Chapter 5 Cash
CASH
Seeing her talking to that asshole George Quinn sparks the kind of reaction I haven’t felt in a long while. There’s a familiarity in their body language, in the way she faces him squarely, head raised, with no deference to him being a guest of the Rinse.
They have history. But the details can wait.
I’m only interested in Remy right now.
Sure, I’ve thought about her every day since that night in the guest room, the night she lost her keys, and got drinks spilt on her uniform.
I dream about her at night and wake up in the morning with a raging erection that refuses to be appeased.
But it’s more than the memory of how her body felt beneath mine, of her walls closing around me, of the way she arched her spine and writhed in my grasp when she reached orgasm.
It’s her.
There’s something about Remy Jones that sets her apart from every other woman I’ve ever known.
She’s beautiful, that’s a given. Sexy as fuck too.
But she’s far more than that. It’s the air of innocence that triggers a reaction deep inside my core whenever I think about her.
The kind of honesty that can’t be faked.
She’s a keeper, my mom would say.
At least I thought she was until I saw her with him.
Of all the people. It’s shitty that trust doesn’t come easily when your family is mafia, but it’s something I’ve grown up with and stopped questioning before I reached puberty.
We sleep with one eye open, a weapon within reaching distance, our enemies’ movements plotted on a mental map because losing sight of them could mean the difference between waking up for breakfast or not.
Is she working with him? Did he plant her in the Rinse as a distraction?
It doesn’t add up though. Why not plant her in my casino at the Titan?
Unless it’s a double bluff and my resort was too obvious.
With my twin brother Bash away on business, he must’ve known that I’d be running the Rinse too.
Stage an accident with a tray of drinks.
Bribe a guest to step in and bring Remy to my attention. The rest was easy.
“Remy.” I watch her freeze midway across the foyer.
Some guests are making their way home, their perfume cloying, their eyes heavy beneath the weight of their losses and liquor consumption. Others are just arriving, eyes bright with anticipation, their night only just beginning.
I nod a greeting to the regulars I recognize, most frequent the Titan too, and the Wraith, the business run by my brother Caleb.
Their lives are an endless cycle of gourmet restaurants, exclusive events, and chancing their luck in casinos.
They know they’ll never beat the table, but the challenge still beckons.
Remy is still waiting for me. I can tell by the tension in her shoulders that I should’ve reached out to her sooner. She’s had time to think and has convinced herself that she meant nothing to me. That I used her and didn’t give her a second thought.
Fuck. Nothing could be further from the truth.
It was just shit timing.
The threat of being taken down by a new Italian mob took over before I could tell her how I felt.
The police commissioner’s hands were tied more tightly than was comfortable for the Murray family, and I was indicted for drug dealing and money laundering on the Titan’s premises.
For the second time. The charges won’t stick, of course.
My brother Kyle has seen to that, which is why we would never consider using a lawyer outside of the family.
Blood loyalty. It’s how we’ve gotten to where we are today.
It can’t help me now though.
She doesn’t raise her eyes to meet mine until I’m standing in front of her.
Her lips part, and my body sends reminders hurtling towards my brain of how it felt to kiss her. I resist touching her hair, her jaw, her pale neck that she exposed to my mouth in the throes of her climax. I’ve relived it so many times, my pants are automatically bulging.
But for the first time, I’m unsure where to begin.
How have you been?
I’m glad I bumped into you.
Sorry I’ve been too busy to talk to you.
What a bunch of copouts, when what I really want to say is: I saw you with George Quinn, and I wanted to break his fucking neck.
“Don’t go.” Because that sounds so much better than ‘do you come here often?’ Understandably, she doesn’t respond. “I wanted to talk to you sooner.”
She blinks, slowly, while my gaze drifts to the freckles at the corner of her left eye. I want to touch them. I want to feel her silky skin beneath my fingertips. Fuck that. I want to kiss her until neither of us can breathe and nothing else exists.
“Why didn’t you?” she asks, holding my gaze.
