Chapter 2
“Because the man you were engaged to works for me.”
The words landed and sat there, and for a full three seconds Meline did not breathe.
The jazz coming through the speakers seemed to drop away. The room narrowed to the length of the bar, to the man beside her, to the smell of cedarwood and the six inches of space he had not left her.
“You’re the money,” she said.
It came out as a whisper.
Declan’s eyebrows moved a fraction — surprise, and behind it something that looked almost like respect.
“Say that again.”
“Three million dollars, moved through the Caymans.” Her voice was shaking but her mind was not; the auditor in her had come up out of the liquor like a swimmer breaking the surface. “Bradley never had three million dollars of his own. He had a client. He had a set of accounts he wouldn’t let me near. And he was terrified of somebody.”
Declan set his glass down.
“He was supposed to wash it quietly,” he said. “Instead he got sloppy. He skimmed off the top to fund a downtown apartment and a leased car and a twenty-two-year-old paralegal. And when the skim got too deep to hide, he did the one thing that made everything worse.”
“He put it in my name.”
“Yes.”
Meline looked at the ring lying in the spilled lime juice.
So that was what this was. Not a marriage. An umbrella. He had needed a person with a clean record and a W-2 and a face that could sit across from a bank examiner, and he had chosen the one he was already living with.
“Hayes Holdings,” Declan said. “Your name, your social security number, your signature on the incorporation documents. Every dollar that has ever moved through that company leads back to your desk at an accounting firm that files quarterly with the state.”
“I didn’t know.”
“I know you didn’t.”
“I didn’t sign anything. I would have—”
“I know.”
She was already sliding off the stool. Her legs had gone unreliable, and she had to put a hand on the bar to keep upright.
“Then let me go,” she said. “I’ll walk out of here and I won’t say a word to anyone. Not the police, not the feds, not a single person. I just want to disappear.”
Before her feet touched the floor, his hand closed around her wrist.
It was not rough. It did not hurt. It simply could have held her there through a hurricane.
“You can’t leave,” Declan said.
“Why not?”
“Because.”
He nodded past her shoulder, toward the front of the room.
Meline turned.
Three men had just come through the heavy velvet curtains at the entrance.
They were not wearing bespoke suits. They wore dark leather jackets, and they moved like men who had not walked into a room they didn’t own in years. The one in front was enormous, with a neck covered in faded blue Cyrillic tattoos and a scar that ran from his ear to the point of his jaw. He was scanning the room, and he was scanning it the way a man reads a page he already knows the ending of.
His eyes stopped on her.
“Those men belong to the Volkov Bratva,” Declan said. “A Russian syndicate out of Brighton Beach and, lately, out of a warehouse in Gary.”
Meline’s breath came in short, thin pulls.
“Why are they looking at me?”
“Because your fiancé didn’t just steal from me.” Declan stood, and his body moved between her and the aisle without appearing to move at all. “He borrowed from them to cover what he took from me. And when he couldn’t pay it back, he gave them something instead.”
“What?”
“He gave them the deed to Hayes Holdings.” A pause. “Which makes you its CEO.”
The three men were already coming down the room. A group of patrons by the rail scrambled out of the way; one of them knocked a glass off a table and left it.
“Mr. Fitzpatrick,” the big one said. His accent was heavy and flat, and he did not bother with the greeting the way a man does who has never needed one. “Step aside.”
“Good evening, Dmitri.”
“You know why we’re here.”
“I usually do.”
“Then you know we are not leaving without her.” Dmitri’s hand had come to rest on the lapel of his jacket, which is a tell in every language spoken in that city. “The girl comes with us. She is Volkov property now. Her fiancé signed the papers yesterday afternoon.”
Behind Declan’s back, Meline made a small sound that she did not mean to make and could not stop.
“I’m afraid there’s been a clerical error,” Declan said.
His voice had not changed at all. It was the same low, patient register he had used to order a drink, and somehow that made the room colder.
“Bradley Carmichael stole three million dollars from my accounts, routed it through a Caymans trust, and buried it in a corporation with this young woman’s name on the front of it.” He turned the cuff of his jacket once, straightening it, and the light caught the watch on his wrist. “Therefore, by the arithmetic of the thing, she is my collateral. Not yours.”
Dmitri’s scarred jaw tightened.
“Ivan Volkov does not care about your arithmetic.” He took one step closer. “We are taking the girl. If you want a war over a mid-level accountant, we will give you one.”
Declan smiled.
It was a small smile, and it had nothing whatsoever to do with humor.
Meline, standing so close behind him that she could feel the heat coming off his back, understood with absolute clarity that she was no longer in a bar.
She was standing in the middle of something that had been going on in this city for twenty years, and she had walked into it wearing an emerald dress, carrying a ring she had already thrown away once.
May you like
“Liam,” Declan said, without raising his voice.
Somewhere above them, in the dark of the mezzanine, a man she had not seen since he walked into the booth stopped moving.
