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“As you can see,” Charles said. “She’s quite beautiful.”
No fucking kidding about that.
The image on the screen was enough to make me sit up and forget about the groveling criminal across from me.
The shot was of a young woman in a skintight cocktail dress of shimmering gold, posing with a drink in her hand on the dock of a fancy boat out at sea, a party going on around her, the sun setting over the water in pinks and purples. She had long, black hair with a bit of a wave to it, and prominent, sharp cheekbones that would give any of the thousands of wanna-be models that stalked the streets of New York a surge of envy.
Her nose was slim and straight, her lips were full and luscious. And her body a perfect hourglass, the dress clinging to her ripe curves. Her skin was the same gentle olive tone as her father’s.
There was one very distinct quality about her that caught my eye.
A quality that remarkably shifted my attention away from her body - as fuckable as it was.
The smile.
The kind of smile that could make heads turn. A smile that could stop me dead in my tracks, even in the streets of Manhattan.
Holy.
Shiiit.
A man in my position didn’t find it hard to come across total knockouts, and perfect tens weren’t exactly in short supply in New York. This woman, however, was on another level. It took all the restraint I had to stay cool and calm, to not let her beauty affect me on the outside the way it did on the inside.
“She’s really something, isn’t she?” he asked as I handed the phone back to him. “And she’s not all looks. Emily is brilliant—receiving a top-tier education by the best private tutors the city has to offer. She speaks three languages and is fully trained in the kind of etiquette that a man like yourself would expect.” He glanced away, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand. “We’d, ah, always imagined that she would end up with a man likeyou. Maybe not under these kinds of circumstances, but all the same…”
I chuckled. “You mean you never imagined offering her to a business associate in hopes that he’d call it good for the millions you owe him?”
Charles’s eyes flashed as I reminded him of what was at stake.
“You screwed me, Chuck,” I said, leaning back in my chair and clasping my hands together. “You sold all of this money laundering bullshit to me as the easiest plan in the world, something that would make us both millions and connect me with some of the most powerful underground figures in the city. Instead, I’m out nearly ten million and you’re here hoping I take your daughter in place of your debt. This isn’t the goddam Medieval Times.”
Charles cleared his throat nervously. “Surely, Mr. Stone, ten million can’t be that much of an issue for someone like yourself. I know that Stone Holdings is worth bill—”
“You think the money is the point?” I asked, cutting Charles off in a way that few men likely ever had. “Because it’s not. Thepointis that you went behind my back with one of my subordinates. And now you’re here offering your own damn daughter like she’s some kind of thoroughbred in hopes to make up for the damage you’ve caused me.”
Charles said nothing.
Good.
It meant that he knew there was no sense in trying to argue his way out of his position.
“I’m not interested in marriage,” I said. “My company demands far too much of my time. But even if I were in the market to be married, you think that I’d want an unwilling wife? You think I’d let such a potential source of disloyalty so close to me?”
“No, no,” he said. “You don’t understand. Emily is gentle, obedient. As I said, she’s been trained for this sort of arrangement all her life. Marriage in our world is looked upon like the royal unions of times past. Women are offered to cement alliances, to build ties between families.”
I snorted, shaking my head. The whole notion disgusted me. I made a silent curse to Byers, the C-level prick who’d gotten me into bed with the Mafia in the first place. He’d been fired, but even that seemed too good of a fate for him.
“I don’t want your daughter,” I said. “I want the fucking money.”
My right hand clenched into a fist atop my desk.
“I don’t have it,” Charles said. “I’m sorry, Mr. Stone, but you can’t get blood from a…” he trailed off, a sheepish smile forming on his lips as he held back the pun on my name that he no doubt had in mind.
“Then I’ll go to your boss,” I said. “Tell him that one of his made men is on the verge of making a powerful enemy.”
He stiffened his posture, a thought occurring to him that appeared to instill a bit of confidence.
“I already spoke to him,” Charles replied. “He was the one who approved this offer. In fact, he seemed most keen on it.”
