My face goes deadpanned. “Was that even English?”
Isabelle’s smile is enough to bend the knee of the most powerful man. I’m confident of this as mine are close to buckling. “You know everything…” Although she’s not technically asking a question, I lift my chin. “…exceptwhat we’re doing today.”
Her smugness takes a step back when I say, “I bet I can find out within thirty seconds.”
She angles her head with a defiance I’m being nurtured to love. “You wouldn’t dare.”
Her mouth falls open when I growl, “Test me, Isabelle.”
I can tell she’s turned on by my threat. I can also smell it, but she plays down the hold I have over her. “If you do, watch March 5 be pushed back another six months.”
After tugging her jeans up her legs, sans underwear, she hotfoots it to the door of our suite, leaving me with a raging hard-on. Isabelle is always beautiful, but when confidence is beaming out of her, she’s ravishingly gorgeous.
* * *
“Excuse me, Roger…” Isabelle scoots to the edge of the backseat Callie’s car seat is hogging to meet Roger’s gaze in the rearview mirror, “… you went the wrong way. You were supposed to take a left at the last intersection.”
Her neck cranks my way when I disclose, “I requested an alternate route.” I dip my chin, instructing Roger to continue on the route he was traveling before shifting my focus to Isabelle and Callie. “When I noticed the time, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to show you something I’ve been endeavoring to explain the past six months. This will make cue cards unnecessary.” After winking at the two sets of eyes peering at me in shock, I return mine to Roger. “Stay a few spots back. I don’t want her to spot us.”
Although we’re not getting around in a stretch limousine like Cormack and Harlow, our pimped-out Mercedes-Benz GLE will still be noticeable in this district. The tree-lined streets give the illusion of safety, but the bars on every lower-level window reveals that isn’t the case. It isn’t as rough as Harlem, but it’s a very close second.
Isabelle’s warm breaths tickle my neck when she asks, “Who are we visiting?”
I ease the curiosity popped between her brows by nudging my head to the left. We’ve made it in just enough time. A Maserati Quattroporte is pulling into a set of brownstones on the outskirts of New York.
Isabelle intakes a sharp breath when Henry Gottle, Sr. climbs the stairs of a building three spots up from us. I don’t need to offer an introduction. Isabelle is well-rehearsed on who he is as he’s been on the FBI’s watch list for as many years as Isabelle has been born.
As he does every day at precisely eleven in the morning, Henry knocks on the door three times. When his request for entrance is denied, he slides an unmarked envelope into the mail slot, places his hand on the warped wooden door for a little over three seconds, then returns to his car.
Isabelle waits for Henry’s chauffeur-driven sports car and four deep security-amped procession to merge into traffic before shifting her eyes to me. “Who was he visiting?”
Callie answers Isabelle on my behalf. “Na-noo!”
Callie waves in excitement as if Katarina can see her through the industrially dark tint of our SUV. She knows who Katarina is because they met during the delay of Callie’s sale. When I was arrested, Vladimir was reluctant to continue with Callie’s sale as negotiated. He offered three girls as her replacement—none of which shared the same bloodline as him. He didn’t want DNA proof of the monster he is while the FBI was breathing down both our necks.
It took intense negotiations, and an increase in the sale price for me to secure the original asset he was selling. Part of our negotiations was that Callie was to be placed into the care of an intermediate party until the heat died down. It was a risk placing Katarina in the Popovs’ radar, but it strengthened Vladimir’s belief that I wanted Callie for unfathomable reasons.
Name one mafia association you know that doesn’t dabble in the sex trafficking conglomerate?
Henry was furious I went straight to Katarina to ask for her help. Katarina was quick to remind him he lost the right to influence her life when he left her pregnant with his son at seventeen—a son who might have been killed if I didn’t step in to help a stranger.
Henry, Jr. and I didn’t meet under normal circumstances. He was surrounded by over half a dozen men branding machetes, stakes, and knives capable of dissecting more than a finger. They had a grudge, but instead of taking it out on the person responsible, they went after his namesake—a college freshman who had recently located to the area.
Back then, I didn’t interfere in other people’s business. Unless it had a direct impact on me or the empire I was striving to get off the ground, it was not my place to intervene.
Something stopped me that night. Henry was clearly outnumbered, he was unarmed, and even with him telling the men he had not seen or heard from his dad in over seventeen years, they continued to approach him.
It was foolish of me to step in, but two against an army had to be better than one, right? It wasn’t my best thought-out plan, but at the end of the day, both Henry and I survived. Henry suffered three stab wounds to his stomach, and I had four broken ribs and a large gash extending from my hairline to my collarbone, but we lived to tell the tale.
That night was also the commencement of my infamous reputation. When word circulated that Henry and I had defended ourselves against eight of Col Petretti’s best goons—including his eldest son, Roberto—we became untouchable. We were feared but also respected.
Henry took the praise humbly. I fed off it like a drug addict. The more I gained, the more I craved, so you can imagine how crazy the hype got when news of our triumph reached the holy grail in the mafia underworld.
Henry, Sr.’s sanction isn’t restricted to his ethnicity. He’s not the kingpin of the Russian or Italian Mafia, he istheMafia kingpin. You can’t get higher than him, so not only did Col pay attention when Henry, Sr. arrived in his unknown town one hundred miles from Ravenshoe, he commiserated when Henry, Jr. and I were knighted by a king he’d never trump.
Henry, Sr.’s visit added to my untouchable stature, and it extended the vault of arsenal I was rapidly gaining. Since I protected his son, he made me part of his family, which evoked several favors, one of which I used to have Isabelle’s brother, Enrique, extradited to Russia.
Although our meeting was not traditional, I’ve learned a lot from Henry the past eight years. The most fathomable was that mercy and understanding should always come before blame and revenge. He gave up his family to save them from the entity he was destined to lead, yet, hate still came knocking. Henry, Sr. and his son now have a somewhat amicable relationship, but Katarina isn’t as quick to forgive. Henry’s absence from their son’s life hurt her for years, so she has many left to wade through before she can consider forgiveness.
