Merciless Union by Faith Summers

32

Lucca

Eric jumps on his motorcycle while Aiden and I get in the car.

We just left our wives to start this lengthy journey. We’re on our way to the airport where we’ll be taking his private jet.

We then have a couple of hours of travel to the place we’ll be staying at, which is near where Gina lives.

“You’re more quiet than usual, Merciless,” Aiden states as we pull out of his drive. “Please don’t tell me you feel bad about Jon. I thought having Marylin awake would lessen the sting of that.”

“Believe me, it does, and I wish I were feeling bad about Jon.” I could tell he was going to ask me what was going on the instant he saw me and Aria walk through his door. I planned to talk to him anyway once we were alone, but the hard part is saying the words I fear are true. After I killed Jon, I called Aiden to tell him I had, but I didn’t tell him what Jon said to me about Damien and going back to Mendes’ Place. “There’s more shit to deal with, Aiden.”

“What’s going on?”

I draw in a breath and fill him on the latest. When I’m done, he stares back at me with the same astonishment as I feel.

“What the fuck are you saying to me? This just gets deeper and deeper down the fucking rabbit hole. Damien, Lucca?”

“Yeah, I know. He’s the last person I expected to be feeling this way about.” I glance at him. “Aiden, if Jon was telling the truth about Damien working for Pasha, and he killed Aria’s mother, then I think he would have known the secret.”

“Fuck, and look at us going all the way to Montana.”

“I know. But, this is the only way to get the whole truth. We’re just assuming.”

He cuts me a sharp glance, and I see the doubt in his eyes. “We’re not people who assume, Merciless. You and I both know that some of the worse people to hurt us are the closest. We both need to be careful. Damien hasn’t been told that I’m helping you, but he’s no fool. He’ll know someone is.” Aiden sighs. “Let’s just focus on one thing at a time. We’ll get to Montana and grab this information from Gina. When we get back, go see Damien, and we’ll take it from there. I’ll also get Eric to set up some surveillance at Mendes’ place.”

“Alright. I still want to go there, though, so that I don’t miss anything.”

“That’s fine. I wonder what the fuck you were supposed to see that you didn’t see.”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

I bite the inside of my lip and glance back to the house where I left my wife.

I always hate leaving on bad terms, and today was really bad.

There’s a fucked up feeling in my gut about everything. Whenever I have that feeling, something disastrous always happens.

What did you do, Damien?

* * *

Gina—now Laila—lives on a ranch with several beautiful Arabian horses.

She comes out to greet us with two bodyguards and a man that has his arm around her.

They look like they’re a couple.

We already decided that we wouldn’t be going in guns blazing with her, and we’d exact more tact and care because of the nature of the situation.

Unlike Eduardo, who we saw weeks ago, she’s also a person who lives outside our dark world, but she was dragged in.

The last thing we want to do is scare her.

The guards come up to us when we park our rental.

The three of us step out of the car and allow them to search us. Of course, we have weapons.

“You can’t go in that house with those weapons,” the tallest one says.

“No problem. Is it okay if my assistant here takes care of them while we go in?” Aiden asks and cocks his head toward Eric.

We also planned this too. That way, if there was trouble, one of us would still have the guns, and we’d just have to try to get to him.

“That’s fine.”

We hand Eric our guns and knives. When we’re weapon-free, we’re allowed to go through the gate where Gina is with the other man.

She looks the same as the pictures Gibbs got us, just slightly older.

She says something to the man before we get to them, and he gives her a kiss and walks away, checking over his shoulder to make sure she’s safe.

She looks us over like she’s still checking we’re not going to kill her and must decide we seem safe because her gaze settles on me for a sad beat before she nods.

There was a look in her eyes like she recognized me, but I’ve never seen her before.

“This way. We can talk in my office.” She points to the opened glass door to our left.

She walks on ahead of us, and we follow her into a room that looks more like a gallery. There is artwork on the walls and an unfinished painting on an easel.

She leads us to a sofa area with a little table in the center that has a neat stack of documents.

“Please sit,” she says.

“Thank you for having us,” I say first.

“I’m not sure how to answer that yet.” Her gaze lingers on Aiden. “It’s not every day you have a Russian mafia boss and an enforcer in your home.”

“I can assure you, we won’t be causing any trouble,” Aiden replies. “We just want the information if you’ll give it to us.”

“I will. I need something, though.” She looks from Aiden to me.

“What is it?”

“Assurance that you will kill Raphael De Marchi. I don’t want to lose any more people I love. I have a good life here, and I want to fight to keep it that way. It would be really nice to wake up and not have to worry someone working for that bastard will find me and end it all.”

“That is the goal. Death will come to Raphael and anybody associated with him who’s a party to this secret,” Aiden assures her.

“Okay. That’s good enough for me. I guess I should start with my part in this mess. I’m not without blame because I had an affair with Raphael. I don’t know what I was thinking. It was only when I stumbled across his big secret that I called it off. The secret has to do with Pasha Ivanov. He’s a child sexual predator. I can’t even call him a pedophile. The word is too tame for what he does or did.”

My nerves scatter at those words when I think of my girl. “What did you discover?”

“Close to seventeen years ago, there were four sisters. The Hawthornes. They were one set of twins and their two siblings. The twins were five, and their sister's ages six and seven. They were popular because they were on a sitcom called Family Nights for years. Everyone loved them and considered them America’s little darlings. Eventually, they were on everything. I’m not sure if either of you remembers hearing about them.”

