SIX - ROMAN
I grabbed my room key card and wallet off the nightstand and tucked them into my back pocket just as someone knocked on the door. I had no idea who James had sent to escort me, but at least they’d shown up as promised, not too long after James and Ivan had left.
A tall, lanky man not much shorter than me stood in the middle of the hallway when I opened the door.
He was dressed in uniform—white button-down shirt with the Emerald Haze logo embroidered on the left chest, the name JORDAN embroidered in all caps just below that, black slacks that had probably never been ironed, and scuffed black dress shoes.
This guy worked for security? No wonder Ivan felt like he had to risk bringing me back here. He looked fucking useless except for going on coffee runs. If this was any insight as to what I had to work with, we really were all royally fucked.
“Ready?” he asked in a slow Southern drawl as he tossed a set of keys into the air, catching them with the other hand.
“And you are…?”
“Jordan.” He tipped his head to the side. “I’s asked to take you to Miss Hazentree.”
This was the first time I’d seen Jordan, and I’d done a lot of work for Elliott and Ivan over the years. Though, he could’ve been moved over from the downtown warehouse.
“Roman.” I stuck my arm out to be friendly, shake his hand. He just stood there. He glanced down at my outstretched arm, then back up at me without a word. I dropped my arm. Okaaay then. “So, you new here?”
“Nah.”
This conversation was clearly going nowhere. “Alright then. Where to?”
“Other side up on the top floor.” He turned and started walking away.
“Guess you want me to follow you?” I mumbled to myself, pulling the door shut behind me. “Lead the way.” Even though I could have gotten around this place with my eyes closed.
We made our way through the employee/maintenance-only areas, weaving our way through back hallways and places reserved for deliveries.
At one point, I did have him make a quick pit stop on the way.
The closer we got to Jameson, the less and less I wanted to be here.
The thought of walking into that room gave me an uneasy feeling and stirred up memories I’d long suppressed.
Not because I was afraid of her, though I probably should have been to some degree.
I just didn’t have a fucking clue what I’d gotten myself into or what to expect out of any of this situation.
And I’d been up against a lot darker, dirtier key players in the industry.
Jordan rapped his knuckles on the door when we arrived.
Looking around, I noticed the entire top floor had been deserted; it seemed like Jameson was the only life left up here. Cameras were still in place, so that was somewhat reassuring. It looked like more had been added since the last time I was up here.
“Miss?” he said into the wooden door. “We’re here.”
“Come in,” she announced from the other side.
A lock released, and Jordan opened the door, walking in first without a word.
“Took the two of you long enough.” Jameson glared at us over the top of her laptop screen.
“Sorry, boss,” Jordan replied, tilting his head toward me. “Someone had to stop for coffee and a cupcake.”
Asshole. “It was a blueberry muffin.” I brushed my hands down the front of my shirt, flinging off any wayward crumbs that might have fallen. “The healthiest option on your grab-and-go buffet.”
She looked at me. “Thank you. You can go,” she told him without taking her eyes off mine.
“Want me to hang around outside?” he asked.
“No. Thank you. We’ll be fine. I’ll call you if I need you.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Jordan backed out, pulling the door closed, causing the space to go eerily silent. If not for the sound of my breath passing through my nostrils, you could’ve easily heard a fly fart.
This was the first time Jameson and I had been completely alone since being reunited, and it did not feel good.
“Have a seat.” She waved her hand toward the empty leather chair in front of me.
“I feel like I’m at the principal’s office,” I half mumbled. I loosened the collar around my neck and sat down directly across from her.
It’d barely been a year since I’d seen her, but it felt like decades. She looked exhausted, but not the kind of exhaustion a person felt when sleep-deprived. This was the kind of fatigue you felt when your soul needed rest. Yet, she was every bit as beautiful as she’d always been.
The whole look but don’t touch clause I knew she’d added to the NDA of her own accord made sense now. It was going to take the self-control of a professionally trained K-9 to keep my hands off her.
“Coffee?” she asked.
“No, thanks.” I raised my paper cup. “We stopped and got some on the way.”
“I wasn’t offering. Is that really what took you so long to get here?”
“Nope. I ate breakfast, too.” That made her scoff. “That Jordan guy doesn’t say a whole lot, does he?”
She shuffled some papers on her desk, stacked and secured them with a paperclip, then dropped them into a drawer beside her. “He’s not paid to talk.”
“It was just an observation. So, how do you want to go about doing all of this?”
“I’m not entirely sure yet. This was all very unexpected. Ivan kind of blindsided me.” She closed her laptop and leaned back, folding her arms across her chest.
“Tell me about it,” I deadpanned.
One minute, I was enjoying my coffee and morning routine at Nancy’s Diner on Broadway Street. The next thing I knew, I was on my bike, rolling 110, headed west.
“This is kind of weird for me,” she spoke softly. “I’m not even sure where to start. I feel like I’m so far behind, and now this.” She waved her hand in my direction. My presence most definitely threw a wrench in her week.
“I know what you mean.” The last thing I wanted was to make shit even more uncomfortable for her and myself.
The last time I did work here, I was essentially Ivan’s bitch boy.
Now, less than a year later, he wanted me to be Jameson’s bodyguard.
“Well, do you want me to just follow you around everywhere? Shoot anyone who crosses your path or looks at your ass?”
“More or less. Except I don’t need you shooting anyone. Not unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
“What about me?”
“What about you?”
“Can I look at your ass?” She already knew I wasn’t going to not look.
She rolled her eyes.
“Okay, fine. I’ll scrub that off my list of duties.”
“You don’t need to look at my ass, and I don’t need you to go everywhere I go.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Like the bathroom?”
