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“Stand down.” He laughs. I recognize his voice, if not the humor in it. “The man is going to marry my daughter soon. I think we can trust him.” Still, as a show of faith, I open my jacket to prove I’m not armed before the men step away and allow me to take a seat opposite their boss. He shakes my hand without rising, then folds them again before looking me up and down.
I make no effort to hide the way I do the same. When it comes to his attitude, his bearing, his command of the situation, he’s precisely what I would have expected. This is not his first such meeting. He’s been in the business for decades—his entire life, in fact. I have no doubt he was trained from an early age as I was.
Finally, it occurs to me. He doesn’t bear much of a resemblance to Elena. His hair is black and wavy, his eyes the color of fresh coffee while hers are the most brilliant green. Nothing about his sharp features or his wiry frame suggests any relation to the girl I left at the townhouse. Nose, chin, ears—all different. She must take after her mother. Lucky girl.
“What would you like to drink? I’ve been assured the bar is open to us.” He waves over one of his men and asks for a vodka and lime. I ask for a whiskey on the rocks before turning my attention back to Josef, whose thin lips twitch as if he finds something about this funny.
“I’m glad we can finally sit down together.” I settle back in my chair, noticing from the corners of my eyes the way my men take their place beside me as Alvarez’s men do the same. Let them do the sneering and posturing. The two of us have business to attend to.
“It seems we’ve gotten off to a rocky start, and I would like to apologize for the part I played in this situation. I ought to have reached out to you as soon as I knew I would be unable to make our first meeting. We could have rescheduled and avoided all of this.”
“I admit,” I murmur, “it came as a surprise.”
“I’m sure it was nothing compared to the surprise I received when I learned my daughter was in your possession. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you the anguish this has caused her poor mother.”
“You have my apologies for that. It was never my intention to cause your wife strain.” God, this is brutal. All this doubletalk, dancing around the subject when what I want to do is demand he tell me what the hell he thought he was doing, jerking me around the way he did. And now I’m supposed to feel sorry for his wife? This is all his fault.
At least, mostly. I would never have taken Elena if he’d been at the warehouse the way he said he would.
“How is she? She had better be unharmed.”
“She is.”
“I’ll need to see her as proof of this before the wedding.”
I keep my tone even, holding his gaze as our drinks arrive. “I’m sorry, but that’s not going to happen.”
“You won’t allow me to see my daughter?”
“You can see her on the day of the wedding, but that’s it. There won’t be any meetings between you before then. I was assured by my grandfather that this was an acceptable condition to set.”
“Oh, were you?” He lifts his glass, eyeing me as he drinks.
“Indeed, I was.”
He lowers the glass, lips pursed. “Then there can be no deal.”
“You’re willing to blow up this entire deal because you can’t see your daughter before the wedding? Is that really worth ending this over?”
“She deserves the opportunity to discuss the terms she wishes to set—with me, her father. We ought to at least be given the chance to speak privately, so I know what she wants.”
“You can go through me.”
“I will do no such thing.”
I lift a shoulder. “Then we have no deal. And remember, this is Renato De Luca speaking, not me. I’m only relaying what he’s already told me. You will not see her face-to-face before the day of the wedding, nor will you be afforded the opportunity for a private phone call. But you can communicate with me as a go-between.”
“You De Lucas think you can control everything, don’t you?” He sneers, leaning back in his chair. “What if I say no? What if this leads to an all-out war?”
“Is it worth that much to you? Having to reach a compromise, I mean?” I lean in, arms folded on the table. “Because if it does, my family already has more than enough reason to go to war. For starters, the man your sniper shot and nearly killed when we were supposed to be getting together for a meeting. You realize I brought her with me. She could have been killed.”
“She was with you?”
I blink, trying to understand him. “You said you wanted what I took from you. Why would I not bring her with me?”
He frowns—then shrugs, his arms spread. “What can I say? It was a misunderstanding. An issue with communication. These things happen.”
“You nearly took out one of my men. Is that one of those things that simply happens?”
