For Logan (Chicago Syndicate Book 5) (23 page)

“What’s the procedure now?” I probe, glancing from her to Adriano. The dark circles of worry around his eyes have finally disappeared.

“I feel very weak, so we’ll focus on getting my strength back. I’ll start physical therapy in a few days.”

“That’s great. You did take a long time to wake up, woman,” I joke.

She chuckles. “Yeah, sorry about that.”

After four months, a time of healing starts for my family. Unfortunately, this period also causes some distance between Logan and me, forcing me to delay informing Logan about Mykhail, yet again.

Though, in life, it all comes down to timing. And I’m about to find out that timing is more important than I realize.

Rosalia

––––––––

C
am recovers steadfastly within four weeks. Throughout this period, my attention is divided among my classes, keeping Cam company at the hospital, taking care of Adam, and sneaking around with Logan.

Mykhail and I are becoming tired and careless regarding this hiding, so I choose to finally confide in Logan since we’re in a good, committed place. I decide to stick to my plan and tell him that I talked to Mykhail after he returned to campus. Only, it’s too late.

The day Cam’s released from the hospital, I’m running behind after babysitting Adam. When I arrive at her room, there’s a commotion in the hall, but neither Adriano, Cam, nor my father is in sight.

The hall is swamped with extra Syndicate men, and I then I hear a guard mutter, “...Dimitri Medlov.”

Dimitri? And why have they doubled security?

Anxiousness flares up. I run back to my car where I see Logan screeching out of the garage. Without thinking it through, I jump into my vehicle and try to shadow him. However, I’m having a difficult time trailing him through the darkened streets since he seems to be in a hurry as he drives to a plain apartment building in the Loop.

I park a block away and walk toward the building’s back entrance. Peeking around the corner, I rear backward when I spot two SUVs with tinted windows and a silver-haired man in a tailored suit, who I swear resembles the president, stepping into one of the vehicles.

Dumbfounded, I squeeze my eyes shut, believing I’m imagining things.
Maybe it was just someone who looks like the president?
No, there were two guards who looked like secret service around him too.

In a daze, I sink to the ground.
What’s Logan involved in?
Was
he
meeting with the president?

Panicked, I call Mykhail and snarl, “Did your father have any business with the freaking president you didn’t tell me about?”

“What?” he retorts. “What are you talking about? Where are you?”

“Answer me!”

“No, not that I know of. I do know some senators were regulars at the sex club, but no one as high up as the president.”

“Well, something’s going on. Stay inside with Adam until I get there.”

When I hear noises in the distance, I creep back to my car, doing my best to stay hidden. Trapped in my endless thoughts, I plop into the seat and rub my palm over my forehead.

“Were you following me?” a low voice asks from behind me.

I shriek in alarm, jerking my gaze back over my shoulder into Logan’s furious sapphire eyes as my heart pounds in my chest.

Logan

––––––––

“W
ere you following me?” I demand, arcing a brow and sliding forward on the back seat in Rosa’s car.

Her head whips around to me, guilt written all over her face as I glare at her. I’m still processing all the information I received during my CIA meeting where the fucking president showed up, and I don’t know if Rosa saw him or not.

“Yes. I saw you driving out of the hospital and there were so many guards there. What’s going on?”

I ignore her question. “Where did you go?”

“Nowhere. I just walked around to look for you,” she replies, glancing away for a split-second.

My trained instinct warns me; she isn’t being honest and isn’t thinking through her answers.

Sadly, right now, I don’t have the time to deal with Rosa. Goddammit, I need her to be safe. I’ve been confiding in her too much about business.

“Nothing’s going on,” I lie. “Cam’s at home. You need to go home too.”

She wants to ask more, but I’m already moving out of the car, bending low to her window as she pushes the button to roll it down.

“I expect you to go to your pool house now, Rosa,” I order, and she nods with a puckered brow.

I’m too preoccupied and stride away, watching her drive past me as I sprint to my convertible.

***

A
ll the high ranking men, except Adriano, are assembled around his desk in his office at Club 7 when I drop the bomb to my underboss, Luca, and two
Consiglieri
, James and Carmine.

