I brush back a lock of hair from her face as she sleeps while Sergei drives, savoring the look on her face. It’s peaceful, unlike everything happening around us.
It almost makes me want to take her far away…from here. My chest hurts as I sigh, and I turn away, resisting the urge to press a kiss to her forehead.
My phone buzzes, and I quickly reach for it in my pocket as she stirs. However, my thumb pauses over the decline button when I see Billie’s name flash on my screen.
I haven’t seen him since he gave me the information on Igor.
“Billie,” I say sternly. “You better have a good reason for calling at this time.”
“Yes, sir.” I frown slightly when I hear him whisper. “I do. You said to tell you if I heard anything about Marco Ricci. Well, I think I know where he is.”
I sit up straighter, but my voice doesn’t reflect the urgency. “How helpful do you think you can be, Billie? Because if your intel doesn’t pan out, I’ll have to cut you off. And you know what happens when I cut you off, Billie Russell?”
He doesn’t respond. Fear or caution, it’s impossible to tell over the phone. But whichever it is, it’s keeping him alive.
“Tell me what you have, Russell.”
He clears his throat. “Well, I heard from a source—”
“The same one who told you about the money?”
“No.”
I shrug, and Isabella stirs again, muttering something incoherent. Her head slips off my shoulder, and I place my hand underneath it, holding it there. “Go on,” I say.
“I got in touch with one of the men who used to work for your father. They had a falling out, and he cut him off, but it turns out that Marco recruited him.”
Another bastard. “Okay?”
“He said that Marco Ricci contacted him a week ago, asking if he could use one of his safe houses. It’s not a safe house per se,” he explains. “It’s a laundromat with a secret extension. There are tons of them in the city—no longer in operation—but Marco wouldn’t tell him which. Just that he needed one, and he would contact my source when he was ready.”
Ready for what?
“And what does your intel want in exchange for telling you the exact location?” I ask after a beat.
Another silence. I wait it out, tapping my fingers on my thigh. I’m not surprised that Marco Ricci is planning something, but it feels like I’m running out of time.
So, as much as I don’t want to admit it to Billie, I’m also running out of patience. “What does he want, Russell?” I ask again, my voice tinged with irritation.
“He wants to work for you, Mr. Volkov. He’s hoping you can reinstate him into the position he had before your father cut him off. I told him I’d ask you,” he stutters, “but I also said he shouldn’t get his hopes up.”
“I see,” I murmur.
I have no desire to bring people I can’t trust any closer than my father did. But I also don’t have a problem getting what I want from them through any means possible.
“Tell him to keep you informed. When Marco calls, I want to be the first person to know. If he proves to be useful, then we’ll talk.”
“Yes, sir.”
I drop my phone as the call ends, my fingers curling and digging into my palm. Marco Ricci. He’s taken a lot from me—not just my father, but Isabella’s trust—and forced me to deal with people I would’ve cut off without a second glance.
It has to end. Sooner or later.
As the car pulls up outside the house, I gently shake Isabella’s shoulder. “We’re home,” I murmur.
She blinks slowly, taking seconds to adjust to her surroundings. “When did we get here?”
“Come.” I hold out my hand. “You should get some more sleep.”
We run into Leo and Polina in the living room—I hand Isabella off to Polina while Leo and I head outside. “Does she know?” he asks before I can say anything.
“Know what?” I ask as my brows dip in slight confusion.
“That you’re in love with her.”
“Love?” I echo.
He nods. “Yeah. You’re in love, Roman. I know you don’t know what it looks like, but you are.”
I don’t answer right away—not because he’s wrong, but because the truth settles too heavily on my chest to refute it. Because, somewhere deep down, I know he’s right. And maybe I’ve known it longer than I’ve been willing to admit.
He chuckles heartily, patting my shoulder. “It’s fun to see, I have to admit. Before Isabella, you were the most rigid person I’d ever known. Now, you’re a lot more human. Prone to sympathy and mistakes too.”
Is that why I haven’t found Marco?
I’ve never strayed off course until I met Isabella. Before I walked into that cathedral, the plan was simple.
Find Marco Ricci’s only child. Take her as my wife. Use her to find her father. Make her the mother of my child so his accursed bloodline ends with him.
