Isabella’s face is absolutely priceless as she recognizes the name.
“Red!” A cheerful voice comes down the line. “I was just wondering, are you around this weekend?”
I look directly into Isabella’s eyes, so like her brothers, as I reply. “For you, I’m free as a bird.”
12
LEON
Atech-bro’s beachfront villa. Practically a glorified frat house.
That’s where mywifeis going in denim short shorts and a backwards baseball cap. Both of which look entirely indecent on her.
The hat, because it pulls her hair from her face in a way that stops it from falling around her features with its usual heart-stopping softness. The shorts, because they are completely and utterly distracting and leave nothing to the imagination.
Not that I need to imagine, I try desperately to reassure myself. But there’s an angry possessiveness inside me that a week's worth of distance has done nothing to subdue.
“Just…be careful, all right?” I ask as she leaves.
She doesn’t look at me or bother responding as she steps out the door of the brownstone. That much I probably deserve after our previous spat about the pros and cons of heart rate monitors.
Mia wouldn’t wear one. I tagged her anyway. She found it and threw it at my face.
I run a hand through my hair, suddenly wondering if it would be entirely unprofessional to start drinking.
It was inevitable that I would see her again, of course. But somehow, I’d managed to delude myself into just not thinking about it.
My insane workload was entirely to blame for this. The breakthrough we had had to search private dockyards, thanks to the information Mia had obtained, led to the very successful extraction of the Cartel’s merchandise.
Now Teo and I were together on a near-daily basis to form plans to best utilize Amos Rubio’s sudden loss of revenue.
My phone rings and I answer it as I return to my office, which is already set up for total surveillance tonight.
“She’s arrived. Carmen Rubio just got in her car,” Max reports immediately.
It’s a reassurance to have him working on this with me. Unlike Dante, my second seems to inherently understand why I prefer to be constantly updated.
Despite not formally knowing who Mia is to me, he was quick to pick up on my anxiety around her involvement. I’d called her a mercenary for hire. Max hadn’t even blinked when he gave me the concealable heart rate monitor.
A nice gesture if it didn’t now lay broken on the floor.
“They’re just talking,” he continues.
I get a sickening sense of deja-vu as I watch Mia’s pulsing red dot pause for a moment at the location.
Ivan had contacted Carmen to negotiate a small deal with a few of their higher-paying clientele. If I had to put money on it, I’d say it was an initiation for the debutant.
Clearly, these Silicon Valley wannabes emphasized discretion, and Carmen just happened to be perfectly cast to show up at one of their parties.
This meant that, once again, Mia would be playing the role of ditzy-soap-making-business-college-buddy.
And I hated it more than I could really express.
“They’ve just set off,” Max interrupts my thoughts. “ETA forty-three minutes.”
He will follow them the entire way, park at the neighboring beach villa, and keep tabs on the entire evening, reporting back to me with any progress or mishaps. He was instructed to intervene the second I gave the order.
De-ja-fucking-vu.
