An hour or maybe longer had passed before the pinpricks of early morning sunlight breached the dark sky, and they finally arrived at Uilleam’s destination.
Even at their distance, she could see the dark glimmer of the ocean water. At this hour, she wasn’t expecting anyone to be out on the beach, but at the edge of the lot where they were parked, she saw a sign that marked this particular beach as private.
Uilleam put the car in park. Leaning back against the seat, his tension returned just that quickly. “Tired?” he asked.
Even if she had been, she wouldn’t have told him. She was far more interested in him and what was troubling him. “Not at all.” She studied him now, her gaze drifting over his face. “You don’t sleep very much, do you?”
She had noticed it already, even in the short time they had been here in Paris. At first, she had thought it was the time change, but not in all the time they had been here had she ever woken up beside him, no matter what time they fell into bed together the night before.
“Hmm. Is it that obvious?”
“No one has a mind as keen as yours,” she said softly, a thought that had been running through her mind for a while now.
She’d tried, before she ever agreed to come on this trip with him, to imagine his thought process and work through the intricate web that had surrounded Miranda’s death. She tried to piece together what Uilleam had done and the sheer reach he possessed, but it wasn’t so much that he had accomplished all this.
But rather that he had predicted it to begin with.
She wondered about the boy he had been before he became the man he was now. Had he always been able to see solutions to difficult situations? Had he excelled in school? Or had it been the opposite? Had he struggled, then turned his weaknesses into his strengths?
“That’s not entirely true, though, is it?” he asked looking over at her, his expression unreadable.
“No?” She couldn’t think of anyone who rivaled him.
Her mother, perhaps, but a part of her doubted that to be true.
“You see what so many others don’t.”
She wanted to deny those words—say she just simply paid more attention—yet she remembered where she was and how she had gotten here. That she was part of the reason Paxton was even in prison.
“It must be terribly lonely up there in the clouds,” she said, thinking of the various portraits in his Paris home of planes and clouds.
He could read people so easily that she imagined most weren’t a challenge for him. As if he were forced to look down at everyone else and observe them living their lives.
“It was,” he said—whispered. A confession he wasn’t expecting to make.
She snapped off her seat belt, glad for how spacious the car was. It made it easier to climb across the gearshift onto his lap. He helped once he realized what she was doing, his arm wrapping quickly around her waist and pulling her the rest of the way over.
It took a bit of maneuvering to get more comfortable, but once she was settled against him, she reached up to cup his face, feeling the prickle of his facial hair against the pad of her thumb.
She liked him like this, more than she would care to admit.
The way his shoulders relaxed when she got close, and the contented sort of smile that spread across his face as his hands settled on her hips.
He had already slipped out of his suit jacket and left it sprawled across the back seat and had even unbuttoned his waistcoat. She carefully undid the buttons down the front of his shirt until the halves spread and revealed tan skin and fine chest hair beneath.
She wanted to bask in this quiet moment with him. To let the night’s events slip away, but she felt compelled to ask, “Why would you want to do business with a man like that? You wouldn’t have to worry very much about enemies working with him.”
“That would be ignoring the purely financial relationship. As long as the parameters are clear, there’s no reason for anything to go wrong. I trust the fact that he would try to plot against me, so I would never be surprised the day he actually does.”
She thought on that a moment, trying to understand his reasoning and failing. “That sounds exhausting. I’d think that would be less productive. You’d be spending too much time on the defense to actually focus on anything else.”
His smile grew a touch, there and gone. He was impressed. “Therein lies the rub.”
She shook her head before she turned his face side to side. “How heavy is that head of yours?”
She hadn’t expected him to understand what she was implying, but this was Uilleam after all. A man who seemed to know everything.
“Enough to wear the crown.”
“So what happens now?” she asked. “Do you pretend as if nothing happened?”
“There’s still one final meeting,” he said, hands drifting lower to skim over the slits in her dress.
“Are you nervous?”
“Not in the least.” His gaze lifted to her face. “Are you worried about me?”
“Why wouldn’t I be? You have no sense of self-preservation, clearly.”
His sudden laughter made her heart flutter.
“But seriously. Gaspard doesn’t seem to like you very much.”
“But he does like money, and that’s the only motivation most men need.”
“Not you?” she asked, genuinely curious. “What’s your motivation?”
“The endgame,” he said, his gaze never straying from hers.
“There won’t be much to enjoy about your endgame if you’re too dead to see the end of it.”
“Don’t worry,” he said with a chuckle. “No one can get rid of me that easily.”
“Because you won’t fail in this?”
“Because I need more time with you.”
Those words swept through her, turning her insides to mush. He was staring at her, she realized a moment later as she forced herself to look at him, taking in everything he was saying. She remembered how captivated she had felt, seeing the beginnings of morning light, but he looked just as captivated by her.
