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He flashed her a ghost of a smile. “This sounds like a trick question.”
“It’s not,” she said. “I already know about your business. In fact, I’ve been up close and personal with it in a way I’ll never forget.”
There was no bitterness in it. Not toward Roman. Not right now.
It was just a fact.
His eyes flashed. “That’s not my business.”
“Then tell me what is.” She learned forward, mindful of the other diners. “What does the Russian Mafia do to make their money?”
His eyes were fastened on her cleavage, pushed up by her arms and the table.
“Or would you rather stare at my tits?” she asked.
He gave her a devastating grin. “I’m not a fool. I’d much rather stare at your tits.”
She laughed. “Tell you what, you can look as long as you want as long as you also answer my question.”
“You sell yourself short, Ruby.” Something low and sultry had crept into his voice. “I’d do much more than that to stare at your tits.” He sat back in his chair. “But it’s too late to change the terms now.”
She laughed. “A hundred years ago, I think they would have called you a cad."
“A hundred years ago, they would have called me a titan.” He tapped his fingers on the white linen tablecloth, the murmur of other diners and soft strains of piano music a soundtrack to the exchange. “Do you know the history of organized crime?”
“Can you be more specific?”
“It’s a tale as old as time,” he said. “Disenfranchised people locked out of the income ladder turn to other methods of survival. Every major population who came to America had their criminal faction, ones that have largely been overlooked by the powers that be. Take the Irish and the Italians. They were allowed to commit crimes as long as they followed certain rules — don’t let upstanding citizens catch you doing it, cut in the power players, don’t make a scene. African Americans tried it too. but it didn’t work out as well for them because—”
“Racism,” she said. She’d read something about this somewhere.
He nodded. “Their drug trade was no different than what the Irish and the Italians were doing, than what we were doing. But they were called junkies and thugs. Case in point, many of the Italians and Irish — the old families who came up with my father — are now legitimately wealthy. They’ve invested their ill-gotten gains into lawful businesses, stocks, bonds. Their kids attend Ivy League colleges and ride dressage on Long Island.”
“Then why do those people still commit crimes?” Ruby asked.
“Why do wealthy business people lobby for favorable corporate policy? Why do power brokers get away with manipulating the stock market? You don’t think the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers got their hands dirty building their empires?” He shrugged. “It’s part of the fabric of capitalism now. History is made not by those who follow the rules but by those who know when — and how — to break them.”
She leaned back. “An interesting history lesson. But you haven’t answered my question.”
“And you’ve broken our agreement.”
She rolled her eyes, then leaned forward so he again had a view of her cleavage. “How’s this?”
His gaze was heated on her tits. “I’d prefer it without the dress but it will do. For now.”
His words sent a shiver of desire up her spine and she clenched her thighs together to stop the throbbing that had started in her pussy.
This was not part of the plan. Talking about his business was supposed to throw cold water on her hunger for him, not amplify it.
“My father’s still doing business the old way,” he said. “Drugs, prostitution, stolen goods, gun and commodity smuggling. It’s part of our… disagreement. These things are changing, the marketplace morphing. More and more of it is moving online and that’s only going to accelerate over the next decade. If one wanted to take advantage of this evolution, one would be wise to get in on the ground floor, so to speak.”
“Is that what you want?” she asked. “Toget in on the ground floor?”
“Selectively. There are other ways to build wealth in our world now,” he said. “Smarter ways. Cleaner ways. My father disagrees.”
“So you want to take the… business from him to make it better,” she said.
“I want to take it from him to cause him pain,” Roman said, no emotion in his voice. “Making the business better is a bonus.”
