Except closets usually have clothes or old boxes. This place doesn’t even have furniture aside from a worn couch and the two cots tied together and topped with a futon mattress. Not a chair or a dust bunny. Everything appears old, beaten, used, and cleaned to within an inch of its life.
The air tastes of desperation and dollar-store incense. With the laptop snapped shut, almost all the light comes from weak, scattered sources. Three salt lamps cast an amber glow on aluminum foil on the wall. Perfect for atmosphere. Useless for actual visibility.
It’s like I’ve stepped into a bizarre alternate reality.
I glance down at her.
Jordan Elizabeth Thorne. Alistair Thorne’s legacy, whether she realizes that or not. Her investigative journalist father sniffed out secrets on organized crime families until his death on Isla de Huesos fifteen years ago.
And we didn’t pull that trigger.
But new evidence, retrieved from a resin ball filled with diamonds also lost on the island, suggests Alistair left behind a cache of evidence that could burn down the Kozlov family.
And this thin woman currently sitting on the floor, smiling at a laptop stacked on top of cardboard apple crates, is his only living blood relative.
Which makes her dangerous. Even if she doesn’t look it.
The Kozlov Bratva once mistakenly thought the same thing about Alistair. Just a man with a pen and a legal pad.
I shift, balancing my weight so the old wooden floor doesn’t squeal. The past several months flicker through my brain.
When MJ Kozlov, the nephew of our Pakhan, wound up dead, everyone assumed suicide. Alexei, MJ’s brother, dug into things he wasn’t supposed to and discovered it wasn’t. Gio Falcone decided to attack us, despite the recently signed truce between his family and ours. After Chloe Davidson showed up in MJ’s notes, Roman sent Kolya Ilyin to investigate her. Then they found diamonds in Chloe’s house, diamonds thought lost for over a decade and sent anonymously to a kindergarten teacher whose only connection to our family was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Now Alistair and Jordan Thorne are the next two leads in this hunt.
Our Pakhan is a target. Roman Kozlov may be a powerful man, but even the one at the top can tumble down with enough force.
Or one well-placed stick of dynamite.
With every secret brought into the open, Roman grows more suspicious, more hungry, and more unstable. And he’s not wrong. The pattern’s become obvious now.
Someone investigated this before MJ caught wind and set up an elaborate treasure hunt for us.
This job is my part.
Determine what “Safety-237” means. What the “Insurance” is. And address any problems.
Jordan’s the first step on that path.
Her dark hair’s a mess, half-tamed in a knot, strands floating down to catch the light. Wide green eyes fix on mine, the pupils bottomless in the gloom and staring out with curiosity rather than terror.
It’s almost like I’m the answer to a question she’s never dared to say out loud rather than a very real threat.
People don’t regard me like that. Especially when I’ve just broken into their homes.
My chest tightens. Not with fear. I haven’t known true fear since they left me to freeze outside my own front door all those years ago. But this clenching ache sends my heart racing before I force myself to calm down.
Jordan backs up, her fingertips grazing the makeshift desk. “Who are you? Why are you here?”
I don’t answer. What I say doesn’t matter. She won’t be able to tell anyone later. Once I get my answers from her, she’ll switch from being a lead to a loose end.
And Roman may not have ordered a kill, but I don’t leave loose ends.
With wide eyes, she catches her breath and covers her mouth. “Oh my god. You’re my manifestation.”
I blink in confusion. “I’m what?”
She twists and points to a square of cardboard with pictures plastered all over like a dollar store travel brochure. “I put ‘powerful, decisive energy’ on my vision board, like, a week ago, and you showed up. Walking, breathing…” She trails off, cocking her head.
