Chapter 75: Chapter Seventy-Five

“Well?” Gloria prompted.

“Well, what?” Conor asked with a smirk as he walked past her toward his setup.

Conor sat down at his computer and the screen flickered to life with several programs like she’d seen in dozens of spy films. He clicked on a video feed that looked to be from under a couch. He maneuvered his mouse pad until the camera was pointed toward the door just as Aleksander Gromov walked into his hotel room, rubbing his temples. Conor’s smile widened as he put a pair of headphones over his ears and pulled up an audio recording program. Gloria strolled up to him and ripped the headphones off his head.

“Jesus,” Conor griped.

“Tell me what is going on,” Gloria growled.

Conor sighed and gripped his hands together hard enough to turn the knuckles of his fingers white. He pursed his lips and turned to face her, his demeanor seeping with annoyance. “We are here to confront your father. This…” he said, pointing to the screen. “Is Ivan Rubanov’s enforcer. He will get us into the party.”

“I know who that is. Don’t talk to me like I’m a child.”

“You are a child.”

“I am the same age as you, jerk!” Gloria spat. Conor looked up at the ceiling and sighed. “In fact, other than you having a Y chromosome, we’re pretty much the same person. Raised in a mafia family where your worth was based on what you could offer. Trained to be a monster, loved by a good woman who…”

“Don’t,” Conor warned, standing with both fists clenched.

Gloria planted her feet in a stance that said she wasn’t backing down. “Don’t what? Don’t talk about the reason you learned all of this?” she asked, gesturing toward the high tech equipment a mafia don would have no use for. “Dons don’t concern themselves with learning this much about security systems. They delegate that stuff to someone with more time and specialized schooling. I’m guessing this was going to be what you did after you escaped? Why the failing security company was one of the only things you kept of your father’s?”

Conor’s gray eyes were wide, his knuckles white, his chest rising sharply with his breath.

Gloria released a breath of her own. She knew she was getting straight to the root of his being. She lifted her hands and let them drop. “Mine was nursing,” she explained. “My mom encouraged my love of medicine. She bought me textbooks, showed me what she remembered from her own time in the medical field.”

“What’s your point?” he growled.

“A few months ago you were standing right where I am and I’m guessing when Accardi was going after your father, he didn’t keep you out of the loop?”

Conor outright laughed. “You clearly don’t know Matteo.”

Gloria sighed and closed her eyes. “We’re two days away from seeing my father. You and Gromov just waltzed through the door, clearly a part of some secret plan I’ve not been given the details to. Based on the feed showing the various event trucks on your screen, you have already been to and set up cameras at my dad’s estate,” she said, flicking her wrist toward the computer monitor where she could see vases of flowers being offloaded from a white van. Conor’s eyes shifted to the screen and back. “And now, the man who promised to not keep anything from me is talking to someone from his past and is on his way to meet the individual at the skankiest underground club in the city.”

Conor rolled his eyes and sat back down on the couch. “You don’t need to worry about Frankie going off with some random chick.”

“And why do you say that?”

Conor looked at her and gave her a once-over before unleashing a secret smile. He ran his hand through his blond hair and shook his head. “Cause I’ve known Frankie Donati for a long time.”

“Cryptic. I see we’re staying on theme for the day,” Gloria said, crossing her arms.

“Look,” Conor said with a heavy sigh. “I get it, okay. Life sucks. Maybe you were right about a few things. Maybe. But…” Another sigh. “But you couldn’t have a better man in your corner. If Frankie isn’t telling you everything, there is a reason. He’ll disclose what he wants to, when he wants to.”

“Does he do that to Accardi?”

“Did he tell Accardi that he was going to tear apart Sergei’s compound brick by brick? Did he tell Accardi he was sacrificing himself to find Sergei’s hidey hole?”

“That doesn’t count.”

“Why?”

“Because it had to do with me, not his job.”

Conor stared hard at her for a long moment, as if waiting for her to piece it together herself. He let out a laugh and scrubbed his hands through his hair. “Alright… Just because I want you to shut the fuck up and leave me alone so I can get to fucking work,” he said, gesturing to the monitor and Gromov pacing in the foyer of his room while on his phone. “The guy who put his hands on you in Chicago.”

“The runt who knocked me over the back of the head like a coward?”

Conor laughed. “Is everyone but Frankie a coward to you?” he asked. Gloria pursed her lips and shrugged her shoulders. “His name is Dimitry Gromov.”

Her mouth parted in shock. “Aleksander’s son. Why didn’t I recognize him?”

