Fuck. Tomorrow. And quickly, I’m reminded that distraction isn’t an easy feat when we are us and we’re in this fucking world. How do I play this? I tussle over that question for far too long, wasting all our times, because there is only one answer. Be reasonable. I have to be reasonable. I turn to Rose. “How long will shopping take?”

  She looks at me like I’m stupid. “How long is a piece of string?”

  I show the ceiling my eyes, exasperated. Rose and I both know Beau hates shopping, so I expect it’ll be done far quicker than Rose is expecting. Or hoping. “Tank and Fury go with you,” I say, just as the men themselves emerge from rooms down the corridor, looking like they’re about ready to burst with excitement, which tells me they already know what today entails for them, which means Danny knows too. “Didn’t anyone think to tell me?”

  “I forgot,” Beau says, sounding apologetic. Forgot? She had all day yesterday to tell me this. All day! I can feel myself getting worked up, trying to mentally reason with myself. It’s hard when so much is uncertain. Where the fuck is Burrows?

  “Call me when you’re done,” I order, my vocal cords straining to keep my voice gentle. I slide my hand onto Beau’s neck and peck her lips. “I’ll pick you up.”

  “Why?”

  “I have a surprise.” I leave her with Rose and make my way down the corridor, passing the big guys. “Have fun,” I quip, getting grunts from them both.

  I pass through the entrance hall, just as the front door opens and Zinnea struts in on sky-high platforms wearing a silver sequin embellished pair of trousers and a bustier covered in feathers. Could be me, but since she heard about her brother, she seems to have become a more extreme version of herself, and Zinnea was pretty fucking extreme already. “Morning,” I say, passing her, forcing her to look up from rummaging through her purse. Her blonde wig is a little wonky. I smile.

  “What are you grinning at?” she asks.

  I raise my hand to my head. “You’re a little”—I jiggle my finger—“skew-whiff.”

  She quickly totters across to the wall-hung mirror to straighten herself out. “I was throwing the ball for the dogs.”

  “Dressed like that?”

  She looks back, her hand pausing on her head. “Dressed like what, exactly, James?”

  “Fabulously, of course.” I smile, and she sniffs.

  “How’s Beau doing?” She goes back to her bag and pulls out a tissue, dabbing at her top lip.

  I glance up the stairs, thoughtful. “She’s okay.” I frown. “I think.”

  “You think?”

  “She’s still trying to get hold of Burrows.”

  “She never could let things go.” She breathes in and looks up the stairs too. “I’m hoping a bit of shopping today will distract her.”

  “For her father’s funeral?” I ask on an unamused laugh. And distract? I’m beginning to wonder if it’s possible to distract Beau Hayley, and that’s a massive disadvantage for me.

  Zinnea stands tall, obviously pushing back her own warped grief for her egotistical brother. “Zinnea makes anything fun, darling.” She struts past me and stops, pouting her over-glossed pink lips and making her eyes sultry so her fake fans of lashes flutter. “Which is why I’m being Lawrence less and less,” she says in her natural, masculine, deep voice. “Arrivederci, darling!” she sings, high again, as she walks like a catwalk model into the kitchen and shrieks a good morning to Esther.

  When I get to Danny’s office, I find him at his desk turning the gold letter opener over in his hand. He looks up, acknowledges me with a cold stare for a few seconds, then returns to deliberately spinning the weapon in his hand. Because that letter open has definitely killed more men than it’s opened letters. I take a seat and let him have his thoughts, while I wonder who’s on the end of that letter opener next.

  “John Theodore Little,” he muses, his blue eyes narrowing to slits. This will be driving him wild. Irritating him. Angering him. He was fooled, and Danny Black is no fool.

  “Otto has nothing, but he will have.”

  Danny places the letter opener down and gets up, wandering to the drinks cabinet, looks it over, probably realizes what the time is, then wanders back. “How are your muscles?” he asks, rolling his shoulders.

  “Better.”

  “Yeah, mine too.” He pouts. “The delivery Fri—”

  “You know I’m not happy about it.”

