Brush of Despair (Dublin Devils Book 2) Read online

  Don watched him closely and Cian held the other man’s gaze, his expression as bland as he could make it.

  “Don’t fuck this up for me, Cian,” Don warned. “This is my ticket up the ladder, and if you ruin it, I’ll make it my life’s work to ruin you.”

  “Have a nice night, Don,” Cian drawled before he turned on his heel and walked away. As he slipped back in the door to Banshee, he finally took the deep breath he’d been craving, the one that meant he was still alive, heart still pumping, muscles still moving. Body and brain still functioning, still working to save his brothers.

  Then he did what he did at the end of every day—he closed his eyes and asked God to give him just one more.

  “Tell them I’m going to be at O’Neil’s alone,” Cian instructed Lila as she sat watching him over a table at Starbucks in Wicker Park.

  The place was crammed with its usual assortment of millennial entrepreneurs—actors working on their portfolios, commodities brokers researching their next trade, college students pretending to study.

  And one mobster meeting with one world-class hacker to discuss the Russian Bratva.

  “And will you?” she asked, looking skeptical.

  Cian chuckled. “What do you think?”

  “I think you shouldn’t be baiting them and you shouldn’t be in the same place they are if you can avoid it.” Her lips tightened, and he noted that today, she wore raspberry lipstick. Shiny, as always. Tempting, also per the norm. It had been weeks since she’d slept in his bed, and honestly, by now he’d expected her to be long gone, but her mother had been diagnosed with cancer before he could get Lila out of the country, and now she refused to budge while her mom was undergoing treatment.

  Her delicate features creased as she leaned forward and whisper-shouted at him. “They’re dangerous, and they have no sense of humor. Why would you voluntarily let them get near you?”

  He smiled benignly at her. It warmed his heart to know she cared about what happened to him. Generally, his brothers were the only people who gave a damn. To everyone else, he was a means to an end—an ATM to his employees, a weapon to be wielded against others by his father, a tool for prying open Chicagoland crime to the FBI.

  “I appreciate the concern,” he told her genuinely. “But my men are the best. They won’t let anything happen. We’ll have home field advantage on our side as well as the element of surprise.”

  “Why do you want to go face-to-face with them?” she asked, leaning back in her chair, slightly stiff, her cheeks pinking up in anger.

  He lowered his voice as he reached out to run a finger along her exposed wrist. He saw her eyes flare with surprise, but she didn’t pull away. Yes, they’d slept together—more than once—no, it didn’t mean they were together.

  “I need to get a feel for who I’m dealing with. All the research and dirt in the world can’t compare to what I’ll learn looking one of their men in the eyes. I need to know what they’re doing here, what they’re after, and how they plan to get it. But more than that, I need to know where the chinks are in their armor and how they deal with other people. That will tell me how to proceed.”

  She scowled at him. “Fine. When should I tell them you’ll be there?”

  “This afternoon, two p.m. Tell them you’ve been tapping in to my texts. Don’t give them an exact address for O’Neil’s. You don’t want to seem too up in my business.”

  Lila nodded. “Is that everything?”

  He watched her, the tense set of her shoulders, the way she wouldn’t look him in the eye. He didn’t like it, but for now, he couldn’t change it.

  “Yes. Is everything else going okay?”

  “It’s fine. Sales are solid. We seem to have settled into some patterns. Certain days and products are doing better.” She paused. “And I have something related to ask you about, something another client is wanting, but I’ll wait until I see if it’s even possible.”

  “Okay, whenever you’re ready, ask away.” He smiled some more, hoping to thaw her out. But it was met with silence and a dead gaze. “So should we phase out the losers?” he finally asked, mentally giving up—for now.

  “Yes, the more we can prune, the less chance of problems arising. Streamline everything to the top earners, then if something new comes along that we think might work, we can always do some pilot projects.”

  You’d think she was discussing the sale of magazines or jewelry rather than drugs. Lila was not only a genius with a computer, she was a damn good businesswoman.

