Except then this hot stranger Kage moves in next door, and Nat’s dormant mourning ovaries jolt to life like reanimated zombies starving for brains.
Brains being a euphemism for the exceptionally hot dick Kage is packing.
But Kage, being cagey, hides the fact from Nat that he’s really the assassin sent to locate Damon and all the money he stole from the Bratva, then kill her.
I mean, it’s understandable he omitted that pesky detail, right?
It would be a deal breaker for most girls.
But Nat, also being cagey, figures out who Kage and her ex really are—wait, there’s another assassin in there somewhere who shows up to kill her because Kage failed to do it—and she heads off to Panama to find Damon, who was never really dead in the first place, just waiting for her to find him from a secret message he left in a painting. He skipped town on their wedding day because the FBI told him the Bratva had discovered where he’d been hiding.
Except by the time Nat finds him, he’s married to some other lady.
Who also doesn’t know his real name or that he was in the mafia.
Anyway, Kage and Nat get past all the thorny I-was-sent-to-kill-you business and move to New York together. Then, of course, Sloane has to go visit her bestie Nat in Manhattan, because the number of millionaires per capita is higher there than anywhere else in the US.
When I ask Sloane how she knew that, she says she looked it up.
Shocker.
So Kage sends a private jet for Sloane—I swear, these gangsters and their private jets—and Sloane heads to New York. Just as she steps out of the car at Nat and Kage’s building, however, Declan roars up with the Irish cavalry to kidnap her on orders from then-boss Diego who wanted information about Kage and a shootout that went down at some Mexican restaurant in Tahoe where both Irish and Russians were killed and Sloane was the cause.
Then Diego dies—supposedly but not really—and Declan becomes the new Mob boss.
I know. I could hardly follow it, either.
But I did follow the part where Declan got a lot more than he bargained for in a kidnappee, because within a few days, Sloane had his whole crew eating out of her manicured hands and him wrapped around her pinky finger.
There was a side story about some guy named Stavros and another jet, but I’d zoned out by then.
The bottom line being that Sloane fell in love with Declan, turned over a new leaf as a human being （I tried very hard not to snort when she said that）， and wanted to mend fences with the little sister she’d never been that close to, partly because the little sister—wrongly—thought she’d once stolen her boyfriend.
By the end of all that, I’m exhausted.
We hang up with Nat—who, from the sound of it, is about to go do something violent to her man Kage for giving Mal intel about Declan—and I lie down on the floor.
To the ceiling, I say, “So to wrap it all up, the three of us are in love with a trio of powerful mobsters.”
Sloane says, “Who are all enemies. Yes.”
“Why would Mal and Kage be enemies?”
“Maybe enemies isn’t the right word, but those boys don’t like to share their toys.”
“So they don’t hate each other as much as they hate Declan.”
She lies down on the floor beside me and takes my hand. “Right. Though I don’t understand what Declan meant when he said he and Malek have a mutual friend now. I’ll have to ask him about it later.”
Whatever it means, I know she’ll get it out of him. The woman was born to dissolve a man’s independent will.
“Circling back. How did Spider know I was in Moscow from the beginning?”
“Kage told Declan in return for a marker.”
“Is that some kind of mobster slang I should know?”
“It’s a favor. A big one. That can be called in at any time, and Declan can’t refuse.”
“Yikes.”
“Exactly.”
I feel bad about that angry speech I made to Declan when I first came in, until I get confused again. “Wait, so Kage and Declan are enemies, but they work together?”
“Sometimes. Other times they try to kill each other.”
That makes me smile. “Sounds like sisters.”
“Ha.”
“What about Diego? Is he still in the hospital?”
“He went to live with his sister in New York. He still can’t remember a thing that happened. He’s working at a diner as a short-order cook.”
“Poor guy.”
“I dunno, I think he might be better off.”