Russian Mobster's Stolen Wife (7 page)

“Flynn, think this through,” her father said urgently. “You really need to stop and think. He’s an assassin. We’re going to kill him eventually.”

“Or maybe he’ll get you first,” she shot back. “Everyone dies. I learned that pretty young. Remember?”

Teller cleared his throat. “Miss Callaghan, you’d best rethink this course of action. We have a team ready to close in on you now.”

“So?” She gazed at Teller as though he were something she’d discovered on the bottom of her shoe. “Like we didn’t expect that or anything, you snake.”

“Miss,” Teller began.

She shushed him, pinching her fingers together and making a zipping noise with her mouth. “God, I’ve wanted to do that forever! I think I should thank you, Teller. You’ve made it possible for me to understand why the job of hired assassin is a necessary one. If I had the funds, I would hire someone to bump you off right now.”

“That’s a statement of intent!” Teller said eagerly. “We can arrest her based on that.”

“Nope. I said
if
I had the funds.” She smiled sweetly. “We all know that I don’t yet. Remember?”

GRIGORI THOUGHT HER father’s reaction to her statement was exceedingly odd. Why should the man care if his daughter was coming into her inheritance in a little less than a year? He had his own money, right?

“Enough,” Grigori told Flynn, keeping his voice low. “It’s time to go.”

Her father actually looked panicked. “Flynn, wait!”

“I’ve waited.” The quiet finality in her voice seemed to have a deep impact on the DA. Callaghan actually looked in danger of crying.

Grigori felt horribly exposed out here in the open. He knew his men were armed and watching, but any assassin worth his salt knew that didn’t matter. A commotion across the quad caught his eye. It was Anson. He was running, sprinting in fact, and heading right in their direction.

Adrenaline surged in Grigori’s veins. Anson was yelling something in Russian, but Grigori couldn’t quite make it out. It didn’t matter.

Grabbing Flynn’s hand, he bolted away from her father and Teller. To her credit, Flynn didn’t balk or hesitate. In seconds she was running flat out beside him, long reddish-brown hair streaming out behind her. Then Grigori heard what Anson was yelling.

“Shooter!” Anson shouted. Now he was pointing to a rooftop.

Grigori angled away and began zigzagging between benches, waste cans, and shrubbery. But it was too late. He didn’t hear the sound of a rifle, but he felt Flynn stumble beside him.

What?

She whimpered, nearly dragging him down with the death grip she took on his hand as she tried to keep running. Her green eyes were huge in her face and a red stain began to spread over her shoulder.

Scooping her into his arms, Grigori continued to run.

He’d never felt like this before. Her blood was soaking his shirt. The warm, sticky wetness caused the fabric to cling to his chest. He ducked around the corner of an old brick building. There were screams everywhere as students and faculty ran for cover. No doubt the DA had hoped to disguise this shooting as just another act of homeland terrorism on a college campus.

Keeping himself disguised in a knot of men and women hiding around the corner from the quad, Grigori used the civilians as cover while he tried to decide what to do. He had to get medical attention for Flynn. She had passed out in his arms, her head lying limply against his chest.

“Oh my God!” someone cried out. “That girl is shot!”

Someone else had their phone out and was trying to text and talk at the same time. “I already called 911. Their circuits are slammed.”

“How many shots did you hear?” another student said.

Her companion whimpered. “I don’t know. Like a dozen?”

Perfect. At least Grigori didn’t have to worry about this incident being somehow linked to him. The stories were already going to be so varied and fantastic that law enforcement would never be able to figure out what had really happened.

“Can I help?” A young man standing close by reached toward Flynn.

Grigori curled his lip. Nobody was going to touch her if he had anything to say about it.

“I’m a medical student,” the kid explained.

Grigori changed his mind. That made some sense. “The bullet went through, but she’s bleeding.”

“Lay her down.” The kid went into doctor mode. He stuffed his backpack beneath Flynn’s head and began probing her shoulder.

When she made a tiny noise of pain, Grigori nearly decked the guy. He had to clench his fist to keep control. That was when Igor showed up with Ivan on his heels.

