Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 99191 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 496(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99191 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 496(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
“You really went into that house knowing that he was using you.”
Anger rose, black and ugly. “At least he’s doing something about his problems instead of just ignoring them and pretending like they never existed. I want justice. Aiden is going to give it to me.”
“You are so goddamn naive, Charlotte. Someone within the O’Malley household is an informant. Their identity is classified information, but Aiden O’Malley picked you in order to get back at me for what he perceives as a betrayal.”
The fact that he was telling her this now meant that either the information was compromised…or he was so worried about her that he was doing whatever it took to get her to safety.
She wanted to believe it was the latter. She wanted to believe it so badly, she almost got into the car that pulled up next to her, its tinted windows and nondescript coloring marking it as government-issued.
But she knew her father too well. John Finch was all about the bottom line, and the bottom line included every member of organized crime he could get put behind bars. The only reason he’d admit that there was an informant in the first place was because Aiden knew and had taken steps to cut off his contact. “How long has he known?”
“I can’t be sure…”
Which was an answer in and of itself. Aiden was a planner. Despite some astronomical differences of opinion, he loved the hell out of his siblings. Someone like Dmitri Romanov wouldn’t hesitate to make an informant disappear—permanently. But to do that to a sibling? Aiden would hesitate. He would gather information, and he would plan, and when he moved, it would be to shut down the threat without harming his sibling.
In this case, the threat was Charlie’s father.
She swayed on her feet, feeling sick to her stomach. “Did he threaten me?” She couldn’t wrap her head around it. He was ruthless, yes, but the man who’d taken her to bed and told her that he wanted a real relationship was not one to coldly use her for his own gain. Except…her own father had allowed her to walk into danger because it served his purposes. He might not have liked it, but he hadn’t given her any warning, because he didn’t trust her.
Because the bottom line mattered more.
If her dad would do that, why wouldn’t Aiden? They’d known each other only a couple weeks, after all. Her instincts told her that he’d never hurt her, but she’d already established that her instincts couldn’t be trusted.
Her dad hesitated long enough that she knew he was considering lying to her. “Not directly. But he threw your relationship—if you can call it that—in my face and threatened untoward things if I didn’t do what he said.”
Untoward things. For her dad, that could mean anything from murdering her to dating her. She sighed, suddenly so tired that she could barely form words. “What did he want from you?”
“That’s not important.”
Traffic had the car in front of her veering away from the curb and back into the stream of cars in the road. Good riddance. “It’s important to me.”
Her dad cursed, his legendary patience having apparently run dry. “He wanted me to be at a dock in New York at a specified time and date. It’s obviously a trap, and I’m not in the business of jumping when mob bosses tell me to jump.”
A dock at a specific time and date—likely when he’d orchestrated for Romanov and the Eldridges to be in the midst of a gunfight. Despite everything, she almost smiled. That was really smart of Aiden. If the two enemies didn’t kill each other off, the FBI would be there to clean up the mess.
But getting them there in the first place was the problem. Her father wasn’t the type to respond to anonymous tips without a whole bucketful of doubt. He’d be so busy looking for the trap, he might miss the opportunity to see justice done once and for all.
“You should go. His tip is solid.”
“You’re just saying that because he said it. The only reason you believe him is because you’re sleeping with him.”
She jerked back and almost ran into a man walking past. The stranger gave her a dirty look and kept walking, but she barely paid him any attention. “Do you really think that little of me?” Sure, she’d gotten carried away with Aiden, but she was also an adult and in possession of most of her common sense. He might try to tell her the sky was pink, but that didn’t mean she’d believe him, no questions asked.
That her father thought she was so foolish—so easily swayed—stung more than she wanted to admit. But then, she shouldn’t be surprised. It was just more of the same, after all. Bitterness clawed its way up her throat and emerged from her mouth. “When your daughter is a dirty cop, all her decisions are subject to criticism.”