Cuckoo (Kindred Book 3) by Scarlett Finn Read Free Book Online Page B

don’t—”
    “I killed him.”
    Inhaling through her nose, she wilted some. She should be used to those abrupt words by now, but they still blindsided her every time. “Why?”
    “Meesh paid me to,” he said, letting go of her hand to shift onto his side. “She’d spent months sleeping her way around the criminal element in Italy’s major cities looking for a hitman.”
    Zara couldn’t see what the trouble would be for her. Mischa was dynamic and cosmopolitan according to what Art had said, even those who weren’t killers by trade would probably offer to do the job if it got her between their sheets. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she? I would think men would be falling over themselves for her.”
    “She didn’t want men. She wanted the best.”
    “Which is you.”
    “Right,” he said, lifting a strand of hair from her cheek to tuck it into place with her other locks. “My name came up again and again when she made it clear what she wanted, no mess, no repercussions. But getting a referral is tough, even those who know me are scared to piss me off by connecting me with a client… Especially one that could be volatile.”
    “But she found you eventually?”
    “I found her,” he said, skimming a hand over her hip to squeeze her ass. It didn’t surprise her that he had taken control when he found out Cuckoo wanted him; Brodie liked to be the one who made the first move. “A couple of guys told me about her, Art and I checked her out, then I made the approach and we made the deal.”
    “Sex in exchange for?”
    He stopped enjoying her body to meet her eye. “I don’t take payment in sex, never have,” he said. “Mischa had the capital and plenty of it. We fixed a price and she told me to make it look like an accident.”
    As simple as that, Mischa wanted her father dead, and Raven did the job. “What kind of accident?”
    His hand returned to its expedition across her exposed body. “I talked her out of that, it’s a rookie mistake. When billionaire’s die accidentally, there’s a heap of paperwork and a long wait for the beneficiaries. I have some experience with this.” From when his parents died. Though he seemed to forget all of those details after Grant died. Or maybe he didn’t want to face how big a deal his brother had become in the business world. “We settled on suicide.”
    “You set it up to look like suicide?” she said, horrified and impressed, yet curious about how someone went about doing that.
    “No,” he said. “It was suicide.”
    She was lost again and she would guess the descent of her brows betrayed her confusion. Brodie curled his index finger under her chin and pressed the pad of his thumb to the front of it so he could tilt her head back and grip her at the same time.
    Trying to think it through, she knew it would be quicker just to ask. “How do you make someone commit suicide?”
    The faint smile on his lips was that of a learned man passing on his wisdom. “Easy. Do your research. It’s as simple as that.” He kissed her plumped lower lip. “A man will do almost anything if you threaten the thing he loves most.”
    The tingling in her shoulders and awareness in her belly were making her itchy in an amorous sort of way. But that awareness wasn’t enough to distract her from the sadness of the truth Brodie had just revealed.
    “You got him to kill himself by threatening his daughter? The one who wanted him dead in the first place?” He’d thought he was protecting his child when all along it was the child who had instigated the plot.
    But Brodie wasn’t tormented by her assumption. “His daughter wasn’t what he loved most,” he said. “His company and his money were the catalyst. Destitution is what the super-rich fear most.”
    That was even sadder and decreased her pity for Mischa’s father. Whatever the Corvi family politics were, it was none of her business. Brodie, on the other hand, was. “How did you end up with her?”
    “You don’t need