Chapter 16 #2
“Thank you, Edouardo,” Matthew said, flashing a courteous smile at the bodyguard, who merely stared at him coldly.
Matthew stepped out of Hayes’ way to stand next to Beckett who had put his back to the wall.
Hayes stepped into the meeting room, keeping his hand close to his weapon.
After conducting a quick threat assessment and deeming it safe, he gestured for Matthew to enter.
Matthew strode into the room as if he owned it. He’d been relatively unimposing and down-to-earth up to this point. But suddenly, he’d adopted the appearance of a full-on mob boss. Head held high, chin jutted out with natural arrogance, he looked stern, beautiful, and cold as ice all at once.
“Fear not—I have arrived!” he declared authoritatively, striding confidently towards the head of the table, where a surprisingly fit, older man was sitting.
Hayes immediately recognised Mario Rosario from the few pictures he’d seen of him.
He had expensive taste in clothing and jewelry, and he’d obviously undergone a series of advanced cosmetic procedures.
The skin over his cheekbones was unnaturally tight and his forehead was too smooth for his age, refusing to budge a single centimeter when he attempted to frown at his nephew.
There wasn’t any grey hair, nor sign of wrinkles on his face or neck.
This was a man who cared about his appearance—no—it was more than that.
A man who was obsessed with looking decades younger.
Since was he was the last to arrive, Matthew took the only empty seat, to the immediate right of his uncle and across from a beautiful woman Hayes assumed was his sister.
Hayes glanced briefly out the door just as it closed, catching sight of Beckett standing off to the side. They were all in position now. Let the games begin.
“New security?” Mario asked, failing once again in his attempts to frown as he tracked Hayes who positioned himself in the far left corner of the room.
Hayes chose that vantage point so he’d have the first shot at anyone coming through the door, while also keeping an eye on those sitting at the table.
“Tyson’s on paternity leave,” Matthew replied, shrugging out of his coat and settling into his seat. He was lounging back, right foot propped up on his left thigh, looking debonair and relaxed, like a goddamned Maine coon cat sunbathing. Beautiful and arrogant to the core.
“Paternity leave? Since when—” Matthew’s uncle snapped. He appeared outraged at the very idea.
“Yes. It’s truly shocking—heaven forbid that a man should take care of his own,” Matthew commented mockingly.
He raised his hands, gesturing towards those seated around the table.
“Is there nothing more important to discuss? Don’t we have a goddamned business to run?
I’d enjoy some mind-numbing reports, if you please—” he declared sarcastically.
There was no doubt that Matthew was a force of nature, and he held a unique position within his family. Hayes wouldn’t call him a leader, per se. The others, though silent so far, didn’t seem—moved by his theatrics. Rather, they were simply tolerant of his style.
“Do you have somewhere else to be?” his sister asked, her smile sharp and vindictive.
She was dripping in money. The suit was from the latest Chanel winter collection, the purse was a Birkin, the jewelry was from Van Cleef & Arpels, and the watch was a Rolex.
When she crossed her legs, she flashed the Chinese Red soles of her Louboutins.
Unsurprising, considering the size of the fortune amassed by the people around this table, yet it sent a clear signal to everyone who saw her.
She had enough money to bury you and your entire family and, based on the force of her glare, she’d be happy to do it.
“You know me, darling. It’s brunch, orgy, or church,” Matthew replied, with a twinkle of mischief in his bright eyes.
At first glance, it seemed to Hayes that Matthew liked his sister, since he smiled at her affectionately.
“You girls done? We have a fuck ton of problems to straighten out, and some of us have to get back to New York tonight.”
“Well, by all means, Silvio—take it away,” Matthew answered his brother, casually waving a hand towards the table in general.
Silvio Rosario was the more—together of the twin brothers.
He sported a salon haircut, and his face had seen a razor at some point in the past 12 hours.
Compared to Matthew, however, he looked a bit worse for the wear, but in a way that Hayes imagined might be appealing to women seeking “bad boys.” Scruffy, with an edge of Italian broodiness, he was attractive in his own way.
Unfortunately, things went downhill quickly once he opened his mouth, but that was what happened with most people, in Hayes’ experience.
“The port’s giving us problems,” Silvio began, and the tension in the room escalated immediately.
