Chapter 9
9
C ALLAN
I toss my keys on my desk and remove my coat before pouring myself a glass of Irish whiskey.
As much as I indulged that girl and kept her company, that glass of sweet white wine did nothing for me.
“Any luck, brother?” Alistair asks.
Lifting my drink to my lips, one hand tucked in my pocket, my eyes pinned on the water outside, I push out a short answer.
“Nope. Someone else is looking for it. Two or three parties have been involved in the search so far.”
“So, the news got around fast, huh?” he rumbles before sliding into his seat.
The armchair groans under his weight.
“It fucking did, didn’t it?” I mutter.
Downing my drink, I turn to him.
“You can always count on that when it comes to easy money.”
“It won’t be easy to sell it even if they find it,” I retort.
“They’ll find someone to buy it. A private client. Someone who doesn’t know it belongs to you.”
A dark smile tickles my lips as I pour myself another drink.
“Or someone who knows it belongs to me. Some vengeful dick. They’ll do it out of spite. To start a war or something. People do the stupidest shit when it comes to money.”
Alistair reaches for his black tie and loosens it a little.
“You could call the cops or talk to the insurance company.”
I take a swig and wince.
“Do I want that? No. I want back what was stolen from me. I don’t want to collect the insurance money. And I don’t want the publicity that comes with it. And the investigation. I have enough problems as it is. I want what’s mine, and whoever is responsible for this needs to pay.”
“ She didn’t pay for it.”
“Daniela, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not in the business of killing women.”
His eyes stay on mine for a long second.
“In her defense, she had no idea who she dealt with. She thought I was some sucker looking for pussy.”
Daniela Contreras was my first mistake in a long period of no women–related mistakes.
When you’re doing what we’re doing, walking a narrow line to appease everybody, and frankly, staying alive and leading a double life while permanently swinging between legitimate businesses and street lawlessness, your instincts must be sharp.
There is no room for errors.
The slightest error in this life can put you six feet under in a luxurious coffin in St. John’s Cemetery. Or Calvary Cemetery in Woodside Queens. Or Holy Cross Cemetery in Brooklyn.
Take your pick.
It’s too early to think about that, so it’s important to play this game well. All this time, I’ve been on top of things, but somehow, picking up this woman in a club to have some fun turned out to be a crime against me.
Me?
I’d laugh if I weren’t so pissed.
Alarms should’ve gone off in my head. They didn’t.
The entire story was so embarrassing I couldn’t even share all the details with Alistair, my younger brother. Forget about Duncan and Ewan. I don’t want my older brothers to make fun of me.
It’s not a laughing matter, though.
The woman had no idea who I was, yet she knew enough to snatch a ten million diamond necklace from my place. That piece should’ve been in my safe deposit, not in her pocket.
Someone tipped her off, and whoever it was, they didn’t tell her who I was . Who she was stealing from.
They used her or blackmailed her. Or both.
Nothing alerted me she might be a thief. Who would dare to steal from the Bard Brothers, anyway?
People lost their lives for way less.
For lying and snitching.
For not showing loyalty.
Or simply for being dumb and knowing too much.
We’ve always weighed our options carefully.
We couldn’t let compromised people in our crew.
Who knew that I’d be tricked by a woman?
There was nothing suspicious about her. Other than her good looks. That was her weapon of choice, and she used it well. Her blue eyes and dark hair distracted me while she used whatever information she had to pull that stunt on me.
Honestly, it wasn’t that I was smitten with her. I wasn’t. I’m surrounded by beautiful women. I know them in and out.
So it wasn’t that.
I wish it were, though.
What happened was worse than that.
It hadn’t crossed my mind that someone would be so bold, so stupid to use a woman to get to me.
And I knew right from the get-go that the heist wasn’t about the money.
As expensive and beautiful as the necklace is, this is about questioning my authority and dominance, which is much worse than taking a financial hit.
So… Daniela got the message quickly and spilled out her handler’s name like it was a cherry pit. Thomas.
I was unaware of the man in question, and I couldn’t connect it to any of my enemies, so I didn’t approach him.
Besides, the necklace had exchanged hands.
Daniela handed it to her lover. Thomas, again.
The kicker was that Thomas had a wife. Carmen.
And Carmen, oh boy, has she been fun for a while?
No one suspected that the fuck boy playing with her is none other than the man her husband had stolen from through a proxy.
The thing is, none of these people seem to be the brains of the operation.
And the necklace is still missing.
The jury is still out on how much Carmen knows and whether she is involved in this or clueless like everybody else.
She might be more than some woman who likes dick.
