Page 117 of Theirs to Desire (Club M: Boxed Set)

NOLAN

W hat a clusterfuck.

Caleb is looking like a kicked puppy. Kiera’s on the verge of a breakdown. Things are imploding spectacularly.

I should have never walked into this room. Serves me right for thinking with my dick.

“She can’t be alive,” Kiera whispers. “How can she be alive? It’s not possible.”

Keep her talking. “Why not?”

“What do you mean, why not?” she snaps. “I was in the morgue. I saw her body, what was left of it. Vladimir Sirkovich ordered Greg’s death because he skimmed off the top.

Bianca got in the way.” She shakes her head from side to side.

“I don’t know what this is,” she says, gesturing to Caleb’s phone.

“I don’t know what kind of sick and twisted game you’re playing. I don’t want any part of it.”

Her hands are tightly wrapped around her body. She’s biting her lip. Her face is pale. We threw one hell of a curveball her way.

None of us have handled this well.

“Two years before you met him, Miles Armstrong’s wife was arrested in Los Angeles and sentenced to five years in prison for dealing drugs.

She was working for one of the cartels. Armstrong worked at the LAPD at the time.

His career fell apart as a result of her arrest. He divorced her and moved to San Diego.

” Caleb and I have spent most of the day gathering information.

“Armstrong loathes the mafia. He blames them for what happened. He will stop at nothing to see them all in jail.” I stare absently at the flogger in my hands and toss it on the floor.

“He needed your testimony to convict Sirkovich. You wouldn’t have risked your sister. ”

Her knees start to tremble. “But they did a DNA test.”

I grab her shoulders and guide her into a couch. While I’m about it, I turn on the light switch. This is not a conversation for candlelight.

Caleb still hasn’t said a word. Damn it all to hell. “In that case, Armstrong lied about the results. You were a means to an end. He used you.”

Her eyes fill with tears, and I feel like a dick. “What happened to Bianca? Why didn’t she find me? It’s been eight years.” They overflow down her cheeks, and she brushes them away with the back of her hand. “I disappeared,” she gasps. “I went into witness protection. Oh God, this is my fault.”

“It’s not your fault.” Caleb clenches his eyes shut. “Armstrong deliberately misled you. The rest of the department was too busy celebrating Sirkovich’s conviction to dig deeper.”

“Where is Bianca now? Where was this photo taken? When can I see her?”

Caleb’s phone beeps again. He glances at the screen. Whatever he reads there isn’t good news, because his expression turns grim. “This photo was taken in Belize last week,” he says. “Your sister was on vacation. Most of the year, she lives in New York.”

Kiera’s not stupid. “You didn’t answer my last question. When can I see her?”

Caleb runs his hand over his face. My gut tightens. Whatever it is that Derek Haas has found, it isn’t good.

“Tell me about your sister,” he stalls. “Why was she involved with Greg Dratch? He was much older than her.”

Kiera opens her mouth to protest, and Caleb holds out his hand. “Please. Humor me.”

“Okay,” she sighs. “What do you want to know? Bianca is six years younger than me. My mother was an alcoholic, so it fell on me to raise her.” She gives us a small smile.

“Even when our mother was alive, we were dirt poor. We didn’t have money for clothes or food, let alone presents and pretty things.

” Her gaze turns wistful. “One day when I was fifteen, one of my mother’s boyfriends gave us twenty bucks because he felt sorry for us.

It was the most money either of us had ever seen in our lives.

We were so excited…” Her voice trails away. “We went straight to the mall.”

“What did you buy?”

She shrugs. “I gave Bianca my money. There was a doll she wanted to buy, and it was thirty-five dollars.”

I grew up rich. My parents were distant, but I never wanted for material possessions.

I always had more toys than I knew what to do with.

Not so the woman in front of me. I can picture a much younger Kiera taking her baby sister to the mall, selflessly giving up her money so Bianca can buy the toy she wants. It’s heartbreaking.

“What did you want to buy?”

She doesn’t meet our eyes. “Nothing important.” Her cheeks are pink.

“I wanted to shop at the Gap. I’d never bought clothes at a mall.

” She shakes her head, dispelling the past. “I was used to being poor, but Bianca hated it. She was beautiful. She loved pretty things. Then, when she started high school, she met Greg. He took her shopping. Bought her clothes, gave her jewelry.” Her eyes darken.

“She was a good kid, she really was. But she’d never had nice things in her life.

Greg Dratch was a twenty-two-year-old man grooming a fifteen-year-old child, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do. Bianca wouldn’t listen to reason.”

One way or the other, Dratch will pay for this, I vow silently. I will make sure of it.

“So that’s why she was involved with him,” Kiera finishes. “Now tell me what’s going on.”

Caleb doesn’t look at either of us. He walks around the room, mechanically blowing out each candle. There’s a metaphor here about his dreams going up in flames, but my head aches and I’m too tired to think.

“Your sister isn’t with Dratch now,” Caleb says. “She’s the mistress of an arms dealer.”

Ice trickles down my spine.

“His name is Luis Martinez.”

No. Tell me this isn’t happening. Tell me that life isn’t filled with such cruel coincidences.

“Your sister wears designer clothing. She vacations at expensive resorts. She’s surrounded, at all times, by half a dozen bodyguards.

I don’t know if she’s with Martinez because she wants to be, or if she’s with him because she doesn’t have a choice.

She might be ignorant of what he does for a living.

She might not know what he’s capable of.

Or she might be fully aware of what he is but is ignoring it because she likes what he can buy her. ”

Martinez is a ghost. He travels under a half-dozen passports. He communicates with his people electronically. Nobody knows who he is.

Until today, I thought that the only way to get to him was through Gregory Dratch. Now, there’s a second way. Bianca Thompson. Except that would put her life in danger.

Kiera looks like her heart is slowly being crushed.

Fuck it all. “I will help you,” I say out loud, throwing three years of hard work down the drain. Caleb lifts his head and stares at me, and I ignore him. “I will find a way for you to contact your sister. If she wants out of her relationship, I will make it happen. Okay?”

“Okay.” She exhales shakily and looks around the room. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry about what?” Caleb’s face could be carved from ice.

“Sorry you were prepared to sleep with me to find out what you wanted to know?” He gets to his feet and stalks to the door.

“I thought that there was real attraction between us, but you were willing to throw it all away the moment you saw Dratch’s photo.

” He puts his hand on the doorknob. His voice is very quiet.

“You just needed to ask, and I would have told you everything.”

Then he leaves.

I want to leave too. It feels like a pit is opening up inside me. Women have slept with me for information before. It’s never mattered until now.

Kiera’s shoulders slump. “He’s angry with me.”

It’s not a question. I don’t answer. There’s nothing to say.

“Will he come around?”

I look at her for a long time. “I can either tell you the truth, or I can tell you what you want to hear.”

Her face falls. “The truth.”

“Caleb cares about you. You were going to use him.” I need air.

I need to be anywhere but here. I get to my feet.

“Caleb will help you because he’s a decent guy and that’s what he does.

But whatever this was…” I gesture to the candles.

The leather bench. The flogger that lies discarded on the floor. “It’s over.”