Cuckoo (Kindred Book 3) (5 page)

“I don’t know how,” he said and his grimace made her smile. “When you’re upset, I want to shoot the shit out of something.”

“That’s how,” she said, rising to rub her cheek on his and kiss his lips. “You feel what I feel… in your own way.”

He searched her face and was as confused as she was certain, but that only made her kiss him again before yielding his hold and putting some distance between them. There were things she had to say and if she stayed in his arms, they’d either relax into sleep or divert their energy into more sex.

She shifted onto her side and stuffed a pillow under her head to support it. “I had to stay away,” she said, trying to explain why she hadn’t returned to her allies this week.

“You didn’t. Who told you to—”

“I’m of no use to you anymore, no use to the Kindred.” Her love for Brodie hadn’t been in question, but her place in his ranks was because she felt like a fraud. She’d done her piece and didn’t see how she could be of use to such a clan anymore. “Yes, you’re right. I probably am grieving Grant, and there’s some part of me that wonders why you’re not more affected by it. We didn’t get to say goodbye to him or to Art. There was no ceremony, you took him away, and put him straight into the ground.” She kept on going before he could respond to what he’d consider an insult. “But I’ve been worried about my place in the Kindred. I don’t have special skills like the rest of you do. Sutcliffe’s gone. Grant’s gone. Game Time is under our control, and now you’re bringing people in to take CI out from under me too.”

He was on his back with his hands resting on his abs. He just laid there scowling at the ceiling, and she hoped that he wasn’t going to ignore her insecurities.

“Do you want CI?” he asked, turning his head and loosening his expression. “If you want it, it’s yours. It didn’t occur to me that you might want to take over running things. You’d have to stay at the manor and if the Kindred are working overseas we’d be apart—”

“This isn’t about CI,” she said, covering the back of one of his hands with her palm. Physical contact anchored them both, the feel of his skin grounded her, and she regretted putting a wedge between them this week.

Brodie needed a reason, he needed to understand and with her offering no answers, he was forced to speculate. “It’s about us? Do you think I’m replacing you?”

If only it were that easy. “No,” she said, rubbing his hand. “This is about me figuring out who I am in this setup. Before we lost Grant, I could gather intel for the Kindred, I always had a purpose. I’m just feeling a bit useless and that’s not your fault. I just have to figure out how to adapt.”

Obviously, he still wasn’t satisfied. It was tough for her to explain what she didn’t fully understand herself. “Did you think I wanted you out of the way at CI?” he asked. “Or are you determined to be there because it makes you feel closer to Grant?”

She’d often stopped and stared at the CI walls wondering why she was there. Sad as it was, she knew the reason. “It’s comforting.”

“Comforting?”

Taking a deep breath, she explained what she knew. “When I feel lost or confused, I can lose myself in work. Having strict policies and procedures gives me structure that saves me from having to make decisions on my own when my head is screwed up like it is now.”

Brodie wasn’t panicked. He never panicked. Reassuring her was something he was getting better at and that he made the effort meant something to her. His patience endured longer with her than anyone else. “There will always be a place for you in the Kindred,” he said.

Except what he didn’t know was that her insecurities lay there and they seeped back in as sought reassurance. “As more than just your whore?” she murmured, arching a brow. She didn’t mind that role, but it wouldn’t help on missions. It wasn’t his view that she questioned, it was her own. If she was useless to the group in any practical capacity then all she could be was Brodie’s mate. Leaving him wasn’t even close to an option, but she wasn’t sure if she could adapt to being homemaker rather than active participant in the Kindred. “I appreciate that you want me around and I promise I’m not even thinking about leaving you. I just have to figure things out.”

“Meesh will need your support for the transition to new management. You’re still vital to CI.”

Something she liked to be. He turned his hand to curl his fingers in hers and took her knuckles to his lips. Brodie didn’t have the same affinity for the McCormack family firm that she did. In fact, she’d guess he was a bit affronted that she got her solace there rather than with the Kindred. For her, it wasn’t about choosing sides. Kindred missions meant patience, long periods of waiting, especially in the case of Leatt when they had no solid leads thus no solid plans.

CI was a distraction. It wasn’t one that would last. She’d do what was needed to ensure the place didn’t go to ruin, but she couldn’t see herself buddying up to Brodie’s ex, Cuckoo and working under her in the same way Zara had worked under Grant.