“Boss?” Igor said in Russian. “They were aiming for her. Flynn was the target.”

Grigori had wondered about that. “Her father was acting strange. Perhaps he knew this was coming.”

“But why?” Igor demanded.

“I think it has something to do with the money.” Grigori didn’t have all the pieces yet, but he would. “Nobody tries to murder my wife and gets away with it.”

“It looks like Anson took down their shooter.”

“Where is Anson?” Grigori almost hated to ask.

Igor sighed. “We got separated, but I saw him run like hell in the other direction. He’ll meet us at the backup point, I’m sure.”

“I hope so,” Grigori murmured.

Meanwhile, the med student had pulled out what looked like clean socks. He was using a water bottle to wet a sock in order to cleanse the wound. Then it appeared as though he was going to use the rest of his socks to dress it.

“It’s not the neatest bandage job,” the student explained. “But it’ll keep her from bleeding to death. The wound is clean. It doesn’t look as if it nicked anything inside her shoulder, but she should definitely see a doctor to determine if there was damage to the bones or tendons.”

“Thank you.” Grigori pulled out his wallet and gave the kid a hundred dollar bill. “Keep your mouth shut if anyone asks.”

The med student’s eyes went wide at the sight of the money. “No problem, dude.”

“When will she wake up?” Igor asked the kid, remembering to speak English.

The student frowned. “It’s hard to say. If she passed out from lack of blood, she may need a transfusion, although I doubt it. When her body is ready, she’ll wake up. Unless she got hit on the head.”

“Not that I know of,” Grigori said, feeling relieved. “She was awake one second, and then out the next.”

“So probably the low blood pressure.” The student nodded. “She’ll wake up when her body replenishes what it needs. And she’ll be tired and thirsty.”

“Boss, we have to get out of here.” Ivan touched Grigori’s arm. “Teller and his men are sweeping the area. I see one of them headed this way now.”

Grigori noticed a narrow alley between the buildings that seemed to lead out toward the parking garage. “Let’s head that way now. We’ll pick up Anson and go home to regroup.”

Chapter Nine

Flynn blinked experimentally, trying to decide why she was lying on her back in bed. She never slept on her back. It was uncomfortable. But when she attempted to roll to her right side, an agonizing pain shot through her shoulder all the way to her fingertips. The haze of pain left her tingling all over.

“Grigori?” she called out, knowing exactly where she was now but not remembering how she’d gotten there.

He appeared in the doorway. “I’m right here.”

She gazed at his disheveled good looks and briefly had the thought that there really had to be some crazy explanation for why she was so attracted to a man she should theoretically hate. Then she noticed how worried he looked.

There were dark circles beneath his eyes, and his arms were crossed tensely over his chest. His jeans were spattered with something that looked disturbingly like gore, and he had changed from the blue shirt he had been wearing earlier to a simple black T-shirt. He walked into the bedroom and sat down beside her.

He pursed his lips and appeared to give her a thorough onceover from her head to her toes. “How are you feeling?”

“Good, I guess.” Then she tried to sit up and had to reevaluate that statement. “Sore, actually. And my head aches. What happened?”

Something in his expression tipped her off that she was not going to like the answer. Her gut churned. She remembered meeting with her father. Teller had made some threats. Then Anson had been yelling at them and they were running. Her mind just sort of went blank after that.

“Someone tried to kill you, Flynn,” Grigori said quietly. “I think it was your father, but I can’t be certain as to why he would make a move like that.”

A tight feeling of mingled horror and sorrow lodged itself in her gut. Her father had attempted to
kill
her? She put her face in her hands to hide her shame.

“Someone shot you from a rooftop. Do you remember?”

“Not much, but that explains why my shoulder hurts like hell.” Then she lowered her hands and twisted her head, trying to see her injury.

“You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“Did I go to a hospital? Who took care of this?” She racked her brain, trying to remember.

“There was a medical student hiding around the corner of a building with us. He dressed it. Then when we got home I had Ivan redo it with something other than socks.”

