Biting my lip, I crawled out from my hiding spot. I watched Andre as if he could spring up at any moment and catch me hiding. He lived. He was still awake, with his chest rising and falling as he clamped his hand to his wound.
Not tonight.
Tonight was a failure, but I could try again later.
Creeping out slowly, I winced at the sound and sight of him in pain.
I could come back another night…
“Fuck,” Andre grunted again.
So much pain and desperation were packed into that one word. And that was all it took to stop me from leaving. The instinct to care and nurture was too strong of a force for me to deny. Hearing him wheezing and growling in pain snagged me.
Oh, dammit.
I bit my lip harder as I rose onto my shaky legs.
He still had his eyes closed. Lines of agony were etched into his face.
I have to at least help him…
My bleeding heart would forever be my biggest flaw.
After one glance at Yusef, dead on the floor, then a quicker glance over my shoulder at the closed door, I cringed and hurried to approach this Mafia man, driven to act like a nurse, not a spy.
3
ANDRE
Relief washed over me. It contradicted the throbbing ache of the bleeding wound on my shoulder. The searing stabs of pain that radiated out from the slash on my side couldn’t diminish the utter peace that hit me in knowing it was over.
It was done.
I’d found the bastard selling intel, and I’d killed him.
While I hated that it was one of our own, that the one responsible for selling secrets and confidential information to Roberto Giovanni was a member of the Orlov organization, I loved that I’d ended his life. I had personally seen to it that he couldn’t deceive us any longer.
You stupid motherfucker…
If I had the energy, I would’ve shaken my head as I lay on the floor.
Yusef had been in the family for a long time, at least twenty years. He was a low guard when I’d started taking more of aninterest in the business, likely when I was ten or so. With it only ever being me and my father, plus my two cousins, it was very much a boys’ club, a tight-knit foursome of us, with my father teaching us all he knew as early as he could.
He’s going to be so fucking pissed. He’ll be livid when I tell him that the mole was one of our own.
I wouldn’t have any right to keep the news from him. Besides, as soon as I summoned the energy to get up and clean off all this blood, the discovery of Yusef’s body would be out there. A call to a couple of the men on patrol would begin the cleanup. Staff on hand or in the other buildings we owned on this block would start the process of returning my office to order. It wouldn’t be a crime scene for long.
I’d rather be the one to tell my father about this duplicity, though. It might soften the blow if he heard it from me, not someone else on the force.
Learning that one of our own men had turned traitor was a hard pill to swallow. And because Mikhail Orlov was that ruthless and just of a leader, he’d take the betrayal personally.
I grunted, trying to gather the energy to get up. A lazy sleepiness seeped through me, though. Relief drugged me, coaxing me to lower my guard. The restlessness of hunting down the mole was gone. Now that it was over, now that I knew I’d caught the mole red-handed as Yusef pilfered through the papers on my desk, I didn’t have to hurry. To stress. To be on the go and on task.
No. I should go tell him now.
Pain kept me sluggish, though. That fight at the warehouse had been a bloody mess. I’d made sure to drop off Oleg at my father’s building, where Claire had her health clinic. My stepmother—a misnomer if there ever was one since my father’s wife was younger than me—would no doubt be in bed or trying to get in bed. Owen was just a baby yet, and she was a hands-on mother. She was also a doctor at heart, and that was why dropping Oleg off at the clinic there was smart. He had been bleeding faster than I was, and I bet that Daria, one of the newest trainees, would be there working the graveyard shift to help sew him up.
Wait.
