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Chapter One
- Gabriel -
Iwalked into a littlecoffee shop on a nondescript corner in New York City with one thing in mind - a pre-emptive strike.
I held a picture of a young woman in her late twenties. She had brown hair cut into a wavy, long layered bob and a glowing smile on her face. She wore an oversized poncho and carried a bag as big as she was. The picture was pixilated, enlarged from a drive-by photo op through a tinted and smudged car window. It could have been a better photo, but my man had followed his orders. Take a picture and get the hell away from her. We weren’t tailing her. We weren’t stalking her. I just needed to know what she looked like so I could easily identify her when she walked into The Coffee Spot for her usual morning pick-me-up.
I thought it’d be easy when I approached her. I didn’t have a plan. I just wanted to find her, to see what she really looked like. Make some observations. Study her for a bit.
And then I’d decide if or how I could use her.
It could be a monumental waste of my time, but this wasn’t something I could assign to anyone else. Not that I hadn’t considered it. I could have picked one of my crew; asked them to wine and dine her while pushing for information about her brother. Sebastian St. Valentine’s peace offering brought out the skeptic in me because he wasn’t someone I could just piss off to make them go away. He played the game as hard as I did, and he had a growing list of influential friends - none of whom I wanted to piss off either.
But someone was trying to back me into a corner. Someone thought they could get away with dipping into my pool. I had connections most mafia dons couldn’t fathom. To manage them, I had intimate knowledge of their lives, their relationships, and their bank accounts. I didn’t just make a living from cybercrime - I reinvented the business. I was a man to be feared by most of my so-called peers.
Sebastian St. Valentine wasn’t one of those men. He feared no one. And I respected that, but all intel pointed at him.
I hadn’t figured out why an international arms dealer would suddenly want to branch into online financial services, but red flags were starting to pop up. Small things only my hackers had noticed so far, but someone was fucking with my system and St. Valentine was the newest player in town when it came to operations like mine. So, I needed information. I needed leverage.
I needed the upper hand.
I needed to get to know Suzanne St. Valentine.
His younger sister.
I was told she frequented The Coffee Spot between nine and eleven every morning, except Wednesday and the weekends, so I arrived on Friday at eight forty-five, surly and grumpy. The New York City morning traffic wasn’t a myth. That was one of the many reasons I ran my business outside the city limits. A drive that should have been a little over an hour became almost two. Since I was trying to blend in, I left my entourage behind and drove myself into the city. It was risky, as I was reminded no less than a dozen times before I made it out the door of my office, but I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. At least, not any more attention than I usually got when I walked into a room.
Arrogance. Confidence. Sex appeal? Whatever the hell it was called, it followed me everywhere I went and today, the last thing I needed was to be noticed. I dressed casually. A pair of jeans, a black t-shirt, a black leather jacket, and a beat-up ball cap I hadn’t worn since I was seventeen.
When I walked into my office inside The Beast, the club I owned in Bridgeport, Andre laughed out loud.
“I thought you were going to try to blend in?”
I looked in the mirror over the sideboard and adjusted my cap. “Why? Do they still wear these things backward?”
I turned the cap around, so the bill was at the back and snarled at myself in the mirror. Fading in with the masses be damned. I hated that look, so I turned the cap back around. I stroked my goatee thoughtfully. Maybe the facial hair made me look old? Was thirty-two old? Fuck. I hadn’t spent this much time on introspection since the day I formally inherited my father’s business.
“Do you think I should have shaved?” I mused. “It doesn’t take long to grow this thing back.”
Thanks to my Italian heritage, even if I shaved this morning, I’d have a five o’clock shadow by four o’clock. That’s why I chose to wear a goatee; it was a lot less hassle than being clean-shaven every day. I shrugged at my reflection in the mirror. It was a good look. I was vain enough to admit that.
I met Andre’s mirth-filled eyes in the mirror. “No disrespect, Boss, but it won’t matter what you wear. You know how they react.”
The reminder, especially coming from my second, wasn’t appreciated. “Don’t say anymore,” I growled as I stared at my reflection. I looked good, but maybe he was right. “Should I wear sweats?”
He laughed even louder. “You mean like the gray ones? It’s not going to matter what you wear. You could grunge it down and it wouldn’t matter.”
That was an idea. “Like dirty clothes? A street person?”
Andre looked horrified. “Absolutely not. You don’t want to scare her, do you?”
Fuck it. Andre was the only person who knew where I was going that morning and he wasn’t being very helpful, even if his fashion advice was usually spot on.
“Just... tone it down a bit,” he advised. “Drop your shoulders. Walk in like a regular person.”
“What does that mean?” I turned to face him.
“You know. What you’re wearing isn’t the only problem. It’s the way you carry yourself, the way you walk, and for God’s sake, if you’re trying to blend in, don’t walk into the joint and do that thing you do in the doorway.”
