“Good, sleepy,” she said in a tired voice.
“Just lean on me,” he whispered. “I’ll keep you safe.”
***
Dylan looked up thirty minutes later as the door to the living room opened and Rogan stepped inside. He raised an eyebrow as he saw Tilly asleep on Dylan’s lap.
“Make yourselves at home,” he said dryly, walking in and pouring himself a drink. “Want one?”
“Yes, thanks.”
Rogan brought over the glass of whiskey and handed it to him.
“She was exhausted,” Dylan said after taking a sip.
“Hmm, probably all that extracurricular activity you two have been getting,” Rogan said.
Dylan just grinned. Then he gazed down at Tilly, his grin fading. “She was worried about you.”
“About me?” Rogan said, looking surprised.
“Yeah,” Dylan replied. “She thought something might have happened to you. She wanted to go find you.”
Rogan grimaced. “Christ, that’s all I need.” But as he gazed down at Tilly his gaze softened a little.
“Everything go all right?” Dylan asked.
“Yeah, mostly. He’ll leave her alone. That’s the main thing.”
Relief nearly brought tears to Dylan’s eyes. “I can’t ever repay you for all your help,” he said.
“We’re brothers. Although I could use your help with something.”
“Sure, anything,” Dylan said.
“Come to Underworld with me tomorrow night. I want you to see where improvements could be made in running it.”
Dylan frowned. He’d never been to Underworld, but he’d heard Rogan and Aedan talk about it. He guessed it was a nightclub and that’s why Rogan was asking for his expertise. It wasn’t the favor he’d been expecting. Rogan tapped his ear and Dylan’s eyes widened. He thought the place could be bugged? But he hadn’t warned them earlier and they’d been speaking freely. What the hell was going on?
Unable to question him further, Dylan nodded.
Tilly stirred in his arms and yawned. “Don’t wanna wake up,” she muttered.
“Go back to sleep,” he murmured quietly. Having her curled up in his arms was pretty much his idea of heaven. He loved the feel of her against him, knowing she was safe.
She sighed then rubbed her eyes. “Where am I? Oh!” She spotted Rogan and immediately sat up. “Are you okay? Did it go all right? He didn’t try anything did he?”
She squirmed off his lap and grabbed Rogan’s arms.
“I’m fine.”
Tilly threw her arms around him, hugging him tight. “Thank God!”
Rogan looked slightly alarmed. Dylan bit his lip. Rogan could face down the worst scum in the city without flinching, but a hug from one little woman had him panicking?
Rogan glared at him and Dylan decided he better rescue him. “Come here, a mhuirnín,” he said. The last thing he wanted was Rogan pushing her away and hurting her feelings. “Let the man sit down and have a drink.”
“Oh, sorry,” she said, looking chagrined. She sat on the edge of the sofa as Rogan took a seat on an armchair opposite them. “What happened? Did he take the ring as payment?”
“He did. Iker is all about the bottom dollar.”
“Will he—I mean, is that the end of it?”
“He won’t bother you again,” Rogan told them both. “He knows you’re under my protection.”
She breathed out a sigh of relief, but Dylan knew that wasn’t the end of it. That was too easy.
“But?” Dylan asked.
“But neither of you can breathe a word of this. Understand, Tilly?” he said sternly. “You can’t say a word to anyone.”
“I won’t. I promise,” she said, eyes wide.
“And it’s probably best if the two of you don’t stick around for too long. I told him you’d be gone by the end of next week.” It was now late Sunday night.
She looked over at Dylan. He winked at her. “We can do that. We’re going to go on a little side trip before we head home.”
“We are?” she said with surprise.
“Yep. But it’s a surprise. We both have the time off, so we might as well go on a road trip.”
Tilly couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a vacation. She smiled over at him and grasping his hand, squeezed it tight.
“What about Miller?” she asked, concern darkening her face. “Is she okay? Can I see her?”
Rogan took another sip. “He said that Miller has gone.”
“Gone? Gone where?” she asked.
“He claims that he doesn’t know. Said she had outgrown her usefulness so he didn’t care anymore.”
“Think he’s telling the truth?” Dylan asked.
“I think that Iker would lie to his own mother if he thought it would benefit him. There’s something he’s holding back.”
“Where would she go?” Tilly asked, looking like she was close to crying. “What if she needs help?”
“I’ll find her,” Rogan said. “If you’re sure that’s what you want.”
“Of course I do,” Tilly said, glancing at them both in bewilderment. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Tilly, she betrayed you,” Dylan said in a quiet voice. “She placed you in danger when she told Iker that Javier was cheating him. If we hadn’t found that money, you’d have a target on your back. Maybe you should just let her go.”
“No.” Tilly shook her head. “I know it seems like she did some terrible things, but that’s not the girl I knew. And I don’t believe that phone call was faked.”
“People change, and often not for the better,” Rogan warned.
“I just need to make sure she’s okay. I can’t go on with my life without making sure she’s all right.”
Dylan softened. “Okay. We’ll try to find her.”
Rogan nodded. “Leave it with me.”
Chapter Nine
“I thought Underworld was a nightclub,” Dylan said.