“You’re staring, you know.”
“You’re worth staring at.”
From anyone else, those words might have made her roll her eyes, but coming from him, they only managed to make her blush brighter than before.
She thought of what Isla had said the last time she’d seen her.
Don’t fall in love. It only ends one way.
But how could she not?
It wasn’t as if it was something that could be stopped once it started. She couldn’t turn what she felt off any more than she could pretend she felt nothing.
She cupped his face before leaning into him.
He slipped his hands beneath the skirt of her dress, fingers skimming over the lace between her legs, but he didn’t delve beneath the delicate fabric until he had his hand cupping the nape of her neck and was dragging her down for a kiss. Only then did he yank the fabric to the side, zeroing in on exactly where she needed him most.
A gasp left her, but she didn’t let the bliss she was feeling stop her from reaching for his belt buckle and wrestling it undone with one hand.
She could almost feel the smile on his face as he lifted his hips and helped her free his erection.
He palmed her hip, squeezing tight as he drew her down, rubbing his cock through her folds.
“Now,” she said, her voice needy, her nails digging into his shoulders.
Uilleam whispered something against the curve of her throat, but the words were lost on her, and she couldn’t bring herself to care when he finally pushed inside her.
Having him inside her felt right.
Nothing had ever felt as good.
She leaned back as much as she could, rolling her hips, her eyes squeezing shut as she focused on the sensations he evoked.
What started gentle turned into something that had her blood running hot and her voice breaking as she screamed his name.
It all became a blu
r.
The wet friction …
His teeth skimming over her throat before latching on …
Ragged groans that tore free from them both.
And when she came, an out-of-body experience that had her seeing stars, she couldn’t bring herself to loosen the grip she had on his shirt.
Because she never wanted to let go.
31
Bella bella
Carmelo Albini wasn’t the sort of man who took meetings with anyone unless they were of his organization or the Coalition.
And even then, he only met when it was absolutely necessary. He had never been what most would consider a people person and had the rather amusing tendency to say whatever was on his mind, even at the expense of whoever he was speaking with.
That was what the top men in his organization were for. They determined whether something was a waste of his time or if their concerns actually warranted a face to face with the mafia Don.
He was particular that way.
It was a rather well-known fact that Carmelo despised having his time wasted, and if it was, he would happily make an example out of the man foolish enough to do it.
Uilleam, on the other hand, had a standing invitation. He needed only to call, and Carmelo would accommodate him.
He had been friends with Alexander, despite the man. Well … as much as one could befriend someone who was prone to random acts of violence and savagery.
Even now, he could still remember the days Carmelo would stop by the castle for dinner, bringing his wife and two sons along. It had always been a rather pleasant affair when they came around, thanks in part to the fact that Carmelo’s presence had seemed to keep Alexander mellow.
At least in the earlier days.
There had been only a few men Alexander could be around without becoming paranoid that they were trying to encroach on his business.
Carmelo was Italian, part of a long lineage of Cosa Nostra, and unless that same blood ran through their veins, there would be no need for him to worry.
To them, family was family—everything else came last.
But toward the end of his seemingly unending life, Alexander had gone too far on more than one occasion and even Carmelo hadn’t been able to be around him without wanting to kill him.
Only after the man had died did Uilleam get back into contact with him. And by the time he had started his own ventures while taking over the family business, he would almost consider the man a friend.
So when a problem presented itself that he couldn’t immediately solve—this particular problem beginning and ending with Gaspard—Uilleam went to the only person he knew would keep his confidence while also potentially providing him with a solution.
It was only a bonus that Carmelo was in the Coalition as well.
“When you said you wanted me to come with you today,” Karina said, drawing him from his thoughts. “I didn’t think you meant to Italy.”
He had said he wanted to take her everywhere—that he wanted to show her the world. His interest had always been complex when it came to her, but after last night, he had to admit this wasn’t just a casual feeling.
It wasn’t merely curiosity anymore.
He wanted to know everything there was to know about her. The good, the obscene, and everything else she didn’t share with anyone else.
More than ever, he found himself distracted, wanting to spend more time with her rather than the never-ending work that was his empire.
“We were invited to dinner, poppet. It would have been rude to decline.”
Besides, it would have been a travesty if he hadn’t been able to see her in this dress with its gauzy fabric and high slit that revealed the creamy expanse of her legs beneath.
He was more curious about how long it would take him to unlace the strings along the back of it later.
She tried to hide it as she tucked her hair behind her ears, her gaze falling onto the water as they rode the taxi toward the manor only reachable by this river, but she was pleased.
Carmelo, Uilleam thought, had always had the right idea when it came to his privacy. He refused to stay in the city, and after ensuring that no one could even approach his home unless they were on a boat, he made it vastly harder for his enemies to reach him.
