“I’ll do it.” She didn’t give herself a chance to think too hard on it. Her dad had stopped being proud of her four years ago. One more disappointment wasn’t going to break him.
Probably.
He hadn’t been able to salvage her reputation after she was branded a dirty cop. No one inside the law had. If Charlie couldn’t fixthat, at least she could ensure that Romanov went down in flames as retribution.
She pressed her lips together. “What, exactly, am I agreeing to do?”
Aiden moved to a dark town car that had pulled up, and opened the back door. “Get in and I’ll tell you everything.” When she hesitated, he gave a mirthless smile. “Look around, Charlotte. If I was up to no good, I could have hurt you at any time.”
“Charlie.” She’d responded without thinking, even as she did what he said. They’d wandered several blocks away from the bar. He could have cut her throat right here and no one would have sprung to assist her—and they certainly wouldn’t have talked to the cops if they’d seen something. Even if Jacques had sent Billy out after her, they were too far away for him to rescue her.
Just as well. She didn’t need rescuing. “I don’t trust you.”
“You shouldn’t.”
Somehow, that eased her distrust a little. His offer—whatever it entailed—wasn’t too good to be true. Enemy of her enemy or not, this man was not a good man.
I’m not much of a good woman anymore, either.She’d tried—tried so damn hard it’d almost killed her—but when push came to shove, the very justice system in place to protect the innocent had worked against her.
She lost everything as a result—because of Romanov.
She climbed into the backseat and scooted over so Aiden could join her. He dominated the small space in a way he hadn’t on the street, and she realized he’d been containing himself. Even now, he hadn’t exactly let himself off the leash, but he’d stopped trying so hard.
Or maybe this is just another version of Aiden O’Malley—this one designed to put me at ease.
She couldn’t trust the change. She couldn’t trusthim.
She took a short breath, inhaling his clean scent, which made her think of snow-topped mountains—beautiful and clear and deadly to anyone who tried to conquer them. “I won’t kill anyone.” She wasn’tthatfar gone.
He chuckled, the sound curling through the space between them like a living thing. “Believe me, if that was my main goal, I have several people better suited.” He shot her a look. “Theoretically, of course.”
“Theoretically. Sure.” She looked around the inside of the town car. It reeked of understated wealth. The leather seats were as soft as butter, and there was a retractable window between the backseat and the driver. With it raised, she couldn’t see more than an outline of the man’s head. It was entirely possible they were taking her to a secondary location for nefarious purposes, but Aidenhad had a point earlier. Knowing that he could have tried to kill her several times over during their walk shouldn’t have comforted her—but it did.
Charlie leaned back against the seat, rotating to face him fully. “You have me alone and at your mercy. Enough circling. What, exactly, do you want from me?”
Heat flared in his eyes, a fierce flame of interest that she’d have to be extremely naive to misinterpret. He banked it almost immediately, the cool mask back in place, but it had been there. She was sure of it.
Aiden looked out the window. “As I said, I need your information, and I need you to be a distraction.”
“Adistraction.” What the hell was he talking about?
“Yes.” His mouth tightened. “I need my enemies—ourenemies—to underestimate both of us.”
She tensed. “If you need adistraction, then you should have hired someone better suited to the job. I’m not a sideshow circus freak.”
“I’m aware.” He finally looked at her again, and his expression was no less intense, for all that he seemed to be trying to rein himself in. “There is no one else, Charlie. You know the players, and you know what’s at risk if we fail. As a relative unknown in this game, you can move through them without raising suspicions. But you have a brain.” He reached out and touched her temple.
She swatted him away, not liking the fact that she could feel his finger against her skin even after he no longer touched her.
Even as a so-called distraction, it didn’t make sense that he’d need her. But she hadn’t made much progress in her own investigation, though she’d had access to several decades’ worth of police files. Charlie narrowed her eyes. Itwould be child’s play for Aiden to get a hold of those files. If he didn’t have ins with the NYPD, his family did with the Boston cops. All it would take was a favor asked by one of the cops on his payroll and he’d have all the information she had—more, since there had undoubtedly been new information in the last four years.
It didn’t make any more sense than his supposedly needing her to be a distraction did.
There was something there, something she was missing. She crossed her legs. “Elaborate.” The more she got him talking, the better chance she had of figuring out his true purpose in inviting her into his game.
“Romanov wants my baby sister. The reasons behind it are complicated, but the end result is that if I push back, he will take us to war, and both New York and Boston will bleed as a result. While there are benefits to war, our family has lost more than its fair share in casualties, and I refuse to lose another person.”
It sounded quite noble…if she forgot who she was talking to.