All that traffic in her building and the shady characters visiting her suggest she might be the key to finding the person behind this.
Whoever that person is, they kept everybody in the dark.
Which is smart and stupid at the same time.
Smart, because these people are unreliable information sources, and stupid because they are vulnerable and easy to surveil.
And the question remains.
Where the fuck is the necklace?
Daniela is out of the picture. Sunbathing on a beach in Venezuela away from the snowy New York City.
Thomas is a small-time crook who might’ve handled the package but only for a short time before he handed it to his boss. Or someone. An intermediary. My suspicion is he had no idea how expensive the package was.
And here comes Carmen.
Something is off about this woman.
I know her in more ways than one, and while she only seems obsessed with her looks, it takes a conniving nature to mislead men like she does.
She likes dick, all right. And I’m not sure about her loyalty to her husband––I’m joking, of course. There is none.
But the men she entertains and invites into her life are more than potential sex partners.
Even Mackenzie noticed something was off about her.
I might not be able to rely on the girl’s observations but that doesn’t mean I can’t give them any consideration.
She was right about those men. I saw them. Some low-ranking crooks, violent in nature, and not the sharpest tools in the toolbox, possibly looking for a threesome.
Or maybe serving as Carmen’s connection to some gang leader.
I wouldn’t exclude the possibility that they work for her.
Whatever the case, she and them might be the answer to my riddle.
I have eyes on Thomas, and while he’s involved with some nasty people, handling Daniela was a one-time thing, apparently something he’s done without his wife’s knowledge.
He’s also bedded Daniela without Carmen’s knowledge.It goes without saying.
What has brought me to his wife?
I checked every possibility.
Every place where the necklace could've been hidden.
One of those places was Thomas’ place. To get inside, I needed to charm his wife. One thing led to another, and she seemed more than willing to invite me to her place if my dick was as good looking as my face.
Her words, not mine.
Fucking her came with the bittersweet taste of revenge since her husband fucked my date.
But that wasn’t the only thing that brought us together. I wanted to know more about these people's affairs.
Usually, I’m not that messy.
Sex and crime don’t make for a good combo, in my case.
But it kind of worked in this situation. I earned Carmen’s trust. She told me enough about her husband to figure out his life. I have eyes on him, but he’s only some fool with a big mouth and a short fuse.
She likes him like that.
And she obviously has him wrapped around her finger.
It's too bad that whatever I know from her cannot help me find what I want.
I’ve played my role well.Rocked her world a few times. Had nothing to say about her ways with men.
Pretended to be intimidated by her old man.
Everything I did made her believe I was another sucker on her long list of suckers.
She might be an innocent player in this story, but honestly, I doubt that. One thing is for sure.She has no idea I am one of the Bard Brothers.
Which only hints at two things.She is not familiar with this world although she might be connected to some cartel people.Or she’s not connected to anyone, her husband is the biggest liability in their house, and she’s more preoccupied with getting her fix than playing the thuggish games of those underground people.
My train of thought is interrupted as my focus moves to the woman living below Carmen’s apartment.
Mackenzie is so different than her neighbor.
We had women like her in our family as we were growing up.
My father wanted them to have a normal life and marry outside our world of crime.
He wanted the same thing for everybody, but things didn’t work that way for me and my brothers.Sometimes, fate chooses you. Sometimes, you’re not choosing your fate.
My father got killed on the day I graduated college, and he wasn’t the only one who perished that day.
Many members of my family got wiped out, so on that day, it wasn’t a matter of choosing what to do.
We had to do what we were about to do.
We fought back and killed our way to the top.
There was no other choice.
We had to save our legacy, what was left of our empire and also save ourselves.
It was brutal.
I lost my parents, and Ewan and Duncan lost more than that.
Alistair was barely fresh out of high school, and he had a thirst for learning and wanted to prove himself.
We succeeded.
We became the most powerful and feared family in our area.
We put checkpoints in place, so no one could ever get to us again and try to destroy us.
We kept the appearances while running our underground empire with an iron fist and stopping at nothing to eliminate threats.
A portfolio of businesses has given us the legitimacy that we sought, and in a way, we made our father’s dream come true. Yet we couldn’t walk away from the dark world we had come from.
We stayed and became kings again despite paying a heavy price for that.
We still don’t have our own families.It hasn’t been in the cards for us after our parents' death.
It’s not like we’ve planned for all this, and I understand Ewan and Duncan’s reason, but Ali and I?
It’s never happened for us, and it came naturally to us to just live our lives and not worry about it.But what happened lately has turned things on their heads.
Having that necklace stolen from me is a big red flag that someone is after me. Or us. Or our empire.