One point needed to be asserted without equivocation though. “You should always consult me before calling an ex, just for future reference,” she said.

He put up no argument and picked up her hand to kiss each of her fingertips. “Noted and understood. Now, are you gonna tell me how you know about Mischa?”

Zara told the truth. “Art told me that you worked with her father,” she said. Amusement contorted his lips causing her to peer closer and scoot toward him some more. “You didn’t?”

Kissing her fingers, he was calm as he admitted, “I didn’t work for him, I worked him over.”

With a shallow shake of her head, she frowned. “I don’t—”

“I killed him.”

Inhaling through her nose, she wilted some. She should be used to those abrupt words by now, but they still blindsided her every time. “Why?”

“Meesh paid me to,” he said, letting go of her hand to shift onto his side. “She’d spent months sleeping her way around the criminal element in Italy’s major cities looking for a hitman.”

Zara couldn’t see what the trouble would be for her. Mischa was dynamic and cosmopolitan according to what Art had said, even those who weren’t killers by trade would probably offer to do the job if it got her between their sheets. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she? I would think men would be falling over themselves for her.”

“She didn’t want men. She wanted the best.”

“Which is you.”

“Right,” he said, lifting a strand of hair from her cheek to tuck it into place with her other locks. “My name came up again and again when she made it clear what she wanted, no mess, no repercussions. But getting a referral is tough, even those who know me are scared to piss me off by connecting me with a client… Especially one that could be volatile.”

“But she found you eventually?”

“I found her,” he said, skimming a hand over her hip to squeeze her ass. It didn’t surprise her that he had taken control when he found out Cuckoo wanted him; Brodie liked to be the one who made the first move. “A couple of guys told me about her, Art and I checked her out, then I made the approach and we made the deal.”

“Sex in exchange for?”

He stopped enjoying her body to meet her eye. “I don’t take payment in sex, never have,” he said. “Mischa had the capital and plenty of it. We fixed a price and she told me to make it look like an accident.”

As simple as that, Mischa wanted her father dead, and Raven did the job. “What kind of accident?”

His hand returned to its expedition across her exposed body. “I talked her out of that, it’s a rookie mistake. When billionaire’s die accidentally, there’s a heap of paperwork and a long wait for the beneficiaries. I have some experience with this.” From when his parents died. Though he seemed to forget all of those details after Grant died. Or maybe he didn’t want to face how big a deal his brother had become in the business world. “We settled on suicide.”

“You set it up to look like suicide?” she said, horrified and impressed, yet curious about how someone went about doing that.

“No,” he said. “It was suicide.”

She was lost again and she would guess the descent of her brows betrayed her confusion. Brodie curled his index finger under her chin and pressed the pad of his thumb to the front of it so he could tilt her head back and grip her at the same time.

Trying to think it through, she knew it would be quicker just to ask. “How do you make someone commit suicide?”

The faint smile on his lips was that of a learned man passing on his wisdom. “Easy. Do your research. It’s as simple as that.” He kissed her plumped lower lip. “A man will do almost anything if you threaten the thing he loves most.”

The tingling in her shoulders and awareness in her belly were making her itchy in an amorous sort of way. But that awareness wasn’t enough to distract her from the sadness of the truth Brodie had just revealed.

“You got him to kill himself by threatening his daughter? The one who wanted him dead in the first place?” He’d thought he was protecting his child when all along it was the child who had instigated the plot.

But Brodie wasn’t tormented by her assumption. “His daughter wasn’t what he loved most,” he said. “His company and his money were the catalyst. Destitution is what the super-rich fear most.”

That was even sadder and decreased her pity for Mischa’s father. Whatever the Corvi family politics were, it was none of her business. Brodie, on the other hand, was. “How did you end up with her?”

“You don’t need to know the details,” he said and took a section of hair in his hand, but when she drew back to focus her expectation, he sighed. “It was just lust, baby. Went to tell her the job was done, and she was grateful.”

Zara could imagine just how grateful, especially with what Art had said about Mischa enjoying the kill. Raven would have turned Cuckoo on in a flash with that brooding stare and his aloof manner. Zara and her father were not close. She’d gone out of her way to avoid him since leaving his home against his wishes when she was a teen. Yet, she didn’t think that upon hearing of his death the first thing she would think about was sex with the man who’d killed him.

