Sinful Love (Sinful Nights #4)(86)

But Charlie had returned to Las Vegas and established White Box with his friend and business partner Curtis Paul Wollinsky, who he’d taken under his wing decades ago when Curtis—who went by his middle name then—managed the limo company. Seemed all the questions Paige had asked about missing rides had tipped off Paul, who’d tipped off Charlie, who’d decided he wanted Thomas dead.

That task was all the easier because Thomas’s wife was in love with the man who ran Charlie’s army on the street—the Royal Sinners. There was a reason they were one of the most powerful street gangs in the country. They had access to criminal masterminds, to men adept at both violent and white-collar crime. Luke was the head, giving orders on behalf of Charlie and paying the Sinners better than average money for selling and dealing.

“Did he offer health insurance, too?” John asked Reiss with a derisive scoff.

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” she said, then added that they’d nabbed Curtis that morning, bringing him in on racketeering charges.

Funny that their investigations had been on parallel paths for a few months, never meeting until, all of a sudden, the paths collided.

That occurred when Annalise had remembered the term that Thomas heard used years ago, which was still a favorite of Charlie’s today. White Box. While waiting for Michael to wake up, Annalise had told John what happened at the diner, how someone had overheard her conversation with Michael as they’d pieced the two paths together courtesy of that term.

White Box. Supposedly, according to what Annalise had said, it meant something related to Charlie’s dead brother. Everything Charlie did circled back to his brother.

John stopped in his tracks when he realized what its meaning could be. Because Annalise had told him Charlie’s last words. You know nothing about my brother. Nothing about how he was buried.

John’s blood chilled as he realized Charlie’s brother, at age nine, must have been buried in a white coffin. And so Charlie named his businesses for him, and for the way he left this earth.

It was oddly commemorative and terribly twisted at the same time. Which described the man who’d built, raised, and run the Royal Sinners. Terribly twisted.

The ways in which people remembered the dead could turn them into killers or into lovers.

John chased away the philosophical thoughts, pushing his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose as he refocused on the call. “Crazy to think this all started from a speeding ticket,” he remarked as he paced the other direction.

“Right? But that’s how it goes. Nothing happens for a long time and then one misstep and all the dominoes fall.”

They were falling indeed. In the last few weeks, the most notorious street gang in the city’s history had been effectively dismantled. John would never have been able to do his part without the help of the Sloan family—each of them had played a role.

That was fitting.

As he finished the call, he stared briefly at the sky, the sun poking through clouds.

Today was something like justice, and that was all he could ask for in this line of work.





CHAPTER FORTY-NINE


Gently Annalise pushed open the door to Michael’s room, nerves thrumming through her body. Instantly, his eyes swung to her, the blue irises sparkling as he lay in the hospital bed.

“Hey,” he said, his voice scratchy from the anesthesia.

“Hi,” she said, unable to contain a crazy grin, or the relief that flooded her heart. She crossed the few feet to his bed and drank in the sight of him. An IV drip snaked out of his arm, and his chest was bandaged. His face was tired, but a gorgeous smile tugged at his lips.

“You look beautiful,” she said.

“I’d laugh, but it would hurt too much.”

“Are you okay?” she asked, wonder in her voice, still amazed, still overjoyed that he was here.

“Yes, and that’s what they tell me, too. But I suspect the morphine helps that feeling.”

She smiled once more and raised a hand, wanting to touch his face, his arm…him.

“You can touch me,” he rasped, answering her unspoken question.

She bent forward, touching him first with her lips, brushing them across his cheek. A quiet sigh escaped him. “I thought you were going to die,” she whispered, the words spilling out with a fresh round of tears that fell on his cheek. She’d hoped to be strong. She’d told the other women she would be. But it was hard, so damn hard, and now all the relief and happiness bubbled up and poured out of her in these salty streaks along her face and his.

“Evidently, a lot of people did,” he said wryly, his sense of humor as robust as ever. “The doctor said she wasn’t sure if I was going to make it through, either. Can’t say I’m bummed that I don’t remember a thing that happened after I hit the parking garage floor.”

“Do you want me to tell you?”

He nodded, and she pulled back. He patted the side of the bed that wasn’t tangled up with his IV. “Sit with me, and tell me about the last six hours of my life.”

She didn’t need to be asked twice. She perched on the side of his bed and held his hand in hers. She cleared her throat, took a breath, and met his gaze.

Then she told him everything that had happened.

*

His mouth fell open as he took in the enormity of what happened after Charlie had shot him. But that moment when Charlie’s gun had aimed at Annalise still played before his eyes. He gripped her hand tighter. “He was aiming at you. My only thought was to protect you.”