Binding Ties

Chapter Fourteen

Clarke's knuckles around the steering wheel were white with the force of his grip.

He wasn't going to say anything, because deep down he knew that it wasn't his business – it really couldn't be his business – but what the fuck were those two cretins thinking giving so much as a second thought to what she'd proposed? Okay, so at first they'd made all of the right noises about taking her out of the firing line for a reason, and making sure she was safe, but she'd fucking brainstormed her way through it with all that "controlled environment" bullshit, and soon enough they were nodding along in sync like they were a pair of fucking Churchill dogs, buying into this shit.

They'd be there at every turn, they said, keep tapped into her phone at all times. She wouldn't be alone, they would make sure that the plan stayed on course. Like they would have any semblance of fucking control against Russian brotherhoods, and Eastern European drug-lords, with a few tapped phone-lines and a nifty right hook.

It wasn't going to happen.

There could be no controlled environment, not with the people that would be looking for her, not with Bratva, or Franchetti, or any of this fucking shit! How could she not see that? How could she be so fucking stupid?

She needed to rest, stay far, far away from all of this. She might be lost, but she wasn't broken, and somehow he had to make her see that she had something to keep going for, because along the way she seemed to have forgotten that. She felt like this was all she was worth.

Hell, at this point, maybe they should just plant a shitload of Semtex in the cellars of Tourniquet and have done with the whole fucking thing! Keep moving on pure faith and hope for the sky!

If Tourniquet was dust, then she could maybe start to put it behind her and move on. He could settle the brother on his own terms – quickly and quietly – he would do that for her.

She was right about one thing, after all, this was not going to be an easy ride. Not with all of the Internationals circling like vultures, their eyes on the prize. Even if he got rid of Bradley Dobrev, there would be consequences, after all, because that was how this world worked.

And then there were all the other facets, what the fuck was Zobaski doing with this crew? Why would those old Russian ghosts come up now? It didn't matter how he looked at this puzzle, none of it made any sense at all. These different crews couldn't know who they were working with.

He'd assumed they were long dead, they had to be – Maksim and his brothers – because he hadn't ever been convinced that a fake ID and a swift relocation could ever have kept him off their radar. The scars they'd left him with were hardly inconspicuous, it would have been simple enough for them to get a hit on him if they'd been looking in the right places, and his mother was British – that was why Trish had inherited her shop here – this was their base. So why hadn't they turned up sometime in the last eleven years with a sack of tools and an empty body bag? Clarke had killed Maksim's youngest brother, and Sophie was right when they said that the Russians considered a blood tie above all others, by that token why wouldn't they exact the vengeance they'd clearly been gunning for when they cut open his face? Surely it wasn't that easy that once you made it out, you were exonerated? They'd been making enough noises at the time about peeling his body from his bones, he wasn't naïve enough to think it was all just white smoke.

He quickly swerved out of the oncoming traffic, having veered into the wrong lane on the A roads. His mind was stuck in memories, he couldn't think straight.

"You okay?"

Her voice was quiet enough to shatter through the darkness. Clarke met her gaze, and noted the steel that lay beneath the look. She'd wanted to keep the cold silence, he knew, keep him at bay so that things would come to play just exactly as she wanted them to. That's why she hadn't looked him in the eye since she'd passed him them pictures, because she knew he'd never let her get away with a suicide mission.