28. Calista
Chapter 28
Calista
H e told me to trust him… right after telling me he has a meeting with the senator and “others.”
Trust. Not very likely, buddy.
I look around the opulent room, the thick smoke winding in the air, and the rich men with impossibly beautiful women at their sides.
Or on top of them.
The hidden pocket of my dress is heavy. I slide my fingers in, over the slick, flat surface of the phone I lifted off the girl in the elevator. A gorgeous brunette in a short, elegant dress that left little to the imagination.
Getting the phone from her beaded evening bag was easy enough, especially since she was too busy fawning over the fat, sixty-plus-year-old man she was with.
The girl looked twenty-one at most.
I’d feel for her, but I saw the desire to be part of the wealthy elite burning bright. She likes how he treats her and the money he no doubt showers on her.
The two of them disappear, which makes me having her contraband phone easier. Smith isn’t here, he palmed me off. And the man he handed me off to is scary. Big and handsome, with a scar on his face, and the kind of angled jaw women swoon over. Yet his eyes, dark and almost black, are hard and emotionless.
The eyes of a killer.
What’s his story? His angle? I study him and those eyes bore into me.
“Don’t even think of trying your baby girl version of seduction on me,” he says, basically manhandling me into a seat.
I roll my eyes, touch the phone once more before making myself put my hands on the table. “Also, Smith might kill you. I’m not sure he’s into sharing.”
The guy grins. “You’d be surprised.”
Heat burns in my veins. And I meet that cold stare dead-on. “I don’t think he wants to share me. And you aren’t all that. Now, I’ll have a scotch.”
He pulls out a leather chair and sits, curling his hand around my wrist and pulling me to him. “You’re not what I expected. But don’t fucking play me. He might like you. I don’t give a fuck.”
A cold bolt of fear snakes through me. This isn’t spinning wheels. This isn’t trust. This is… I don’t know what it is… I stop, narrow my eyes, and take a breath. Then I relax into his hold. “Scotch. Please.”
He’s about to say something when the other ginormous man, one of the men who came to our rescue in Cuba, drops next to me. “Play fucking nice, Reaper.”
Then Reaper, that’s what the killer holding me is called, looks at him and smiles slowly as he takes in the honey-blonde woman standing near the other big man.
“That’s Smith’s kid,” Reaper says, hooking a thumb through the air at the blonde. “This is her fiancé, Orion. Fuck, I wish I could hang for the fireworks of the wedding, Orion, but…” He shrugs. “Got things to do.”
The honey-blonde pretends not to be interested. Orion just looks hard, bored, annoyed. Reaper’s got nasty delight all over his face.
“This is Smith’s piece, girls and boys. Hendrix.”
And then the asshole saunters off to the bar.
“Calista,” I manage to push out. “My name’s Calista.”
Orion gives me a look but doesn’t say anything. Instead, he goes after Reaper as he motions to the blonde to sit.
For a moment it disgusts me, the dynamic. Like, Smith’s daughter is his to boss around, even without words, because she just nods sweetly and looks down, doing as ordered.
But I catch the proprietary gleam in his eye, and something blinding hot that’s passion and love and adoration. It’s so apparent for a sliver of a moment that I hurt inside because…
Because it’s special.
And Smith’s daughter… Dakota… her little smile is excitement and love, the gleam in her is just as bright.
It dawns on me right then that they play their own sex game. Some kind of D/s. And while they’re both into it, she… she loves it.
Then her gaze hits me hard and it all shuts down. “So your Smith’s latest? Normally I don’t meet them. Is he that desperate? God, he’s pathetic.”
I squeeze a hand tight. “Desperate?”
“Not you, just bringing you here. Are you my age?”
“I’m older than I look.”
“He’s not a good guy,” Dakota says, anger burning the edges of her words.
“Really?” The two men are at the bar, talking, and I’m damn sure I won’t even make it near the exit before I’m shoved back down. Though I don’t know where I’d go anyway .
Sure, Smith’s here somewhere in the building, but he’s with the senator and whoever else is involved in the game about the blueprints.
The ones I’m pretty sure I have.
But I don’t get why the CIA is so hot for me. They could have grabbed me in Germany. Instead, they hired Smith.
Or someone did, anyway.
Then again, if I have the blueprints, so do others, and everything is on the databases. I just took stuff to decode, to play with, because I could.
Except for what Johnny asked me to hold.
Stuff I haven’t even opened.
My stomach sinks. Is that it? Is it to do with that?—
“…and a failure. He only cares about himself.”
Dakota sinks back in her chair, arms folded.
I wasn’t listening, not to her words. But I go over the cadence of her voice. It’s not cold. There’s anger, yes, and hurt. And a big fat dose of denial that comes from Smith’s DNA. I can see him in her, but I’m betting she looks a lot like her mother.
Funny how I’m not jealous of the only woman he’s ever mentioned caring for. Then again, they were kids, and I just like to fuck him. I don’t like or love him.
So I don’t know why I even care about his relationship with his daughter.
