Chapter 113 Operation Raven, Updated

Chapter 113 Operation Raven, Updated
POV: ELI
They sat on the sofa for half an hour and she laid out the plan.
He listened without interrupting, which cost him. When she finished he leaned back against the headrest and looked at the ceiling and let out a long breath.
"That is the most insane plan I have ever heard," he said.
She started to deflate.
He lifted her chin with one finger and kissed her. Soft. No agenda. Just a clear and simple point of contact.
"It's insane," he said against her mouth. "But it might work."
She bit back a smile. He pulled away before she could let it out.
"We're not celebrating yet." He kept his voice level. "The operative word is might. Russell has your father and your brother as leverage. This only works if your bluff holds. Russell is a kingmaker. He is very, very good at finding the obscure." He held her gaze. "When I tell you to go, you go. You don't wait for me. You don't look back. Do you understand?"
She nodded.
"Say it."
"I understand."
"And when I tell you to run?"
She threw her arms around his neck. "I'll say not without you."
He lost the battle immediately. He kissed her again, longer this time, and told himself he would restore his authority in approximately five minutes.
He picked up the small notepad she had brought from the Mandalay. Corbett's list of Russell's pharmaceutical operations. Two major labs in Miami, one in New Jersey, one in Nevada. All domestic. All feeding clients in Hong Kong and Macau. It was why Russell had spent so much time in Asia Pacific. The Macau meetings weren't about the casino expansion. They were about moving product.
Corbett had spent years being underestimated by the men around him. It had made him extraordinarily useful as a listener.
"Jimmy will verify these coordinates," Eli said, turning the last page. He set the notepad down and took her hand. "Two weeks to one month, you said."
"One month at most."
He exhaled.
"I know," she said.
They sat with it for a moment.
POV: BRIGAIL
"Five more minutes," he said into the hollow of her throat.
"Thalia's shift ends in twenty. I have to be in position before Barry comes back to sign her out."
He tightened his grip around her waist instead of loosening it.
Thalia, Eli's plant at the Mandalay who posed as a pit boss, had been Brigail's way back in. She had met Brigail in the casino and helped her into the barmaid uniform and the dark wig. She had also booked Brigail into one of the private poker rooms at the end of a corridor with no clear camera sightline and a fire escape two steps from the door. A murder central room, in the surveillance team's terminology.
Being the granddaughter of the owner had turned out to have at least one use.
"Wait until I'm asleep," he tried.
"You only sleep when the sun comes up."
She worked her way free from under him. He let her go with a groan that she chose to interpret as affectionate.
She went to the vanity closet and took out the black A-line cocktail dress she kept in the suite for emergencies, because the barmaid uniform had not survived the evening intact.
He followed her in, wearing only his gray silk boxers, and stood behind her.
His hands closed over hers as she fought with the top button. "Let me," he said.
He buttoned her up slowly. Kissed her nape before he zipped the back. She watched him in the mirror and thought that this was the kind of thing that stayed with you. The small ordinary gestures. The ones that accumulated quietly into something you couldn't name or give back.
"How long?" he asked.
"Two weeks. A month at most."
His chest fell.
"I'm sorry," she said.
He said nothing for a moment. Then: "Borrow my jacket. It's cold in there."
She took his black blazer off the coat hanger and put it on. It smelled like him. She smoothed the lapels in the mirror and did not comment on that, and he did not comment on the fact that she had spent an extra second doing it.
Her fingers found something in the inner pocket.
She pulled it out.
A black velvet box.
She looked at him in the mirror. He had gone completely still.
She opened it.
The ring inside had the biggest stone she had ever seen in her life. Platinum setting. Simple and extraordinary at the same time.
She turned around.
"Eli." Her voice came out wrong. "What is this."
He said nothing.
"Is this for me." She swallowed. "Please tell me this isn't for some woman you were planning to meet in Macau."
His expression told her exactly what it was for.
"Then why didn't you." She pressed her hand to her stomach. "Why didn't you ask me."
"Would you have said yes?"
The silence lasted exactly long enough to be honest.
She lifted the ring up between them. "Ask me and find out."
His lips parted.
"It doesn't have to be dramatic," she said quickly. "We have enough drama. You don't even have to go down on one knee. Just ask me. And I will say yes and we can go find a chapel and have Elvis do it tonight."
He still hadn't spoken.
"Ask me, Eli. Please." Her voice cracked on the last word. "Before everything goes to hell. So that even if the plan doesn't work, I will have been a Michealson."
He went quiet in a specific way.
Then: "No."
She blinked.
"I will not ask you to marry me out of desperation." His voice was very careful and very steady. "I don't want you to say yes because you hate your name or because you're afraid we're losing. That is not how this happens."
Her eyes were burning.
He walked toward her and stopped close enough that she had to look up.
"We are going to take Russell Edgington down," he said. "Your plan will work. I will make it work. And when it's done, when all of this is finished, I will ask you. I will ask you in a way that leaves you no choice but to say yes." He took the ring from her fingers and held it for a moment, then closed his hand around it. "And you will not be an Edgington anymore. You will not be a Havens. You will be a Michealson."
She pressed her lips together hard.
"You'll be mine," he said. "In case you have missed it, Brigail, I am already yours."
She stared at him.
He was watching her with that look, the steady unguarded one he only produced when he had stopped calculating and was simply telling the truth.
She had the ring. He had the plan. They had one month.
She reached up and straightened his collar.
"Don't get shot while I'm gone," she said.
"Same to you."
She walked out of the dressing room and didn't look back, which was the hardest thing she had done all day.
And she had been arrested, found her dead father alive, and lost her brother all before midnight.