Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 86242 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86242 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
The Irish are my mortal enemies. The most dangerous fuckers I’ve ever met, and I’ve been swimming with sharks since I was a kid.
“We’re twenty minutes out,” I say. “We’re on my bike now. Ruthie’s car broke down, and I can’t tell if it was mechanical or if it was intentional.”
“Let me check with Matvei, see if we have surveillance outside the area you’re in. You were with her mother, yes?”
Brilliant. Why didn’t I think of that?
“Yes. Good idea. Thank you.”
“It’s filling up here fast. Everyone was at the house when Rafail hit the alarm. I’ll make sure I save space for you.”
She has to. She has my son. “Thank you.”
“Are you two hungry?”
“Yeah.”
She’s so cute. Literal lives are on the line, and Zoya’s worried about feeding us. Always the little mother hen—even when she was little. I remember the first time she saw a bruise on my shoulder, back when my father had decked me, the fucking asshole. I remember when she started realizing the bruises on my arms and cheeks weren’t from falling or walking into walls, like I told everyone. That I wasn’t just clumsy.
She reached out and touched a black eye with a small, trembling hand. “No one’s perfect, Vadka. But no one deserves this either.”
I slept on the Kopolov couch that night. And I never went home.
“I’ll have some food prepared for you,” she says. “Luka is tired. We had a busy day. He might be asleep when you get back.”
“I know. I just want what’s best for the little guy. Thank you.”
I decide to tell Ruthie what’s going on, so I fill her in on the comm and tell her she should come with me.
I realize then that I like the feel of her behind me. It makes me a little sad, honestly. I could never convince Mariah to sit on the back of the bike with me.
Ruthie reminds me of her sister—but only the best parts of Mariah. She probably fears that when I look at her, I see a smaller, younger version of her sister. Hell, I feared that.
But I don’t.
I see Ruthie. Brilliant, headstrong, somewhat chaotic Ruthie. The most loyal woman I know. The strongest.
The one who clutches her vulnerability with a death grip, unlike anyone else I’ve ever seen.
Dusk has fallen by the time we pull down a long, quiet street. I check behind us carefully, making sure we’re not being followed.
No shadows. No headlights tailing us. Just the steady rumble of the engine beneath us and the way Ruthie exhales—slow, uncertain—as I ease the bike down a narrow back alley.
We don’t pull up to the front of anything. That’s suicide. I cut the engine behind an abandoned auto shop with rusted signage and boarded windows. The back lot is gravel and overgrown. Only the locals know the garage door still works.
It groans as it lifts.
We roll in silently. No interior lights. Just a single, motion-activated bulb that flickers when we pass under it. I kill the ignition.
Ruthie slides off behind me. She looks around, frowning.
“This can’t be the safe house,” she says.
“No.” I take her hand before she can wander. “It’s the entrance.”
We walk. Around the side of the garage, across a broken alley. The kind of place you don’t look too long at if you want to stay alive.
I stop outside the side door of a grimy dive bar—“Crescent,” the faded lettering above the awning reads. It used to be a jazz bar back in the '60s. Now, it’s mostly forgotten.
But not by us.
We step inside. The place is nearly empty—just an old bartender cleaning a glass and a silent man in the corner who doesn’t glance up. No music. Just the hum of an old fridge and the tick of a slow ceiling fan.
Ruthie gives me a sidelong look. “This where we drink or die?”
I almost smile. “Both, maybe. Come on. Let’s get a table.”
“I mean, I could definitely use a cheap beer,” she mutters.
God, me too.
I look at my phone and see a message from Rafail.
Rafail
Zoya is trying to get Luka to sleep. He’s almost there. If you come in now he’ll get all wound up, so can you kill some time?
I show Ruthie. “Bingo.”
We get drinks and sit alone in the back. She regales me with stories from her work at the bar—A fight that broke out over a spilled drink when some suit in a linen blazer shoved the wrong man and got his teeth kissed by a barstool. A guy who tried to flirt with her by sliding her a poetry book—dog-eared and underlined, as if his annotated Pablo Neruda was supposed to win her over.
And then there was the wannabe playboy who ordered a “non-alcoholic vodka” and declared he was “sober but fun,” to which she replied, “Then why are you trying so hard?”