Pretty Little Lion by Suleikha Snyder

27

The McCammon Lodge and Event Center was just what one would imagine such a place to look like. Half luxury cabin, half corporate retreat. Owned by one of Mirko’s many shell corporations. Tavi had been here before, during his years affiliated with this circle, but never under such particular conditions. Never with such grim intentions. And he didn’t even have the serum in his possession. No, Mirko had tasked two more of his henchmen with guarding the prize, cuffing the reinforced briefcase to one of his pet bear shifters’ wrists. How Vladimir felt about such a responsibility was of no consequence…but he had no problem mauling anyone who tried to take it. Tavi had filed that away just as he filed away everything else he learned from these people.

Now, he paced the halls of the lodge, watching the guests arrive throughout the day. Some by car, others by helicopter, landing on the private helipad just behind the building. Many of the same people who’d been at the party, their confidence in Mirko bolstered by the amount of coke that had gone up their noses. But then, that was all part of the plan, wasn’t it? To gain their confidence before he gained control. Tavi knew all the pages of this playbook. He’d seen far more ambitious and capricious men use it…and fail miserably.

“Are you ever going to do more than watch?”she’d taunted him once. More than once. Dropping into a spindly seat across from him at a café in the Marais. Sliding into a seat beside him at a bar in Havana. And New York. Always New York. Funny how it was the place that captured so much of his past and all of his mistakes. Her. Finian. His conscience made sentient.

Tavi had been an operative and an operator longer than most. A double agent. A triple agent. A traitor to so many causes, barely true even to himself. But one thing he knew for certain: Every living creature in this building was going to die before the night was out. According to Mirko, it was the only way to move forward. The only way to be sure. Not Tavi’s personal choice, not his favorite method of dispatching competition, but you couldn’t make lemonade without squeezing the lemons. That they were racist lemons went a long way toward easing any of Tavi’s discomfort on the matter.

He’d been making such rationalizations for a very, very long time. Very few people had called him on it. Because he let so very few people get close. His family was long dead. He’d kept deliberate distance from their descendants. His lovers remembered him fondly, if they remembered him at all. Finian had been an exception on that count—and a costly one. But none had cost him more than the person he was doing all of this for. The person he’d never once taken to bed.

“Are we going to do this dance forever?” he asks her when she slides into the seat across from him.

“Yes. Until we can’t anymore.” She has a drink in her hand, untouched and just for show. Something fruity with loads of rum. There’s no shortage of such cocktails on Hector’s menu. “And that might be sooner rather than later.”

He doesn’t like the sound of that. It’s jarring. At odds with the music from the stage. At odds with everything he’s come to know of her. “Are you in some kind of danger? More than usual?”

“More than usual,” she affirms. “And so I need a fail-safe. Backup. In the form of someone no one will suspect.”

Him. She means him. “Whatever it is, I’ll do it,” he says instantly, though he’ll likely regret that later.

“Find me,” she says with an odd intensity. With flames in her eyes. “I’m always the one finding you. I need you to return the favor.”

So yes. He was finally doing more than just watching. All because she’d asked. If his methods were crude, crass, less than desirable…so be it. He’d let dozens of men die if it meant she lived.