“I do,” Aiden says.

“Yeah, me too. They were all killed. It was a really big thing.” I never watched the news, but the incident was horrific enough for everyone to tune in to what was happening. I don’t remember specifics, but I remember the parents being questioned and the father going down for their deaths.

“Their murders shocked the nation in a massive way, but nobody knew the truth, but me. And anybody who found out what happened was killed.” Her gaze drops to her lap, and when she looks back at us, she has tears in her eyes.

Her hands shake, and she inhales sharply. “Pasha took a liking to them and managed to work his way into their lives via the studio manager whom the parents trusted with their children. Pasha abused all of them. I don’t know how long it went on for, but soon people started to notice that the sisters were acting weird—acting like they were being abused. The eldest one started cutting herself. People are going to question things when a seven-year-old starts doing things like that. That summer, when people started talking, all four sisters disappeared. Weeks later, their mutilated bodies were found buried in the woods.”

Jesus, I think I know what she’s going to tell us.

“Pasha killed them, didn’t he?” I ask.

“Yes, he did,” she confirms, and Aiden and I exchange glances.

That is definitely something that would have destroyed him and the Bratva at large. There is no question of whether it would or would not. That type of evil is what makes people bond together to take down the perpetrator and anybody associated with them. That’s why the man kept the secret for so long. But there’s more, isn’t there.

Raphael. What did he do?

“What’s Raphael’s part in it?”

“Raphael used his position to cover Pasha’s tracks. At the time, he was the State’s Attorney en route to being governor. As the State’s Attorney, Raphael had access to everything. He pointed the evidence and media attention to the girls' father. Once the media’s eye was turned to James Hawthorne, it wasn’t difficult to do the rest. Raphael pulled all manner of strings to hide and destroy key evidence and plant traps. He made it look like James abused his children then killed them. The case went on for nearly a year. In the end, James was issued the death penalty and administered his fate with a lethal injection. Pasha and Raphael thought they got away with everything until I stumbled across the truth.”

Fucking hell. I don’t even know what words to say. That was the extent of Raphael and Pasha’s evil. That’s what they did.

“This is it. The evidence of the truth.” She points to the stack of documents.

“How did you find all of that?” Aiden asks.

“I had access to all of Raphael’s personal files. I gathered everything over a period of weeks. I printed out emails to certain people from the forensics and coroner’s office who helped him and took copies of letters and evidence before they were destroyed. There’s everything to link Pasha to the murders and incriminate Raphael.”

“This is a big thing you did here,” I state, and she gives me that look again.

“I was trying to do the right thing by exposing him. Maybe it was my way of making up for the affair. The secret would have ruined him, but I didn’t know who I was dealing with, and I never knew about his mafia and cartel connections until it was too late. Everybody I went to was killed. Then Raphael killed my family. I escaped because….” Her voice trails off, and she glances at me, holding my gaze. “I escaped because your father helped me.”

My mouth goes dry, and the tightness in my stomach knots into beads of shock. The sadness etched in her face deepens, but she doesn’t look away.

“My father?” I can barely get the words out.

“Yes. You look like him. When Gibbs told me who needed my help, there was no hesitation on my part because I know what happened to your father and your family for helping me. Your father knew what happened and wanted the evidence to give his Pakhan because he knew Grigori would take the right action. I didn’t even get as far as that. Lucian never saw what I had. He got me away from death when Raphael’s men came to kill me. Raphael found out he helped me, though, and I couldn’t get to your father in time to warn him. Two days later, he was dead. It was with his help that I got the CIA contacts to change my name and flee to this life you see here. ”

I can’t breathe. This is another piece of the puzzle, and no matter how tough I am, hearing the truth about my family in any shape or form will hurt me.

Within that two-day period, things happened to me too. I remember how Raphael stoned me. His assault felt like it wasn’t just about Aria, and he kept calling my father scum. Since he always called me scum, I didn’t think anything of it.

“I’m sorry,” she adds. “Your father was a good man. I knew him because he visited the office. I could tell he wasn’t like Raphael. I’m sorry for what happened to your family. Not a day goes by when I don’t blame myself.”

“It’s … it’s okay. I will give the evidence to Grigori and deal with Raphael and Pasha after.”

“Thank you.”

I glance at Aiden, who is already looking at me with sympathy.

He looks back to Gina, and she focuses on him. “How would other people have found out the secret after you left? There were a few people who died years later.”

“It could only have been through stumbling across the files. They were on a secured portal, so it couldn’t just be hacked. That’s where Raphael kept everything. All correspondence with everyone linked with him is there.”

That’s the same portal Eduardo told us about. I’ll never know how Timothy and Aria’s mother got involved with this, but they did somehow.

“Did you see anything else in the files?”

“There was a lot there I never looked until I needed to. I’ve given you a ghost password to the system. My CIA friend rigged it up for me. It’s one of those where it will work even if the password has been changed and it cloaks your access. He’d never know you were in there. I thought that bastard might have gotten up to more shit over the years. ”

That’s the best fucking news we’ve had in a while.

“Thank you for your help,” Aiden says.

“Yes, thank you,” I add, and she turns back to me. “I guess maybe I’ll finish what my father set out to do.”

“Yes. Please let me know if I can do anything else.”

This is everything. I started out with Damien wanting to destroy Raphael.

Now I have it all. Everything Eduardo gave me on the chip Jon stole and much more to exact revenge for all the wrong Raphael did.

I’m just not sure who else I’ll be burying along with him.