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“Why the fuck are you calling me at the ass crack of dawn?” A gruff, and very angry voice sounds over Eli’s phone’s speakers.
“Good morning to you too,” Eli says happily. “I’ve got Tucker here. I owe him a favor, and you owe me a favor from helping out our friend. So I’m gonna cash in now because there’s only so much I can do from my desk and I think your . . . line of work is more suited for this instance.”
“What?” the voice snaps. “What the fuck, Eli? I just woke up.”
Eli sighs. “Do you have anyone in Miami?”
There’s a pause and then—
“Maybe. What’s this about?”
“An abusive piece of shit ex who decided stalking and threatening is his newest hobby. He hired a PI and sent some pictures with a threat. Not those kinds of pictures,” Eli adds before whoever he called can say anything.
“Is someone stalking Tucker?” the man asks.
“Nope, someone close to him.”
Silence again.
“What do you want me to do? Break this asshole’s legs, or . . .” I can feel all the color drain from my face and stumble back, but Tucker wraps his arm snuggly around me and keeps me standing.
“Fucking hell, Eian. Thank god this is a secure line,” Eli snaps. He looks back for a moment at Tucker. Tucker nods once.
What. The. Fuck.
“You know I’m gonna make your life a living hell if you do anything with this information other than what I’m asking, right?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Eian mumbles, clearly not giving a fuck about being threatened by some hacker genius at seven in the morning. “I’m not going to do anything to anyone who’s dealing with an abusive ex who’s stalking them, Eli. Come the fuck on.”
“I guess,” Eli mumbles, then he blurts. “Tucker’s nanny, his name is Sunny, he’s a real nice guy.” I wish I could appreciate the compliment. “He ran away from this narcissistic prick who’s a pediatrician, can you believe it?” He’s clearly not expecting an answer because he keeps going. “Anyway, he—the ex—hired a PI out of Baltimore, the cheap bastard, and took pictures of Sunny walking around with Tucker’s twin brothers. He’s threatening to come get Sunny, whatever that means. So—”
“Yeah, okay, I know someone in Miami, but I don’t actually have their number. No one’s supposed to know they’re in Miami. Or alive.”
“Who?” Eli asks, completely ignoring the alive part of it all.
Eian sighs.
“Mikhail Aslanov.”
The name rings out inside the sudden complete silence of the room, and it doesn’t mean shit to me, but Tucker sucks in a sharp breath.
“He’s alive?” Eli shouts, but his fingers are once more moving a mile a minute as he turns to the monitor on the far right. “I’m gonna find him and get a number for you.”
“Great. Then I don’t have to call and threaten Sasha to give me his dead father’s number.” Seriously, what the fuck? Dead father? Sasha? Threaten? “It’s gonna save me a tense meeting. I’ll call you back when it’s done.”
“Thanks, Eian, but I’m going to send you the location of this PI when I find out where he’s staying in the city. Maybe you can have someone stop by?”
“I’ll go myself, as soon as you send the address,” he growls. And I don’t want to imagine what that means, because I’m starting to realize just who Eli is talking to.
It doesn’t make sense, though. Why would Eli have the kind of relationship with the infamous head of the Irish mob where he can just call him up at seven in the morning and demand a favor?
Wait, Eli said Eian owed him for helping out their friend.
Weirdest of all is when Eli smiles, all bright and sunshine, and says goodbye.
“Say hi to Colby from me, and to our friend.”
“Whatever, I’m going back to sleep.”