Still, I don’t miss the tremor in her voice, and it cracks something solid inside my chest. “I’ve had a lot going on. I’m sorry.”
She watches me, her expression unreadable. “Is that it? Are we done here?”
Adrenaline crashes through my body, leaving me feeling drained. “Is that what you want?” Maybe I got it all wrong. Maybe her innocence was just an act. Or maybe this is part of the distraction, reel me in and then drop me from a great height.
It’s fucking working if that’s the case.
“Does it matter what I want?” She licks her lips. Her eyes glisten with tears, but she clutches her purse tightly to her chest like it’s her suit of armor.
“More than you realize.” I try, and fail, to control the emotion in my voice. I can’t be this close to her without wanting to see her naked and fuck her until she begs me to stop.
“You’ve been avoiding me though.”
Is she playing it coy to snare me further, or does she genuinely not know what’s been going on?
I want to believe the latter, but the rational part of my brain is telling me not to forget who I am.
There’s a fucking great empire with the Murray name blazoned across the top to lose if I let testosterone do the talking.
“Not true.” No matter what her agenda is, I’m not going to be an asshole and hurt her here in the foyer of my brother’s casino. I can already hear the disappointment in my mom’s tone if she ever found out that her son had treated a woman badly. “Avoiding you is the last thing I wanted to do, Remy.”
Her eyes flicker. She glances around the foyer at the other guests, bringing them back into focus. “What did you want then?” she asks finally.
Good question.
I didn’t think beyond the overwhelming desire to touch her. If I’m honest, I didn’t expect to want her as much as I did, as much as I still do. But I do know that hurting her was never part of the plan, if I even had one to begin with.
“You.”
She sucks her top lip, and her shoulders drop. “Please don’t do this. It isn’t fair.”
“I know.” I reach out and touch her hair, and she doesn’t pull away. “I’m sorry. I don’t want you to think that—”
My phone vibrates in my pocket, and we both glance away, bursting the bubble prematurely. I slide it out and check the Caller ID. It’s Bash.
“I should get this.”
She nods, and I turn away to answer the call.
“Where are you?” Bash asks.
“I’m in the foyer.” I glance back around as the doorman closes the door behind Remy. She doesn’t look back. “I’m coming.”
My brothers are all waiting in the boardroom when I arrive.
There’s an ache in my chest that I want to massage away, but it’s on the inside, it isn’t something that can be cured with aromatherapy oils and a gentle touch. Unless that gentle touch belongs to Remy Jones.
I park the thought for now. Her address will be on file. I’ll find her when this is resolved, I’ll give her the attention she deserves, I’ll show her exactly how special she is.
“The Leone family,” Caleb begins. “Strong connections back in Sicily, but they’ve been content to stick to the island. Until now. Isabella Leone has other ideas though, and she’ll push them through her alliance with the Quinns.”
“What do we know about her?” I ask.
I’m still questioning Remy’s connection to Isabella’s fiancé after seeing them together on the casino floor. I don’t want to. I can’t bear the thought of Remy being anyone other than the person I thought she was. But practicality reigns. For now.
Caleb leads the conversation. “Her engagement suggests that she’s planning a strategic attack against the Murrays. With an Irish contingency on her side, she’s already acting as if the city is hers for the taking.”
“Is she aware of our alliance with the Byrnes since Emily’s marriage?” Bash asks.
“It’ll work in our favor if she isn’t.” Caleb shrugs.
“Feels like deja-vu,” Kyle says. “Olivia Dragonetti point 2. What is it with this family and Sicilian heiresses?”
Olivia Dragonetti wanted to marry Caleb.
They dated briefly a long while ago, but her obsession with my brother led to her kidnapping the woman he loves and Kyle’s wife Sienna, and then, a year later, our baby sister Emily.
Her father, Don Dragonetti, lost the heir to his empire because of her recklessness, but despite his daughter’s behavior, or perhaps because of it, he won’t stand back and watch another family try to take us down.
Isabella Leone is a fool if she thinks that an alliance with the Quinns will buy her the kind of bargaining power that can touch our empire.