They were nearly to the gates when he spotted the young Albini brothers racing along the side of the property, oblivious to everything around them.
“Oh wow,” Karina murmured, drinking in everything around them from the tall wrought-iron gates that opened to the stone stairs.
The villa itself was perched at the very top of the hill, as vast as it was beautiful.
“I’ve always heard these villas were beautiful, but seeing one in person is utterly breathtaking.”
Uilleam smiled as he took her hand and helped her off the boat, nodding toward one of Carmelo’s men waiting at the gate. He might have been wearing a suit and polished leather shoes, but the man was also capable of violent things better left unspoken.
He spoke into the wired earpiece a moment before he opened the gate and allowed them through.
Carmelo and Aurora were waiting for them by the time they reached the top.
“Good to see you, Uilleam,” Carmelo greeted with a kiss to both of his cheeks. “And Karina, always a pleasure.”
He repeated the same gesture with Karina before Aurora enveloped her in a hug.
Aurora was unlike his mother in most ways. She was kind and considerate, welcoming in a way his mother wasn’t.
He was glad Karina was meeting her.
“Come, we can talk in my office.”
He touched Karina’s back briefly before he left her with Aurora, following Carmelo to his office on the opposite side of the property.
“You’ve brought her here,” Carmelo said conversationally, though there was a certain note of curiosity there. “Can you trust her?”
The question was a loaded one if he had ever heard one.
One that he, surprisingly, didn’t have to think too much about.
He glanced back a moment, seeing her through the tall windows as she smiled at whatever Aurora was saying to her before they both disappeared into the villa.
“She’s given me no reason not to.”
Carmelo accepted this with a nod of his head, opening the door to his office. “Good. Let’s talk.”
His office was a traditional room complete with bookshelves built into the walls and a desk of the same dark mahogany.
A sitting area was positioned just off to the side in front of a fireplace where flames burned bright and the wood crackled from the heat.
Carmelo didn’t hesitate to walk over to the gold bar cart and pour them both a drink. Uilleam had never been much of a drinker—he’d seen how it affected his father and never liked the idea of being anything like him—but Carmelo, he indulged.
The man didn’t speak until he’d sat in his chair—always to the right and angled away from the door—and taken a sip of his brandy. “Gaspard never did like your father.” Uilleam shrugged.
Not many had.
Even before he’d gone mad there at the end, Alexander Runehart had never been a likable man. He was too gruff and blunt—too prone to violence even for the most minuscule insult. He’d had more enemies than anyone Uilleam could ever think of.
“I assume my father slighted him in some way.”
A curious quirk curled the left side of Carmelo’s mouth. “Shunned is the better word there, I think. As often as Gaspard had tried to go into business with your father for years ... I would be more surprised if he welcomed you with open arms even with all you’ve accomplished.”
Uilleam contemplated what reasons his father might have had to refuse whatever endeavor Gaspard had wanted.
“I shouldn’t find it surprising at all that I’m still paying for my father’s actions.”
He didn’t doubt that he would for a long time to come. The only question was just how powerful and numerous his enemies were.
<
br /> “Is this truly what you want?” Carmelo asked. “You don’t need the Coalition, not with all you’ve accomplished on your own.”
It wasn’t a question of whether he needed to be a part of the elusive organization, but rather how he could use it to his own benefit.
“It’s the next logical step,” he found himself saying.
“Then what are you willing to do to obtain it? You have my vote—that you already know. And considering you’ve not asked about anyone other than Gaspard, I assume you already have the majority?”
On the surface, it appeared quite simple to join the elite group of criminals that made up the Coalition. It all came down to the number of votes a man had, as well as his ability to pay the initial fee and the yearly dues.
Uilleam’s fortune was vast, in part because of his own dealings but even more so because of his family’s legacy.
Now, it was just a question of the votes he needed.
“I have three,” Uilleam said, mostly to himself.
The Coalition was made up of six men.
Carmelo Albini, the boss of bosses.
Haruto Nakamura, head of the Yakuza in the Eastern hemisphere.
And finally, Thomas Callahan, a man who ran a vast criminal network the likes of which the Americas had never seen before.
“I imagine Marko is firmly for whatever Gaspard wants. He always did blindly follow the man.”
Uilleam smiled ruefully. “It also doesn’t help that he hates you and will likely vote against anything you agree to.”
“Russians,” Carmelo said with a shrug. “I know no other men who hold grudges quite as long. I’ll … take care of that little problem. Don’t worry about him.”
“Gaspard won’t change his decision.”
Carmelo nodded. “As long as you know.” He finished off the rest of his drink. “Find what the man covets and give it to him. I’m sure he’d be more amenable to any request should you manage that.”
“What does he covet?”
He had been asking himself that very question for a few weeks now.
White Rabbit: The Rise (The Kingmaker Saga Book 1) Page 26
