TWENTY-SEVEN - ROMAN
Part of the plan was to keep my distance from Jameson so that she could mix and mingle, shake hands, throw on the charm, and flash her bright smile to win over the wallets of guests.
She assured me there would be no ass-grabbing…
by Chris or by me. Quite frankly, I was surprised he’d made an appearance—battered, bruised, and all.
I was getting sick of her hands off rules. The ones that applied to me, anyway.
While I wanted nothing more than to swoop her up into my arms and whisk her away from this place, there was still business to be conducted that hadn’t been part of the original plan.
As we entered the event center, the room was already buzzing with energy.
The room was filled with doctors, lawyers, men and women from the city council.
The chief of police had shown up, as he should.
Emerald Haze still had him and his entire department on payroll.
Every who’s who of what’s what was there.
The turnout was twice the size of any event I’d ever seen hosted here.
I guess people were really fucking curious as to what Jameson had been up to since taking over the family business.
Most of the people here tonight would’ve never otherwise set foot in this place.
I recognized a lot of familiar faces and repeat customers and just as many new ones, each of them with more money than sense.
As much as I hated that she would even attempt to host an event of this proportion, I knew how much it meant to her in the past, and even more so now for the sake of carrying on Elliott’s legacy.
Unfortunately, it also meant she had to be at her most vulnerable.
I lost sight of her as she was swallowed up into a sea of jet-black tuxedos, glittery ball gowns, and everyone was wearing a fucking mask. Each time she disappeared, my body went into panic mode.
Eventually, she popped out of the crowd and made her way toward the stage.
I shoved my way through the mass of millionaires, not even giving a single flying fuck if I knocked into anyone.
She hiked up her dress to keep from tripping over the bottom of it and making her way up the stairs and onto the stage. My stomach tied into the biggest knot with anticipation.
The last thing in the world I wanted was for her to be standing front and center in a room with more than a thousand people who would all have their eyes locked in on her.
I zeroed in on the guy from security standing off to the side of the stage, just behind the curtains and out of view of the crowd.
Leon had brought in a team of men he’d put together.
Some I knew, others I didn’t but who Leon had worked with in the past. Each one stood their post at various places around the room, all the way from the perimeter below to the balcony above.
Only one spot left was currently unmanned—mine.
I jogged up the stairs to the side of the stage and got into place.
If you’d asked me a week ago if I saw myself back at Emerald Haze being paid to protect the heiress to one of Mississippi’s largest organized crime establishments, I would have laughed in your face and said abso-fucking-lutely not. I would have thought you were more out of your mind than me.
Yet here we are.
I looked around and caught a glimpse of Ivan standing across the room, half in the shadows, half-washed in multicolored light. Bastard. He was half the fucking reason we were in this mess. Seeing him took me back to that night.
“Roman!” Ivan called my name from across the kitchen.
“Yeah,” I said, turning around toward the voice that made every muscle on my body tense at its sound.
He rounded the corner of a baker’s rack stacked with industrial-sized stainless-steel pots and pans and baking sheets.
“You busy?” he asked as he swiped a handful of grapes out of a food storage bin sitting on top of the buffet before popping one into his mouth.
“I’m always busy.”
“I understand that. Where you headed?”
“Out to the docks. We got a shipment on its way. It should be here any minute.” I glanced up at the wall clock. “Soon.”
“Well, I need you first. This shouldn’t take a minute.”
“That’s like three minutes longer than I have right now. Tater will have my ass by then. We’re expecting a boat to roll up any minute now.”
He shrugged and dismissively swiped his hand in the air toward the back exit door that I was just about to go out of. “Fuck ’em. Tater can wait. This is more important.”
I laughed. “Right. Nothing is more important than moving a load of cargo right now. Plus, have you seen how he responds to tardiness?”
Tater’s idea of discipline involved anything from shooting at you while you zigzagged your way between pallets on the back dock, trying not to take a bullet to your ass, to having you strung up by your ankles and hung upside down over the railing with raw meat tied around your neck while you prayed a gator or gar wouldn’t find you before he came back.
I once saw him time tie a man up and throw him off the back of a barge and watched as he was dragged away down the Mississippi.
No fucking thank you.