  “Sounds fine to me. You want to give Finn a list of what to cut? So we can alter our purchasing.” He raised an eyebrow at her, and she looked away from him again.

  Then she did that thing she’d always done, stood abruptly, obviously out of whatever patience or forbearance she needed to deal with him. It was puzzling, but he’d begun to accept it.

  “Maybe next week. I’ll go send the message right away.”

  “Thank you,” he told her, rising from his own seat in a more relaxed fashion. “Does your mother have another doctor’s appointment today?”

  She nodded, swinging her messenger bag onto one shoulder.

  “You’ll tell me if either of you needs anything?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  She turned to leave, and he couldn’t stop himself from reaching out and grabbing her elbow. She looked at him over her shoulder, and her eyes nearly undid him. “I care, Lila from Rogue,” he murmured, his gaze burning into hers, holding her trapped as her lips parted and he saw her breath quicken. “I’m not able to give you what you deserve, but I care, and I’ll always be here.”

  She blinked at him, then gently pulled her arm from his grasp before turning her back and walking away from him.

  He thought he might never get used to watching people he cared for walk away.

  Chapter 2

  Katerina Zima Volkova opened her eyes to darkness. An oppressive and overwhelming darkness. It was only because she could hear breathing that she knew she wasn’t alone. Even though they were all jammed into the small space, there was no light anywhere, and she couldn’t see the body closest to hers no matter how much she strained her eyes.

  “Nadja,” she whispered, digging her elbow into soft flesh. “Nadja.” She elbowed her neighbor again.

  “Ukhodi!” Nadja mumbled, slapping at Katerina’s elbow. Go away.

  “Nyet. Vstavay,” Katerina replied. Wake up.

  Nadja cursed and moved. Katerina could feel her friend sitting up next to her.

  “What do you want?” Nadja snapped as someone across the room shushed them both.

  “We need to try to get out of here,” Katerina whispered. “There are only two men in the hall, and they’re asleep. This may be our chance.”

  Nadja sighed, and the resignation in that one small sound sent Katerina’s anger spinning to the surface.

  “We’re not giving up,” she gritted out beneath her breath.

  “Katya,” Nadja said softly as she placed a hand on Katerina’s arm. “They are too powerful, too strong. They will find us, and it will be so much worse.”

  “Worse than being forced to service filthy men in an even filthier brothel?” Katerina snapped. “Worse than being told when we can and can’t eat, bathe, use the bathroom? Worse than never seeing friends or family again?”

  Nadja snorted softly in the pitch black. “It’s already too late for that.”

  Katerina tried not to think about the moment earlier in the day when the men had chosen Nadja to take away. Every day they chose a handful of women in the room and took them away, bringing them back several hours later. Sometimes the women were beaten, sometimes they were crying. Some hadn’t spoken since they’d returned. And Nadja had come back with glassy eyes and slurred words. She’d mumbled something at Katya, then fallen asleep on the bare, dirty mattress they shared. When she’d woken a few hours later, she’d pasted on a big smile and said to Katya, “Now get the cards back out, because I was winning.”

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sp; Katerina tentatively put her hand out, meeting up with Nadja’s knee. She gave it a quick squeeze, then whispered, “If we get away it doesn’t have to happen again.”

  “Katya.” Nadja cupped the back of Katerina’s head and drew their foreheads together. “I’ve seen these men. There is no getting away.”

  Then she lay back down, murmuring for Katerina to get some sleep, because they never knew when the men would come again.

  Katerina stared into the darkness, hearing the women around her as they slept, dreamed, cried. Some prayed quietly to themselves; others whispered to one another like she and Nadja. She breathed deeply of the odor of sweat and fear. How long would they be kept here like this, she wondered. And how many more opportunities would they have to escape before they were taken someplace even worse?

  Something in Katerina’s gut told her a window of opportunity was closing, but she wouldn’t leave Nadja, no matter what. They’d planned to move to America together, filling out the applications that their friend Jakob had given them for jobs as hostesses. They didn’t know what hostesses were, but Jakob said it was working in restaurants, making the diners feel comfortable. “It’s easy work,” he’d said. “They like pretty girls who can smile.”

