Chapter 41 Ransome
RANSOME
“Can I do anything else for you, Mr. Rozanov?”
Hearing Amara address me in a professional manner after staying the night with her, all night, in the same bed, then having breakfast and talking business in our underwear is… I’m not gonna lie. It’s kind of hot. I’m actually digging the contrast.
“No, Miss Parker. I’m good for now.”
Today, unlike most days, I don’t walk out of my office after looking over my schedule. Typically, I have people to talk to, or people to glare at and make sure they’re getting shit done.
But today, I have a slightly different agenda.
Amara takes the hint when I sit down at my desk and excuses herself, though not without letting her hips sway on the way out.
I shake my head and let out a breath. I refuse to let my mind wander. It would be too easy to pull her back in here, yank her into the closet and reenact our last twelve hours together.
Regrettably, I don’t have time for that right now.
I take another sip of the perfectly brewed coffee she brought me and open my laptop.
One of the perks of the dark side of my job is having the ability to hack into anyone’s lives at the press of a button.
It’s not something I do often, worming into other people’s business, including personal life details and bank accounts. Too much hassle, if I’m being honest.
But right now I have my reasons.
It’s even easier to do when that person works for you and you have access to their accounts and social security number.
Amara has less debt than I would have expected.
Honestly, I’m a little impressed. She has no car payment or student loans, and the only credit card she has has no balance.
From the look of it, she uses it for gas and pays it off every month.
She also has a decent chunk in savings which I also don’t hate.
I am a little surprised at the amount being Zelle’d to her sister twice a month. It’s over half her income.
I don’t have a lot of info on her siblings aside from their names, but that’s enough to pull up the entire family.
Their house is in a less than desirable part of the city. I’d be lying if I said I don’t know exactly where it is, and not because I frequent it. Our men deal a lot in the area, which in this context makes my skin crawl a little.
I find myself feeling strangely protective of these kids.
Their house is nearly paid off, though it can't possibly be worth anything. A Google Earth search that was updated not long ago shows the place in near shambles. If I had to guess, that’s thanks to a deadbeat parent of some kind.
My instincts say dad, and that’s pretty much confirmed once I dig a little deeper.
Her siblings are easy enough to find on social media.
Eliza is the oldest, and a true mini-me of her sister.
Most of her posts show her working at a salon, hair color before and afters, showing off outfits with a boomerang effect, and having fun with friends.
The similarity isn’t in their interests—Amara is a business girl through and thorough—as much as in the obvious drive.
Gianni is next. My chest constricts when I see what he does for a living. He’s a mechanic, and at a glance, he reminds me more of Nik than I care to see. His pages are littered with photos of cars and engines, though not many of himself. I swallow hard with a tight jaw and move on to the youngest.
Isabella Parker, aka Bella, is a spitfire, though I’m not surprised. Her photos are over the top, filtered, dramatic, angry. But despite her bottle blond hair and face piercings, I see a lot of Amara in her too. The soft side of Amara. The side that is faking bravery to survive.
One thing is for sure: They are a family of survivors.
I finish off my coffee and grit my teeth before moving on.
Driven by dread, I type in the father’s name.
He has literally no social media presence, or any internet presence at all.
Other than an old link to his employment at a gas station, the only place his ugly mug pops up is just that—a mug shot.
He’s been arrested for drunk driving, more than once. And shop lifting from—you guessed it—a liquor store.
Other than that, there’s nothing to see. He is a waste of space and, from the looks of the money flowing from Amara’s account to Eliza’s, he’s a waste of everything else, too.
A few clicks on my side of the screen take care of a few of these problems. She now has zero debt (not that it took much to do so) and her apartment is paid off as well. With her permission, it will be listed within the week.
The outstanding problem though, her shitstain of a dad, is still festering in my head. I close my laptop and suck my lips for a moment before making a decision.
I want to see this house for myself. I want to see where Amara grew up, where her siblings still live, and just how shitty things are. I can’t fix the situation if I don’t evaluate it first.
And I will fix the situation.
“Amara.”
Her head darts up from her desk. Her eyes are wide in surprise, like she didn’t expect me to drop by her office. To be fair, it’s usually the other way round. “What can I do for you, Mr. Rozanov?”
I almost smirk. This newfound professionality of hers feels like a little game between us. “I need you to push the rest of my meetings to tomorrow.”
“Sure.” Her brow lifts slightly, but she’s already tapping away. “What should I put on the schedule instead?”
“Just mark me unavailable.”
Her brow lifts higher, but she doesn’t comment. Whatever else we may be out there, in here, she’s my assistant and I’m her boss. “Okay.”
“Good. I’m leaving for the day. Text me if anything urgent comes up.”
“Yes, sir.” I’m already halfway out the door when she adds, “Would you like me to call Ivan for you?”
“That won’t be necessary.”
I make my way out and get behind the wheel. It takes the better part of an hour to navigate traffic all the way to the address I found online, but I don’t question that I’ve made the right decision. Both in doing this and keeping her in the dark about it.
Amara is proud. Above all, she’s protective of what’s hers. Better to ask for forgiveness than permission—not that I plan on needing either.
I get there just before dusk.
The house is run down at best, sinking into the cold, hard New York dirt.
It’s on a street of cookie cutter houses from the Fifties, homes that may have been nice once.
But thanks to the rising crime rates in the area, the neighborhood has become neglected and sketchy.