  He hums, walking to the window. “I know. You want to call it off?” He looks back, and I can tell that if I demanded it, he would support it. Fuck the Mexicans, we’d deal with the repercussions. But it’s not the Mexicans I’m worried about.

  “I have to let her have this.” It fucking pains me, but if I call a halt on this shit, Beau will retreat and I can’t have her retreating. Not with this afternoon’s appointment and the funeral tomorrow and the fact that her ex is waiting in the wings to . . . what? Make her fall back in love with him? Turn her against me? He’s tried it all already. Failed. And, again, where the fuck is he, anyway? Does it matter? Beau will do what Beau will do . . . if I let her. Which I won’t. Can’t. Fuck. But I’ve long accepted she’s not an average woman. Lara Croft. But if she was pregnant . . .

  I shake my head to myself. “And to be clear, this wouldn’t be happening if it were an exchange.” Dealing with Chaka and the Coast Guard is one thing. Dealing with the Mexicans is another.

  Danny laughs under his breath. “You’re a better man than I am.”

  “Our women have different needs,” I point out. “Rose needed to help those women. You bowed when she insisted on Pearl and Anya remaining in our care.”

  “True.” He settles back in his chair. “Sandy called me last night.”

  I balk. “And you’re telling me this now?” I look at my watch. “Twelve hours later?”

  “I was enjoying my day off.” He tosses the letter opener into the middle of the desk and focuses on it. I don’t challenge him. I was enjoying a day off too. “He heard about the Poles. Told me we left two alive. A prize for guessing who one was.”

  “The Shark,” I muse.

  “And guess what?”

  “Don’t tell me Sandy offered you a name?” How many people are going to claim to know who The Bear is? If I hadn’t spoken to the elusive fucker personally, I would think he’s a figment of all our imaginations. A nightmare that haunts our dreams, but not reality.

  “You’re so clever.” Danny turns his eyes up to me. “But that’s not all he offered.”

  I raise my brows, thinking. It doesn’t take me long. “Volodya,” I breathe. “Sandy’s offered you Volodya too.” So there really is unrest in the camp, because not so long ago, Sandy and Volodya were playing nicely together under The Ox. Now he’s dead too, the Russians and Poles are offering each other up left and right. Of course Sandy would offer Volodya to Danny; he knows that’s a prime piece of meat for The Brit after he turned on him at the Winstable massacre. But is the not so tiny detail of Sandy organizing a hit on Beau when she lay in the hospital with a gunshot wound being forgotten? Surely not. It’s the whole fucking point I ended up resurrecting The Brit after he faked his death.

  “I assume you declined.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Don’t piss me off, Danny,” I warn, shifting in my chair. “He had a—”

  He holds up a hand. “I know. But let us not forget, Volodya shot me of his own accord. Sandy was ordered by a higher power to kill Beau because she was uncomfortably close to exposing him, like her mother was.”

  I settle in my chair, but I’m far from comfortable with where this is heading. “He still acted, whether ordered or not. Rose doesn’t have a target on her head. Beau has been a target since she started digging around into her mother’s death.”

  “We’re past that,” Danny says, appearing as frustrated as me. “The FBI and MPD buried that case for a reason, and since you were implicated in the evidence that was destroyed by Dexter and it wasn’t only The Bear’s name in that safety deposit box, we should be grateful. This is personal now, James. Beau doesn’t want justice like she used to want justice. She wants justice like you want justice. With death. Blood.”

  “Pretty fucking impossible when the man we want dead has disappeared off the face of the fucking earth.” The Bear vanishing pains me more than him terrorizing us. “He called us in St. Lucia. Took the greatest of pleasure in informing us he’s still alive, that we got the wrong man. We come back to Miami to deal with it. He calls us the day we arrive to tell us he dug up your pops and Beau’s mother, and over a week down the line, nothing. Not a fucking peep.”

  “I think Beau’s right. He’s lost their confidence.”

  Whoever he is. Who the fuck is he? Facing the idea that we may never know is torture. There was a time when no one knew who he was. Now, apparently, every fucker does if the amount of offers of a name is a measure.

  “About tomorrow,” Danny goes on, swiftly changing the subject. “The funeral.” He eyes me curiously.