“What exactly happened? You were called into the CIA office and then what?” Luca asks from behind the desk as I sit opposite him with James and Carmine to my left.

“I was called into the office. Tara Kaden, the senator whose campaign we’ve sponsored, was there to inform me that my superior at the CIA had been terminated along with several other higher ups in the senate who were all clients of Dimitri’s sex club. Apparently, Dimitri used Russian slaves – the girls we found on his estate and handed over to the bureau – and some have contacted the Russian embassy. The Russians contacted the White House and are not pleased, but the president has been denying all rumors of a human trafficking business in Illinois. Now, as we set it up, the FBI built their case after Henry and I methodically went through all the Ukrainian documents, which the U.S. government isn’t aware of. And the FBI assured that Dimitri was prosecuted, although a lot of CIA members tried to get him free. The higher ups in the FBI and the CIA are working against one another while this has become a huge issue for the current administration. So huge that they need the mafia to help them. The president explained he’s had the secret service investigating us. He knows I’ve defected and has pictures of all of us, including spouses. He’s ordered us to break out Dimitri and kill him after ensuring that every trace of the Ukrainian empire is erased, which means hacking into FBI systems. We’ve been given a six-month deadline and full immunity if any of us is ever linked to the Chicago Syndicate.”

Luca looks away, neither pleased nor displeased.

James tells us, “Then we have a new concern. We still have a liability walking around. There’s one more outsider who knows about our setting up Dimitri, and that’s Mykhail.”

That also crossed my mind.

“I guess we’ll have to capture Mykhail anyway,” Luca ponders out loud. “This is a prosperous relationship for us. One we can’t afford to screw up. It shouldn’t be difficult for my soldiers to find a college boy. And there’s also a little kid with him. Logan, I want you to locate Mykhail. I don’t think our soldiers have been actively searching for him, but maybe someone has seen him. Contact me when you know more,” he finishes.

Standing up, I nod to continue with business. Much to my chagrin, I can’t meet Rosa.

I call Henry and we follow leads all night, well into the next day, when I discover Rosa has been lying to me for a long time. I find out that while I’ve worshiped her with my faithfulness and patience, she may have been using me for months.

Rosalia

––––––––

I
n secret, I call Cam when I get back to my pool house. I was afraid to go to Mykhail when Logan ordered me to go home. He’s never ordered me before, so I knew he must’ve been onto my lie about whether or not I saw him with the president.

“Hey, Rosalia.”

“Hey, Cam. Are you okay? I was at the hospital earlier. You were already gone, and there were a lot of guards walking around.”

“Yeah, I’m fine. There’s a Syndicate issue.”

“With Dimitri Medlov?”

She’s silent.

“I overheard the name.”

“Oh. Yes, with him. But it’s being handled. Don’t worry. I’m fine and happy to be home.”

“Okay, call me tomorrow. Night.”

So the president is involved with the Syndicate and Dimitri? I’m astounded by how high up corruption goes.

Perplexed, I climb into bed, yet I don’t get any sleep the entire night.

***

T
he next morning, I meet Adam and Mykhail at a coffee shop near their apartment building, and since the terrace isn’t crowded, we hide inside.

“We need to talk to the Syndicate,” I tell Mykhail, who has Adam in his lap. He’s eating a blueberry muffin that’s smeared all over his mouth.

“And then what?”

“I don’t know, but something’s up with your father, so they’re bound to start looking for you. It’s always better to come clean than to be caught.”

“But what could be up? Dimitri’s been sentenced,” Mykhail points out.

“Why would the president of the United States talk to a Syndicate member?” I counter.

“Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he was talking to his CIA agent, and maybe Logan hasn’t defected at all.”

I let out a loaded breath. “No, I don’t believe that. I know Logan. And it’s too coincidental that I heard Dimitri’s name at the hospital for the first time in months on the same night.”

“That’s true—” He looks out the window and then his gaze shoots back to me. “Duck! It’s Logan.”

Glancing outside across the street, I dip down just before Logan steps out of his luxurious white convertible. Hurriedly, I throw a twenty dollar bill on the table.

