Chapter 10 #2
His response is typical. I guess a man who plays by his own rules doesn’t believe in them. I don’t think a glass of wine is going to help, but I’m oddly touched that he’s making an effort.
“Thanks,” I say reluctantly and take the glass from him.
Our fingers brush on the stem, and for a brief, wild moment, awareness zings through me, potent as the rush of adrenaline on a roller coaster.
“No need to thank me. If you lose your shit and try to jump out a door, Luna and Priest will kill me.”
His expression is impassive. Fine. He’s not just being nice. He’s got an ulterior motive. But somehow, I’m still kind of touched that he noticed and cared enough to fetch me a glass of wine.
“I won’t jump out a door,” I say, because I can’t promise that I won’t lose my shit.
I should have changed my flight and traveled commercial.
The trouble with that was I didn’t really have the money to pay the exorbitant difference for the new flight at the last minute.
Not that I don’t have the funds—the trust from my parents, after all the red tape was settled, left me set.
But I’ve never touched the money. I just can’t bring myself to do it.
“Drink,” he commands, folding himself back into the seat opposite mine.
“I thought you and your brothers were having a business meeting.”
“They are. I’m babysitting you.”
“I don’t need a babysitter, thank you very much.”
He just looks at me and raises a brow.
I exhale again. “How do I know it’s not poisoned?”
He laughs. “That’s not how I clip someone.”
His words are hardly reassuring.
“Is it roofied?” I ask next.
“Mother Mary,” he growls, scrubbing a hand along his jaw. “Just drink the damn wine.”
I can feel the plane preparing for takeoff. It’s that shift as the engines pick up, and we’re poised on the runway, waiting for the orders that it’s go-time. I suppose the wine couldn’t hurt. I take a sip as we start to move.
Think about what you can control, I remind myself sternly.
Deep breaths.
We achieve lift-off effortlessly, as if it’s a natural state. And as we hit the smooth glide of the ascent, I take a few more sips of wine. I’m not calm. Far from it. But I’m not coming out of my skin either. I’ll take it.
I know from experience that distracting myself is the key. Maybe I’ll try reading, even if it’s impossible with Alessio sitting so close.
“Better?” he asks.
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine to me.”
“Thanks for the compliment.”
“Look, I need to have a conversation with you. I want to make sure we’re on the same page, and I’d like to get it out of the way now, because when we hit the ground, I’m going to have a shit-ton of work to do after being gone like this.”
He’s all business. Any hint of tenderness or concern has been ruthlessly excised until all that’s left is a harsh, cold mobster. The kind of man who’s capable of anything.
I down the rest of my wine, bracing myself.
“By all means, get it over with.”
Saint
There’s something wrong with Isla.
Something that goes way beyond a fear of flying. It’s profoundly deeper. But whatever it is, she’s not willing to let me in on her dark little secret. Now that we’re finally in the air, a bit of her fire has returned, but it’s just a spark instead of a roaring flame.
It doesn’t matter to me.
Shouldn’t matter to me.
I don’t need to play therapist and patient with her. I just need to tell her what she has to know while she’s cat-sitting for Luna and Priest the next two weeks. I’m going to be her lifeline, and even if it irks the shit out of me, I have no choice.
“I’ll be taking you to the penthouse,” I tell her, forcing my mind to my job.
It’s a difficult switch to make, leaving the chill of the islands to head back to the rat race and the game of cat and mouse we play on a daily basis. But this is the only life we’ve ever known. And more importantly, it’s made us wealthy and powerful as fuck.
“I can get an Uber,” she tells me.
“You can, but you’re not going to. Priest doesn’t like his address getting around, especially not since he and Luna moved after the incident.”
“The incident?” she repeats, looking confused.
Maybe Luna never told her the full story of what went down a year ago. Probably didn’t want to terrify her best friend. Looks like I get to be the bad guy now.
“Luna was taken from the penthouse at gunpoint by her cousin, Amedeo the Animal, and some of his crew. They took out the guards and made off with her while Priest was away. They moved to a different building since then, and they’re keeping it on the down-low. So, no Ubers. Ever. Got that?”
She’s even paler than she was before, a perfect ice princess from her white-gold hair to her light-blue sandals and matching toenails. “Got it.”
“He’s no longer a threat,” I add.
Priest ended him with a bullet between the eyes for what he’d done. He should have done worse. The bastard deserved to be tortured slowly before being mercifully put down, but there hadn’t been time. Priest had been acting to save Luna, and protecting her had come first.
“If he’s no longer a threat, then why can’t I take an Uber?”
“Because he was only one threat. In our line of work, you can never be too careful with who you let in, who you trust.” I give her a hard, meaningful stare.
“But I’m not a part of your world, so there shouldn’t be any real danger for me. Right?”
I don’t have the answer for her that I’m sure she wants to hear. The truth is, she’s a soft target. The kind that’s easy to hit. The realization makes a sharp, protective urge jolt through me, but I tamp it down. She’s not my responsibility, and she never will be.
Besides, after these two weeks are up and she heads back to the Midwest where she belongs, she’ll no longer be a target. She’ll be thousands of miles from the shadowy networks we deal in, from the threats and the death and the power struggles.
I crack my knuckles, an old habit of mine I can never seem to shake, one I resort to when I’m deep in thought. “You’ll be a part of this world for the next two weeks. While you’re in my orbit, you play by the rules I give you.”
She doesn’t like that. Her lips compress like she’s contemplating ways she can murder me without getting caught.
“What if I don’t like your rules?” she asks.
I hold her stare, showing her in my eyes a hint of the beast she’s dealing with. “Too fucking bad.”
She met me at a bad time, catching me with my guard down. I thought she was a woman I’d never see again. One who would never know who I really am. It was a little like role-playing that night.