“Wait. Did you just say socks?” Her brain couldn’t even process that nonsense. “My shoulder was packed with socks?”

“We used what we had.” He shrugged it off, so she did the same.

“Am I going to be okay?” It felt stupid to ask that, but she really didn’t know anything about gunshot wounds.

“That depends on whether or not your father is going to make another attempt on your life. Flynn, why would he do that?” Grigori gently stroked her hair. The touch was so very soothing. She didn’t want him to stop.

“He wants the money. My father is a US district attorney, but he has political aspirations far beyond that. He wants to run for a Senate seat, and that takes money.”

“I thought politicians sold themselves to their constituency in order to get campaign funds.” He seemed amused by this concept.

“Sort of. You have to have enough money to start a campaign.” She thought about all of the fights and the pressure over the last few years. “Sort of like that old saying that you have to spend money to make money, you know?”

“So he wants your inheritance to fund his campaign?” He seemed to be working through this idea in his head. “How much money did your mother leave you?”

“Several million dollars.” Flynn cleared her throat. “Okay, so more like ten million.”

His elegant dark brows shot up in surprise. “That’s certainly motivation for murder, but killing your own child? That’s despicable.”

“I have to admit that it surprises me too.” She traced the pattern woven into the blanket still covering her body. “He’s been pressuring me since I turned eighteen to turn control of my trust over to him. It’s held by an executor who was my mother’s financial planner.”

“He wanted to be the executor,” Grigori guessed.

She nodded. “When I turned eighteen, I could have filled out the paperwork to have it changed. Most people would have, you know. But my mother knew my father. She knew he would go through the money in a week trying to buy his ambitions.”

“So she protected you the best way she could.” His soft smile made her feel so protected. It was the first time Flynn had felt like this since her mother’s passing.

Then she remembered the other thing that had happened at the meeting with her father. “Grigori, I’m really sorry about your brother. I’m not much of a winning pick.”

“That was a play on your father’s part to make you doubt my intentions.” He gently touched her face with his fingertips. “My main goal was to be married in order to stay in this country. I had Anson file the marriage certificate this morning. I’m sure immigration will be knocking on the door at some point and demanding proof.”

“Speaking of knocking. How is it that we can be a few hours from Washington DC in a nice neighborhood in Richmond, and nobody is knocking the door down trying to get to you?”

“First of all, the community is gated. Second, we keep round the clock surveillance. Third, I have a rather elaborate identity set up to hide this place.” He paused for a moment, getting up and walking to the window. “Your father knows where we are. He sent a message to you here this morning. He’s choosing not to act here. I’m not sure why. It very likely has to do with the way he wants your murder to look.”

Flynn frowned. She took a few deep breaths, trying to clear the cobwebs from her mind. Then she realized what they were missing. “College campus, public shooting—he’s trying to make it a public spectacle to drum up an outpouring of voter sympathy.”

“By killing his own daughter?”

She carefully drew her knees up and rested her chin on them. “If I die before I turn twenty-one, he gets my inheritance. No questions asked.”

IT WAS ONE thing to speculate that District Attorney Ronald Callaghan was trying to have his own daughter murdered for money. It was another thing to imagine that the man was trying to use her death as a multifaceted attempt to gain public approval and a subsequent win in the political arena.

“That is disgusting.” Grigori gazed at the beautiful woman who continually impressed the hell out of him. “It actually makes me want to get my rifle and go to work.”

He could actually see her working that through in her head. Then she exhaled a sigh and tucked her tangled hair behind her ears. “I wish I could tell you yes. I really do. I never thought I would agree that assassination was a good idea, but there you go, I guess.”

“Most of my contracts are real scumbags, sweetheart.” He sat back on the bed and rested his shoulders against the headboard. It gave him a true rush of pleasure when she curled up beside him as best she could with her sore shoulder.

“How does it work?” she asked.

He felt odd telling her about his job, but she seemed to be coming to grips with it, and that was very important to him for some reason he didn’t particularly want to examine. “There are nine main Russian mafia families here in the US. Most of them have branches in Russia or the Ukraine as well.”