Gio #2
My dark gray Rolls Royce Phantom was already waiting for me out front of my compound when I got there, and Milli had the keys in his hand.
He handed them to me as I passed, offering me a polite bow as he did so, then I climbed in the car, smiled at its welcoming, sleek interior, and started off up the driveway that would take me to the gate that separated my home from the road.
“Have a good day, Mr. Raines,” my front security guard said as he activated the gate’s lift for me.
“Thank you,” I replied, and zoomed past before it was even fully pulled aside and started off on the forty-five-minute drive for my office.
I got to the offices of KGP a little after seven in the morning, and things were just winding up for the day.
The receptionist greeted me with a friendly smile and a nod, and I looked her up and down as I passed.
She was curvy, kind, and wore herself like a woman who didn’t require a relationship with a man.
Maybe…
“Stop it.” The words only briefly preceded a sharp jab across the back of my head.
My hair flopped forward a bit and I had to run my fingers through it to set it back in place.
I looked over with a glare and Kelly was passing me, stunningly dressed in a professional suit with a pencil skirt and her blond hair held up in a clip.
She forced a coffee into my hands as she growled, “You’re not costing us another receptionist. This one is actually good. You’re at work, focus on work.”
“Ass,” I hissed.
“Brat,” she barked back.
At the back of KGP’s first floor, marble-clad lobby was a wall of silver elevators, most of which led to every floor in the ten-story building, save for the one furthest down on the right.
Kelly and I stepped swiftly towards this one in particular, and when we got close enough, she pulled the badge out hanging from her hip and slid it across the electronic panel next to the elevator door.
It beeped to let Kelly know that her badge had read successfully, then the elevator pinged, and the doors slid open.
I held out a hand for her to go ahead of me to get on, then I climbed on after her.
Kelly pressed the tenth-floor button and immediately fished into her bag as the doors started to close.
“I have the contract for the new Oicho Building if you want to...” A hand slammed in between the doors just before they closed, and Kelly jumped. “Jesus.”
“Heh.” Punk pulled until the doors were open enough for him to step on, and then he shuffled until he was between us. “Mornin’ Kel.”
“I can’t stand you,” she growled, and I knew it was a lie. The two of them had been hooking up for a little over six months.
Even though they’d yet to tell me.
The doors to the elevator closed, and Punk looked at his reflection and flicked a hand through his shoulder-length, black hair and did the best he could to press his very wrinkled, white button-up shirt into something presentable.
Not that it mattered much with the black jeans and combat boots he’d partnered with it.
“Aw, come on,” Punk grumbled. “You know it makes your whole day to see me.”
“Yeah, it makes my whole day,” she replied, “worse.”
He frowned and rolled his eyes before holding out a fist to me to bump. “What’s up, Gio?”
I met his childish greeting. “Hey. I’m surprised you’re here. It’s still prime hangover hours for you.”
He laughed. “Well, duty calls.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Narzand duty?”
He gave me a knowing look. “We’ll discuss it when we’re in your office.”
Kelly finished sifting through her bag and pulled out an incredibly thick contract and started to hand it over to me.
At the last second, just as I was about to take it, she pulled it back and shifted it towards Punk.
“Well, I guess it makes more sense for you to tell me if these parameters work first.”
Punk took the contract from Kelly and started to flip through the pages.
I watched over his shoulder, catching all the fine details as he moved, when he eventually got to the specs page, detailing what the newest client was looking for.
Punk always got this super-concentrated look on his face when he was going over specs or drawings.
For the fact that he usually went for ‘lovable doofus’, it was always interesting to see.
“Yeah, I can do it, but this timeline ain’t gonna work,” Punk said. “I need six weeks.”
Kelly’s jaw dropped. “Six weeks?! You did the entire Williams Restoration in three.”
“If he said he needs six weeks, get him six weeks,” I said. “You know what happens when we rush him.”
Kelly rolled her eyes as she took the contract back and put it in her bag. “Fine. I’ll get six weeks, but you owe me.”
Punk leaned all the way over until his face was mere centimeters from Kelly’s. “Ooh, owe you what? You name it, I’ll do it.”
She put her palm in his face and shoved him backward. “Fuck off.”
But I knew Kelly well. When she had dirty thoughts in her mind, her eyes narrowed, and her pupils got smaller.
Exactly how they were now.
Congrats to Punk anyway. Kelly was a catch in the bedroom and out. I wasn’t the commitment type, but if I were, she’d be an ace in the hole.
The elevator finally reached the tenth floor and stopped.
The doors wouldn’t open without authorization, and I was the only one who had it, so I stepped forward and set my thumb on the LED panel near the door.
It went blue for a minute as it scanned my fingerprint, then turned green, and the doors pinged and slid open.
