Page 113 of The Mafia Enforcer's Temptation

Then he walks away, leaving me cold and alone, despite the warmth of the day filtering in.

But I’m not going to chew on it. Things are what they are. We’re uneasy enemies… frenemies… people in a difficultsituation that has a bonus side dish of scorching hot sex. That’s it. And in a year, I’ll have my bratva, and he’ll…

I’ll find a way to make sure the Murphy family has nothing but a client’s access to the routes.

Nothing more, and if they complain, I’ll wipe them out.

Somehow.

Later, in the living room, I throw myself into what the code might be. Our last name means wolf, so I jot down as many deviations, and then I do the letter to number conversions. I jot down my birthday and my mother’s birthday.

And in the end, despair and anger bites.

Combinations are endless.

Launceston said code, so… I don’t even have a start, apart from my last name, which has got to be too obvious.

I ball up the piece of paper and throw it across the room.

“You look pissed off,” Declan says. “Do you want to come with me to Lucie’s pet café?”

I don’t really have anything else to do, so I let him fit me with the cat backpack, the weight of the black cat somehow comforting as he takes the dog’s leash.

It’s not that far of a walk to the pet café. Next door is Dirty Harry’s, and inside I can see Harry talking to a woman picking out flowers. These Murphy men. They love their women.

Dec holds the door for me to the café and I step inside. He takes the carrier from me and unleashes Arnold, kissing Lucie’s cheek lovingly. She grins.

It pushes the lump in my throat higher. They clearly love each other like siblings, and I don’t have anything like that. I never will.

Tatiana will grow up with that possible monster Romanov, a man who, I think, does love her. And she… she already loves him, probably calls him Dad.

I’m just someone she sees on occasion.

“Hey, Ava, look…” He picks up a puppy similar to the one I found, but he’s bigger, stronger, not at all as runt-like.

I take the pup as Declan plucks a fuzzy kitten, this one chocolate-colored with blue eyes. “Did you…?”

“Early hours of this morning. I told Clawsy and Arnie I’d avenge their brethren.” And he grins, though his green eyes are dark and savage. “Thanks to you, we tracked them down. So many animals crammed in. We saved them all.”

“We?”

“I didn’t go alone, Ava. Seamus… I had to stop him from torturing these people.” He studies me. “Never seen him so furious. For the animals, of course, but I think for you, too, that you had to find the dead ones.”

“I don’t think it was for me.”

“If you say so,” Declan says. “I’m just letting you know what I saw.”

I stroke the top of the little puppy’s head. “Are the people who dumped the animals dead?”

“Yes,” he says.

And I nod. “Good.”

Through dinner before the event, Seamus played the part of loving husband. The little touches, the smiles, and looks all turned my heart inside out and made my stomach flutter and sing.

He still does play the part for all to see. The interim head of Volkov is here with us in the bar where he’s been pinned down by Seamus and Callahan. He slips and slides, trying to wriggle free of the gathering at the townhouse.

I stand by Seamus. He slips an arm around me, easing me in against him as he kisses my throat. Then he looks at Ivan, my uncle’s chosen second. “I’d hate for it to get out that the current Volkov leadership’s scared of the actual Pakhan because she’s female. It won’t do your business well. And my family and I would hate to see her heritage crumble and get taken over by others.”