They’re teasing me or warning me. Harassing me, perhaps, and waiting for me to make a mistake.
I thought the FBI might’ve set me up, but no. This is not their style.
The whole thing was a bit sloppy, hinting, again, at people who don’t know much about us.
The thought that they’re still playing this cat and mouse game makes my teeth grind.
And then, there is this woman.
Mackenzie.
Yes… Going back to how we grew up.
The women in our family pulled away from us.They have married regular guys and started families.
We occasionally get in touch with each other, but it’s mostly at the funerals and once in a while at someone’s wedding.We try to avoid each other for the most part to protect them and their families.
The women we had as very young men were more like Carmen. A tease for the flesh and a way to forget about our lives. A sure thing when it came to unloading our tension and annihilating our dark thoughts.
I have the other kind of women at my workplace.The business that I’m running. But I don’t pay attention to them. It’s safe to keep things that way.
They’re someone’s sister, mother, fiancé, or wife.
They work for me, and all they know is that I'm their boss. It’s enough to make them off-limits for me.
I like to keep things neat.
That’s why I said that losing this necklace, and having Carmen, Thomas, and Daniela involved in this story––and now, Mackenzie––is anything but neat.
Mackenzie.
Interesting woman.
Hot as fuck, but she wouldn’t know that.She’s like a closed book, her pages needing some dusting off.
I like her curiosity and taste for adventure––although she’s money-motivated, and I get that––and the way she puts me in my place.
A smile tugs at my lips, bringing my brother’s attention to me.
“What’s so funny?” Alistair asks, and I down my drink before responding promptly.
“Nothing.”
His eyes stay on me as I move to the bar and set my glass down before looking out the window, unable to let go of that image of Mackenzie on top of me.
Her thighs open, her tits perky, the corners of her lips naturally curled up.
She looked like an angel.
A strange comparison, I know.
I was mad at her for pulling out her camera and taking pictures of me. What the hell was she thinking? She shouldn’t try to do that with anyone? But me?
She was lucky I didn’t confiscate her phone, toss her over my shoulder, and lock her in the fuck room downstairs where the bed is wide, the candles are plenty, and the drawers are stocked with lube, whips, blindfolds, and shackles.
Make her my little sex angel.
Ready for me at any time of day or night, prepared to satisfy me and give me pleasure and take my punishments with a drunk smile on her face.
Joking aside, the room is there.
I’ve never had the chance to use it. But for some reason, I thought she’d make for a good tenant.
Something about her spunk and goodness would make her the perfect resident.
I can only imagine her eyes going wide. Her lips trembling with revolt and anticipation.
Her snappy words coming to me fast.
She and I could not be more different, and yet, we’d make a great pair in the bedroom.
I’d lie if I said she didn’t ignite my curiosity or I didn’t think about ruining her for other men.
Keeping her is out of the question.
None of the Bard brothers look for commitment these days. Maybe that’s why I’m dithering over making a decision.
The kernel of honorability I still harbor and the sliver of conscience left in my brain prevent me from pulling this woman into a story that would leave her broken.
But that doesn’t make my curiosity go away.
I know my ways.
I know how distracting a woman can be.
So I might end up dragging her to my bed and have her under me just to get her out of my system.
She might not be what I think she is.
We might not hit it off.
She might hate me, which would make things even more pleasurable for me. And for her, in the end.
Nothing fuels my pleasure like fake hate.
Whichever way our story goes, I want to make her time worthwhile.We’ll see how that goes. I already have mixed feelings about the whole thing.
And there’s something else I like about her.She’s unpredictable and keeps me guessing.
I was annoyed with her that night, and for sure, I was intrigued, unable not to think about her.
Aside from the practical benefits, the idea of gathering information for me has also been a ploy to have her bound to me in some way.
I thought it would help me observe her and learn more about her. The woman who’d sparked my imagination.
Which is a rare occurrence these days.
The silence grows in the room, making me turn around and glance at my brother.
Alistair’s eyes are trained on me.
“What’s bothering you?” he asks, his dark green eyes flickering between his thick lashes.
We’ve all inherited our mother’s eyes. Different shades of poisonous green. Mine are tinged with amber. Alister's are dark like the forest. Ewan’s eyes are washed out––a gray cloud tinged with watercolor green.
And Duncan’s are blue-green. I’m not gonna lie.
The color of our eyes did us a solid with our women.
“Nothing,” I say in a clipped voice again, moving to the armchair.
Slowly I slide into my seat across from him, his eyes still on me.
“You’re not only thinking about the necklace,” he says, his words tearing into the silence.
I lean back, smiling.