Mischa had paid to have her father killed and when the job was complete there was no remorse, sorrow, or guilt. No, she’d jumped the assassin.

Rolling onto her back, her hands spread on her ribs as she absorbed his tale. “And now this beautiful, intelligent woman who you couldn’t keep your hands off is coming to run the family firm.” She couldn’t even hide her sarcasm. “Great.”

“You have nothing to worry about with Meesh and me,” he said, rubbing her abdomen.

Stretching, she returned to his side and welcomed his arm when it curled around her. “I know.”

“You just like freaking out?”

She didn’t like freaking out and wouldn’t say that she had. Pressing one fingernail into his ribs made him move his leg in a quick motion to scoop both of hers under his that were still jeans clad and that made her sigh.

“Forgot about that, didn’t you?” he teased. “Maybe next time you’ll remember how much you hate me screwing you with my jeans on and stay at base like you’re supposed to.”

“I didn’t know you were going to visit here,” she said.

“You were told forty-eight hours. You ignored that rule and the one about staying where I left you. You knew I was coming for you, baby. Whether you admit it or not, you fucking knew.”

Her subconscious had a lot to answer for today, and she had to wonder if that reasoning had contributed to her decision to stay here at the apartment. In retrospect, Brodie had always come to her here in her bedroom. Misbehaving, flouting his orders, was a surefire way to bring him to her.

Her issues weren’t resolved, but lying here, pressed into Brodie’s body, she found some peace. Being with Brodie made sense and she’d meant what she’d said about him making everything better. What she needed was closure on her former life before she could move into her new Kindred one at Brodie’s side, and she wasn’t sure where to start in achieving that.

Brodie was still there when she went to sleep, and she’d expected him to be gone before first light. But he was still holding her and wearing his jeans when she woke up. They had breakfast together, and he was vague in answering questions about his plans, cryptic was his specialty. With a smack on her ass, he sent her out of the apartment and on her way to work, closing the door, and staying behind himself. Though he’d insisted she return to the manor after work, he hadn’t confirmed or denied whether he was going back to join Tuck.

Entering the CI building through the executive parking lot, she got off on the floor below hers to make her way through the law bullpen to the offices beyond where she knew she’d find…

“Julian,” she said, taping her knuckle on his open door causing him to look up from the pile of papers on the desk. His desk was a mess and the cluttered cabinet to the right suggested he wasn’t as much of a neat freak as his meticulous appearance suggested.

“Hello, good morning,” he said, rising from his seat. “I’m sorry for the mess. I’m changing the office and we just lost an associate yesterday.”

Panic made her take a stride forward. “Lost him?” she asked, hooking her thumb over the purse she had across her body.

“Yes,” he said, coming around his desk. “He was poached by a Manhattan firm… I can’t lie, people are twitchy around here since, you know.”

He got that odd look of solemnity again, so she smiled to try to put him at ease. “I came to reassure you about that,” she said. “I know the board isn’t meeting until next week but stability will be returning to Cormack Industries.”

Concerned with his work and consumed by his own thoughts, he spoke as though he may not have heard her. “I’m glad you came because I was going to call your office. A client got in touch, an important client who CI has done a lot of business with.”

That narrowed it down to about a million. CI didn’t have unimportant clients. Reminding herself to stay cool and patient, she did her best to pace her words. “That’s good. Things are getting back to normal. Who is heading up the—”

Julian’s smile was joined by a shake of his head. “Oh, I’m sorry, I meant, he’s looking for you. Specifically you. He stated that you are the sole person he will deal with.”

Her thoughts stalled. She was an assistant, she didn’t head negotiations, she got doughnuts and Danishes… at least, she sent one of the girls to do it while she lined up the presentations and set out contracts. While all of their assistants knew her by her first name, few of the clients knew her as anything more than a voice at the end of the phone or a name on an email. No client would request to talk to her on the phone, let alone have a private meeting with her.

Naivety was a liability, so she greeted this development with suspicion. “Who is he?” she asked. “What does he want?”

“He didn’t leave his name, just said that you’d met before and that you knew what it would be about,” he said. “He requested to have the meeting in Grant’s office. Will that be suitable for you?”

If the client had asked for it, she had no choice, she knew that much about being professional—personal issues didn’t matter a damn if someone was going to spend a shitload of cash with the company.