The tenth floor was entirely mine.
The doors opened out into my massive rectangular office.
Directly across from the doors, I had a huge, cherrywood, L-shaped desk sitting in the middle of the room, with the windows behind my chair.
Across from the desk were four armchairs, and to the left was a huge meeting table for when I needed to gather more people than just myself or my co-owners.
To the right, there was a door that led to my kitchen and bathroom, and a couple of couches surrounded a fireplace that I’d lit many late nights.
I walked over to my desk and sat down, Punk right on my heels and slumping down into one of the armchairs across from me.
Kelly lingered, but only to close the additional security door that I had between my office and the elevator.
She’d caught Punk’s hint on the elevator that we’d need total privacy to discuss the most recent mission I’d sent him out on, so she was sliding out the security partition and locking it, ensuring that no one could get in without our knowledge.
We sat in silence until Kelly had taken her seat next to Punk and then both of our gazes turned to him. “Well?” I asked. “How did your meeting with Curtis go?”
Punk threw me a mischievous smile. “It took me a while to track him down at first. I checked all the places you’d said I’d be likely to find him, but he’s not the easiest guy to get in touch with, at least not when you’re looking in the typical spots.
I finally found him…” He raised an eyebrow. “Down at Aqueduct.”
My nostrils flared out and my blood started to boil in an instant. “What?” I said through gritted teeth.
Punk snickered. “Aw, I knew you’d love that.”
“Was he...”
“Deep into some horse for the cost of his house? Oh yeah,” Punk said. “And I don’t know if that guy’s just unlucky or what, but his horse didn’t just lose, it came in dead last.”
I folded my fingers together. “Did you talk to him?”
“I went a little rogue,” Punk said. “What was talking to him going to do when he was so down on his luck that he was ordering water from the bar at the end of the night?”
“What did you do?” Kelly asked.
“Tailed him. Wanted to see what he had in mind for a response to his turn of fate.” At this point, Punk fished into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper, and tossed it onto my desk. I looked down at it and saw the copy of a receipt for a plane ticket.
To Tokyo, Japan—one way.
Kelly snaked the page off my desk when she saw my reaction and figured I’d seen it enough. She scoffed when she looked it over before crumpling it in her hand. “What do we do?”
“We could just slap him with the contract break-fee,” Punk said, barely holding back a laugh as he said it.
“Kids?” I asked.
“Apart from your favorite brothers?” Kelly said, joining Punk in barely holding back a snicker. “Just a daughter. Avion. I think she’s in her early 20s. Never seen her before though.”
“She just joined the family business,” Punk said. “The dad’s business, not the brothers’.”
“Is his car bugged?” I asked.
“It wasn’t, but I made sure to give it a tap on my way out,” Punk replied, but then he rolled his eyes. “Look, can I just kill the guy? I haven’t gotten to be violent in a long time.”
Kelly shook her head. “This is what you get when you try to tame a street dog.” Then she looked at me. “Although, he’d probably be a little more receptive to Punk and his toys.”
“Relax, both of you,” I said. “If there’s anything I’ve learned from Merrick it’s that sometimes things need to be handled with finesse.” Not only that, but Merrick didn’t want me to start sharking in the first place, and if I lost that money, I was going to get reamed.
“And I hate to make things worse, but I guess we can’t get caught being too sloppy,” she said, going into her bag and pulling out a newspaper. “You’re the talk of the town today.”
She tossed the newspaper onto my desk and it folded open to the front cover story.
JUDGE HANDLING RAINES FAMILY CASE HAS SUDDENLY DROPPED ALL CHARGES: Merrick Raines up to his old tricks, or just a judicial change of heart? Is the Raines Family the most notorious organized crime syndicate of all time?
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “My old man struggles to stay out of the papers,” I said. “I hate that.”
“You’ve always preferred a softer touch,” Punk said.
“Except when you don’t,” Kelly said, raising an eyebrow at me.
“Very funny,” I replied, “but accurate.”
“You play the long game, that’s for sure,” she responded, “starting an entire architecture company just to hide your underground business is a feint for the ages.”
Ignoring Kelly, I looked at Punk, trying to keep my temper at bay. “Do you know of a place where I can speak to Curtis man-to-man? Professionally of course.”
“Oh, sure. The ribbon-cutting for the new Apex Founders Tech building is tonight, and he’ll be there. I designed that building, so you’re already on the invite list,” Punk explained.
I nodded. “Good. Thanks for following up for me, but I’ll take it from here.”
“What are you going to do?” Kelly asked.
I smiled. “What else? I’m going to go pay Governor Narzand a visit and see if we can’t work something out. I’ve got half a million dollars at stake and I am not about to lose it.”
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