“What makes you say that?”
“The way you act.”
He crosses his arms on top of his chest while I stretch mine along the armrests.
“Why don’t you want to tell them about the necklace?” he asks.
Pursing my lips, I ponder.
“It’s better that way. I don’t want to make a big fuss about it before I figure out who did this and why. If I tell them, we’ll have a war on our hands. You know Ewan. He’ll kill first and ask questions later. He still has a lot of anger left in him. And Duncan?” I sigh. “Duncan would use this opportunity to go after some people who might not have anything to do with the necklace. That won’t help me either. I won’t get the necklace back, and more importantly, I won’t know what or who to look for.”
He studies my face.
“So, what’s your plan?”
“My plan is to get a lead from this woman. Carmen. If she’s not involved, someone in her circle is. I checked her place today and found nothing. I’m checking a couple of men who visited with her. Maybe they’ll lead me to their boss. My men have told me there isn’t talk about the heist on the streets, which makes me believe someone’s fucking with me. They may have eyes on me. Although my men have said that no one’s following me around. They better not to. In the meantime…” I muse over my next words. “I will start a different kind of war. A quiet one.”
Our eyes are still locked together.
“If they want to test me, I’ll test them, too. You know who’s on that list,” I say quietly, and he nods his head in response. “Then you know what to do. Just don’t make it look like revenge. Shake things up. Let these people know they can’t fuck with us. It’s either us or them. Money is the best weapon, and we’re about to use it.”
A smile stretches across his lips.
“I like the sound of that, brother,” Alistair says, satisfaction gleaming in his eyes. “What are you going to do?” he adds.
Faint amusement flickers across his face.
I slide my hand inside my pocket and retrieve my phone.
“I’m playing dumb and fucking with everybody,” I say when a ringing sound wafts from my other pocket.
His eyes dip, filled with questions.
“Don’t ask,” I say, pulling out my regular phone.
I take the call.
“I’m listening,” I say.
“There’s some party going on. A couple of cars just pulled in. They dropped off several men and women in front of Carmen’s building,” one of my men says.
“Fuck me… And I’m not invited?” I joke.
My brother smiles while my man continues, unwavering.
“It looks like a Christmas party.”
“Everything does these days,” I muse.
“Gifts and shits.”
“Uh-huh…” I say, my smile dying out. “The two men are there?” I say, prompted by a hunch.
“It appears so.”
“Their boss?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Do you know who their boss is?”
“I have a pretty good idea. Ricky The Monster.”
“Ricardo Alvarez,” I say as things start clicking in my head.
My brother’s eyebrows go up slowly, questions forming in his eyes.
“You know him?” he asks.
“I’ve heard of him,” I say.
“What do you want me to do, Boss?”
“Keep an eye on them. And let me know if a short guy with a cross tattooed on his cheek joins the party. I doubt he will, though. It would make no sense. But who knows?”
“Okay. Anything else?” my man asks.
“Keep an eye on the woman who lives on the floor below. I need her.”
“All right, Boss.”
I end the call and put my phone down before facing my brother’s scrutiny.
“Who is the woman downstairs?”
“Someone I’m paying for information.”
“A snitch?”
I laugh.
“Yeah.”
“Since when are you relying on random people who are not our men?”
“Since it’s convenient.”
“What’s so convenient about this woman? And who the fuck is she?”
I shrug.
“I don’t know. Some girl who spends an awful amount of time at home and is a bit nosy.”
“She cute?”
“Not that it’s your business…” I stop, unable to stifle a chuckle. “No, she’s not,” I say, regaining my composure and trying to distort the truth.
“She fucking is,” he says, smiling.
“No, she’s not,” I say, more serious this time, no grin on my face. “She’s just a normal woman.”
“How does she look?”
Not a muscle moves on his face or mine.
“Dark hair. Blue eyes. Small frame.”
“Short?”
“She’s not that short. But she’s not tall either.”
“You know a whole damn lot about a woman who is just like any other woman.”
“She is just the girl who lives downstairs. And she caught me climbing over Carmen’s balcony. We got into an argument, and I decided to hire her. She’s not the usual burly man snooping around for me. I think it’s a great way to keep an eye on Carmen’s apartment.”
“Is she any good?”
I nod.
“She gave me a couple of good tips. Plus, I can always use her apartment.”
He studies my face for a couple of moments.
“With her consent or…?”
A smile blooms on his lips.
“She’s helping me. That’s all you need to know,” I say, indicating that our conversation’s over. “Now let me call Carmen. I feel like going to a party,” I say, grabbing the first phone while Alistair shakes his head in amusement again.