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Next week was the biggest week of his life. And all he could think about was the past and what might have been. Which is why he was now spending his evening in a not great part of town so he could reestablish the boundaries that had nearly been undone instead of enjoying a glass of bourbon on the rooftop balcony of his penthouse. He determined the nature of their relationship, not she. Her reaction to the photos had thrown him off. He wouldn’t be caught unawares again.
He’d arrived at the Met after she’d just left. His disappointment, he reassured himself, was because he’d wanted an opportunity to see her again in a professional setting, remind her that he was the one in control. When Jessica had handed him the threadbare raincoat Alexandra had left behind during her tour and told him Alexandra had mentioned running back to the shop to get some work done, he found the perfect excuse to see her before Monday.
His eyes moved back and forth over the darkening street as he neared The Flower Bell. Several streetlights were out, the bulbs most likely broken by vandals. The empty storefronts looked sad, paint worn by weather, time and neglect. It reminded him of some of the more downtrodden parts of Fortaleza.
Even though Fortaleza had its problems, the city had been good to him for most of his childhood. How many summers had he spent on the beaches to the south, hiking among the red cliffs that bordered the ocean with his father or snacking oncrème de papayaunder the palm trees with his mother? As his father’s role in the construction company he’d worked for had grown, he’d taken Grant with him overseas when he oversaw the delivery of major orders. The locales had been incredible. But nothing had compared to coming home to Fortaleza.
Homesickness pricked him. It had been over twenty years since he and his mother had fled after their father had done the unthinkable and said no to a drug cartel that had wanted to use his construction equipment to smuggle cocaine to Belgium. The cartel had responded with a bullet and a notice that Grant and his mother would be next unless they helped. Jordana Santos had lived up to the meaning of her name—daring—and smuggled a twelve-year-old Grant out of the house under the cover of darkness. He had never learned how she’d done it, but less than a week later they’d arrived in New York City, where Jordana had channeled her grief at losing her husband into re-creating a life for her and her son. She lived a couple hours north of the city now, in a rambling Victorian with a garden out back where she drank tea, the occasional glass of wine and entertained her weekly book club.
A slow-paced, pleasant life. One she had more than earned. She turned down his offers of more—more trips, more clothes, more gadgets—with a soft smile. She told him the only thing that mattered to her was seeing him happy. A statement that, more and more, seemed to end on a question, as if she knew that his numerous successes hadn’t yet delivered the happiness he sought.
But then she wasn’t being completely honest with him, either. Yes, he knew he was the most important thing in her life. But returning to Brazil, seeing her family and friends, was a close second.
He would tell her in the fall that the head of the cartel that had ordered his father’s execution had been killed, his organization taken over by a rival gang and moved to Natal. However, he wouldn’t tell her the role he had played, that his interference time and time again in the cartel’s operations had led to another organization moving in and taking care of someone they considered a weak link. He wanted to verify for himself that it was safe, take a trip before going with her again in the spring. He would not risk losing someone else. Losing his father, then Alexandra—or at least whom he thought Alexandra had been—had been painful enough. He would not risk heartbreak a third time by placing his mother in danger.
Oddly, the victory of his father’s murderer being killed had felt unexpectedly hollow. Yes, one less drug dealer was on the streets. But it hadn’t brought his father back. It had also left him restless, adrift, with nothing to focus his time, efforts, or money on. That restlessness had led to his next goals, of starting his own investment firm and achieving his first billion. Goals he was on the verge of realizing.
And Alexandra, damn her, had seen right through him yesterday. His hands tightened around her coat. How had she known that the harder he pushed himself to succeed, the closer he got, the emptier he felt? As if he would always be pursuing something just out of reach?
Up ahead, a figure in a trench coat rushed out of The Flower Bell. The door slammed against the wall. Glass shattered and rained down on the pavement. The figure glanced back into the shop before running down the street, arms pumping, something flat and metallic clutched in one hand.
His body roared to life. He stepped in front of the person and dropped into a crouch, his years of high school wrestling coming back as he surged forward, grabbed the runner around the waist and stopped him cold. Whatever the man had clutched in his hands dropped to the pavement as Grant swung him around and pinned him against the wall.
“Let go of me, man!”
Sweat and an all too familiar bleach-like scent stung his nostrils. Older boys in his neighborhood in Fortaleza had started to carry that smell on them when they started working for the cartels.
“What were you doing in The Flower Bell?”
The man finally lifted his head. Bloodshot eyes sat deep in a face with skin stretched so tight Grant could see the outline of his bones. The man smiled, revealing chipped, yellowed teeth.
“Just getting some flowers.”
Grant glanced down, his blood turning cold as he realized what lay on the ground between them.
“Where did you get that laptop?”
The man wasn’t high enough to miss the danger in Grant’s voice. He shrank back against the wall.“Look, man, I don’t want any trouble—”
A high-pitched siren cut off whatever the junkie had been about to say. Grant’s head whipped around, his heart tripling in speed as a police car stopped in front of The Flower Bell and two officers got out.
“Officer!” he shouted.
They glanced at him, then did a double take as they took in the scene. Another siren sounded in the distance.
“Go help him,” the female officer ordered her partner before she entered The Flower Bell.
It took every ounce of self-control Grant possessed not to toss the struggling addict at the officer approaching and rush inside. Once the officer handcuffed the thief, Grant scooped the laptop off the pavement with one hand and ran to the store just as an ambulance pulled around the corner.
No.
Past met present as the sirens and flashing lights sparked a cascade of memories: walking up to his house, seeing his mother cradling his father’s body in her arms, the shriek of the sirens as the ambulance had arrived far too late to do anything but take him away covered by a sheet.
Por favor, não.
He burst into the shop, his chest so tight he could barely breathe.
Alexandra sat on a stool next to the counter, wincing as the officer placed a cool rag against a red gash on her forehead. Fury pounded in his ears with a roar that blocked out all sound.
