Saving Rose Red - Maggie Dallen Page 0,1
turned into a hobby when he went into the military and then a good cover when he became a cop. But the way she was looking at it now made him wonder why he hadn’t just stuck with tattoos and left the scum of the earth for someone else to deal with. Maybe then he’d be chatting her up and not standing there like a lump as she looked through his designs.
“That’s all Dagger,” Stu said. The ever-present guilt that gnawed at his gut intensified into a stabbing pain at the obvious pride in the older man’s voice. Since Stu had hired him almost six months ago, he’d treated him as more of a son than an employee. And in return, Cole had done nothing but lie to him and use his connections to get himself in with the Corada gang who ran the drugs in this neighborhood.
It was all part of the job. But even after years in this line of work, lying to good people never got easier. Another reason it was best if he stayed far, far away from this woman who practically wore a sign that read innocent and optimistic. Two words no one would ever use to describe him, not even back when he’d first joined the military. People like her had always been a bit of a mystery to him. Maybe that was the fascination.
She turned back to him with that megawatt smile and her blue eyes were lit up with appreciation. “You’re really talented. Will you do my next tattoo?”
He had not been expecting that. Before he could shut it down, his mind went down a deliciously dirty path thinking of all the body parts she might want tattooed. “Sure. What were you thinking?”
She turned her back to him and looked over her shoulder. With one hand she yanked down the shoulder of her T-shirt and leather jacket, revealing one slim shoulder and impossibly creamy skin. He saw the tail end of what looked like an ivy tattoo but he couldn’t make out the rest. “I want to add to this one,” she said. “I’m thinking a red rose.”
As far as he knew his expression didn’t change. He hadn’t done much more than frown since she’d walked in. But she hurried on, “I know, I know. It’s a little boring, right? But it has significance. See, I just found my family. I was put up for adoption at birth and a couple months ago I found my parents and half-sister.”
He couldn’t bring himself to look away from her animated features. To be caught in the tsunami of personal information pouring out of her mouth was surprising. Humbling, even. Why was she telling him this? He was basically a stranger. A large, tattoo-covered, scowling stranger who’d barely said two words to her.
He was dimly aware of Stu heading to the back office but he couldn’t look away. Her blue eyes were fixed on him and her level of excitement was…well, it was charming.
“And my half-sister has this ex-stepsister, right? I know, it’s a little convoluted. Anyway, my former stepsister has this thing with fairy tales and she keeps calling me Rose Red and I just thought—”
She was cut off by the door opening and two men walking in.
For the second time that day, Cole froze. All thoughts about the charming pink-haired angel came to a halt as his cop instincts kicked in. One of the men was tall, slender, and so well put together he looked like he’d just stepped off the pages of a J. Crew catalogue. In khakis and a cable-knit sweater, topped with a tweed blazer, the clean-cut, dark-haired man oozed wealth and power. And well he should, this man and his family owned half of Brooklyn.
He was also the reason Cole had been working undercover all these months. Rumor had it that this man was the reason the drug trade in this area had picked up recently. About two years ago, the Corada gang had gone from small-time drug pushers to a small empire. Odds were that the Coradas didn’t suddenly become financially savvy business whizzes overnight, and sources had leaked that Anthony Gallagher had extended the family business from their mildly shady dealings in development to outright criminal dealings in the drug world.
And now here he stood with one of his lackeys at his side. After months of making contacts with the Coradas and working himself up in the ranks in the hopes of getting some solid evidence that