“And have you seen how he responds to me?’ Ivan asked. “I invented the consequences, and I trained him how to follow through. He takes his orders from me, so if I say I need you, he’ll have no choice whether he likes it or not.”
“Fair enough.” Tater presented himself like a badass to everyone else, but when it came to Ivan, he was scared shitless. Hell, most of the men here were, sometimes myself included.
I glanced back up at the wall clock.
One minute.
Tater was gonna be all over my ass like white on rice, and I didn’t trust Ivan enough to have my back. On the flip side, if I didn’t show up to Ivan’s office, he was gonna have my ass. Either way, I was fucked.
I sighed. “What’s this about?” I couldn’t think of one thing we had going on that took precedence over a new shipment of goods that would need to be moved out again just as fast as it had arrived.
“I’ve got a…job for you.” He pulled his phone out, did something on it, then dropped it back into his pocket. “I’ll meet you in my office,” he said as he walked past me.
“Fuck,” I breathed into my palms with a defeated moan, scrubbing my hands down my face.
“You’ll be fine, kid,” he called back as he exited the double doors on the far side of the kitchen. “I’ll handle Tater.”
“Boy, he can be a real prick sometimes, huh?”
The sound of a woman’s voice caught me off guard. I thought we were alone.
“I—sorry, I didn’t know anyone else was in here.”
Josephine popped out from behind the bar of prepped food. Though I didn’t need to see her to know who she was; I knew it was her just by the voice. She was the head of food and beverage…and probably a lot more than what she let on.
“He didn’t either.” She smiled. “I’ve been in this business longer than you’ve been alive. I know when and how to keep my mouth shut,” she said with a wink.
I smiled back at her. “Good to know.”
“You’d be amazed at the things you hear when you don’t speak.
You know how it is around here. People talk, but they really don’t say anything.
” She started covering the open trays of food with lids.
“Now, run along. Get out of my kitchen. I’ve got things to do, and unless you’re going to grab a knife and start chopping, then you’re just in my way. ”
“Yes, ma’am. Always bossy, never the boss,” I joked with a smirk. Everyone knew she could probably pull rank over anyone in this business if she wanted to.
“I’ll show you who’s boss!” She threw a cherry tomato at me as I followed the same route as Ivan, veering off my original course. “Now, pick that up before someone slips and gets hurt.”
I bent down and picked up the tomato, tossing it into the trash as I pushed through the doors.
The space opened to an extension of the main casino floor, tucked into a dark, desolate corner.
Other than a small food and beverage station, a handful of slot machines, and an emergency exit door that led to a stairwell, this side of the casino left a lot to be desired.
It was where a handful of loners and regulars often played—the ones who started early and stayed well into the night.
I wound through the slots and pushed through the emergency exit. Then I hauled ass up the stairs, taking two at a time.
Ivan’s office was on the second floor, halfway down a long, run-down hallway, located somewhere just above the kitchen. His office door had been left cracked open, awaiting my arrival. I knocked anyway.
“Come in,” he said as I stepped into his tiny, suffocating office. “Close the door. Have a seat.”
You’d think for a guy who’d been with this family doing business for as long as he had, he would have had a bigger, brighter office. One with a view of the parking lot, at least.
“So, what’s up? What’s so important that couldn’t wait until later?” I asked as I dropped into the chair across from him.
He spun around in his decades-old wingback leather chair, turning his back to me, and popped the top off a decanter, pouring himself a drink. “Bourbon?”
“No. Thanks. I’m good.” It wasn’t even eleven in the morning.
I leaned back and crossed my legs, resting my ankle on my knee, and waited.
Impatiently.
This will only take a minute, yet he had time to offer me a drink.
He faced me. “I’ve got some new orders for you.”
“Okay? Isn’t that why you hired me?” That was what I’d been brought here to do all those years ago—take orders, help with the company’s dirty work, perform petty tasks no one else wanted to do.
Shit that kept everyone else from getting blood on their hands.
Generally, I wasn’t allowed to ask questions, and for the most part, I didn’t.
“True,” he said, taking a sip of his amber drink.
He lit a cigarette and took a long, slow drag, then blew the smoke up into the air.
I watched impatiently as the gray cloud reached the tiles of the drop ceiling, suffocating every pore in the dingy plaster.
“You’ve been with us, what, almost five years now? ”