Page 9 of Nine Months to Bear

I hired her on the spot.

I grimace as I once again disassemble the gun and start laying out the parts on the velvet cloth. “If I wanted your psychoanalysis, I’d hire a fucking shrink. What do you have for me?”

Mikayla would laugh, if that was the kind of thing she ever did. Since it’s not, she just arches a silent brow. “Straight to business it is, then.”

I pay her obscene amounts of money to know everything about everyone. As she sets a stack of photographs down in front of me, I see that today’s surveillance package includes Frederick Carson writhing in his Mass General hospital bed. The son of a bitch has three broken ribs and a fractured jaw after a “fall down some stairs,” per the report.

Poor guy. Those pesky stairs can get anyone, just when they least expect it.

But after the way he cornered Olivia, he should be lucky the “stairs” didn’t rip his intestines out through his asshole and hang him with them.

A rage I haven’t felt in years threatens to yawn open inside of me, hungry for blood. But it snaps its jaws shut when I see the next photo.

Olivia. Pages of her. Getting coffee. Meeting patients. Arranging white orchids in her office window, sunlight catching in her hair.

I stare at that last one longer than the others.

But only because I’m observing. Cataloging. Gathering intelligence on an imminent business decision.

That’s what I tell myself, anyway.

“Her clinic is bleeding money,” Mikayla adds, tapping one photo where Olivia’s shoulders are tight with tension as she speaks to a supplier. “She’s three months behind on rent and the building owner is getting antsy. And that security system…” She makes a disgusted sound in the back of her throat, like Olivia’s lackluster self-protection has personally offended her. “Two cameras from 2010 and not a single fucking alarm. Even her file cabinet is a plastic hunk of junk from IKEA. Anyone could walk in and?—”

“I get the idea.” I start to hand the whole stack of photos back to her, but then I stop. I retain the last one, of Olivia with the orchids, and give up the rest. “Burn these.”

Mikayla snorts when she sees the one I’ve kept. “I’ve never seen you sentimental. It’s cute.”

I tuck the photo in my pocket and rack the Glock’s slide. “Do you have any more commentary? If so, go down-range and stand in front of the paper target before you deliver it.”

Even the death threat doesn’t earn me more than another eyebrow raise. “You might want to know that someone has been asking questions about her clinic,” says Mikayla. “Not our people. Not sure who, though.”

My blood turns to ice water. “Find out.”

If Mikayla thinks I’m being sentimental again, she doesn’t mention it. She gives one sharp nod and leaves as silently as she arrived.

Alone, I take the photo back out and stare at it again. My gaze keeps wandering back to Olivia’s delicate fingers arranging those white orchids into perfect order. I recognize the impulse because I do the same thing.

She and I have different methods, but they disguise the same madness.

Which is how I know that, behind that immaculate facade, Olivia Aster is a chaos of contradictions.

Proud but desperate.

Refined but raw.

Prim in public, but that wild, rabbit-fast pulse when I touched her wrist tells a different story.

Prey recognize their predators. That’s all this is.Chemistry. Biology. Pure fucking natural instinct.

I’m still staring at the photo when Taras Vasiliev, my other second-in-command, arrives in a cloud of cigarette smoke. That’s rarely good news—he only smokes when he’s nervous.

Taras has the charm of a rabid bear and the subtlety of a sledgehammer, but he’s been my best friend since our days running guns in Grozny. Back then, we were foolish teenagers playing at war.

Then the real thing found us.

I still remember the night we swore brotherhood in a bombed-out church, reeking of blood and vodka while mortars painted the sky in shades of hell.

“Mornin’ to ya, Stef.” He punctuates the greeting by tossing a file on top of the loose gun parts, scattering my neat organization. He takes a sick pride in pissing me off like that.