“Well, it’s a club of sorts,” Rogan replied, looking amused.
Dylan just gaped at him in disbelief. “It has a bowling alley.” When he’d heard Rogan and Aedan talk about Underworld, he’d just assumed it was a bar or nightclub.
“We also have a cigar room, a bar, and a games room.”
“Huh, and you called it Underworld because…”
“It’s underground and its exclusive. Not just anyone can join. That’s the trick. Make it hard to get into and people go crazy. They’re willing to pay big money to join.”
“I don’t know anything about running a bowling alley,” Dylan said.
“Luckily, that’s not what I need your help with. Come into my office.”
“So what’s going on?” Dylan asked once they were sitting in Rogan’s office.
“I brought you here because I didn’t want to talk where others might hear us.”
“Do you think your house is bugged?” Dylan asked. “Don’t your guards regularly scan for bugs?”
“They do. That’s not the issue. I think I have a traitor and I’m not sure who it is.”
Dylan stared at him in shock.
“I need your help finding him.”
“Are you sure? I mean, what makes you think that someone is betraying you?” Who the hell would be that stupid?
“There have been a few things that on their own wouldn’t seem like much, but when you add them up they become a big problem. A few weeks ago, a warehouse I was using to keep shipments in was raided by the cops. There’s no way they should have known about that. Luckily I’d had forewarning and moved things a few hours earlier.”
Dylan didn’t want to know how he’d been warned about that.
“Information has been leaked when it shouldn’t have been. Like how did Iker’s men manage to follow us the other day when we were going to Tilly’s apartment?”
“They could have been watching the house.”
“They weren’t. I had people watching the house. They would have seen them.”<
br />
“They could have been waiting down the street for us.”
“Maybe. But how did Iker know that the ring Javier used to replace the stones with diamonds was Tilly’s grandmother’s ring?”
Dylan sat back, floored. He thought through all the angles, trying to come up with any other explanation.
“I have no idea. Could Javier have told him?”
“Possibly, but why would Iker have kept that information to himself? If he’d told us, we could have just handed the ring over.”
“Shit,” Dylan said.
“Yeah. I’ve only discussed this with Aedan. I have a meeting with the Aleksandr Anisimov, the boss of the Russian mob, as well as some of the others, including Iker, on Thursday night. I can only take one person in with me. I can’t take in someone I don’t fully trust and right now I don’t trust anyone but you or Aedan, and we both know that Aedan wouldn’t be a good second.”
No, besides the fact that everyone knew who Aedan was, he looked like a model rather than muscle.
“Won’t the others think it’s odd you’re taking me?” he asked. “Who do you usually take with you?”
“Brandt. I’ll make up some excuse.”
“All right. But what about the traitor? How are you going to flush them out?”
“I have a plan. I’m going to lay a trap.”
Dylan wouldn’t like to be in that man’s shoes once Rogan got hold of him.
***
Tilly pulled another batch of cookies out of the oven. The scent of chocolate and vanilla filled the kitchen. In the beginning, she’d been hesitant about making herself at home in Rogan’s kitchen, but after a few days of boredom she’d gotten over that.
She knew that Dylan was helping Rogan with something. Something that he couldn’t tell her about. She couldn’t help but worry that it was something dangerous, even though Dylan kept telling her not to worry.
She snorted. Like just telling her not to worry was enough to make her stop. Rogan’s world was dangerous in ways she didn’t even understand. That was why he went everywhere with bodyguards. There were always men watching the house, even when she was the only one here.
Thank God they were leaving this weekend. Hopefully, they could put this whole mess behind them. She only had two more days of feeling claustrophobic to get through.
And two more nights of being lonely.
Dylan came to bed late and left early in the morning. She knew she shouldn’t complain. He was helping Rogan, and they owed him a lot. To help ease her boredom and frustration she’d started baking. Before discovering BDSM, baking had been her stress-reliever of choice.
“Chocolate chip?” Colm asked, peering into the kitchen with a hopeful look on his face.
She nodded, and he walked forward, a big grin lighting his ferocious face. Most of the time, he stayed home with her while Cillian and Dylan went with Rogan.
That suited her. Out of the two guards, Colm was the friendlier one. He’d sit and chat with her, unlike Cillian, who barely said a word.
Colm sat down at the breakfast bar and reached for a cookie, quickly munching it up in two bites.
“Do you want some tea?” she asked.
He nodded. His phone beeped.
“Brandt’s on his way in,” he said.
Brandt was looking into Miller’s disappearance. So far, he hadn’t found much. It was frustrating, but she couldn’t do much about it. If she complained, she’d seem ungrateful, and she wasn’t. She just wished she could do something to help find Miller.
“Morning, Tilly. How are you today?” Brandt asked in a friendly voice as he entered the kitchen.
“I’m good, thanks.”
Colm stood. Grabbing a few more cookies, he left the room.
“Would you like a cookie?” she asked Brandt.
“No thanks,” he replied. “Got to watch my waistline.”
She paused as she went to take another bite of cookie, reminded of her own waistline. She put the cookie back on the plate and reached for her cup of coffee, taking a sip.
“I just dropped in to see if you needed anything.”
