Chapter 15 #2
“Right.” Paolo rubbed his eyes, his fatigue from playing the game he wasn’t going to win showing now. “But she’s gone now. Has been for years. And honestly, I still think it’s the right thing to do to help her family, especially when it benefits us both.”
“Tell me then, Paolo, is Wilshire beneficial to us both while they continue to fuck up?” I leaned back and draped my arm along the back of my chair as I waited.
“What are you talking about?”
“They’re still using their medications for unapproved conditions. Off-label uses. And not well enough that the FDA isn’t sniffing around.” One move closer to checkmate. “I get updates from my men at the FDA every month. You think I didn’t know? They’re flagged.”
He tried to recover with a smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes at all. “They’ve been under pressure, but all businesses are right now.” He hurried on, “And once I have port access, it’ll be a fifty-fifty deal between us. Everything legal on paper, and your name stays clean.”
I didn’t need to respond. I just lifted a brow and let him talk.
“You know the ingredients go straight into generic production and how fast they move. Painkillers, supplements …”
“Cancer meds?” Of course it would still be beneficial to Lex’s company.
“Yes. The product will move fast.” He tried so hard to pretend this was just business, but I saw through it.
And then he said what I knew he would. “You know, Wilshire does have the distribution already set up. They might be struggling, but they’re known in this world.
We could use them and also prop them back up along the way.
If Lex was here … she would have wanted this. ”
He said it like he could make us all believe it even though she wanted nothing to do with the Diamonds. She thought Paolo had it all. His statement was just another nail in his coffin. “Lex always had unrealistic ideas and goals, Paolo. And those unrealistic goals are what killed her.”
“No. No … Lex wasn’t unrealistic. If she were here today, I bet she’d be excited.
” He hurried along, scrambling to give me something to be enticed with.
“A diamond remains unbroken right? I mean … I could be a part of that. A diamond remains unbroken, and the Ruiz cartels are there to take care of the cracks.”
He said it fast and smiled like it was a good line.
What he didn’t realize is he’d just shown his hand. Our game of chess had just elevated. It fed my gut instinct.
As I stared at him, I was beginning to think he was just a pawn. “She used to say that to me,” I told him and watched his every movement.
He glanced away, but I saw how his jaw ticked just once.
He had cracks that I was chipping away at to show either that he’d loved my wife so much that he couldn’t really want to partner with me, or he was hiding a deeper secret, one I was going to find out.
He grumbled, “Oh, really? Well, no matter.” He wiped a hand over his face. “Wish she could be here today.”
“I bet you do.” I narrowed my eyes at him.
“Even still, her dream could live on with Wilshire & Co., Jameson.”
“Is that your sell, Paolo? To play into the goodness of my heart for my dead wife’s legacy?”
“If not for Lex, then maybe for the legacy she wants to leave behind. I’m just saying … she’d have wanted us to try at least for Fran—”
“Paolo …” I stood abruptly. “You know that you were supposed to be Lex’s solution. She was wrong then … and now. You can’t rewrite history. You bought into Wilshire & Co. thinking you could save her family’s company and bury their hardship. You didn’t. You think I want to be a part of that?”
He glanced around as if flabbergasted and offended.
He was down to only a few guarding his king …
or his queen in our chess match. “Look, in the grand scheme of things, the company doesn’t matter much.
” He waved away my intel, but he was sweating now, trying to weasel his way into another tunnel to feed off me.
“Why bring it up then?”
“Because I thought that you—”
“That I might feel indebted to you for funding your lover’s family business?” I tapped my fingers on the table and tsked. “I don’t give a fuck what you do with your money, Paolo. This meeting is over.”
“Wait.” Paolo stood too, his frown deepening and his brow now sweating. “Don’t you get that her family will suffer?”
“Just them? Or you too?”
He threw up his hands, looking around like he needed someone to back him up. His brother next to him didn’t say a damn thing. “She might not be the love of your life, but she is mine.”
The man was panicking and showing all the moves he planned to make without making them. “She wasn’t, no.” I said that with finality.
“But she was still the mother of your—”
“Yes, she was. But now, with her gone, that’s over. And so is this meeting.”
“Have you no mercy?” the woman who stood behind Paolo blurted out.
A scoff left my brother’s lips before I could answer her. I glanced at him and saw the look he shot her way, so cold we all felt the temperature drop. He didn’t look away from her for even a second as he said, “We never promised mercy, Jasmina.”
She grumbled something under her breath, and normally Cal would have let that go. He was the diplomat, after all, but he taunted her instead. “I’m sorry, we didn’t hear that, Jasmina. Want to speak up, or are you scared to in a room full of men?”
Whoever that woman was, it was clear they’d brought her because she was trained to kill, and even I was impressed at how fast her knife flew across the table toward him.
My brother was trained in combat though. We all were. And still, he barely dodged the blade. Paolo bellowed her name, standing over her as if he were going to beat the shit out of her.
“Everyone, stop.” Callahan kept his eyes on her while Paolo’s men backed off in surrounding her. “Jasmina has never been to one of our meetings before. I might not have mercy, but I do have grace to give sometimes. She’s fine.”
“We meant no disrespect. Right, Jasmina?”
My brother didn’t even wait for her to answer. “Oh, she meant every ounce of disrespect she could muster in that throw, but I don’t mind a fight.”
And as we walked out, I heard him as he passed her by, “Next time, try not to miss, baby.”
When we got back into the SUV, I laid my head on the seat rest and closed my eyes. “Do I want to know what the fuck is going on between you and Paolo’s niece?”
“Nope.” But the corner of his mouth lifted like he knew it was going to be a whole lot of trouble. “Do I want to know what the fuck you’re thinking happened back there with Paolo?”
“Nope,” I said right back. Then I sighed, shaking my head. “Not until I’m sure, brother, not until I’m sure.”