“It’s about that ambassadorship,” she said. “It’s about the fact that, if Alex is the one the President selects, we may have to move to Greece for a little while.”
A sad look appeared in Jordan’s big eyes. “What about it?” he asked her.
“I want to know how you feel about it, Jordan,” Kari said.
Jordan pushed his glasses up on his face. “I don’t like it,” he said. “That’s how I feel about it. I don’t wanna leave my friends and my school.”
“I know you don’t. But Alex really wants it.”
Jordan nodded. “That’s what makes it so hard.”
“And he’s made so many sacrifices for us,” Kari reminded her son. “When he first planned to build this hotel, he didn’t plan to spend any real time in Apple Valley. But he moved here.” Although, Kari also knew, he was strongly considering moving himself and them away from there.
“But he did it for us,” Kari said. “He was trying his best not to disrupt our lives at all. He promised to spend every weekend with us, and so far, he’s kept that promise, J. He divides his time between his corporation in New York, and us. And for the kind of conglomerate he runs, that’s not easy to do.”
“I know it’s not,” Jordan said, looking over at Alex as Alex placed both hands in his pants pockets and continued to listen to that agent. “And I know he’s done a lot for us. And I’ll do anything for him. But moving all the way to another country?”
Kari nodded. It was going to be difficult for her, too, if it happened. “But helping somebody isn’t always going to be an easy call, Jordan. Sometimes a sacrifice is really a sacrifice. It’s sacrificing your own routine, or lifestyle, so that the person you love can make their dream come true.”
“You think he wants it that much?” Jordan asked.
“Oh, yes,” Kari said without hesitation, and she looked over at Alex too. He was listening to his Talent Director and the agent more than he was talking. “He wants it very much.”
Jordan exhaled. “But why?”
“Because it’s his homeland.”
“A homeland with a lot of problems right now,” Jordan said. “I looked it up. Greece is in a recession worse than ours. Their whole country is nearly bankrupt and the European Union doesn’t want to bail them out either.”
“But that’s why he wants to do it. He thinks he can help his country. He’s never asked us for anything. Not ever, Jordan. He’s always been the one giving. Now we can do something for Alex for a change. I just want you to think about it, okay? Don’t rule it out completely. Okay?”
Jordan nodded. He could do that. “Okay,” he said.
“Think about what it’ll mean for you, yes,” Kari said, “but also for Alex.”
Jordan smiled. “I can do that,” he said, and was about to make his getaway again.
But Kari pulled him back again. “And Jordan,” she reminded him, “it’s all in the family.”
All in the family meant that Jordan was not to bring it up to anybody outside of the family.
“I got you,” Jordan said. “You know I don’t talk like that.” And then he took off.
Because he was a good kid who could be trusted to keep his word, Kari didn’t worry about it. She, instead, walked over to Alex, and listened too. As she suspected, some diva pop star had ridiculous demands as a condition to her performing on one of the hotel’s biggest stages, and Alex, to his credit, Kari felt, wasn’t going for it.
She listened, like Alex was listening, but nodded whenever he did speak, because his every sentence ended in no. Not going to happen. She either performed or got sued. She was learning a lot about business from Alex.
And later that night, after another long day that went far longer than either one of them had planned, they laid in bed in each other’s arms. Too tired to do anything but hold on. But the holding was everything to both of them. Because they were at peace. Because all was right with the world.
They fell asleep, spooned together as one, as if they were in heaven.
But all hell would break loose the very next day.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Inside the massive casino that was adjacent to the hotel’s lobby, a pretty businesswoman from Indiana was getting the business too. Only it was being run on her by Alex’s kid brother Oz. But she wasn’t going for it. “Why do you need to know my sign?” she asked him.
“I don’t need to know it,” Oz said, “but I want to know it.”
“But why?”
“Because I want to know who I’m dealing with.”
“My sign won’t tell you any such thing.”
“Then tell me what it is. What’s the big deal?”
The woman looked curiously at him. Oz was only half paying attention to her, as his main focus, like always, was on the entire casino. But she was attractive enough to at least hold his partial interest.
And he was more-than-attractive enough to hold hers. “Okay,” she said. “You win. I’m a Leo.”
He gave her his infamous look-over: one of his assessing, do I really want to bother with this looks. She was beautiful, with those earnest midwestern looks. But she was eager too. And despite trying to pull that hard to get routine on him, she was thirsty as hell. So thirsty, he decided, that she turned him off more than she turned him on. Just like that.
“Oops,” he said to her. “Wrong answer.”
Now the woman that had been so coy, was gravely disappointed. “What do you mean wrong answer?”
“We’re incompatible,” Oz said. “A Leo and my birth sign? We’re kill each other in the end. Everybody knows that!”
The woman, who always thought of herself as the grand prize in any show, frowned at him. “What an asshole,” she said.
Oz, who saw that innocent act she was originally trying to play out, crumble, laughed. She was so angry with him and his laughter that she could do nothing but turn and walk away.
His big brother once warned him about his unsavory behavior when it came to the ladies. “Keep playing with these ladies the way you do,” Alex once told him. “You’re going to meet your match one of these days. She’ll treat you like you treat these ladies. It won’t be so funny to you then.”
Oz knew it, too, but until that day came, he was still going to have fun.