“Tonight is dedicated to reviewing the status of our properties—” Lara began, cutting him off.
“Ain’t got a single shit to give if it ain’t scheduled!
” he snapped back at her, sounding more like a cabby from Brooklyn than Hayes had expected.
“I have a goddamned load coming in Tuesday, and cops are sniffing a bit too close to home—the port’s not working with us.
Denis needs to be put in his place before he—”
“Denis has been nothing but loyal to the family,” Mario interjected angrily. “He wouldn’t cross us.”
“He wouldn’t have crossed Dad,” Callum said. “But you?” he shrugged, as if to say, “why the fuck would he care about you?”
And Hayes actually heard Matthew grinding his teeth and looked over to see him clenching his jaw.
Callum was, as far as Hayes could tell, the oddball of the family.
He looked—well, like a junky. His hair was long, greasy, and hung in a jaggedly cut curtain around his head and over his face.
Silently staring down at the table, he’d been trying to carve something into the veneer of the table with an overgrown, dirty fingernail ever since Hayes had walked into the room.
He hadn’t even looked up once—a sure sign of how disconnected he was.
His hollowed cheeks and sallow skin tone were sure signs he’d been surviving on poppers and cocaine for years.
His t-shirt had been black when it was new but was now faded to a mottled grey and his sweatpants were filthy.
Hayes imagined that he could even smell the scruffy man from across the room.
“Either you take care of it, or I will!” Silvio snarled, looking at their uncle with a surprising amount of anger.
“How? You couldn’t find your ass with two hands and a flashlight,” Lara snorted derisively. She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “I’ll handle Denis, and you just make sure the shipment gets there in time.”
“I can—” Silvio began to object.
“No, you really can’t,” Matthew snapped, stopping him in his tracks.
“Let Lara handle it—you’ve got enough on your plate.
” He made it sound as if Silvio had a lot to deal with, but Hayes had the distinct impression he was snarking him.
Silvio didn’t seem to notice though, as he grumbled for a moment before accepting Matthew’s decision and settling back in his seat.
“In accordance with the agenda, I brought over the numbers from last month.” Lara pulled a stuffed, expandable folder from her Birkin bag. She plopped it on the table and pushed it towards Mario and Matthew.
With a quick flick of his wrist, Matthew flipped it open.
“Any new properties we should be picking up?” he asked, glancing up at Lara.
“Yes, actually—”
Hayes lost interest after that. As Matthew had promised, the rest was nothing but legal jargon. Boring and dry as dust—certainly nothing that would be useful to them, especially Franklin.
Beckett was bored. It wasn’t an urgent problem, or even much of a problem really—but it was, well—boring.
He’d spent several minutes categorizing the four men around him, but they were so goddamned similar to one another it was a fairly short mental exercise.
Tall meatheads with broken noses and cracked molars, surely, from the way they were clenching their jaws.
One of them was a bit taller than the others, and he had a wicked scar that ran from the middle of his forehead, across his right eyebrow, down the side of his face, narrowly missing his eye by about an inch.
Mentally, Beckett referred to him as Scarface—perhaps this wasn’t his best work in choosing nicknames, but it suited the guy.
Scarface had taken the spot right next to the door handle and hadn’t moved in the past 20 minutes.
Next to Scarface was a shorter version of him, fidgeting ever so slightly.
Portobello, as Beckett nicknamed him, looked remarkably similar to Scarface, except he didn’t have a scar.
He did, however, have a very fat nose. It was round and bulbous, and even from where Beckett stood against the opposite wall, he could see lots of disgusting, oversized pores—thus the nickname.
No way a man could walk around with fungi for a nose and not be mocked.
Their shitty black suits were too tight in the arms and too short in the torso—like they’d shrunk ‘em in the wash.
“Was there a cancer fundraiser or something?” Beckett asked about 15 minutes after the meeting had started, running his hand over his head meaningfully, nodding towards Scarface’s bald head.
All four men, who had the same haircut, stared blankly back at him.
If the Marines called it a high and tight—this was a waxed and gone deal.
None of the men answered, of course—God forbid they make friends.
Two men who were similar to Scarface and Portobello stood on the other side of the doorframe. They lacked any distinctive features, so Beckett was challenged to find a way to tell them apart even after careful scrutiny.