It was simple, like every other plan I’ve made before, until I started thinking about all the ways she made my blood run hot and my emotions bleed into logic.
“It only sucks when you fight it,” Leo comments. “Embrace it, Roman. It’s my advice to you as your best friend. Embrace love.”
Not when it makes my chest feel like it might explode.
“I might have a lead on Marco,” I say gruffly, changing the subject. “Billie called on the way back. He said something about a safe house disguised as a laundromat. He’s not sure which,” I add before he can ask.
“Is the source reliable? We both know what Billie did to your father. What’s to say he’s not screwing you over the same way?”
“Because my father would’ve spared his life,” I say coldly. “But I won’t. If he fucks me over, he won’t find the sympathy you seem to think I have.”
“Fair.” He purses his lips. “What’s your plan, then? I could have someone look into the source if you want. Keep an eye on him and Billie in the meantime.”
“Do that.”
“You got it.”
I start to walk back into the house, but I stop a couple feet away from the door, turning to Leo again. “What are you doing here, by the way? Since Isabella got here, I’ve seen you in my house more than I have my entire life.”
His shrug is nonchalant. “Maybe you weren’t fun to be around? You happened to marry an amazing woman, and for some reason, Polina’s meals improved after she showed up. So maybe your housekeeper didn’t like you that much either.”
“That’s it,” I say, pointing in the other direction. “You can go home now.”
Leo crosses his arms. “I think I’ll hang around and see what’s for dinner. I’m getting a little tired of takeout. And if Isabella—”
“Nope.” I give him a shove. “Home. I won’t let you spend more time with her than I do. Goodnight.”
His laughter follows me as I walk away, and the implications of what I actually said dawn on me as I walk through the door.
I sounded possessive. Like a man ready to defend something he can’t bear to part with. My steps slow down as I reach the stairs and pause at the bottom, lifting my eyes upward.
Leo was wrong about one thing. I might not have experience with love, because I never thought it existed for me, but I can tell what it feels like.
Because I’m falling in love with Isabella.
I lean back, my eyes narrowed and trained on him as Billie walks into my office the next morning.
“Wait,” I say out of the blue, and he halts abruptly. “Where’s your confidant? Your source of information? The deal was that you had to bring him to me.” I tap my fingers on my desk. “Where is he?”
He shakes his head, eyes wide. “I don’t—I don’t know.”
“Don’t know?” My mouth tightens into a scowl. I let out a sharp breath. “Of course. You picked an unreliable source who bailed at the last minute. So why are you here? To tell me how hard you tried to convince him?”
Billie’s hands shoot up defensively. “No. It’s nothing like that. He was desperate to come with me, I swear. I called him this morning and was supposed to pick him up from his apartment, but he was gone when I got there. Place was trashed.”
Marco.
I don’t need to connect the dots. Marco got there first. Or someone did. And odds are, the source is dead.
“Fuck,” I mutter, jaw clenched as my fist curls. It takes everything in me not to slam it through the desk. “So we’re left with a needle in a fucking haystack, aren’t we? How many laundromats do you know that double as safe house fronts?”
Billie drags a hand down his face, mumbling something under his breath. When he looks up again, he exhales. “Shit,” he says. “Twenty. There are twenty that I know of.”
Twenty.
Out of those—assuming the intel’s even real—one of them holds Marco.
And I’m running out of time.
“You’re going to make yourself useful, Billie,” I say as I stand, rounding my desk. He takes a tentative step back, but I don’t move toward him. “You’ve been useless so far, but I’ll give you a third chance.”
His head shoots off in an eager nod.
“First off, you’re going to keep your mouth shut. I don’t want anybody finding out what you’ve told me. Unless you want to go the same way your informant did. Two—” I hold up my fingers. “You’ll keep your ears peeled. I can’t trust you to watch the safe houses, so I’m asking you to keep your ears peeled. You hear something, you report to me. You hear?”
“Yes,” he says quickly. “I understand.”
I sigh, leaning against the desk and bracing my arms behind me. “You can go.”
As the door closes, I reach for my phone. “Sergei,” I say as he responds. “I need you on something.”
I don’t care how long it takes for Marco to show up. The moment he does, at any of the laundromats, he’s as good as dead.
