Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Corvus…
She was ignoring me.
I hated it when she did that. It was childish, and it also stirred that part of me that wanted to hunt, to stalk, and to pin her up against a wall and make her listen to what I had to say, even if I already knew it was a nonstarter.
Our respective clients were two very different kinds of people.
No matter how in love with it my clients were, they weren’t going to get away with making the changes they had in mind after taking possession of the place without an uproar and lawsuits hitting them left, right, and center from the local historic societies.
Sometimes, it was about protecting your clients from themselves as much as it was about protecting the agency from becoming legally liable during a sale for making bad-faith investments and sales.
Still, I appreciated Savannah’s spitfire attitude and general stupidity in not backing down from me. She could be feisty when she wanted to, and it gave her hot looks an edge with personality that just did things for me.
Not enough to want to keep her around for anything but a casual fuck – I didn’t tend to do shallow and insipid for very long.
Like I said, there was something about Savannah Davenport that screamed fake.
Disingenuous. She certainly could mean girl and be as cutthroat as the best of them, but I didn’t tend to dig it when it was a woman’s whole personality.
I set my phone aside, put my feet up on my ottoman, and took up my glass of cognac, breathing deep its rich aromatics.
My phone started buzzing across the small side table, and I let out an explosive sigh. “Jesus Christ,” I muttered, and picked it up, half expecting her name to flash across the screen – but no, it was worse than that. Much worse.
I grimaced and answered the line. “Renaldo, to what do I owe this pleasure?” I asked.
Renaldo Benitez was the foot soldier for Benito Castaneda, our primary contact and boss for one of Colombia’s more notorious cartels.
No, we didn’t deal in drugs – but we did deal in guns, and it wasn’t time for our monthly cache exchange for cash out in the middle of nowhere.
So, a call was… out of place, and out of place was never a good thing when dealing with the cartel.
“We got a situation,” he said. Holding the phone away from his face, he rattled off in rapid-fire Spanish to someone in the background.
“What kind of situation?” I inquired, trying to suss out whether it was one that involved the club, or was just a problem the cartel was having and was coming our way, looking for a solution.
“The kind that requires the right tools to fix – if you catch my drift.”
I did indeed catch his drift. He needed weapons, and he needed some now, before the usual drop. I heard someone make a query in Spanish and Renaldo tell them, “El parche.” I knew what that meant. It meant posse, or group of friends – roughly.
“So, you help us out?” he demanded.
“Let me take it to the table,” I said. “Get back at you within the hour.”
“I’m gonna need an answer sooner than that,” he said.
I nodded, realized he couldn’t see it, and said, “Noted. Holler back at you in a minute.”
I ended the call and dialed up Syn forthwith.
“Yeah?” he rasped on the other end, and he sounded out of breath. This time? He was likely fucking Madisyn into next week.
“Renaldo called, wants to, ah, borrow some tools.”
“Borrow?” he asked.
I cleared my throat, and he grunted.
“Timeframe?” he asked.
“Like fuckin’ yesterday, apparently,” I said.
Syn swore, and I heard Madisyn groan, then yip after a sharp report – likely his hand landing on her ass. I got hard just thinking about it.
“Call him back, tell him rendezvous at the third worksite in…” he checked the time. “Forty-five, and he better not make this a fuckin’ habit.”
“Copy that,” I said, shaking my head and pinching the bridge of my nose. Syn hung up on me, and I dialed Renaldo back.
“Third worksite in forty-five minutes,” I said as soon as he answered.
“We’ll be there,” he said, and the line went dead.
I sighed and swirled the amber liquid in my glass, holding it up to let the light shine through it.
That was a little too easy, I thought… and I was sure that Syn would impart the rest of his message himself.
I scrolled down to the text exchange with Savannah and huffed a sigh.
She was showing a place on Hamblin. I wondered if it was the old Lane place – if so, good luck selling that one. It’d lost most of its historic charm, and there weren’t many willing to shell out just under a mil for a one-bedroom, two-bath, especially not now.
The wave of new money, typically from online influencer money, required space, studio setups, and a myriad of other bells and whistles that the old Lane place just didn’t have.
It was charming, sure, but it wasn’t really what you thought of when it came to Savannah – at least not without an eye for and a budget for restoration.
I closed my eyes and settled back in my seat.
I’d have another chance to spar with Savvy Savannah another day.
I didn’t have any doubts about that.