In a rush, Mykhail whispers to Adam, “Let’s play a game and see who can crawl out the fastest.”

Adam goes down on all fours and sneaks out to the other entrance that leads into the mall. As the barista laughs at us, we shadow him, dashing around the corner of the shop and speeding through the busy mall without being seen. I grimace while panic claws at me.

Outside, I say to Mykhail, who’s clutching Adam in his arms, “You can’t go home.”

“I have to try to get my fake IDs. Maybe they haven’t discovered my apartment yet?”

“Okay, give me Adam.”

“No, you contact Logan and talk to him. You can’t have Adam with you when you confide in him in case he turns against us, Rosalia.”

“I don’t like this,” I mumble. “Be careful, okay? And if you see anything strange, don’t go into your apartment, please.”

“I won’t take that risk with Adam. I’m going home and coming to your pool house.”

“Okay,” I mutter as he takes off.

When I call Logan, he doesn’t answer, so I keep trying – since I have to walk around the mall to return to my car – to no avail.

It takes over forty minutes before I pull into the driveway that leads to the pool house. While biting my nails anxiously, I march to the entrance, unlock the door to slide it open, and go inside, shrieking when I realize that I’m not alone.

“Where have you been?” Logan asks in a dark tone, seated on the edge of my bed and peering down at a bill he’s twirling in his hands.

His anger is unmistakably palpable.

Logan

––––––––

I
shut the door to my vehicle and cross the street with Henry to a coffee shop where Mykhail was once seen. There are only a handful of customers inside as I scour the tables.

“He probably lives around here,” Henry muses.

I stop at a round wooden table behind him. “Probably.”

Observing the surface, I note an oddly shaped twenty dollar bill and snatch it off to inspect it. I notice burned edges, so I smell the paper: liquor.

Henry looks at me curiously. “What?”

I hold up the bill, clenching my jaw. “A bill with burned edges that reeks of alcohol. Does this remind you of anyone?”

His eyes widen, but before he can respond, I shove the money into my pocket and turn on my heel toward my car.

Inside the vehicle, I instruct him, “Pull up Rosa’s phone records for me. Now. I knew she was lying to me!” I jam a fist into the steering wheel, rearing backward as I unclench my hand.

“Calm down, Logan. What am I missing?” Henry probes, extending his arm to the back seat to grab his laptop. Setting it in his lap, he powers it on.

“Rosa followed me last night to the CIA office. I don’t know what she saw exactly, but I do know it was fucking suspect. And then she flat-out lied to me.”

“Give me her number.”

Yanking my mobile from my pocket, I check her info, reading the numbers aloud.

Henry explains, “There’s been one number besides yours she’s been communicating with daily for months, since November.”

I contact the number, but it goes to voicemail, and a male voice states,
leave a message
. In the meantime, I receive a notification on my cell that I have a
caller waiting
, and it’s Rosa, yet I don’t answer. She keeps calling. I keep ignoring her.

“Can you do voice recognition for Mykhail on your laptop?” I inquire.

“Yes, I have a log with tapes from him.”

I hand over my phone, and he gets a black cable from the glove compartment before connecting it to his laptop. He types away energetically, clicking for several minutes.

“It’s comparing both files. Wait a second...Oh, shit. It’s Mykhail. Rosa’s been in contact with him?”

“Apparently,” I grind out, gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles turn white.

Did she use me to get info to keep Mykhail safe?

Doubt is a treacherous emotion that instills rage. Manic thoughts fly through my head. I recall every time I’ve kissed her. Every time I’ve opened up to her. Every time I’ve loved her while she fucking lied to me. Every time she’s refused to let me inside her.

“I’m going to Rosa to get to the bottom of this,” I declare. “Don’t tell anyone about her possible involvement yet.”

“Okay. I’ll go to the club.” He clicks shut his laptop before he gets out to hail a cab.

I shift the convertible into
drive
and hit the gas. The hardtop is open, but the morning wind blowing through my hair doesn’t cool me off in the slightest.

Livid, I race to her pool house, skating through every red light I come to.