“Probably ‘cause he hit you from behind and then you had a concussion,” he surmised. “Anyway, Frankie figured it out and knew Gromov would come to his rescue. He told Accardi to be on the lookout. The moment Gromov crossed into his territory, Accardi had him by the short and curlies.” Gloria wrinkled her nose at the image. “Frankie used Dimitry as leverage to garner some tickets to your daddy’s event along with a private one-on-one after the candles are blown out.”

“Wow.” She thought she’d be used to how diabolical Frankie could be, yet every other week there was something new to stir pride in her chest. “How on earth did he manage that?” Conor’s eyes slid to the counter where the little red box still sat. “That?”

Conor smiled. “A little invention I cooked up,” Conor answered with a dark expression that allowed her to see the distant relation between him and Accardi. “A tiny device inserted into an individual’s bloodstream that, when detonated… Well, you can probably imagine.”

“What are you, some Mission Impossible villain?”

“That’s where I got the idea!” Conor said, raising his hand as if he'd been waiting for someone to make the connection. “Finally, someone who has seen a goddamn movie.”

“And the detonator?" she asked, looking at the counter.

“Yup,” Conor said with a nod.

“How could the frequency possibly reach…” Gloria’s eyes widened. “You brought Dimitry to Chicago.”

“Now you’re catching on,” Conor said while he typed out an algorithm on his computer as if he’d already decided their conversation had come to its end. “The deal is once we gank your father, we deactivate the device.”

Gloria’s knees felt a bit wobbly. She sat down in the armchair across from him, interlaced her fingers and sandwiched them between her thighs. She hadn’t thought about killing her father. Sure, she wasn’t naive. She knew Frankie probably had it in his mind to. Perhaps it was her way of protecting herself to only think as far as the confrontation… not what followed after they got the answers they needed.

“Why are you here?” Gloria asked. Conor looked up at her over his laptop screen. “Why are you sticking your neck out for us like this?”

Conor bit his lip and sat back on the couch. He sighed and met her eyes again. “Her name is Mira. The woman I did all of this for,” he said, gesturing to the equipment in front of him. “I met her when I was fourteen. All she wanted was for me to get out of this life. To run. And I was set to do it. We had a plan. We were going to get out. Two people knew about our plans: Mira’s father, who found out by accident, and…”

“Frankie,” Gloria guessed.

He nodded. “I could trust Frankie to help us. He made all the arrangements. She was enrolled at Oxford. I was meant to go to Italy to learn under the tutelage of the great Palladino family,” he said with a roll of his eyes. His shoulders hung heavy as if the weight of it all still clung to them. “Frankie was going to help me get away from Alessio, fake my death and help the two of us disappear. Forever.”

“What happened?”

“Life. Loss. Not by any fault of Frank. I didn’t get the life he promised me, but… She got hers, and if I can return the favor, wipe the slate clean… that’s what I’ll do. Then I’ll leave this fucking life in the dirt…” His jaw ticked and the anger he felt showed plainly in the hard set of his jaw, the crease of his eyes, the way his fingers twitched on his thigh. “Just like I promised her.” Conor gave a nod, and she knew that’s all he would say on the matter. He leaned forward and got back to work.

“And what about what he’s doing tonight? How does that play into his plan?” Gloria asked, happy to change the subject and alleviate the tension in the air.

“What he’s doing tonight?”

“Yeah, the stranger from his past he’s meeting at the underground fuck club,” Gloria reminded him.

“He doesn’t tell me everything either, Gloria,” Conor said, cracking his neck in annoyance.

She stood up. “If I were to leave to find out on my own, would you try and stop me?” she asked, eyeing his slender build trying to decide if she stood a chance in making it through him if it came to that.

“I’d give you a hand-drawn map to the place if it meant I got five fucking minutes of peace,” Conor said, not looking at her.

“Great,” Gloria said with a nod of determination. She started for the bedroom, deciding tonight would be the perfect opportunity to give one of the disguises they’d organized a test run. At the door, she paused. She laid her hand against the doorframe and smoothed her palm up the polished wood. “Conor?”

Conor released a long, drawn-out groan from the couch. “What?! I’m five seconds from cracking this thing if you’d just…”

“Your dad,” she interrupted.

“What about him?”

She turned to face him to find his head back against the couch. “When you killed him…” Conor’s head turned on the couch to look at her. “How did it feel?”

He watched her for a long moment, his gray eyes analyzing her expression. She could practically see him weighing the pros and cons of telling her the truth. He looked back up at the ceiling. He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “When I put that gun to his head, for a moment, a split second, I could see it: fear. The fear I felt every time I stood in front of him after my mom died, knowing he was the one to blame. The fear I’d seen in Mira’s eyes when she was waiting for me by the train we were supposed to meet at in London.” He shook his head. “Then I pulled the trigger.” He focused back on her, his face set. “And I took it all back.”