In For the Kill (McClouds & Friends #11)(63)

Her chin went up. “I speak when it pleases me.”

This was going south at warp speed. He hastened to intervene. “So, uh, Dad. What brought you back so early?”

Sveti crossed her arms over her tits, zapping Richard Petrie with a death-ray look, as if she wasn’t facing down a billionaire financier whose ass was kissed by everyone. Except for his wayward son.

“You’re the reason I’m back early,” his father said. “I learned you’d been in another deadly shootout involving the Chinese mob and a half-drowned prostitute.”

Sveti’s eyes narrowed. “What half-drowned prostitute is that?”

“The one from the escort service you called. My investigator took pictures.” He clicked on his phone and handed it to Sam.

It was a shot of Sveti in the evening gown, tottering up his steps. Lit up in the porch-light’s glare, she looked so exotic and out of context, he could see why she’d be mistaken for a call girl. Sveti glanced at the picture and maintained a sphinxlike silence. Taking the high road.

“You’ve got it wrong,” Sam said. “An investigator? Seriously?”

His father grunted. “We booked a flight immediately when we heard. Your grandmother as well. Dinner will be served in half an hour. Your companion can stay up here. Your sister and your aging grandmother do not need to meet her. Dolores can bring up a tray.”

“Sveti’s been a friend of mine for years, Dad,” he said. “Her life is in danger. I brought her here for the night because I trust your team. I thought we’d be no trouble, because you were out of town.”

“Protection from whom? Her pimp?”

“She’s not a call girl, Dad,” Sam said through his teeth. “Don’t say that again. I’ll come down to dinner, but Sveti comes with me.”

His father looked like something had curdled in his mouth. “Bring her, if you must. Explain her to your grandmother, who turned eighty-seven last week, by the way. She could have used a phone call. You’ve been sulking for months, and she misses you. Don’t be late, please.”

His father marched out, closing the door smartly.

Sam listened to footsteps recede, trying to breathe. Everything just got way more complicated than he’d bargained for. “Sorry,” he said.

“It’s not your fault,” she said. “But is it true, about not having seen your eighty-seven-year-old grandmother in months?”

He gave her a narrow look. “Don’t you dare judge me right now.”

“I’m not judging,” she said. “But I have a lot of bitter experience with this. Death comes without warning. And it’s very final.”

“I lost my mother when I was fifteen,” he said. “I know about the finality of death.”

She was quiet for a few moments, eyes downcast. “I’m so sorry,” she murmured. “You go on down to dinner. I’ll stay here. I’m not hungry anyway. Being taken for a sex worker killed my appetite.”

“No way. You’re coming with me. He has to get used to this.”

“Used to what?”

“Us,” he said bluntly.

Sveti had that terrified look in her eyes again, the one that always came over her when he dared to invoke a possible future with her.

Too f*cking bad. He was sick of backing down, *footing around it. There was no way this woman was getting away from him. The sooner she understood that, the better for everyone concerned.

“Sam . . . I don’t think you should . . . now is not the time to—”

“Now is the only time,” he said, grim and relentless. “Start learning to tolerate my family. You’re going to need the practice.”





CHAPTER 13

“Hollandaise sauce, Svetlana?”

Sam’s older sister Connie’s voice was artificially bright and sweet as she held up the sauce boat. She was a pretty woman, tall and statuesque, with long, gleaming chestnut hair.

Svetlana murmured her thanks and held up her plate to have buttery sauce drizzled over her blanched asparagus. Sam and his father glared stonily at each other, over an abyss of silence. All attempts to break the silence sounded weak. Baby birds, cheeping in the void.

Connie gamely tried again. “So, Svetlana. Do you, ah, have a green card?”

Sveti smiled behind her napkin as she dabbed at her lips. “No,” she said. “I have a passport. I’ve been an American citizen for years. I went to high school in Washington, on the coast, where my adoptive family lives. After that, I went to the University of Washington.”

“An American success story!” Sam’s grandmother, Moira, seized eagerly upon the new topic. “Like us! Augustus Petrie crossed the Atlantic in seventeen-ninety in search of opportunity. And he found it.”

“Have you found yours, Svetlana?” Sam’s father asked. “Or are you still looking?”

The question felt like a trap, so she chose her words carefully. “Yes, certainly. I’ve been very fortunate in the friends I’ve made here.”

“It must have broken your parents’ hearts to have you go so far away, though,” Moira said. “What does your father do, dear?”

“He was a police investigator,” she said. “He’s been gone for many years now. He died in the line of duty.”