Adversary (The Aces Book 2) Read online

  I was met with two adults, a man and a woman, both clothed in black suits with white button-ups and boots. The man’s face had odd proportions, his nose and forehead a tad too large while his eyes were tiny. His skin was olive and his black hair was balding, the large forehead expanding further up his head than normal. The woman was a shorter, lean brunette who had an air of superiority as she sized me up.

  “Miss Casterelli?” the woman asked. Her voice was sweet, but there was a steel undertone that promised authority and strength. I kept my face blank, only allowing my brow to dip.

  “Can I help you?” Both of them screamed cop or some other kind of law enforcement; I honestly didn’t think they could be any more obvious.

  “I’m Special Agent Venry, and this is my partner Special Agent Samson. Can we come inside to speak with you for a moment?” she half-asked, half-demanded, flashing me an FBI badge.

  Knew it.

  “Oh, of course.” I shifted out of the way, allowing them to pass.

  “Are you home alone?” Agent Venry questioned, both her and her partner scanning the house with critical gazes.

  “I live alone,” I answered, making sure to give them mine and Chase’s cover story.

  “This big house just for you?” she challenged, a dark brow rising as she looked back at me. I bit my tongue to keep my snarky comment contained, directing them to the living room.

  “What can I do for you?” I sat on one of my chairs across from them. Her partner, Agent Samson, stayed quiet.

  “That is quite some bad bruising you have there.” Agent Venry avoided my question, her tone sickeningly concerned. “Can you tell us how that happened?”

  “Got a little rowdy in my Pilates class,” I lied with a straight face.

  “Pilates?” she repeated skeptically. Her perfectly plucked eyebrows rising slightly as if she couldn’t believe I just said that.

  Wonder if this is how Chase feels when people give him a look, I chuckled.

  “Yup,” I responded cheerfully. “I’m just a regular ol’ housewife.” The agent’s eyes narrowed on me before dipping down to my tattoos, but I cut off any sassy attitude she could throw my way. “Now, for my original question, what can I do for you?” Please don’t be here about my poor destroyed house, I pleaded. The only reassurance I had was the fact that it had been under an alias and not my real name like this one.

  “We want to know when was the last time you had seen your father.” Fury flared within my chest, but I schooled my face in an attempt to keep it contained, but based on her smug smirk, I didn’t manage it.

  “I haven’t seen him since I was 18,” I ground out. “Is there a specific reason you’re asking?”

  “We’re merely looking into some of his business practices.” She stated, looking around again. “You look like you’re doing quite well for yourself. Are you sure you aren’t working for or with your father?” I ground my teeth at the blatant insult.

  “I had an expansive trust fund that opened when I turned eighteen. My investments, all of which are one hundred percent legal, have done very well, as you can see.” I swallowed the rage down, focusing on getting them out of my house without them asking any more questions or looking into me. “I’m not sure what being his daughter would have to do with any of his businesses, and if that’s all you’re here for, I have plans with a friend for dinner that I need to get ready for.” Standing, they took my polite enough statement for what it was, ‘please leave.’ Well, technically it was more of a ‘get the fuck out,’ but they don’t need to know that.

  “Of course,” she agreed politely. The walk to the door was tense, and I felt my skin start to itch with nerves. They had just stepped outside my wide front door before Agent Venry turned to look at me, her smirk sending my nerves into overdrive.

  “Oh, and Miss Casterelli?” I paused waiting for her to respond. “We’ll be keeping an eye on you.”

  Fuck.

  This just got a lot more complicated.

  Chapter 2

  May 12th

  Sunday Afternoon

  Garrett

  “Fucking Feds,” Kiera huffed after she shut the door, the full-color monitor showing her standing in the front entryway. From the angle of the camera we were watching, I could see her profile as well as her ticking jaw as she ground her teeth in a rhythmic manner. This side of her face was undamaged except a tiny hint of bruising on her lip, and as much as I wanted to pretend she wasn’t hurt, I couldn’t help but rage at the remembrance of how she had gotten her injuries. Fucking bastard, I growled, can’t wait to get my fucking hands on that piece of shit, and when I do… Kiera shifting on the camera pulled me out of my spiral of thoughts. She rolled her shoulders back in a self-assured manner and turned sharply away from the wooden door that she had latched shut before heading toward the security room.