She shook her head. “No, I’m fine.” Bored, lonely, worried, but he couldn’t do anything about that. “Have you found out anything about Miller?”
Brandt’s gaze turned sympathetic. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. It looks like she’s left the city. I can’t find any hint of her anywhere.”
“Oh, well, thanks for looking.” Feeling completely deflated, Tilly took a seat opposite him. “I just wish she’d contact me. Let me know she’s okay.” She’d tried calling the number that Miller had phoned her from three more times without luck.
Brandt shrugged and stood. “Druggies often only care about their next fix.”
She bit down on her lip to stop herself from snapping at him. They didn’t know for sure that Miller was into drugs.
“If you need me, get Colm to contact me.”
She wanted to ask him if he knew what Dylan and Rogan were doing, but she figured he probably wouldn’t tell her. Once he’d left, she puttered around the kitchen, thinking.
Finally, unable to just sit around idly, she went to find Colm. He was sitting in the living room. He looked up as she entered.
“Do you want to watch the telly?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I can go to the media room to do that.” She sat opposite him. “Brandt can’t find Miller.”
Colm’s face turned sympathetic. “If Brandt can’t find her, then she probably can’t be found.”
“I get that. But I can’t help feeling that she needs me. I just feel so helpless sitting around her, doing nothing.”
“Not much you can do,” he said bluntly.
“No, I guess not. But there is someone who might be able to find her.”
He sighed. “You need to drop this. If Brandt can’t find her, then no one can.”
“What about that man, Jimmy? Aedan said he knows everyone and everything that goes on in the city. He said that Miller wasn’t with the Vipers voluntarily. He told me to get her out. What if he knows where she is?”
“Jimmy isn’t the most reliable guy,” Colm said warningly. “Rogan refuses to deal with him since he gave him bad information.”
“At the moment I have no information. I just want to exhaust all the possibilities.”
“So ask Rogan when he gets back tonight,” he suggested.
“You think he’ll let me talk to Jimmy?” she said hopefully.
“No,” Colm said bluntly.
“Oh.” She sat back against the couch. She churned the possibilities over in her head. Jimmy seemed her best bet to finding Miller, but how would she get in contact with him?
“This is so frustrating,” she moaned. “All I want to do is find Miller and make sure that she’s okay. Have you lived here long, Colm?”
“About eight years.”
“Your accent isn’t very strong,” she said. Although she’d noticed that when he was more relaxed his accent grew thicker
He shrugged, a guarded look on his face.
“Do you have family here?”
“No, they’re all back in Scotland,” he replied in a voice that warned her to drop this topic. But she was desperate.
“Must be hard to live so far away. Do you miss them?”
“Aye, every day.” His face took on a pensive look. Then he sighed. “All right. Let me see if I can get in contact with him.”
She grinned. “Thank you.”
He pointed a finger at her. “But do not try that on anyone else around here. Someone else might not be so nice if you started asking questions about their family. They’d start to wonder what you wanted and none of their thoughts would be good.”
She sobered up immediately. “Sorry. I didn’t mean anything by bringing them up.”
“Guys around here are very protective of their families. They don’t like to talk about them with strangers, understood?”
Duly chastised, she nodded.
Colm stood.
“How will you find him?” she asked.
Colm checked his watch. “If we leave now, we’ll catch him at Mrs. Chu’s.”
She stood. “Mrs. Chu’s? Is that a Chinese restaurant? Is the food good?”
Colm slowly smiled. “Nah, the food is shit.”
She wondered why anyone would go to a restaurant that sold bad food, but Colm was already in the corridor and she didn’t want to make him wait for her.
***
Tilly stared around her in shock. “I can’t believe you brought me to a whorehouse,” she whispered at Colm.
An unbelievably nice whorehouse. She’d kind of imagined something sleazy and overblown. But the beautiful old house had been restored to an excellent standard. The woman who had shown them in had been fully dressed and polite. She gestured to them to wait on a large, plush couch.
Tilly studied it closely as Colm sat with a sigh.
“Sit down,” he said with a grin. “No one has sex in the waiting room.”
“You sound like you know from experience,” she replied, sitting gingerly on the edge of the seat.
Colm just shrugged.
“How did you know Jimmy would be here?” she asked.
“Because this is where he spends every night.”
“Every night? It’s not even seven o’clock, isn’t it a bit early for him to be here?”
“Some people work all night and sleep all day. Man’s got to have a place to lay his head. And having some company isn’t a bad thing.”
“But doesn’t that cost a fortune?”
“Not if you own the place,” Jimmy said with a grin as he stepped into the room. The sleek woman who’d opened the door followed him. “You wanted to talk to me?”
Tilly jumped to her feet. “Yes, but it’s private.” She gave the woman an apologetic smile, but she didn’t appear to care.
“We’ll use the green sitting room, Amanda,” Jimmy said. “Make sure we’re not disturbed. Come with me.” He gestured to Colm and Tilly, who followed him down a passage to a small sitting room.
“You own this place?” she said.
“Well, I’m a silent partner. When Felicity hit money trouble, I said I’d help her out. Of course, I can’t actually own a business.”
Sinfully Yours, Sir Page 11