Rinaldo had been concerned—Milena was the niece of one of Rinaldo’s rivals in the Russian mob, though she didn’t seem to have anything to do with it herself. Her brother, Micah Severinov, was one I knew. He had been quickly added to my kill roll within the first month of his arrival in Chicago. I just hadn’t gotten around to him yet. I almost did the night I came face-to-face with him at Sweetwater, but Nick had gotten in the way, basically telling me not to go after him for the sake of the chick he was banging. I had planned to follow up on it with Rinaldo but ended up finding out about Bridgett before I had the chance.
Maybe if I offered to take out the whole Severinov family, Rinaldo would consider letting me go. It would probably piss Nick off, but I really didn’t give a shit about how he felt. I needed to figure out how I could both protect Lia and stay with her at the same time. I was willing to consider any and all alternatives to getting what I wanted.
I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling. My head might have been clear, but my thoughts were still leaning toward the impractical if not quite insane. I had to figure out what strategy would allow me to end up with Lia in some remote area far away from Chicago and the people who knew me based on the business I conducted.
I wasn’t going to be able to do any of that shit from where I was at the moment. Unfortunately, this was going to be a waiting game as much as anything else. Michael Beard, the attorney, and Rinaldo obviously had some sort of plan, and I was going to have to be patient enough to wait for it to come to fruition.
Patience wasn’t my best attribute.
Still, first things first. Before I could figure out how to plan a life with Lia, assuming she was even interested, I had to get out of this place.
*****
Rinaldo’s visit had been expected. Even when my head wasn’t working quite right, I knew he would be coming to see me. Now, whether he brought a lawyer or someone to kill me right there in the visiting area was anyone’s guess, but showing his face wasn’t. He’d need to look me in the eye and make sure whatever the fuck I had done was about me and not about him. He needed to know I hadn’t betrayed him.
Lia’s visit was a little more jolting, but if I had been in my right mind, I would have figured it was going to happen. After all, she had seen me carted off by a SWAT team and was taking care of my dog. It made sense for her to show up.
The third visit though—that one caught me completely off guard and was bound to end very badly for me.
Two men.
Dark suits.
They were escorted by a short, ginger-haired man I hadn’t met but still recognized as the prison warden. He looked from me to the other men but didn’t say a word as he leaned over, spoke into the guard’s ear, and then escorted him out of the room. As he walked near the door, he reached up and pulled the cord for the security camera out of the wall.
Shit.
I saw the red light on the side of the machine go dim and then watched the suits as they sat down at the table across from me. The cuffs holding me to the bolted-down chair scraped against the chains as my hands briefly clenched into fists and then released again.
The man on the right was in his late forties, and he just stared at me without any particular expression on his pale face. The lack of emotion wasn’t a natural thing for him—he was having to work at it pretty hard to keep it going. There was a spot on his cheek that twitched every few seconds, telling me he didn’t feel at all comfortable with trying to portray himself that way. He looked a little awkward in the chair as well but kept himself poised. His suit was tailored, but there were crumbs from a sandwich or something on the lapel, so he wasn’t used to being dressed as nicely as he was. He had salt-and-pepper hair and matching beard.
The other one, though—he was a puzzle.
He was big—really big. Bigger than Mario, even. His head had been shaved close with no marks around it to tell if he shaved it for the sake of the look or if he did it because he had already lost all of his hair anyway. He was in his mid thirties, maybe, and had dark, curly hair around his wrists that stuck out of his cuffs. His suit was also tailored but extremely neat. He even removed the jacket, folded it neatly, and laid it across the back of the chair before he seated himself and looked into my eyes.
His eyes looked familiar, but I was sure I had never met him before.
He smiled, and there was nothing the least bit friendly about the look. He reached his hand out toward me as he spoke.
“Mister Arden, my name is Agent Trent, and this is Agent Johnson. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Most adults, when offered a hand in greeting, reflexively hold out their right hand without question. Without a doubt, this was the response Trent was expecting. It was a calculated and cold move, given the current state of my bound wrists. If I had been the kind of guy who immediately responded in the most polite of ways, I would have fallen for the move and been noisily reminded of the chains attaching my arms to the chair.
I wasn’t that kind of guy, though, so I didn’t move. Trent narrowed his eyes the tiniest amount but recovered within a second. Completely relaxed again, the corner of his mouth turned up slightly as I raised a brow.
I was instantly glad I had managed to get some actual sleep. If I hadn’t, I might have missed his ploy and therefore misjudged him. With my mind back in the game, my perception was strong. I recognized immediately that he was definitely my opponent.
He wasn’t going to be a quick win, though, whatever the game was going to be. Regardless, he’d already made a mistake. The most interesting part of the short exchange was the obvious lack of research Trent had done. He was expecting me to act in a certain way, but he was wrong, and his initial mind-fuck was wasted on me. If he had done his research, he would have gone with another approach, like an officer’s uniform and a salute.
I probably would have responded to that.
Instead, I continued to eye him carefully. I made sure my expression was emotionless as I glanced from his outstretched hand to my bound right wrist and then up to his eyes. I raised my eyebrow again and waited.
“Ah, yes,” Trent said, “I suppose we’ll have to stick with a hello.”
He dropped his hand and tapped twice on the table as he settled in his seat. There wasn’t any reason for the tap, I was sure of that. If there had been any kind of “code” between the two men, Johnson obviously didn’t know about it. He glanced toward the sound, but his expression didn’t change. He was having too much trouble keeping up the façade for his expression to remain the same if he was being given orders of some kind.
What reason then?