  Glancing around as we waited for her to get here, I took in my fellow officers’ expressions as well as Chase’s, but he looked about as concerned as I expected. Which to say was almost non-existent, his lips curled ever so slightly in a tiny smile as his eyes followed Kiera through the house. Brooks was rubbing his eyes, his body taut with tension despite his semi-laid-back appearance while Stone stood completely still, his eyes melted into two ebony pools in his anger. Knowing him, he was running through anything in his memory relating to the two fuckers who had just waltzed into our home and flat out threatened our girl. I had to bite back the urge to punch the wall or throw something at the blatant disrespect the head agent, Venry or whatever the hell her name was, showed Kiera. Work for Frankie? She would rather cut her own throat than go back under his ‘employment.’

  The door clicked, and a fuming Kiera stood on the other side of the opening as the faux-wall swung open silently. None of us spoke, lost in our own thoughts about what just happened. After a few more tense moments, Kiera sighed and headed to the other section of our hidden alcove, the stairs to the basement. The rest of us trailed behind her, and despite being angry, I found my attention dipping down to watch her luscious ass shift under the barely long enough shorts, the bottom of the cheeks teasing me with the delectable mound that I knew hid under the denim. My cock twitched at the sight, but when she curved toward the work station in the basement, my gaze fell on the mottled bruising on her thigh and arm from having to jump out of the humvee; the red striated, deep purple and blue splotches obscured the tattoos underneath until it was nearly impossible to make out what the art was supposed to be. My anger flared once more at the reminder that my ex-best friend had almost taken my Kitten from me. Again.

  “So,” Kiera started, turning to face us as she braced herself against the table top in the middle of the space. “What now?”

  “I guess we have to be a bit more careful,” Brooks offered with a single shoulder shrug. “At least until we find out how much they’re actually watching you or the house. They could just be blowing smoke up our asses in an attempt to scare us.”

  “I’ve heard of Special Agent Venry,” Stone added, his tone uneasy. That’s not a good sign. I shifted anxiously. “She’s fairly new off the block, but she’s making waves in the Bureau. Some even call her The Bloodhound cause she…”

  “Sniffs out her targets,” Kiera finished the statement. Groaning, her hand came up to rub her eyes in a very Brooks fashion. “Awesome,” she muttered sarcastically.

  “So,” I took over when there was a lull in conversation, “how do we want to handle this?” Chase was suspiciously quiet, standing impassively at the other end of the table. His steel-colored eyes were glued on the table, unseeing, as he tapped a light rhythm against his faux-suede coat sleeve.

  “Research,” Kiera suggested resolutely. Her tone was hard as she glared at the table. Information on Frankie, the Alloy Kings, and Jace sprawled out on the stone surface until it was completely covered. I knew she was spending a bit of time each night before going to bed reorganizing all of her photos and papers up on the large section of wall. Based on the stacks at the base of
the section Chase had left open, there was still a lot of intel to place on the corkboard. “We find out if she’s actually watching, anything she could know about me or The Aces, and information on her and her creepy clown-looking partner.” I couldn’t hold back the laugh at the insult she threw out about Venry’s partner, Sanderson… Samson… whatever his fucking name is, and neither could Chase, her statement finally pulling him back to the conversation.

  “I can look through what I can find in our files and see what I can dig up or what any of our contacts might know. I’ll make a note to have Val dig around too,” Chase explained, before turning his attention to Stone. “Do you have contacts within the FBI?” Stone tilted his head back and forth slightly in a weird yes-no combination.

  “I know someone who passes on information but not a straight contact that I could ask questions,” he admitted. “I can try though.” Chase nodded eagerly before walking over to the desk that was against the wall next to the corkboard. Sinking into the rolling chair, his fingers started to fly across the keyboard as he looked over at Kiera.