Given her association with the Kindred, and the possible outcomes of this peculiar request, she didn’t probe Julian for any more information or let her true curiosity show. If she played down her confusion, Julian shouldn’t follow up with questions when they next saw each other after the meeting. If it turned out to be Kindred related, she wouldn’t be able to be honest with the ignorant lawyer. The less he knew, the safer he would be.

It could be that the appeal for an audience with her was benign. One of CI’s longer standing clients might just want to snoop now that Grant’s obituary had been printed. In their eyes, she would be the most likely candidate to have salacious details, and they’d probably guess she was weak and stupid enough to share them. Though if that were the case, there would be no reason to specify a meeting location or to be so guarded about who they were.

“Yes,” she muttered, taking her attention to the sunshine beyond the window. “I’ll go upstairs and set it up.”

“What did you want to tell me?” Julian asked and she looked at him again.

Her forehead was still tense, but she didn’t have time to speculate about who the stranger might be. So she did what she’d come here to do. “I wanted to let you know that there is a woman coming in to take over Grant’s position, subject to board approval.”

Julian didn’t flinch. “Yes, Mischa Corvi.”

His knowledge was unexpected. “You knew?” she asked. Brodie didn’t make phone calls, didn’t like to talk to people, yet he’d apparently called ahead. “How did you—”

“Her people called last night. The rest of us were notified this morning,” Julian’s face lit. “She’s an incredible woman. She triumphed after her father’s unexpected suicide. She took over the family firm and has helped several others return from the brink of bankruptcy. She has a knack for business.”

Wasn’t it just wonderful that everyone worshiped this woman who Brodie used to fuck? Zara did her best to smile. “CI is not near bankruptcy,” she said, trying to remain upbeat while being visited by an immature pang of jealousy.

“No,” Julian concurred. “And I didn’t know she was affiliated with the McCormack family. Grant was so private about that sort of thing.”

Grant didn’t know Mischa Corvi personally, at least as far as Zara knew. But it turned out there was plenty she didn’t know about the man and the company she thought she knew so well.

“What do you know?” Zara asked, finding it difficult to maintain the façade.

Julian was too distracted by his own eagerness to notice her discomfort. “She knows the family, was sent by them according to her people, hand-picked. I’m looking forward to meeting her.”

She never would’ve guessed. “I can tell. We’re all in for a treat.”

“I think we are.”

Observing the clutter of the office, she took a deep breath. “Well, I should let you get back to tidying up. We want everything in order for Ms. Corvi’s arrival, don’t we?”

“Yes,” he said and his glee dissipated to concern. “Yes. Yes, you’re right.”

Having notified the man of something he already knew, Zara left him to his work and began to think about her own. A day of preparing for the arrival of Cuckoo to the company was bumped down the priority list too. A mysterious client wanted a meeting with her.

Leaving the law floor, she went up to her own and set Grant’s office in her sights. Zara wanted time to walk around the CEO’s office that she’d so far avoided before she was expected to take a meeting in it. On several occasions in the past, she had been party to Grant’s discussions with important clients. But she sat in a corner, out of their eye line and took notes or offered facts as they were requested.

Grazing her finger over the fingerprint receptor on Grant’s office door, she was disconcerted to feel tears burning in her ducts. Grant had screwed her over and wanted her to suffer for falling in love with Brodie. But he was a damaged man, desperate and alone. There wasn’t anyone on the planet who knew him through and through.

She wondered if there was anything more she could have done to bring him closer to Brodie. She didn’t have to turn her back on him in the Atlas warehouse as she had. So many ‘what ifs’ and ‘could’ve maybes’ presented themselves to her now that she had the full picture. Retrospect gave her the unwelcome chance to make excuses. The Kindred didn’t tell her that they were going to be at that warehouse or that they planned to intercept the deal.

But she could pinpoint the moment that her relationship with Grant had been broken. It was that second she tossed the van keys to Brodie instead of him. Zara already had a sense of responsibility for what happened with Art. Guilt over her decision still often kept her awake at night. If she’d tossed the keys to Grant maybe Sutcliffe would’ve made it out of there with the device, but Art would be alive, wouldn’t he?

