Page 145 of Twisted Temptation

And I am not afraid of what you are.

Tommy Gallagher clears his throat.

"So," he says. "Who's buying dinner? I could murder a lasagna."

I pull back from Sunny and look at him.

"Welcome home, Tommy."

He winks at my wife. "Told you I'd get you out of here, sweetheart."

Tommy leaves through the door.

Sunny looks up at me through her tears. "I have so many questions."

I smile, but suddenly the world slows and the next few seconds feel like I am watching them unfold in slow motion.

Sunny’s eyes slide over my shoulder, and her body goes stiff. I feel her move. See her eyes widen. Feel her panic. Then I watch in disbelief as she reaches for the gun in her waistband, points it past me, and fires it.

I swing around in time to see Anton still on the floor, holding a gun pointed at us. But the bullet from Sunny’s gun rips into his hand, and he drops the gun.

Letting go of Sunny, I walk over and finish him with two bullets. One center mass. The second between the eyes.

I look over at my wife. “Nice shot, little rose.”

She looks dazed but smiles. “What can I say, I had a good teacher.”

63

SUNNY

“You have some explaining to do,” I say as we sit on the couch.

I’m nursing a tea, while beside me, Dante drinks scotch. Across from us, Tommy has a whiskey in his hand.

I’ve already showered and washed the last eight hours off me and changed into my pajamas, with a robe and a towel wrapped around my hair.

“So, who is going to start?” I ask.

Tommy grins at Dante. “I like her.”

"I saw Anton coming from a thousand miles away," Dante says. "He was a fuck-up long before he became a pakhan. His father was old-school bratva. Brutal, but he wouldn't cross certain lines. Human trafficking. Everyone assumed he'd name a successor with the same spine. Then he dropped dead without naming anyone, and the title fell to Anton by blood."

He takes a slow sip.

"It took him six months to run a fifty-year empire into the gutter. His father's income streams weren't clean, but they were rational. Anton wanted faster money, so he went where the desperate go. Trafficking in product with a heartbeat."

The disgust in his voice is quiet, which makes it so much worse.

"You watch a man like that." He glances at Tommy. "So I put someone inside."

"And that's where I come in. Dante sent me in to infiltrate the bratva and become Anton’s best friend. It wasn't hard. The freak had no friends because he killed them all when they started telling him no, so by the time I arrived on the scene, he was happy to have some Irish scoundrel as a friend."

"So you were Dante's eyes and ears inside the bratva," I say.

"Yes, I am the one who fed Dante everything he needed to know to become a giant pain in Anton Grazalov's ass."

"Except you didn't tell him Anton planned to kidnap me," I say, not accusatory, more as a way to process the situation.