  “You still going to the compound to do another walkthrough, Kittycat?” How can he type so fucking fast without looking? I thought, before realizing the answer was simple—Chase was just weird. No use in trying to understand him, I reasoned.

  “I’m not sure if that would be a good idea to do today,” she murmured, clearly irritated with the wrench that had been thrown into her plan. Kiera loved her plans, and she hated when they got tossed out the window, so I wasn’t surprised to see her so irked. “The fucking Feds are probably watching the house for at least the rest of the day, so I’m not sure it would be good if any of us leave unless we take the tunnel.”

  One thing Chase hadn’t disclosed when we first toured the house was that he had, somehow, built in an emergency escape tunnel. Don’t ask me how he accomplished that in under six months, but he did. The mile-long tunnel had two exits—one at the half-mile mark and one at the very end—and both had vehicles waiting in case of an emergency. There were multiple ways to reach the tunnel, all through hidden entry points including from the basement, the pantry in the kitchen, the garden out back, and in the bar room right next to the patio. Brooks rubbed his eyes with a muttered ‘Jesus’ under his breath at the suggestion of such an extreme measure.

  “All right, here’s what we’ll do.” He took over, sliding into the leadership role. “Kiera, Chase stay here, lounge about, or do whatever it is you do when you’re trying to lay low and act normal.” Kiera scoffed before chuckling.

  “Hellooo,” she teased, “have you met me? I don’t do normal.” She shuddered, as if being normal was such a terrible thing to be, but I couldn’t argue with her. She was definitely one of a kind.

  Wow, I groaned, cliche alert. What in the ever-loving fuck has the woman done to me to be thinking so damned mushy? Brooks and Chase both laughed, and Stone even cracked a tiny smile. Well, hell, Kiera’s doing a lot of things to all of us if she could crack the impenetrably gruff exterior of Stone ‘Grave’ Ronin.

  “You know what I meant,” Brooks argued playfully with an eye roll. Glancing at Stone, he directed his next statement to him. “She really is a brat, ain’t she?”

  “Told you, Boss,” Stone agreed, but instead of reprimanding her for her attitude, he joked along with Brooks. I felt like I had stepped into some weird, fucked up episode of The Twilight Zone, but I wasn’t going to complain. Stone agreed to be with Kiera same as the rest of us, and I wouldn’t let him or his hard-ass attitude hurt her.

  “Anyway...” Brooks pulled me from my internal musings. “We will head to the compound and handle our shit that needs to be done. We’ll take the tunnel so we don’t bring any attention to you since you’re supposed to be here alone. Meaning Chase”—the assassin looked at Brooks over his shoulder—“stay out of sight.” Chase’s eyes narrowed playfully before looking to Kiera who nodded. Despite this weird relationship we were in, Chase still refused to take orders or listen to anyone except Kiera, and I didn’t expect that to change any time soon, if ever. Brooks walked over to Kiera and gave her a quick kiss. Ignoring the pinprick swell of jealousy in my stomach, I waited until he stepped back from her before closing the distance between me and my Kitten.

  “Be careful,” I murmured, my lips brushing against the crest of her ear as I whispered. “I’ll see you later, Kitten.” Pressing my lips against hers gently, making sure not to hurt her or her still-healing lip, I drank her in. I had to ignore the surge of need that went straight through me to my cock as it stirred in my jeans when I pulled away. Her mossy green eyes were heated, the darkened honey green half-lidded as she looked up at me.

  Forcing myself away from her before I got lost in her arresting gaze, I followed Brooks and Stone to the tunnel entrance leaving Kiera and Chase to their impromptu house arrest.

  Kiera

  The guys left, and Chase and I got to work. For the next couple of hours we worked on our own projects, him researching our new babysitters while I performed the tedious task of hanging up my information on my father and his businesses, making notes and connecting any related items together with bright red string. Chase’s typing and his soft humming were the only sounds between us as we worked, too immersed in our own tasks to speak. My mind drifted into unwanted territory as I hung glossy photographs and printed pieces of paper that reminded me of the man I hated more than anyone.