I was a different man because I could be. Now she thinks she can push me. That there’s a hidden softness under this hard, harsh exterior. Spoiler alert: there isn’t. And if she pushes me too far, she’ll realize it.
Her eyes narrow on me. “What are your rules?”
“Respect what the guards tell you,” I start, listing off the first thing that comes to mind.
“There are guards?” A crease furrows her forehead.
It’s clear to me that Luna failed to fully inform her friend what to expect while she filled in cat-sitting for Cid.
“Yes.”
“Multiple guards?”
“That is what the s implies, I believe.”
“Very funny. I’m reasonably sure I know grammar rules better than you do.”
“Don’t let this face fool you.”
Shit. I’m joking with her. For a second there, it was impossibly easy to revert to the man I was when we met at the hotel bar.
I wasn’t Saint that night. I was Alessio.
And she wasn’t my sister-in-law’s best friend either.
She wasn’t off-limits. Instead, she’d been the most beautiful, mysterious, sexy woman I’d ever met.
She snorts. “I did. And it didn’t go very well.”
We stare each other down. I know she’ll be first to blink, and she doesn’t disappoint me, looking at her hands in her lap. Her fingers have been going the whole time we’ve been talking. I know she’s not as at ease as she pretends. But she’s good at faking it.
“So, the guards,” I start again, keeping my voice stern. “There will be anywhere from three to eight of them, depending on the day. Some stationed in the parking garage, others at the door to the building, and at least two at the elevator.”
I wait while she lets that sink in before continuing. “You’ll be given a code that’s unique to you. Don’t share it. If anything happens to suggest your code has been compromised, Scorpion will be in touch to give you a new one.”
“What might happen to compromise it?”
“We have a vast intel network. If something is happening, we hear it first.”
“A vast bribery network, you mean.”
“No one said anything about bribes. I’ve never bribed anyone in my life, Jane.”
But I have left sums of money wadded inside envelopes and shopping bags in many an ingenious place.
We don’t call these bribes. More like shows of faith.
I give you the cash; you do me a solid. Whether it is a politician, a cop, or even the mayor himself, we’ve had our fingers in everything over the last few years.
It was necessary to build our influence.
“You can call it whatever you want,” she says flatly. “A bribe is still a bribe.”
I shrug. “Want another glass of wine?”
We have a flight attendant and I don’t technically need to be the one playing fetch for Isla, but I feel responsible for her.
Besides, Gena knows better than to come into the cabin unless she’s requested.
Like everyone else, the less she overhears, the better.
She gets paid incredibly well to do her job and look the other way.
Isla looks down at the empty glass she’s holding. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
I remember from the reception and her night at the bar that she’s a lightweight, so I don’t push it. I need her to pay attention to what I’m telling her.
And I also can’t help but feel relieved that she’s starting to look more like herself. Now that I’ve been antagonizing her, some of the color has returned to her face. She’s still agitated, but the distraction seems to be helping.
“Fine, then. The rest of the rules. Keep to yourself. Don’t tell anyone where you are unless you’re on a call with 9-1-1 and they need to send an ambulance to get you.
” I pause, mulling over that directive. “Actually, on second thought, don’t.
You’ll be better off and much safer calling me, Scorpion, or Lucky. ”
“I’m feeling positively warm and cozy already,” she drawls. “So, let me get this straight. I’m going to be a prisoner at my bestie’s penthouse for the next two weeks and kept under armed guard. No one can know where I am, and I can’t leave until Luna and Priest show back up from their honeymoon.”
“You can also leave if I accompany you.”
My revelation goes as predicted.
“Absolutely not.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “I’m not going to answer to you, Alessio.”
“You don’t have a choice. I’m responsible for you, and I’m also responsible for making sure that Luna and Priest have the best uninterrupted honeymoon of all time. That’s not going to happen if you do something stupid when you’re grabbing a cup of coffee around the corner.”
To be fair, it’s not like Priest told me that Isla couldn’t leave the penthouse without me.
He just asked that she have an armed guard at all times.
But I’m taking it one step further and making sure I’m around whenever she leaves the penthouse.
Too much can go down, and it can happen in seconds. Then I’ve got a war on my hands.
“What if I don’t drink coffee?”
Always a fighter, this one.
“Sue me for the guess.”
“Actually, I’m more of a tea woman.”
“Figures.” I shrug. If my brothers could hear this shit, they’d laugh me out of the nearest plane window. We’re debating fucking hot morning beverages of choice, for God’s sake. “Doesn’t matter where you go. Wherever it is, I’m tagging along.”
“What if I stay in the penthouse for two weeks?”
“Suit yourself. I’ll still be checking in regularly, regardless.”
As soon as I say it, I’m tempted to kick myself. I don’t need to check in with her. Priest didn’t even ask me to. What the hell am I thinking? It doesn’t matter. I said what I said, and I can’t take it back.
We hit a patch of turbulence, and she goes pale again, her knuckles white as she grips the armrests. She’s definitely got a fear of flying, but she doesn’t want me to know about it.
Some foreign and totally unfamiliar part of me wants to comfort her.
But I’m not about to do that. So I get up instead and fetch her another glass of wine before returning to our seats.
I’m aware of my brothers watching me as I go, but they’re too smart to say anything to me. I’ll probably hear about this later.
Grimly, I stalk back to Isla, holding out the pinot. “Drink this.”
This time, she doesn’t give me shit and ask if I roofied it. She just takes it from me.
“Thanks.”
I don’t like the vulnerability in her face or the fear. But she’s not mine to protect. Not mine to fix. I’m here because Priest asked me to step in, and I’m his second-in-command. Nothing more.
“Remember what I said,” I tell her. “Just follow the rules, and everything will go smoothly.”
Then I go back to my brothers at the table, leaving her alone.