  Katerina and Nadja had been thrilled. They were young, they were pretty, they could smile. It sounded much easier than cleaning offices or selling cigarettes on the street. Katerina did both. And with the hostess jobs, Jakob told them, they would get a one-room apartment to live in, plus some wages to pay for other things. So for months, Katerina and Nadja had planned, waiting to hear if they’d gotten the jobs. Jakob said not to worry, it was a sure thing. But it took time to get the immigration paperwork, and they should count their blessings the company that was hiring them did all that. Most employers wouldn’t.

  Then the day had come when Jakob knocked on the door of Katerina’s small apartment she shared with her mother.

  “The paperwork is done,” he’d said. “Get your things, because you need to go to the airport right away.”

  She’d left a note for her mother, not that it mattered. Paula Volkolva hadn’t cared much about anything Katerina did in years. The older woman spent her days working as a washroom attendant at a private luncheon club before she’d move on to her other job as the second-shift housekeeper in the home of a very wealthy government official. By the time Paula came home at midnight, she didn’t care where her daughter was or what she was doing. And Katerina imagined Paula wouldn’t be terribly distressed she’d run off to America either. Although she’d miss Katerina’s contribution to the rent.

  It had all seemed so perfect those first few hours. Katerina and Nadja had been taken by bus to the airport with a group of other young women. There were twelve of them, and they waited in a special lounge at a private airstrip for a small jet they were told was owned by the company they’d be working for.

  Katerina had never been to an airport, flown on a plane, or lived outside her mother’s neighborhood in Moscow. She had been in awe of the sight of the jet sitting on a darkened runway when they were finally allowed to board late at night.

  They’d spent the next fourteen hours flying. First to Helsinki where they boarded a different plane, and then to the city that was supposed to be their new home—Chicago, USA. She watched the sun sparkle off the mirrored windows of the skyscrapers as their plane had swung over the city on its descent. It had been morning when they’d landed, and even as exhausted as she was, Katerina had experienced a surge of hope unlike anything she’d ever felt.

  Finally, she’d thought. Finally her life was going to change. She stepped off the plane, took a deep breath, and opened herself to all the possibilities she’d never allowed herself to consider. A beautiful home, a safe neighborhood, a family that loved her.

  Then a large man named Sergei had grabbed her arm and muscled her into the pitch-black back of a generic van, and her entire future had crumbled like the bricks of her mother’s apartment block.

  The heavy bag thudded dully as Cian punched it—right, left. Right, left. Sweat beaded his brow, and he grunted with the exertion of each deadly blow.

  “When I was a younger man, I won many amateur fights in Moscow,” an accented voice said behind him. Cian pulled his last punch and turned slowly to face a stocky man who looked to be in his late forties, but still impressively fit—broad chested, hard as steel.

  His gaze darted over the man’s shoulder where he saw two men with obvious shoulder holsters standing alongside the door. But he also saw his own men on the catwalk that ran around the high ceiling, AR-15s aimed at the Russians, who apparently hadn’t realized the competition was there.

  Cian gave the man a cold smile. “I’m guessing you’re not here to tell me you’ve moved in next door and you’re bringing cookies.”

  The man’s cold expression didn’t crack. “Oh, I’m moving in next door, Mr. MacFarlane, but I’m definitely not bringing cookies.” He began to stroll casually around the area, looking at the equipment, touching a weight, inspecting a bag. “My name is Sergei Petrov. I am a businessman, like yourself, and I have recently acquired the rights to operate here in Chicago.”

  Cian pulled off first one glove, then the other, slowly unwrapping the tape on his hands afterward. He leaned back on the nearby fighting platform, letting the ropes dig into the bare skin of his back.

  “That’s odd,” he said with a smile. “I don’t recall giving anyone permission to operate here in Chicago.”