  My father, Frankie ‘Smokes,’ hadn’t always been a mob boss, king of the Reno underground. No, he had started off as an assassin before he had amassed enough connections and mindless minion followers in Italy to take out the crime family that had run their city for decades. When they were out of the way, he set up shop. It worked out for a while, but then he knocked up my mother, Catherine Costa, a lowly prostitute attempting to afford her way out of her own hellish past in Sicily. After word got out that there would soon be a Casterelli heir, threats were issued, and prices on both Frankie and my mother’s heads flooded the underground. Frankie lost over half of his men before they faked my mother’s death and relocated the stupid hierarchy to the United States.

  I pinned up a photo of my former bodyguard, Lorenzo Bianchi, and snarled silently. He had, unfortunately, been one of the ones to escape the massacre against the Casterelli mob. He was one of Frankie’s most loyal lieutenants, entrusted with watching my mother and me when I was younger. Everything had been good for a time, a very brief couple of years when my mother and I would play and talk, go visit places. I never realized what my father did or how hellish his wrath was. I don’t believe my mother did either since we were kept separate from the rest of the underlings. Not until that fateful day when I was seven and I was eavesdropping on their hushed argument from around the corner. The Devil himself had come calling that morning with my father’s request, and my mother refused what he was demanding of me. I hadn’t understood what he wanted. I rarely saw my father, hell, half of my childhood I didn’t even know what he looked like. Fucking bastard…

  “Kittycat?” Chase’s worried tone pulled me out of the rage filled haze I had sunk into. I loosened my grip, realizing a few photographs of Lorenzo had crumbled within my tight fist. “I lost you for a few minutes there,” he murmured. Only then did I realize he was standing right next to me, his callused hand cupping my aching jaw that I finally unclenched.

  “Sorry,” I muttered, and the fury that had consumed me pulled back, retreating to its home in my chest where it would wait for me to come calling again. “Lost in thought.” I glanced over at him, hating the worry I saw deep within his grey eyes. Forcing myself to smile, I faked a happy disposition. “How’s research going, my little assassin?” It was a few moments before he responded, his observant gaze focused on my face before he sighed, realizing I wasn’t going to talk about what I had lost myself in.

  “Not bad.” He stepped back and over to the printer, snatching up a stack of freshly printed papers. “Got her information and all her files from her work at the Bureau. Sams
on didn’t have much. He’s just biding his time until he can retire, so I didn’t do much looking into him.” Glancing back over at me, Chase gave me a small smile laced with pity, which I purposely ignored. “Let’s head upstairs and I’ll tell you about it.”

  “All right,” I agreed readily, tossing the damaged pictures on the table before I could burn them like I wanted. My assassin started up the stairs first, his step filled with pep as he ascended. At least he’s not too worried about me, I noted, he would have threatened to kill someone by now if he was too concerned about my mental state. My brow creased when he didn’t stop in the living room or kitchen but continued up the main staircase. Curious about where he was going, I followed up without question.

  “Come here, Kittycat,” he urged as he stepped into my master suite. Setting the papers down on the bed, he waved a hand toward me to follow him. Without waiting for me, he strode confidently into the en suite, the sound of the tub running filling the quiet house. I finally went after him, his sexy jean-clad ass seated on the edge of the tub surround with his fingers under the spout feeling the water.

  “What are you doing?” I asked quietly, but he just flashed me a happy smile and didn’t answer. Damn troublemaker. I stood there with my arms crossed, skeptical of his intentions. When the water was to his liking, he poured a bunch of my bubble bath into the hot stream. Don’t turn those judgy eyes on me, people, even thieves like bubble baths. As the tub filled, Chase got up and messed with the touchscreen on the wall to close the electronic shades. The sun streaming through slowly dimmed until the bathroom was covered in a faint wash of sensual illumination. Music started through the speakers unexpectedly. It wasn’t the usual pop music Chase loved to listen to but a soft instrumental that I didn’t recognize.