  “What about it?”

  “I’ll ask you again. Did you kill Beau’s father?”

  “I’ve told you repeatedly, no, I didn’t fucking kill her father.” Wanted to. God, did I want to.

  “Then what the fuck were you doing at the hotel?”

  I breathe out, defeated. It’s time to share since Beau will find out later anyway. I pull out my phone, find the details, and slide it across the desk. “I wasn’t at the same hotel as Tom Hayley.”

  Danny frowns as he picks it up and starts scrolling through the images. “What’s this?” he asks, splitting his attention between my uncomfortable form and my phone.

  “I’ve bought us a place,” I tell him, a bit unsure, because, honestly, I’m still feeling it, and I can’t put my finger on exactly why. Would Beau like it? Hate it? “I was meeting the realtor at the lobby bar to finalize some paperwork.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because you’d tell Rose and Rose would tell Beau.” This needs a gentle approach too. “I need her in the best frame of mind. Stable. Positive.”

  “Is it an apartment, or is it a glass box?” Danny looks up at me. “It’s very . . . exposed.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. I’m just saying, it’s very . . . glassy.”

  “Very observant.”

  “So why haven’t you told Beau?”

  I reclaim my phone. “I’m trying to minimize stress. She’s got a lot on her mind at the moment.”

  “You’re worried she’ll say no to moving in together.”

  “We live here together.”

  “Minimize stress,” Danny muses, his forehead creasing, his brows heavy. What’s taking so much of his brain space at the moment? “It’s her father’s funeral tomorrow.”

  “Again, very observant. Brad’s rubbing off on you.”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he says, and I recoil, surprised.

  “The funeral?” I say. “It’s kind of necessary. They happen when people die.”

  He looks at me tiredly. “No, not the fucking funeral. The apartment, and I’m not speaking completely selfishly. Beau needs Rose as much as Rose needs her. Plus, you’d have to move Fury in there. Is there even enough room for him because it looks kinda small?”

  “I hope we get to a point when I don’t need Fury stuck to Beau constantly. We need our own space.”

  Danny gets up, appearing agitated, pacing. “Not if you’re fucking dead,” he says gravely, stopping with his circling of the room.

  I’m recoiling again. “She needs some normal.”

  “This is about as normal as our life gets, mate. Cleaning cash, gunrunning, and fighting off the daredevils who try to move in.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then why?”

  My teeth grit. “I have to give her hope that we can be . . .” I pause, thinking, trying in vain not to get worked up. “I don’t fucking know. Something other than dark. Some normality. Or something close.”

  “For you or her?” he fires back.

  “Her,” I murmur unconvincingly, shrinking into my chair. “Everything is for her.” I’m not lying. “She wants a baby. She’s said she’ll marry me. Why wouldn’t she want our own place?”

  “Are you prepared to give her a baby?”

  I scowl. “Anything.”

  “You’ve changed your tune,” he muses, looking at me like he knows. He just . . . knows. “She’s with you, James. She accepted when she held Burrows at gunpoint and shot Perry Adams that normal would not feature in her life anymore. She chose you.”

  “What if she’s regretting it?”

  “That’s bollocks.” He dismisses me easily. “You’ve got to stop thinking you can bring her to heel.”

  “That’s rich coming from you.”

  He smiles, and it’s fond. “I know when to let Rose have her way. As you pointed out, I wasn’t comfortable having those two girls in my house, but Rose needed that. I’m not all too fond of the fact that she cracks me one on the nose every now and then, but she needs that too. Your Beau is like a champion racehorse being forced not to run. It doesn’t work. They’ll always end up bucking. Do you actually want a baby, or do you just want a reason to keep her close?”

  “The fuck?” I blurt.

  “It’s a serious question.”

  “It’s a stupid fucking question.” I push back in my chair, standing abruptly, my fists clenching, and Danny takes a wary step back. I manage amid my instant anger to ask myself why his question has triggered me. It’s easy. Because he’s bang on the money. Our baby was a healing balm on both of our wounds. All of them. And we have a lot of fucking wounds. Mental, emotional, and physical. Why wouldn’t Beau want that again? And me. Not just for all of that, but because she would have no choice but to tame the Lara in her. I’m such a dick. An apartment won’t solve my problems. Marriage might not either. But a little piece of her and a little piece of me in one little person to call ours?