Maybe Grant would never have found out about her relationship with Brodie. Sure, Brodie would’ve been pissed at her and it would’ve taken some explaining, but… She’d had to make a split second decision, and the crux of it was that she trusted Brodie to be compelled by the Kindred’s motives that were more virtuous. When she’d made that instinctive choice, none of them knew that Sutcliffe was packing a weapon or that any of them were in immediate danger of death.

Replaying the past over in her mind wouldn’t change their circumstances. She was here now, outside the CI CEO’s office, and no matter how she justified it, she had to go inside. With one long hard breath that shook her shoulders, she straightened her spine and pushed her thumb against the security plate. It flashed in acceptance, so she strode inside.

Her concern should’ve been what was coming, who this strange client would be, and why he wanted to meet with her. It was disconcerting that he knew her well enough to want to talk to her while she had no idea who he was. That left her at an instant disadvantage.

Less than five paces into the room, she paused, her vision snagged on the black leather chair that hadn’t been used since Grant was last here. Grant. The room still smelled like him. Rolling her lips around her teeth, she squeezed hard but couldn’t stop her chin from wobbling. Maybe that was why this was so difficult. Grant was gone. He had nurtured CI, it was his legacy, his passion, and now like a lost child, it stood as an ominous reminder of what was missing. This building was a glass and steel headstone bearing the name of the man she had once idolized and who would never again visit its hallways.

It would be easy to attribute her emotional reaction to thoughts of Grant McCormack to the five years they worked together when there were good times. But it wasn’t so much the man himself, or the happy times they shared, that she grieved. Her regret came from the way things ended, so abruptly that no one got the chance to say goodbye.

And guilt. The weight of it kept her awake. It was ironic that she could see strangers die and hear of Brodie’s work without blinking an eye, yet the demise of one man who had become their enemy plagued her. That fact was the root of her guilt.

He had become their enemy. But why was that? Because of her. Maybe the foundation of their animosity had been laid when they were teenagers, but it was her involvement in their lives, in their work, and relationship that had caused the rift to become terminal. She felt guilty about coming between the brothers, which was crazy, because they’d had years to make amends with each other and neither cared.

Zara knew what it was to live without family and what it was to want the approval of a parent or the support of a sibling and to be left hanging. Her father didn’t contact her anymore, and in years gone by, when she mustered the courage to call home, the conversation was so strained that she eventually gave up trying to force it. Her mother was long dead. Her brother was too busy being a dumbass to think about stepping up for her. To her family, it was as if she’d ceased to exist because she chose to make decisions for herself instead of relying on theirs.

At one time, she relied on CI and on Grant to fill that hole. Losing both now was like losing an old friend or breaking up with a long-term partner. She knew there was nothing for her here, that she didn’t want this life anymore, but it didn’t make turning her back any easier.

Her future was with Brodie and the Kindred. What they did was so dangerous, as Grant and Art’s deaths had shown, that the void within her was always precariously close to becoming vacant. It could come at any second. Brodie had enemies and one of them could be loitering in any shadowy corner, ready to take her love away from her without any warning.

“I guess I’m early.”

Spinning on the spot, all of her thoughts jarred to an abrupt halt when she identified the man who had spoken. “Oh my God,” she whispered, forgetting to inhale before she sealed her lips.

“Kahlil Samara,” he said, coming into the room with his hand extended.

Her body went into lockdown. She was so stiff, she couldn’t move, though her eyes were doing a crazy job of trying to find any troops he might have brought with him. He got over to her and stopped, lifting his hand higher as he smiled.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, casting off her surprise so as not to betray how he’d caught her off guard.

She and Kahlil had met months ago in the Grand Hotel conference room during Grant’s negotiations into selling Game Time. But she’d been aware of him before then after overhearing a meeting between her boss and this man. Having believed that she’d made a discreet escape, she was then attacked by Kahlil’s security men in the CI parking garage. She’d been green and didn’t know how to extricate herself. So it had been lucky that Raven was watching because he’d swooped in to save her ass.

How much Kahlil knew about that night, she didn’t know. But Raven wasn’t here to save her this time. Grant wasn’t even around to offer a buffer. This was her and a terrorist alone in a room. They were probably the only two people in the building who had any idea about Game Time. Kahlil’s master was unsuccessful in his bid for Game Time, so maybe this was him taking a second shot now that Grant wasn’t able to hamper the deal.

Kahlil’s hand dropped in time with his sigh. “I heard about Grant. I wanted to extend my condolences.”