Page 8 of Cruel Kiss

"I thought she threw us all out," he says with a raised brow.

"She did."

"And yet here you are."

I just grunt in reply.

He pulls a cigarette out of his jacket, then thinks better of it and puts it away. Not out here. Not with kids twenty feet up andwindows that might be cracked. He learned that from me, and I learned it from watching my mother waft smoke out a window because Igor liked to light up in the house, even though he knew it made her asthma go haywire.

But without a cigarette, he gets fidgety. His oral fixation has always been a bitch on his nerves.

He glances over his shoulder, down the street at our two men posted at the corner, and then at the other duo patrolling the opposite intersection. Even then, he lowers his voice, though there's no one remotely close enough to hear.

"Something's been bothering me since we got here," he remarks.

"Join the damn club," I mutter, cracking my knuckles.

"It's the detail," he says. "The men who were on the house before this. I've been going over it again and again, trying to figure out how a guy with a bag full of zip ties just waltzes right past four of our people and up your girl's stairs."

I eye him. "And? Any conclusions?"

"That's the weirdest part. I interviewed them separately, and they both swore thatwetold them to stand down."

That catches my attention. "But we didn't."

"Of course not. Why would I pull them off fifteen minutes after I first told them it was the most important job of their lives? But they said again and again that the confirmation codes were correct, and only we know those codes. I checked 'em over, too, and there's no signs of coercion or drugging or anything."

"So then someone got to them," I suggest.

"No." Navi shakes his head. "Ro, I trust these guys with my life. They aren't traitors and nobody has leverage to make them act against us. They just got bad orders. I'm trying to figure out how."

I get the nasty feeling that he has a theory, and I'm not going to like it at all.

"As far as I can tell, someonedidtell them to stand down. I'm pretty comfortable assuming it wasn't you. And it wasn't me. So if that's true… You know these codes, Ronan. They're old protocol. Dating back from the Igor era."

I have to put my hand on the railing to steady myself.

My father founded the Bratva in his youth. He set up all the systems that first brought it to life, and many of them have stood the test of time. The methods we use to move men from place to place, to issue orders that the police will never be able to decipher… He drilled those things into all of the men in the brotherhood. Sometimes literally.

And in this life, you learn very quickly not to question orders. If someone gives you a command in the language you were taught to listen to, then you obey, simple as that. Questioning got you flayed or killed.

Hell, that was the whole point. Igor wanted men who moved when he snapped his fingers and didn't stop to wonder why.

So that's the answer, then. Someone who speaks the Bratva tongue snuck into our comms and pulled the soldiers off Cali's house so that this mystery man could sneak in instead.

Navi watches as I reach all the same conclusions he did. "It's not their fault, Ro. It's not even really our fault. Whoever sent that order knew exactly what to send."

I look up at Cali's windows again.

Drifting out of the dark—not the literal dark, but the dark undercurrents of my memory—comes my father's voice:You thought you were too good for the old ways, didn't you, boy? You were so certain that you didn't have to be as hard and rigid as me. Well, look what it's cost you now. The boogeyman walked right up your woman's stairs, because you were too soft to stop him.

A hand on my shoulder drags me back to the present. "You alright there, man?" asks Navi. "Looked like I lost you for a sec."

I shrug him off. "I'm fine."

I make myself breathe and reorient. The only alternative is standing here letting a dead man talk me into circles, and I don't have that kind of time.

"So it's an inside job," I conclude.