  “Calm down,” Danny murmurs, and, weirdly, I do, taking a few deep breaths and lowering back to my chair. But then something else comes to me.

  “You should have run it by me before you agreed to let them go shopping,” I snap. “And why the fuck do they need to go shopping for anyway? They can get everything they need online. Beau hates shopping.”

  “Because a shopping trip is one tiny bit of normal we can offer.”

  He’s right, of course, but I’m obviously not feeling very reasonable today. “You should have fucking asked.”

  “I’m sorry, okay?” Danny wanders over to the drinks cabinet and takes a couple bottles of water, bringing one to me. “Drink. You look parched.”

  “I’m fine,” I mutter, swiping the bottle from his hand. Fuck. He doesn’t think our own apartment is a good idea? I’ve been so focused on trying to give Beau what I think will fix us, I’ve forgotten what she might actually want. Problem is, I’m not certain what it is she actually wants. A baby? A badge? Our own place? This house is as fucked up as a house can get. And yet . . . it works. And, really, having so many friends and family close by is a comfort. Support. Respite in a world where there is little relief. “So you’re telling me I might have just wasted five million dollars?”

  He smiles. “Plenty more where that came from, mate.”

  The door knocks behind me, and I look back when Danny calls an okay to enter. Goldie walks in first, followed by Otto and Ringo. All have a quick scope of the room before settling on the couch in a line. “All right?” Ringo grunts, looking down his colossal nose at us.

  “Fine,” Danny says.

  “Fine,” I mutter moodily, firing off a quick email to the realtor telling him I can’t make our meeting today.

  “In other news,” Danny says, his eyes on my silently uneasy form. “Sandy’s been in touch.”

  “And what gifts has he offered to bring to the party?” Goldie asks. “Wait, don’t tell me—”

  “No, no,” Ringo chirps. “I know the answer to this. Is it a cuddly toy?”

  “And a Russian,” Danny confirms, eyeing me, waiting for me to react. How’s he being so fucking calm?

  “A Russian?” Otto asks, looking between me and Danny, as does Goldie. I don’t need to answer.

  “Sandy’s offered Volodya?” Goldie balks. “No. Kill Sandy. Kill the fucker or I will.” She stands, practically cracking her knuckles.

  Danny’s hands rise in a pacifying way I’m not feeling, and Ringo reaches for Goldie’s arm, gently easing her back to the couch. “We’re taking a moment to decide how best to approach this.”

  I know how. A machine gun and a few belts of bullets. Fuck, why did I think the apartment was a good idea?

  “A meeting without me?” The door pushes open, and Brad stands on the threshold in his boxers looking sulky, his hair all over the place, his shoulder bandaged. Danny and I are both up from our chairs quickly, helping him across the office.

  “What the fuck are you playing at?” I mutter.

  “I’m bored.”

  “You’re shot.” I point out like a chump.

  “Get off,” he grumbles, rolling his shoulders and hissing in pain as a result. “I’m fine.”

  Danny looks across at me, jerks his head in signal, and we both link our arms behind him, making a little seat for him to perch on. “I said I’m fine!” he snaps.

  “Sit the fuck down or I’ll drag you back to your room,” Danny retorts as everyone gets up, making space, Goldie perching on one arm, Ringo on the other, and Otto setting his laptop on Danny’s desk and taking one of the chairs.

  “I’m not a fucking invalid,” Brad grumbles, relenting and lowering to the makeshift chair.

  “You are an invalid, you dick,” Goldie says, plumping a pillow at her end as we carry him over. We lay him down, getting him comfy, and he gives each of us a filthy look.

  “This is the worst. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing important.” Ringo holds up his phone. “Want me to order you a coffee?”

  “Oohhh, yeah.”

  “I hope that order isn’t landing with my mother.” Danny’s face is pure and utter disgust as he makes his way back to his desk.