  Sergei chuckled, but even that was cold as ice. “No, you wouldn’t. We don’t ask permission from others, merely take what we desire.”

  “And while that may have worked in New York…or Moscow,” Cian answered as if he’d barely heard the man, “that’s not how things work here.”

  Sergei snorted in derision. “You really think you can stop me?” he asked, stepping closer.

  Cian kept his gaze firm and pushed off the ledge he leaned against, coming nose to nose with Sergei. “Oh, I know I can,” he answered in a low voice. “Whatever you think you’re going to be doing here, you’re dead wrong. Nothing goes on in Chicago without my permission. It’s MacFarlane territory, and that’s not going to change.”

  “And the Mexicans?” Sergei asked, eyes narrowed.

  “Because I allow them,” Cian spat. “And they know it as well as you do.”

  Sergei leaned in closer, his voice almost a whisper as he replied. “Yet, for someone who is so in control, you appear to have none at the moment. Your brothers don’t have what it takes to stop me, we both know it, and your father is sick in the body and the mind. What’s to keep me from simply killing you now and doing whatever the hell I want?”

  Cian grinned, then gestured at the ceiling. “Go ahead,” he said mildly. “Try it.”

  Sergei’s gaze went up, and the moment he realized what waited in the rafters, his skin mottled red with fury.

  “Home field advantage,” Cian said with a slight tilt of his head.

  Sergei began backing away, anger making his movements jerky. “We’re not done, MacFarlane. The battle might have been won, but war is long, and I have lived through many.”

  Cian waved like a prom queen as Sergei jerked his chin at his men and marched out the doors.

  “That was badass, boss,” Danny said, strolling out from behind the door of the back office where he’d been skulking.

  “That,” Cian answered as he reached for his water bottle and took a long draught to calm his racing pulse, “was only the beginning.”

  Ever vigilant, Liam MacFarlane watched as his brother’s men unloaded cargo from a truck outside a warehouse his family owned along the I-90. He stood, legs slightly spread, hands hanging loosely in front of him, a Ruger 9mm tucked in the holster under his arm, which he made no effort to conceal.

  “Mr. Mac,” one of the guys called as he held a box labeled Bath Salts, “Do you want all these to go in the warehouse, or should we leave some in the truck?”

  “It all goes here,”
he answered. The forty-seven boxes would be here for only a few hours while the “bath salts” were repacked into smaller boxes with shipping labels that would send them all over the country. First thing tomorrow morning, the United States Postal Service would be collecting the new packages and distributing them like it did for a million other businesses all over the country every day.

  The only difference being these boxes were filled with opioids and heroin.

  The idea had been cooked up between his younger brother Finn and Xavier Rossi, the sleazy hacker who originally ran the dark website Rogue. It was simple, really—place drugs in with lavender bath salts to help disguise the appearance and odor, take orders on the website, then ship the product via good old-fashioned US Mail.

  Liam had to admit, it had sounded like a whole lot of stupid when he’d first heard the plan, but business had been booming for two months now, with no signs of stopping, and the postal service had no clue what they were sending around the country. But really, he thought, why had he ever doubted? Finn had planned it out, and Finn was a freakin’ genius.

  Liam’s phone chimed, and he looked at the screen, seeing a text from Cian.

  You done with the shipment yet?

  He texted back, his big thumbs less than agile on the smooth screen. As Finn often said, he needed to get a “Liam-sized” phone.

  Just about. You need me?

  He watched as the dots danced across the screen. His heart took an extra beat or two as it always did when he worried about Cian. After all, Cian was his best friend, the guy he’d looked up to his entire life, the reason he did what he did and was who he was.

  Meet me at Banshee when you’re done. We need to talk.

  Dammit. Liam looked impatiently at his phone. Everything had been a clusterfuck for the last two months. His youngest brother, Connor, had made a series of immature mistakes that had nearly gotten the family into a war with their nearest rivals, then he’d left the family and the business altogether, a decision Liam was still unsure about but had agreed to support because Cian asked him to.