Maybe because her anger and hurt remind me of Henry and how he feels about our dead mom. He sounds exactly the same.
Dakota opens her mouth and I turn to her. “I don’t know you, and I don’t know Smith that well. But we’ve talked… and maybe you want to sit down and get facts straight. He’s adamant you don’t want him at your wedding.”
“I don’t.” That sounds exactly like Henry, and if I’m honest, me. With him, it’s about Mom, with me…? I’m more in troverted than him. Walls up, rejecting everyone before anyone can reject me.
Dakota doesn’t strike me as introverted, but the sentiment is so familiar. I’d like to be more a part of things, which the job gave me, all while keeping my distance. Henry pushes things about Mom into hate because he’s hurt. Dakota rejects her father because he, in her eyes, rejected her. She wants him at her wedding, no matter what she says.
“I think you should talk to him because I got the picture of a man who might sell me down the river but will do anything to keep you safe, even have you hate him. He gave up a lot for you. Maybe the world? His world.”
“You think he’ll love you for this?” she asks. It’s not spiteful, it’s curious, like she sees more in me, too, and it makes me shift on the chair like I’m in the hot seat.
I rise. “I don’t think he loves anyone other than you, Dakota. He’s your father. And he didn’t know about you until… well, until your mother was gone. He decided, because of his lifestyle, to give you up, give up a real relationship, to make sure you grew up safe and stable and happy. And if his sacrifice isn’t love, I don’t know what is.”
Taking a deep, shuddery breath, I step away and walk around the table to her side. “Talk to him.”
With that, I straighten and cross to Reaper and Orion. I take the scotch from Reaper and down it. “I’m going to the bathroom.”
“Two minutes.”
I don’t respond, I just take off so I can break into the phone and get onto my cloud in private.
The bathrooms put the opulence of the ones from the earlier party to shame. Dark rusts and delicate ivory orchids with onyx fixtures make it into something glamorous and chic, something I could imagine for a photo shoot .
If you’re into that kind of kinky shit.
I drop onto on the velvet bench. It doesn’t take much to get it open, her password is just zeros. I shake my head. Such brilliance.
From there, I can get into my stuff on the cloud.
My heart leaps. There’s a message. It’s voice to text.
Call me. Aaron.
Fingers shaking, I memorize the cell number, and I’m about to call when something stops me. Maybe it’s him seeing Felicity, which makes no sense. Although moneyed people know moneyed people, and Riley made money when he moved into the private sector.
So I back trace it. Could be that Riley changed his mind after seeing me, but this message… it was left before then. Between leaving Brooklyn and the opening.
And it looks to have come from DC.
I close the phone and pocket it, then open the door and almost scream.
Smith glowers at me.
Everything in me goes into free fall and I half expect him to push me back inside and ravage me.
Instead, he grabs my hand. “We need to go.”
“Wait—”
“No, we move now. And fast.”
We race down the hall, past the bathrooms and through another door marked management. I expect it to be an office, but it’s a small room with an elevator. He hits the button and the door slides open.
Smith pushes me inside.
“I thought this was an exclusive club with a restaurant and a night club with a sex club downstairs. Your depraved all in one. ”
He laughs. “That and it’s also headquarters for billionaire criminals.”
I almost laugh when I catch his eyes. They’re serious. Deadly, dark-blue pools of very deep secrets.
“You’re a billionaire?”
“No, I just like to squat upmarket and sneak on private planes.”
The door dings at the floor marked G . I expect to step into a lobby, but instead we’re in an underground garage with low lighting and expensive cars. Taking my hand, he leads me through the cars to a back exit that is covered by armed guards.
Whatever this place is, it’s fortified, protected, and they know Smith.
There’s a black car waiting on the narrow street where we exit.
The back door opens and he gives me a gentle shove. I slide inside, and the moment he closes the door, the driver takes off.
I’m not sure where we’re going, but it’s not to any of the places we’ve already been to tonight. The windows are tinted so I can’t see much. We cross a bridge and we’re in a crisscross of streets that are mainly industrial and bars, some strip joints and old-school diners.
And we keep going.
Finally, we pull up to a curb in front of a warehouse.
When we step inside, he says, “Welcome to your new abode.”
I step in, and lights burst to life. Outside there aren’t any windows, and it looks like it’s unused, or if it is, used for long-term storage. But inside…
Wow, it’s gorgeous. State of the art. Luxury in a hidden box. And, I’m betting, complete with security camera feeds.
There are safe houses, and then there’s this. Oh, it’s a safe house for sure. The street is void of people and even cars, and the other warehouses probably just sit, unused. Blend in and be seen.
But this is something else.
“No barebones safe house for you,” I mutter as the door closes and locks behind us.
“I like to impress.”
Smith takes me by the shoulder and crowds me up against the door. His hands skim down the length of my body, setting off all kinds of fires. I shift into him, craving his touch, needing for him to finish what he started earlier.
Instead, he pulls the phone from my dress pocket and holds it up. “Explain.”