Page 31 of Sweet Deception (Irish Kings #4)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

In the dark of night, I trail Shane and Donal to the Gallagher estate in my Aston Martin.

Every few seconds, the impulse to whip this car around and speed back to the safe house, back to that woman I can’t stop thinking about, incinerates me. And each time, I weather the instinct and do nothing like the coward I am.

I’m the worst man alive.

The look of betrayal on Nika’s face…

I never vowed to stay by her side, but leaving her behind felt fucking awful. Almost like ripping an organ from my body.

My brain tries to convince me that it’s for the best.

When all this blows over, Veronika Kotova should hate me. She should want to get away from me.

An iron fist squeezes my ribs when I realize that I may never touch her again.

I’ve never been this down about anything. Ever. Not even that first explosion-gone-wrong that I’ve regretted so much. I’m lost in all the irrational defiance exploding inside me.

Normally, a long drive would clear my head, but by the time we arrive at the estate, nothing is settled. I’m more on edge and hollow inside than I’ve been in a long time.

My focus is shot, and my brain’s revolving around thoughts of her. Only her.

I’m hardly paying attention in the war room as Shane and Donal review the evidence of Nika’s work and brief the others—Finn, Cian, and Rory.

“So, she helps endangered wives get away clean. What’s the big deal?” Finn asks the room after our fathers have laid out the bulk of it.

Shane shakes his head at his son’s blasé attitude. “She’s dangerous,” he insists. “She’s got the skills to help people vanish without a trace. Isn’t it obvious how that could be used against us if she’s a Sullivan minion?”

“But she’s not.” The protest escapes unbidden, sounding dangerously close to backtalk. “What I mean is…she used her hacking skills to try and get intel for us on Troy’s operation.”

“And that’s a reason to trust her?” My father’s voice is gentle but firmly skeptical.

“If she were really one of theirs, why would she betray them in order to help us?” Damn, even I can hear the defensiveness in my tone.

My incredulous friends and family gawk at me as awkward silence eats up the air in the room.

“What?” I meet Finn’s gaze. Is there something on my face?

My father is the next one to break this strange quiet. “Son, you’re too close to this.”

I narrow my eyes. “What are you talking about?”

“She infiltrated one of our weddings. She stole our data. And she’s been helping women affiliated with our enemies for years.”

“That doesn’t have anything to do with this.” I’m shaking my head. “She’s just trying to find her friend’s sister.” I’m pouring strength into my voice, so why do I sound so weak right now while surrounded by all the men I respect?

“A convenient story.” Shane’s heavy voice shuts the rest of us up. “She needs to be interrogated properly. Who knows what else she’s learned about our operations?”

“I already questioned her.” I click my lighter open and closed.

“And you were completely objective, were you?” My father’s knowing stare cracks something in my chest. An uncomfortable sting blooms through me.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“We saw how you looked at her.”

Those words hit me like a punch to the face.

Is my father accusing me of…falling for her?

Am I falling in…?

Fuck.

“Listen,” Shane cuts in just as I’m ready to explode. “This summit is our most pressing issue. If Red Hill establishes international trafficking routes through Sophia Kovaleva’s connections, forget undermining our operations. They’d become our biggest rival overnight.”

“We need to find out everything the hacktress really knows,” Cian muses aloud. “She has to know something.”

Finn scrubs his beard, his expression pensive and calculating. “This is about the family. We have to verify she wasn’t planted and that she won’t turn on us if we engage her.”

Shane releases a gruff grunt of approval.

I seethe in silence. A coward.

A couple of days later, I’m lying alone in my bed at night and staring up at my fifteen-foot ceiling. Doesn’t matter if I close my eyes or leave them open.

All I see is Nika in that safe house.

With those two guards who aren’t me.

Cradling Napalm in her arms like an abandoned child.

Suffocating guilt bears down on me.

My mind should be on the summit now that we’ve finally discovered the location. Shane has decided that we’re going to crash it. We have to. We can’t let this little business deal of Troy’s go forward. Not without risking a huge power shift in the criminal underworld.

I should be contemplating which smoke bombs and hand grenades to use to get us in and out.

Instead, I’m wondering if Nika’s warm enough. If she ate. If she’s scared. If she hates me.

Fucking hell.

I’m too miserable to even drive. And worse than that, I don’t trust myself. I know with every fiber of my being that if I go down to the garage and get behind the wheel of my car, I won’t stop driving until I’m back at that safe house, pulling her into my arms.

That I manage to sleep at all, even a little tiny bit, is nothing short of miraculous.

I usually don’t remember my dreams, but this time around, they linger. Scenes of carnage unfolding around me while I run, searching for someone amidst the massacre, desperately hoping she isn’t already dead?—

My phone spurts to life on my nightstand, and I slap my hand over it before dragging the cold block to my ear. It’s Finn.

“What is it?” I sound like shit, even to myself.

“My father just put in the order.”

I sit straight up in my bed. What does that mean?

“And?” I prompt my cousin.

“He sent Cian and Rory to do recon on Red Hill’s operations.”

“Fine. And?”

“You’re benched. Too compromised.”

A sarcastic laugh sticks in my throat. “Anything else?”

“Rory just sent me a copy of their recon notes. As we suspected, there’s a lot of activity going on, but we need to get eyes inside and perhaps some surveillance footage from the Red Hill servers in order to parse out what’s important?—”

My phone buzzes in the middle of Finn’s sentence. I pull it away from my ear and check the caller ID.

“I’ll call you back. It’s your dad.” I hang up on Finn to answer Shane. “Yes.”

“My office. Now.”

Tension locks my chest up tight as I spring out of bed and quickly dress. Nine times out of ten, if my uncle wants to see someone in his office, that means they’ve fucked up.

As I take the grand staircase down to the second floor and wind through the administrative hallways to the most imposing door of them all, I wonder if that’s the case for me too. Guards let me into Shane’s wood-paneled study, a space forever infused with oak and cigar smoke.

My uncle sits behind his massive desk, fingers steepled over paperwork, a cigarette pinched between his lips.

“You wanted to see me.” I grab one hand with the other, holding them both behind my back. When facing my uncle on my own like this, I do everything in my power to keep my tone level.

“Go get Veronika Kotova and bring her here for questioning.” Shane might as well have shot me through the heart.

“Excuse me?”

“We’ll keep her close and put her IT skills to work.” Shane lowers his hands. “But Darren. If she steps one toe out of line…”

The threat hangs unfinished in the air.

I don’t know whether to celebrate or push back. Every second I’ve spent away from that woman has killed me a little on the inside, but it’s still safer for her if we’re apart.

If she comes here…

If I bring her here…

Then what?