Page 45 of Marked By the Devil

She hadn’t been hired in any traditional sense of the word. I had taken her. Kidnapped her. But in the process of figuring out what I should do with her, killing her hadn’t come to mind. Hurting her didn’t, either. Nor did releasing her.

It wouldn’t be an overnight shift to get her to lose the idea of this being temporary, though. I’d need to make sure she saw no need to go back to her former life.

If there was even a place for her in her former life.

What became abundantly clear over the next week of her being at my house and working at the mansion with Elena and Trojan was that she had a place with us. It was never an easy or simple concept of finding where money went and who was hiding it, but she was working with us to uncover exactly who was bribing who. And if it could be related to Gregori.

Of course, her ethics were challenged. I knew that she struggled with participating in anything that a Mafia family would want. But she did. She was at the computer, looking at the fraud, searching for the evidence, and trying to do what she could do to help us get more answers about the threats that we faced. It helped that she had experience with doing this before—only on the other side of the law.

By the time the third week of her “stay” ended, I couldn’t imagine not having her around. When I picked her up from the mansion at the end of that third week, I took her out to another restaurant, but she told me more updates about what she was looking into.

“Trojan tried to set me up with hacking access to the internal messaging program that they use. My logins are not valid, which would have made this easier.” She frowned. “I’m not sure that they were ever actually fully activated. I was only there for one day before I went on that stakeout.”

“But it is another avenue to explore, right?”

“Yes, it will be. Getting into the emails would be another route to getting information, but there are so many apps and programs where you have encrypted and automatically deleted and untraceable communication, too.”

Of course there was. But I didn’t expect her to pull off any magic trick. Except for the ones in bed.

It didn’t escape my notice that she never asked about anyone looking for her. No family members could be hunting her down, but her workplace was another thing.

Does she suspect that she was put on that stakeout just to be a scapegoat?

It had to have crossed her mind that she was used as a person to be shot in place of Smithson that night.

In the limbo of being forced to work for me, and be in the company of my Mafia family, maybe she just did not want to talk about it. Such that if she didn’t have a place in her “normal world” where good and bad existed as clear-cut, black-and-white pieces for everyone to follow, she would have to admit that she had no place anywhere.

Which wasn’t true at all.

You could stay with me.

I admired her profile as we walked back toward the car waiting for us.

If she could prove to all of us that she was loyal to the Bratva and would never consider going back to her former workplace and resume working against us, I would be the next one in line to bring a woman into our inner circle.

Adrik started it when he took Elena.

Maksim was second when he was arranged to marry Carina.

Lev had just married Mila, buying her as a slave before he could realize she was much more.

Was it my turn now?

I felt stupid to even think about this when there were so many other things that I had to focus on instead. Like my long-lost uncle coming back from the dead. Like making sure my brothers would stay protected.

Stupid it may be, but I couldn’t stop it. Walking hand-in-hand with Wren felt natural. Having her next to me, sleeping in my bed with me, felt right.

What didn’t feel right at all was the burst of air that came at us suddenly. It rushed at us with the force of a large object coming into us. The guard to my right, who was closest to the road, was thrown back. He flew across the sidewalk, and that was all it took for me to spin and wrap my arms around Wren. The blur of a black car crossed up onto the curb, aiming for us.

Adrenaline charged through me as I clutched Wren in my arms and pulled her in the opposite direction, out of the way of the car coming up to bump into a building. People screamed. Pedestrians started jumping out of the way. And a small mob-like crowd started to dart away from the vehicle that was aiming to strike at us.

Wren tensed in my arms. Her hair smacked in my face, temporarily blocking my view. But I could feel her. She was here. She was a solid weight in my arms, out of the path of danger. Already, we were retaliating. The guards who came with us were shooting at the car as it sped away. Dropping back down off the curb, its tires on the road squealing away and smacking into a couple of other cars that were stuck in the congested traffic, the perpetrator escaped.

“Go.”

I directed the order to one of the guards who ran forward to start pursuing whoever had tried to run us over.

The other guard stayed with us, ushering me into the car with Wren. Her eyes were open wide, those green pools full of shock and caution.