“What about the fiancé?” I ask, trying to ignore my racing pulse and the queasiness sitting in my gut. “What’s his story?”
“Grifter.” Kyle’s tablet is open on the table in front of him. “He’s in it for the money and power. She gets the connection; he gets the trappings.”
It happens all the time in the mafia world.
For generations, daughters have grown up knowing that they’ll be married off when they come of age, to a family with the kind of connections that will expand their father’s empire.
It’s one of the reasons why Terry wanted to keep our legacy a secret from Emily.
But I need more information about George Quinn. I need to know that Remy isn’t involved in their bid to take over the world, starting with New York City.
“What’s his history? Family. Previous relationships. Career prospects outside of marrying Isabella Leone.”
All eyes are on me. I play it cool and fill a heavy crystal tumbler with brandy, knock it back, and wait for the heat to kick in. It barely touches the sides.
“Nothing of note. Attended CUNY. Started up a tech company with money from Daddy. Hit the big time when Isabella was handed to him on a plate.”
“Until he realizes that he’s marrying a Sicilian heiress with psychopathic tendencies,” Bash joins in.
It’s easy to see the funny side of a situation once it’s behind you. We almost lost our sister because of Olivia Dragonetti. We’d have all done time to save her, but we’d have had to climb over Terry first.
“What about Remy Jones?” I float the name out there.
Bash sits up straight. “What about her?” His eyes are like bullets.
“She and George Quinn were deep in conversation on the casino floor when she finished her shift.” It’s an exaggeration. From what I saw, Remy couldn’t wait to get away from him, but I need the truth, not the watered-down version of events.
We all face Bash when the empty glass in his hand cracks, scattering jagged shards across the table’s surface. He shoves his seat backwards and stands up, staring at the blood welling in his palm.
“They were childhood sweethearts,” Kyle reads from the screen in front of him; he’s the glue that holds us all together.
“Left his girlfriend, Remy Jones, shortly before his engagement to Isabella was announced. The only information I can find on her is that she’s enrolled at CUNY, her sister died of a drug overdose aged sixteen…
And she is now employed at the Rinse.” Kyle eyes me coolly. “But you knew that, of course.”
“That’s it?” Bash sits back down with a crisp white napkin wrapped around his hand.
“What more do you want?” I ask.
When my twin loses his shit, we all pay attention because it happens so rarely. They expect it from me, but he got the quiet, controlled genes when we shared our mom’s womb.
“I want to know why she’s here. I want to know who her friends are, where she hangs out, when was the last time she spoke to George Quinn.”
“Care to enlighten us why this is relevant?” Kyle powers down the tablet and sits back in his seat.
“It’s relevant because she’s working on my premises.” Bash avoids making eye contact with any of us. “So, I want to know if she’s an implant, and if so, what are her intentions.”
“Or,” Kyle says, “you could just fire her. Job done.”
Bash shakes his head. “When did we start letting potential danger out of our sight?”
He has a point. If Remy has been planted in the Rinse by her ex, we’ll deal with the situation accordingly and use her to make their plan backfire.
I’m still struggling to think that she might’ve had an ulterior motive when drinks were spilled on her, but I can’t write it off until armed with all the facts.
“I’ll see what I can find out.” Kyle’s gaze hops back and forth between Bash and me.
“But Isabella Leone is the real problem here. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that Ms. Jones has no connections other than an ex-boyfriend who dumped her when a better offer came along. She has no reason to work for him.”
“Money is always a reason.” Bash unwinds the bloody napkin, tosses it onto the table, and flexes his fingers.
Kyle is still watching him closely. “Agreed, but realistically, how close has Remy Jones got to knowing anything about you or the Rinse? Firing her tonight would shut any potential situation down.”
“Too late.” Bash stands up again, ending the meeting. “Send me everything you find on her ASAP.”
He doesn’t make eye contact with me, and his vibes are all over the place tonight, but I don’t need it written in black and white.
He knows about me and Remy in his guest room.