Both Maximus and Hunter hum in agreement, but only Maximus adds words to his reply. “And his five-hour flight to Vegas gave him plenty of time to strategize a plan.” He sets down a photograph that makes my blood boil. It shows Col exiting an airport hangar of a private airstrip in Vegas and entering a stretch limousine. Unlike the images his IT department wiped from the servers last night, he spends most of his time on the strip peering up at the multiple cameras dotted throughout the playground for the rich and famous, making no attempt to conceal his infamous face.
“He wanted me to see this.”
“Very much so,” Maximus agrees. “Along with this.”
He places down another image. There are no pompous has-beens in this snapshot. Just a business proposal left out in the open for the world to see for a commercial property I know all too well. It’s the warehouse Ophelia sped away from after two of Col’s henchmen loaded her almost unconscious brother into the passenger seat of her car since they refused her numerous requests to call an ambulance. It is the exact location I last laid my eyes on Ophelia in the flesh.
I stop recalling the glare she hit me with as she slid behind the steering wheel when Hunter’s deep timbre breaks me from my thoughts. “Col placed in a tender for the warehouse you’re leasing in the wee hours of this morning.” Knowledge Col is aware I’m leasing out the warehouse he blames for the loss of two of his children on a long-term basis already raises my hackles, much less what Hunter says next, “He offered a very generous nickel and a promise to keep things strictly business if his tender is approved.”
“So, in other words, he’s inducing a favor to keep Isabelle’s birthright private?”
“Yes. And…” Hunter’s pause infuriates me to no end, “… he expects more than the use of a warehouse for the next hundred years.” I realize his pause wasn’t solely to have me on tenterhooks. He needed time to load Col’s endless list of demands onto the monitor his face was filling. He wants equipment, staff, vehicles, and access to funds no startup business would ever have the gall to come up with, let alone request.
“If I give himanyof this, his list of demands will never end.”
“Exactly,” Hunter pushes out in a brusque tone. “That’s why Regan denied his bid this morning and sent him a very detailed reply as to why Holt Enterprises will never associate with the Petretti conglomerate.”
Although pleased my team is showing incentive, I’m also furious. I have a hand in all aspects of my empire, so shouldn’t it be the same for my personal life as well?
Before my annoyance can be voiced, a video playing on Maximus’s monitor stuffs my words into the back of my throat. It’s footage I’ve seen before but not from this angle. It is of me with a busty blonde who looks more than eager to suck my dick.
“How long ago was this taken?” I ask, confident the date on the footage is fraudulent. I haven’t been on a single ‘date’ since I met Isabelle, but this video appears as if it was only recorded last night.
“It’s from the night before you flew commercial, but since we wanted Col to believe otherwise, I altered both the digital and analog footage.”
Hunter zooms in until the scandalizing event bouncing off the rearview mirror of a loaned Maserati I was getting around in months ago leaves no doubt as to what is happening. The blonde, whose name is slipping my mind, was so eager for dessert, she commenced stroking me through my trousers within a nanosecond of me sliding behind the steering wheel. Her head bobs out of footage even quicker than the valet closes my door.
With her ability to keep me on the hook depleted during our thirty-minute drive to the hotel, I pulled into the valet at the front, then gave her an excuse that I had an urgent business matter to attend to. She fell for my ruse as many women before her had. I’ve never hidden the fact that before Isabelle I used women for one thing and one thing only—as a vessel to get me off—and Hunter’s doctored footage showcases that in all its erroneous conviction. I look like an ass who uses women for pleasure—the exact man I emulated only months ago.
I brace my hip on the edge of Maximus’s desk when Hunter informs, “I kept the circulation ratio low, but within an hour, Col caught wind of yoursupposedadventurous night.”
After growling at him in warning to keep his chuckles to a minimum, I ask, “How did he respond?”
He answers me with footage instead of words. It shows Col returning to the private jet he hired last night before dawn this morning. His grin is nowhere near as debonair as the one he was wearing earlier, and he looks defeated.
“He believed it.” I smirk at his inability not to look a gift horse in the mouth. If he didn’t immediately assess how he could profit from Isabelle’s birthright, perhaps he would have realized a man would never settle for an appetizer when he has access to every item on the menu.
“Don’t get cocky just yet, boss,” Hunter pushes out with a chuckle, mistaking the victorious expression on my face as glory for pulling the wool over Col’s eyes instead of the ultimate prize I claimed last night. “It will take more than one incident to have Col believing he can’t milk you of funds to guarantee Isabelle’s safety.” With a nudge of his head, he orders Maximus around like he’s a trainee security officer instead of a decorated ex-military sergeant. “An hour after Col boarded his flight, Maximus’s surveillance team documented two dark sedans circlingMummo Koti.Their tags are stolen.”
Maximus hands me images corresponding with Hunter’s statement. I don’t believe you should ever judge a book by its cover, but the neck tattoos on the two men behind the steering wheels of dated BMWs give a ton of leniency to that theory. The Petrettis brand their crew within weeks of recruiting them, and there’s no missing their family crest on these men’s neck tattoos.
“Then there’s this.” Maximus hands me another grainy image. It is clear it’s from the same airport hangar Col entered and exited in previous surveillance, but unlike Col, this assailant keeps identifying features hidden from surveillance cameras while boarding a similar jet to the one Col utilized an hour before him.
“Who is he?”
My jaw grits when Maximus shrugs. “We don’t know. The flight manifest states only the pilot was onboard during the relocation flight.”
I point to a clear outline of a pilot seated in the cockpit. Although the image is grainy and taken from a distance, the contour and shape of the shadow can’t be discredited.
“Hunter was right. Nothing gets past you.” Maximus clicks on the keys of his keyboard almost drowning out Hunter’s chuckle of confirmation before bringing up a second set of images.
“He landed in Hopeton.”
I’m not asking a question. I am stating a fact. Even though most of Col’s assets were swindled to nothing in the months following Ophelia’s death, he still has access to numerous modes of transportation—private jets included. So not only does Hunter regularly monitor the Petrettis’ favorite landing strip that borders a town nestled between Ravenshoe and Hopeton, a handful of the pilots and crew from said airstrip are umbrellaed under the Colt Enterprise Group.
When Hunter hums in agreement, I ask, “Where did he go from there?”
My teeth grit when I hear Hunter scrub at his beard before the whoosh of his shoulder’s lifting announces he shrugged. “As I said, he’s skilled at remaining undetected. I don’t even have a partial plate to work off.”
