Page 16 of Nothing More

Ian came to stand at Toly’s side and peer down into the box. “Christ,” he said, tonelessly. “There’s a gift.” When Toly glanced up at him, he found his head cocked, gaze slightly glazed, but more curious than alarmed. He was a bit of a sick fuck, after all; perhaps skewering Waverly had awakened a dormant bloodlust within him.

“What?” Cassandra asked, approaching them. “What is it.”

Toly snapped the box shut. “I need to call Maverick.”

“What?” Cassandra asked again, drawing closer.

Ian turned to intercept her with a gentle hand on her arm and a murmured reassurance.

Toly caught Miles’s gaze, and tried through eye contact alone to convey the seriousness of the situation.

His expression was grave, and his nod immediate. “Come on, Cass,” he said, going to his sister. “Let’s go see what they’ve got in the canteen, yeah? It smells incredible.”

Cassandra clearly didn’t want to leave, and even Raven seemed poised to protest.

“Bruce will accompany them,” Ian said, motioning toward his bodyguard.

A bodyguard who made the slightest face of displeasure at being separated from his charge, but who nodded and escorted the two young people out.

(Maverick had looked at him funny once when he’d called a prospect his own age aboy. Toly saw his years on earth as irrelevant; he hadn’t been a boy since the night he killed a man for Andrei Kozlov’s approval.)

When the three of them were alone, Ian went to relock the door. “They’ll be fine,” he said. “Bruce won’t let anyone lay a hand on them.”

“Melanie’s locking the whole floor down,” Raven said, falling heavily to the sofa, one arm around her middle and the other hand pressed to her forehead. “No one can get in and out.”

Which would probably panic an employee who chose that moment to leave for a late lunch or early commute, but so be it. In the moment, Toly didn’t care.

He set the closed box on the coffee table and watched Raven shrink backward an inch on the sofa. He needed to call Maverick, yes.

But first, he walked across the office to the painted Chinese cabinet with a marble top that served as a makeshift bar. The lidded ice bucket was restocked every morning, and he filled a low glass with cubes before fixing a gin & tonic.

Raven looked up with bewilderment when he offered it to her.

“Here,” he urged, leaning closer; the ice cubes clinked together, releasing a torrent of bubbles to the surface. “So you stop shaking.”

He realized after he said it how it might sound. He’d meant the drink to settle her nerves; help her draw herself together so they could have a proper conversation about what this might mean, and who might have sent it. But he could see that it might have sounded like annoyance; like her shaking was bothering him and he wanted her to stop.

Slowly, her expression hardened to a cold glare, and he decided that was better than the lost, floundering look of before. She wasn’t a woman made for uncertainty and fright.

“Just brilliant,” she said, snatching the glass from his hand. “I have to be sat down with a brandy like a bloody Victorian novel heroine.”

“Technically, that’s a G&T,” Ian said, and then murmured soothingly as he sat down beside her and slipped an arm across her stiff shoulders.

Toly dropped into one of the chairs opposite them, the one Smith had used, to be precise. He perched on the edge, legs spread so he could rest his forearms on his thighs and lean forward, closer to the box – and to her, sitting nearest.

“Drink that,” he said, and attempted to gentle his voice. Her brow popped up in response. “You’ll feel better.”

“I feel like a person shouldn’t be encouraged to use alcohol in a medicinal way,” she muttered, but took a long sip, and looked calmer afterward. He’d made note, the last time she fixed one for herself, of her preferred ratio of gin to tonic water. A brief flash of surprise touched her gaze, as she lowered her glass to rest on her knee, and then she got serious. “Right, then. Someone’s trying to send a message. The question iswho, and the question iswhat message?”

Ian crossed his legs and propped an elbow on the arm of the sofa, elegant fingertips resting at his temple. With his free hand, he gestured toward Toly. “I think now’s a good time to utilize our best resource in this instance, darling.”

Toly stared at him.

Ian’s brows went up. “YouwereRussian mafia, weren’t you? This business” – a flick of fingertips toward the jewelry box – “fairly screams organized crime.”

“Yes,” Raven said, before he could answer, “you were bratva. That’s the whole reason Maverick put you on my detail.”

He frowned. It wasn’t thewholereason. Keeping him in a swanky high-rise away from street-level violence was a good way to keep Kozlov’s people from recognizing him and jumping him in an alley, sure. But he’d been assigned to Raven because he was quiet, astute, good with a knife, quick to react, had a keen eye for detail, and a host of other skills that made him the best fit for the job. Skills he’d acquired while part of the Kozlov bratva.