks with a napkin. Taking a deep breath, she sat up straight and looked him in the eye. “Enough of the pity party. Do you have any leads on who bombed Brewed Moon?”
“I have some ideas,” he told her. “We just need to find something that definitely ties them to it.”
“We don’t have to go back to the police station, do we?” she shivered. “I kind of hate it there. I don’t know how you can spend so much time there. It’s so cold and noisy.”
“No, you won’t be going back to the station. In fact, I want you to stay here. Indefinitely. And not go anywhere for a while, until we figure this out. I don’t think it’s safe for you to be out.”
“I’m going into hiding?”
“Yeah. At least until I can get these guys off the street. It looked like he was bracing for an argument. “Please, just do as I ask on this.”
“Mitch, they can’t stop me from living my life. If I’m going to face this, it’s going to be head-on. These guys just can’t get away with what they’re doing to us.”
She could see Mitch’s hands curl into fists, and she knew that there weren’t many people who said no to Mitch Swanson. “Jules, listen-”
“No, you listen,” Juliana told him, putting a finger in his face. Her sadness and fear had quickly made way for anger. But it felt good, r
ighteous. Her anger took away the helplessness she’d felt, and she was suddenly filled with power. “These guys are bullies, and I don’t cower to bullies. I never have. So sure, Mitch, I’ll stay in your apartment, but I won’t stop living my life. These guys have already taken so much away from me, my business, my safety. But they won’t take my spirit. I’m not going to be afraid of them anymore.”
Mitch sat back and watched her. “You’re not easy to protect, you know. But you’re right. We’re going to stand up to these guys. They won’t hurt you anymore.”
Less than a week had passed since witnessing the murder behind Brewed Moon, but since then her life had been turned completely upside down. Not just with the sheer violence around her, but as she looked at the man sitting next to her, eating a dinner that she’d cooked, things had changed with Mitch as well. They had barely had five minutes alone all day, and neither had brought up what had happened the night before – the revelation that he was her mystery lover.
“Mitch,” she whispered. “Do we need to talk abut what happened? About us?”
He put down his fork, and took a deep, weary breath. “Yeah, I guess we should. I’ll go first. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry about what?”
“Everything,” he shook his head. “I should have been honest with you about Leather & Lace. It wasn’t right to not tell you. I was a coward. I guess I wanted it to continue, but I knew that if I told you, it wouldn’t be anonymous anymore. And that was what you needed.”
She nodded. “You’re right. You should have told me when you found out. But, you know, it doesn’t seem like that big of a deal right now.” She considered what would have happened if he’d revealed himself. Would she have stopped seeing him, if the illusion of anonymity had been dispelled? She didn’t know. She had no way of knowing that, but she didn’t see the point of denying herself of him or his body, as long as she would be staying in his house. They might as well use each other to relieve some stress. “I had fun with you, at the club, and last night,” she told him, meeting his eyes. “And you had fun, right?”
Double Shot to the Heart (Brewed Moon Book 2) Page 15