Great. He thought as he untangled himself from her death grip. Turning slowly from Ivy, Nikolai faced his friend and occasional business partner."Niko...? Ivy what the hell is going on?" Disbelief and anger colored Coles voice as his eyes bore into Ivy."Don't you take that tone with her Cole." Growled Nikolai. "This whole mess is my fault and I fully take the blame and any ass kicking you feel like dishing out." Nikolai said as he ran his hand through his recently disheveled hair."Wait. You two. His real name is Nick Armstrong. We started out together working for a local guy years ago, mostly small stuff. Nick was really ambitious. Worked his way up, became more and more hard and ruthless. I rose with him.’ Stopping talking for a moment he closed his eyes and seemed to be lost in some thought as Rachel ran her eyes over him for the first time really looking at him. He was a good looking man under all the purple bruises on his cheekbone, jaw and eye on the left side of his face.. She held him and maintained the smile.“I’m sorry for all this, Colin. All of it. He’s been a different person since you came into Connie’s life. I’m almost sure it’s the money thing and thinking you should be helping him by bailing him out.”“Nancy, he never asked. No one did.”“Connie, four years ago, when he was talking about it, told him not to. She told him under no uncertain terms that his failings were not Colin Cranston’s problem, and he was not to ask you for money. If you found an issue. A lot of major companies were doing that, so there was no reason why he could not do it, too.School had not started, yet, so the whole family traipsed off to Freeport for a vacation while Jim established his business there. Before leaving, Jim had made contact with a local corporate lawyer and had hired her to help him get his business started. He hired a woman as a sort of camouflage to make it look like he was a naïve American who was being very politically correct. Elsie laughed at the.