“The fact remains that I didn’t miss the wedding.”
She wasn’t satisfied, though, clearly seeing this as her opportunity to give me hell about my lack of punctuality. “You’re a groomsman. Where could you possibly have been off to in order to bethatlate?”
I turned my head slowly and smiled a bit. As I gave her a knowing look while raising my brows, she huffed. “Fine. Fine. Whatever. You were off on some ‘job’ again.”
A kill.
She meant a hit.
My job was to kill the people the Dubinin Family needed gone.
My father trusted me to do his dirty work in the fashion of assassinations, and I was often away and on the go for my career.
“Luka has warned me not to ask too many questions, and I won’t. But Emil, this is ridiculous. You knew when the weddingwas happening. You could’ve been more careful in planning your travels and… tasks.”
I had no doubt my father warned her not to pry. As someone from outside the Bratva circles and as an individual not from an official crime family, Gabriella would always be the stranger learning how to acclimate and catch up.
But I could be flexible. Shehadput a lot of energy into planning this wedding and she’d likely freaked out about my late arrival after all the emphasis she’d put on wanting to have equal numbers of people in the bridal party to match the groomsmen.
“I’m sorry to make you upset about how late I was to return.” Across the ballroom, I saw my father speaking with a supervisor within the family. He was merely looking for Gabriella, just to know where she was. With baby Andre in his arms, he looked more like a father figure than a mighty Bratva boss. I had no doubt that they were standing there talking business, though. Sometimes, our work was never done.
Cue another sigh. “But something came up.”
“With the ‘job’?” she asked, air quotes and all. “Is that why you were so late?”
Alexsei brought over Lev and Misha right then. They boys didn’t take a seat, like he did. Still bouncing around and too hyper, Lev and Misha giggled and laughed, rowdy as ever.
“Yeah, Emil,” Lev teased. “You were so late that I was almost the groomsboy in your place.”
I allowed a smile at that. “Better late than never.”
Lev shook his head. “That just means you’llneverbe on time.”
I wasn’t sure how he came to that logic, but I wasn’t going to argue with him. He didn’t wait for long anyway, running off with Misha again.
“We’re leaving in a half hour, boys,” Alexsei called. Once they were out of earshot, he turned to me and Gabriella. “Whywereyou so late?”
Dammit. They wouldn’t leave it alone. I didn’t understand why everyone was making a big deal out of how I disliked sticking to any agendas or schedules. It wasn’t like I had a strict timeline to follow.
“Because,” I admitted, hating the tinge of guilt that snuck into my mind.
The truth was that I had finished my latest assignment. The bloated and angry lawyer who’d screwed over one of my father’s friends was only a corpse in a seedy bar in San Diego now. It was an easy kill, too, a simple assassination with no obstacles or loose threads. No witnesses. Minimal blood.
Easy peasy.
What wasn’t so easy was heading to the airport and catching the interest of one particular woman.
No.
It was more like she’d caughtmyinterest.
Whoever that slim, raven-haired federal agent was, she had to learn a thing or two about actually staying undercover. Four times this year, I’d noticed her tailing me on my travels to jobs. Watching me. Following me. Trying to snap pictures of me. She was far too obvious at this game of hunting and stalking, and her lack of stealth was what had me noticing her the first time, atanother airport. Since then, every time I spotted her, this weird thrill of playing a game with her had taken over me.
The last time I saw her was when I was flying back from Italy with Ivan. I decided to take her on a wild goose chase of leading her to assume I’d flown to Bogota instead of New York, where we called home.
This morning, before I could fly from San Diego back to New York, I saw the blue-eyed beauty and decided to throw her off again, diverting her to Juneau.
“Because?” Alexsei asked with a laugh. He rolled his eyes.
