***
Aiden O’Malley figured he should be grateful Charlotte hadn’t pulled the gun on him that she kept touching like a security blanket. He hadn’t really thought she’d fall all over herself to agree to help him—especially since she hadn’tcalled him once during the last twelve months—but her cutting through all his bullshit didn’t bode well.
He’d never had a problem getting people to do exactly what he wanted—whether he needed to force them or they only required a subtle nudge—but he couldn’t do that with Charlotte Finch. He needed her to agree to help him of her own free will, or a vital part of his plan would fall to pieces.
It had taken him twelve months to get his dominoes in place and ready to knock down. The balance of power between the three Boston ruling families—the O’Malleys, the Hallorans, and the Sheridans—was as stable as it would ever be. The feds had backed off enough that he could breathe. Even Dmitri Romanov had been lulled into a false truce at the chance of bringing down a new player in the game.
The Eldridges.
They couldn’t have timed their power grab better if Aiden had conjured them himself. All of it added up to a confrontation he knew he could win—if he played his cards right, he could remove the threat of both Romanov and the feds in a single strike.
But to do it, he needed Charlotte.
So he weighed his odds and, after careful consideration, decided being blunt was his best option. “You’re familiar with the Eldridge operations.” She’d worked the organized-crime unit in the NYPD, so there was no way shedidn’tknow about them, at least in passing, but she wasn’t going to trust him if he didn’t slow-play this.
If she was smart, she wouldn’t trust him even then.
Her step hitched almost imperceptibly. “They’re run by Alethea Eldridge and her daughter, Mae. Scary, scary ladies, who have a habit of making their competition disappear, though no one has ever been able to put together enoughevidence to pin anything on them. Their main income is from drugs—heroin mostly—though they dabble in gunrunning and human trafficking when it suits their purposes. They’re small players in the overall New York scene.”
“Not anymore. Romanov has made a deal with them—a deal he has no intention of following through on.” Or so said the dossier Aiden had gotten from Jude MacNamara. Yes, he’d sold his sister Sloan for information on his enemy—a weight he’d never truly be free of. It didn’t matter that Sloan had chosen Jude. If Aiden had paid better attention, she wouldn’t have been put in that situation to begin with.
He wouldn’t allow it to happen with his youngest sister, Keira.
He didn’t trust this unexpected opportunity from Romanov any more than he trusted anything in life, but he’d be a fool to pass up the chance to put his plan into motion.
“How could you possibly know what Romanov intends?”
“It doesn’t matter how. All that matters is that it’s the truth.” He understood her disbelief. Dmitri Romanov was about as easy to pin down as smoke. Aiden had spent the last twelve months verifying Jude’s information and looking for other options, but Romanov wasn’t the kind of man to leave bread crumbs that could be connected to him and his operations. Even with the sheer amount of intel Jude had on him, there was nothing concrete that could be used against him.
Or there hadn’t been until Romanov himself called Aiden.
Charlotte paused, and he stopped next to her. There was a distant look in her blue eyes. “Even if it’s true, I don’t see how I play into it.”
“You know the Eldridges. You know Romanov. You know what they will or won’t do in any given situation.”
“So do quite a few other people.”
She wasn’t saying no, so he pressed. “None of those people are as uniquely motivated as you are in seeing Dmitri Romanov taken out at the knees. The O’Malley family barely registers on your radar. You have no reason to double-cross me, because I’ll be giving you what you desire above all else.”
“And, pray tell, what is that?”
Shedidn’t know it yet, but he had her—hook, line, and sinker. Aiden just had to reel her in. “Justice.”
***
Justice.
The word rang through Charlie like a bell, and something deep inside her responded. For whatever reason, this man wanted Romanov’s downfall as much as she did—possibly more, if he was scraping the bottom of the barrel forherhelp.
She knew what her dad would say. John Finch had a very low opinion of anyone even remotely connected with organized crime, and Aiden O’Malley was the head of his family.He’s as much a snake as Romanov, and getting into bed with one evil to bring down another won’t solve anything.
That didn’t change the truth.
And the damn truth was that she’d been living half a life for four years. Even after Jacques saved her and gave her a purpose, no matter how small, she still hadn’t bounced back. The drive she’d had ever since she was a child—the desire tobe a force of good in the world and to stop bad people from doing bad things—it was gone. It’d disappeared right around the time that Romanov won.
The bad guys won.
She’d learned the hard way that life wasn’t a fairy tale, and good didn’t always triumph over evil. Sometimes a compelling lie was sought above a harsh truth.
