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Seven
Cole
Flashes of the night before played in my mind while I watched the front gate to Giorgio’s estate. My sweet little Adele, sprawled facedown on the bed with the black tip of her plug peeking out from between her pinkened bottom cheeks. The way her nose had crinkled when I’d popped the plug back in her well-fucked little hole and told her it would stay there the rest of the night. Her ass bouncing under my hand when she’d gotten sassy with me after our shower, and then the way she’d begged Daddy to let her come again.
Letting her go this morning, knowing she would be spending the day in Giorgio’s orbit, was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. All I wanted was to bundle her up and whisk her away to America where I could spoil her and spank her and fuck her as I pleased.
But that would mean leaving Giorgio alive. And it was disconcerting to realize the idea of letting him live didn’t leave the bitter taste in my mouth it should have.
Gripping the gold cross through my shirt, I closed my eyes and tried to bring Natalie’s face to mind. The grief was as sharp as the night she died, but her face was blurred, like a copy of a copy of a copy. What did it say about me, that I was no closer to avenging her death nearly a year later, yet her memory had already begun to fade?
Movement on the sidewalk distracted me from my self-flagellation. Adele, in her too-short uniform, hurrying toward the gate. Grabbing the camera perched on my passenger seat, I focused the zoom lens on the number pad by the gate and began snapping rapidly as she punched in the code and pressed her thumb to the pad below. The gates swung open and she scurried through.
The code should be easy enough to figure out from the pictures and Mikey had given me a kit just in case I was lucky enough to be in a situation where I could copy a fingerprint from someone who had access to Giorgio’s inner sanctum. Adele not only fit that requirement, she slept like the dead, so it would be nothing to get the impression once she fell asleep after our date tonight. Which meant I would have the means to break into Giorgio’s compound tomorrow night.
And Natalie would finally be avenged.
Returning the camera to its spot on the passenger seat, I allowed myself to imagine his death for what felt like the millionth time. As much as I wanted to be able to take my time, to make him suffer, my window of opportunity wouldn’t be large enough for what I had planned. And Mikey had already talked me down from moving him to a secondary location. I’d settle for a bullet in his brain, and then I’d work on getting my girl out of the country.
Which meant she’d need documentation. A visa of some kind, at the very least. Something else to have Mikey start working on before we left.
As if on cue, my phone rang, and I grinned at his name on the screen. “Mikey. I was just thinking about you, my friend.”
“Well, you can stop. Every time you think about me, it just adds to my workload.”
The seas may rise, kingdoms may fall, but Mikey would always be a giant grouch. Even without video, I knew he would be sitting at his cluttered desk in his cramped office, his jaw working furiously at the stick of nicotine gum he’d recently begun chewing to replace his smoking habit.
I missed the hell out of him.
“I do have a bit of a favor to ask. Adele is going to need paperwork. A visa, but not a work visa. Although I suppose we could create some kind of bullshit position for her at my company.” Since she would be spending the majority of her time under me, it would be fitting. “Whatever puts up the least amount of red flags. You know what to do.”
“Ahhh, yeah. About your girl. That’s why I’m calling.”
Something in his tone had the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. “What is it? What did you find?” Maybe the ex-boyfriend was a bigger deal than she’d let on.
Maybe there was no ex, and despite her wild, desperate promises the night before, she was still keeping secrets.
For her sake, I hoped not.
“Nothing. That’s the problem.”
Irritated by his vague answers, I scowled at the phone. “I don’t understand how ‘nothing’ is a problem.”
“I don’t just mean I didn’t find anything negative. I didn’t find anything. At all.”
“That’s impossible. She works for Giorgio; she’d have to pass a background check.” Unless Giorgio had been the one to set up the fake identity for her.
No. Whatever her secrets, she wasn’t a criminal. That much, I knew in my bones.
“Yeah. And she does, at least on the surface. It’s once you start digging you realize there’s nothing there. The school she supposedly went to never had anyone with that name enrolled. Her parents exist on paper, but I can’t find employment records or anything beyond birth and death certificates for them. So on and so forth. She’s a ghost, boss.”
“Who the fuck is she, then?”
“I’m working on it,” he growled, annoyance laced through every syllable. It wasn’t often Mikey was stumped by someone, and it was obviously making him grouchier than usual. Which, for some perverse reason, eased the fury boiling in my veins.
“Let me know what you find as soon as you have it.”
“Always.”