The idea of Amara having ever lived in this place makes me want to vomit, not to mention the thought of her younger siblings still being here.
My plan is to do a slow drive-by. But when I see a garage outback holding a red muscle car and a kid bent over the engine, I find myself rolling to a stop.
It’s Gianni. And good idea or not, I think I’m going to pay him a visit.
My shoes crunch on the gravel as I make my way down the drive. I’m surprised he doesn’t hear me coming, but when I get closer, I know why. One, he really is deep diving in that engine. And two he’s got the radio blasting hard rock music from a unit on the workbench.
It isn’t until he straightens up to wipe his brow that he notices me standing there. He immediately whips around defensively, standing on guard with a wrench in his hand.
“Who the fuck are you?” he demands, chin held high. He’s putting up a front, and while he’s not a big guy, five seven at best, I can tell he’s been in fights. If I had to guess, he’s spent his entire life fighting.
“Calm down, kid. I’m Ransome Rozanov.”
“Is that name supposed to mean something to me?” he asks, his hand tightening on the wrench. But I just stand there. My shoulders aren’t squared. My hands are where he can see them.
“I’m Amara’s boss.”
His expression softens a little, but his death grip on the tool doesn’t waver.
“She’s not here,” he tells me. “She doesn’t live here. But you probably know that.”
“I do know that,” I agree. “And I’m not looking for her. She’s at work.”
“So what do you want?”
“I was in the area and thought I’d stop by.”
He snorts with a smirk.
God, you are more like Nikky than you know…
“You? You were in the area.” He looks me up and down with a mix of disgust and envy on his face. I can see him mentally tack a price on every item of clothing I’m wearing and come up with more zeroes than he’s ever seen in his life. “Fat chance. For real, man, what do you want?”
“I want to see where my assistant’s family lives.” I take a few steps closer, then I stop. I respect the kid enough to acknowledge that he is the man of the house.
“There’s nothing to see here,” he says. “We aren’t like you. Obviously.”
“You don’t know where I come from.” I eye the car. “You build that engine?”
“From scraps.” He looks back, his stance loosening a little. “You know cars?”
“I know them well enough to know that’s a 1967 Chevrolet Chevelle SS.”
“Well, shit. Maybe you aren’t just deep pockets and hot air.”
Gianni walks over to the work bench and sets the wrench down. Then he reaches into a small, old Frigidaire and pulls out two bottles.
“Beer?” he asks, holding one out to me.
“Should you be drinking?”
“My house. You going to tell on me?”
I think about the cards at hand and after a beat, take the bottle of domestic beer. “Actually,” I say after taking a pull, “I was hoping we could keep all of this on the DL.”
“You mean Amara doesn’t know you’re here?” he asks with another grin.
“She’s my assistant. I don’t answer to her.”
“She’s my sister. Everyone answers to her.”
That earns a smirk from me.
“So. Tell me about the car.”
I spend the next ten minutes listening to Gianni as he explains how it was a naked gray shell when he got it, lifted on cinder blocks in the junk yard near the shop he works at. But he wanted it.
“I get that,” I tell him.
“You wanna sit in it?” he asks and I agree. Then he brags about the wrap around tail lights, the fourteen inch wheels and the Malibu trim. “I kept everything as original as I could. Though the engine is a bit souped, I’m not gonna lie.”
My hands grip the pristine wheel. I can’t help but wonder what she’d feel like on the road.
“You race?” he asks, and I snap out of it.
“No,” I answer shortly.
Gianni, like his sister, isn’t stupid. “But you have.”
“I have. And those days are behind me.”
“Too old?” he kids.
I get out of the car and finish off my beer. “Too smart. Racing is risky and reckless.”
“That’s half the fun,” he laughs.
“Until someone you care about gets hurt.”
After that, he studies me. Like he knows better than to dig too deep on that one.
“So why are you really here?” He reaches for his wrench again and leans back into the engine.
“I wanted to see what kind of place my assistant’s siblings are living in.”
“And what’s the verdict?”
“I don’t approve.”
Another throaty laugh comes out. “We live in a dump, I get it. But Amara takes care of us. Too much if you ask me. That’s why I want to race. There’s money on the streets.”
“Not honest money.”
Gianni turns to look at me again. This time he studies me a little longer.
I can’t help but feel like he’s summing me up.
And while I don’t typically take that from anyone, especially not cocky kids who don’t know any better, this kid has seen shit.
So I let him make his assumption of who I am even if it is only scratching the surface.
“You know what, man? I don’t need to be honest. I just need to be fast.”
“Just don’t lose control of the car, kid,” I say before tossing the bottle in the waste bin next to the work bench and walking back to my car.
As I drive back to the office, I can’t help but think about the way the wheel felt in my hand. I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a sweet car. To think that it used to be a heap of junk is impressive as well.
Nik would have loved it.
I swallow hard and grit my jaw into a vise.
I stand by what I said. I don’t want the kid racing.
If he can flip cars like that, he doesn’t need race money to do okay.
None of them need to do anything to be okay.
Because, between the way Amara is slowly weaving her way into every aspect of my world and the obvious threat my life has on their family, I don’t plan on them ever needing to take care of themselves by their own means again.
I meant what I said when I told Amara she belongs to me. It wasn’t just bedroom talk. And if she belongs to me, so do they. Just in a different way. They are my responsibility now, and as far as I am concerned, if anyone tries to mess with them, they’re dead.
No exceptions.