“Specifically, the bathroom. And if I’m inside of here”—she pointed her finger downward—“I’m fine.
You don’t need to sit around watching me work.
When I need to go anywhere, as soon as you get a phone, I’ll reach out and let you know.
In the meantime, I’ll either have you with me, or I’ll get Ivan or someone else to stand in place. ”
“Got it. Do you want me to feed you and tell you you’re pretty?” I smirked, trying to lighten the mood or, at the very least, get some semblance of a smile out of her. The air was too damned thick with tension.
“Don’t be so fucking ridiculous. I can feed myself.”
“So just tell you you’re pretty?”
“Roman.” She dropped her head into her hands and rubbed her temples.
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry. I’ll stop.” Clearly, she’d lost her personality somewhere along the way.
“Whatever it is you’re trying to do here, it isn’t working. We’re not about to pick up where we left off like old friends. We are not friends. You have a job to do, and I need you to be focused on the task at hand, not out here trying to get nominated for class clown.”
Ouch. That stung. I knew she’d be pissed off at me, and I didn’t blame her. I just didn’t think I’d actually be hurt. “I’m not trying to get nominated for shit. You’re the one with the stick up your ass. I was just trying to lighten the mood a little.”
“Well, don’t. I’m so fucking stressed-out right now. You have no idea.”
I needed to know whatever was going on that suddenly required my presence, and that information needed to come straight from her mouth because I knew I wouldn’t get the truth from anyone else around here.
“Then give me an idea. What am I doing here? Why does Ivan seem to think I’m the only person who can help you?”
“Because you are. That’s how bad this is.”
“Then start talking. What am I going up against?” The only reason Ivan had used me or kept me around was because he knew I’d get the job done and done right. I could make people disappear off the map without a trace. Now he needed me to protect Jameson? None of this sat right with me.
She looked up at the ceiling for a moment, contemplating. “Remember Kane?”
“Of course.” Everybody in this industry knew Kane.
Elliott had once been Kane’s biggest rivalry and an even bigger pain in the ass.
Elliott always liked to try to stay one step ahead of Kane.
If he’d heard of something Kane wanted to get into, whether it be weapons, museum artifacts, or alcohol, Elliott would try to get to it first, just to fuck with him.
Kane was also known to be very unstable and unpredictable.
There wasn’t much that man wouldn’t do to a person if he thought he’d been betrayed in some kind of way. “What’s Kane got to do with you?”
“He’s been coming after me.”
And there it is. Fuck. The last thing I wanted to hear and probably my biggest fear. “Are you sure?”
“Oh, I’m pretty positive.”
“I don’t mean to sound like a prick, but why? What in the hell did you do?”
“Me? Why do I have to be the one who did something?”
“You’re kidding.” I raised an eyebrow. “Kane only reacts when he’s been provoked. That’s a fact.”
She flicked a paperclip across her desk. “He thinks I stole one of his boats.” Her tone was barely audible.
“Why does he think that? Did you?”
“No…?”
“No? Is that a question? You don’t know if you did?”
“I didn’t exactly steal one…”
“James. Talk.”
She let out a sigh, and I knew whatever she was about to tell me was going to piss me off. “I sank it.”
I looked up to the ceiling, sucking in a long, deep breath. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Why in the hell would you do that?”
“Because,” she said as she picked at her fingernail, “a few months ago, he killed one of my men.”
“So?”
“What do you mean so? He killed one of our security crew, for no good fucking reason.”
“Oh, I guaranteed Kane had his reasons, one of those being you sunk his shit into the Mississippi River. What happened?”
She sighed. “Kane had a boat come up missing. I don’t know if he ever found it, but he thought I was the one who’d taken it.
So, I guess to send me some kind of message, he had one of my men killed.
Briggs was making rounds, patrolling the perimeter on a golf cart.
Surveillance lost him on the radio and cameras.
So they went out and backtracked his last known route.
They found him just off the trail, slouched over the steering wheel with a hole in his head. ”
Kane had a lot of men working for him. Probably a lot more than Jameson or Elliott ever did, and definitely more feral.
Mainly because Kane didn’t give a fuck who he hired.
If they didn’t comply or perform to his standards, they’d just disappear and never be missed.
As far as Kane was concerned, the people he hired were as disposable as the trash his casino produced.
“So you sunk one of his cargo boats?”
“I did. He wasn’t about to kill one of my men in retaliation for something I didn’t do in the first place.”
“It—fuck. It doesn’t matter. You should’ve just left it alone. Let Kane get his revenge, wrong as he was, and moved on. Now he’s after you? Why? What did you do?”
“Nothing!” she practically shouted at me. “Another one of his boats came up missing. He’s still accusing me of taking them.”
“Do you have a death wish?”
“Roman! I didn’t do it! I don’t know who did, but I don’t have time to find out. I’m just trying to host this gala and move on with my life.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “Is there anything else?”
“No. Not yet.”
“Not yet? You mean not ever.” I had no doubt in my mind that Kane would take out anyone if he thought they’d crossed the wrong line. Diverting or sinking one of his boats definitely crossed that line, even if he had killed one of her men first.
“We’ve tried to tell him we don’t want or need his shit, but you know how he is.” Her voice trailed off.
“Yeah, I do, unfortunately. So you didn’t take his missing boat or have anything to do with it?”
“No. Not at all.”
I shook my head. Somebody here knew something. “Well, I guess it doesn’t matter. He thinks you did, and he’s on a fucking rampage now. You know he isn’t going to stop until he gets what he wants.”
“No shit. I’m well aware.”
“So what’s he want?”
“Me.”