Odysseus “Oz” Drakos, the younger brother (by only a few years, he was quick to point out) of Alex Drakos, was sitting in the center of the massive casino at the Drakos Hotel and Casino in Apple Valley, Florida, in Armani-blue head to toe: from his suit to his tie to his shoes to the big hat he wore, he was a sight to behold. And with that cigar between his fingers and that loud, booming voice, he was now as much a spectacle and fixture of the casinos at The Drakos as the gambling tables and slot machines.
But not for nothing, he’d be the first to make clear. He had a very watchful eye. He was watching their guests come and go and play, play, play. From the slots to blackjack, they came to lose big bucks, or win even bigger bucks. He was seeing what worked, and what they could do better. Vegas might have been the queen of gambling at that moment in time, but Apple Valley, Oz was now convinced, was going to one day give that old queen a run for her money.
Not that Oz had always thought that it would. He thought it was a bad investment when Alex first broached the idea to him. Oz wanted no parts of it then. Even after it was built and operational, he had planned to go back to his beloved Greece since all of the dust had cleared after the death of his mob boss father, and stake his claim there.
But Alex didn’t want his kid brother to leave and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse: forty percent ownership of the casino end of The Drakos Hotel and Casino, and he would give Oz operational control of said casino. Although the offer did not include the hotel, Oz, a wealthy man in his own right, knew it was still too attractive an offer to turn down. He accepted, and stayed.
Now his brother and sister-in-law were entering the packed casino and heading his way.
Alex and Kari, entering the casin
o, heard Oz before they saw him. Not that it was unusual. His big, booming laugh, and even bigger personality, was becoming a fixture in that big, gambling hall.
And he was in full command when they walked in. He was no longer laughing, but was holding a conversation with a couple of Miami guys who bragged that South Beach made Apple Valley look like kid’s play.
But Oz’s main focus, at that moment, was on his brother and sister-in-law. They looked determined, and all business, as usual. But at least Kari had some flare to her dress: the occasional scarf or something of that nature. But Alex? Oz wondered if his brother ever let his hair down!
He also wondered what he’d done to deserve a visit from the boss. “What brings you two back here?” he asked them as they arrived at his chair. He dismissed the two braggers from South Florida simply by turning his attention elsewhere. They got the drift, and left.
But Alex was smiling. “Holding court like this,” he said to his kid brother. “Who do you think you are? Reno Gabrini?”
Oz laughed. “Not yet,” he admitted. “But if The Drakos keeps performing like it’s doing, who knows? They might be asking Reno Gabrini who does he think he is, Oz Drakos, one of these days!”
Alex and Kari both laughed at that. “That’ll be the day,” Alex said.
“So what brings you two back here?” Oz asked again.
“Your ass, what else?” Alex said.
“And what, pray tell,” Oz asked, “is my ass supposed to have done this time?”
“Did you tell Jordan about your life back in Greece?” Alex asked him.
“Probably, why?”
“The crime syndicate part of that life?” Alex asked.
“Probably, why?”
“Why, Oz?” Kari asked. “That wasn’t something we were ready to share with Jordan.”
“Why the hell not? He can handle it! He’s a smart kid.”
“With kid being the operative word,” Alex said. “He’s still a kid.”
“When we were fifteen, we were practically running our own households, Alexio! What do you mean he can’t handle a little truth? Because I never lie to him. I always tell him the truth.”
“But that wasn’t truth for you to tell,” Alex said. “You should have asked Kari or me first. And in the future, that’s exactly what you’re going to do.”
Alex always bossed Oz around. It was the very reason they had contentiousness in their relationship. “Yes, sir, Boss,” Oz said dismissively.
“Don’t dismiss it, Odysseus,” Alex said. “You live your life outside of the boundaries. When it comes to our son, you’ve got to stay inside those boundaries. Understand?”
Oz looked at his brother. He used to think it was all a farce. The idea that Alexio would want to be a husband and father again after such a disaster on both fronts when he tried it the first time. His wife divorced him and took up with their father. His son committed suicide. His daughter tried all kinds of evil against him, went to prison, and eventually managed to get away unscathed in Greece. And he decided to do it all over again? Oz thought he was insane! Until he met Kari and Jordan and got to know them for himself.
It was, Oz now realize, the sanest thing Alexio had ever done.
“Yes,” Oz said. “I understand.”
“Excuse me, Mrs. Drakos.”
They all turned to the sound of the soft voice. When Kari saw that it was one of her maids, a young woman from Guatemala named Elena, she smiled. “Hey, Elena,” she said. “What’s going on?”
“May I speak with you, ma’am, please?”
“Sure, what is it?”
“Private, please, ma’am?”
Kari could see something in her eyes. Something that wasn’t that ray of sunshine she usually saw. “Sure, you can,” she said. “Excuse us, gentlemen,” she said to her husband and brother-in-law, and she and Elena made their way out of the casino.
They walked right past Paddy Jupe, who stood on the far side of the massive casino with a ball cap down low on his forehead and in nondescript tourist clothing. He smiled when Kari walked right past him. He smiled because she had no idea.
And then he left too, pulling out his cell phone as he did.
When his boss answered, he smiled. “He took care of it,” he said.
“Is he reliable?” his boss asked over the phone. “That Puerto Rican sure as hell wasn’t. I heard Drakos’s wife beat his ass rather than the way it was supposed to go. What happened with that?”
“That didn’t work out according to plan,” Paddy admitted as he got outside and into his waiting SUV. “But this guy is reliable. I’ve got the goods on him.”
“What goods?”
“He has a particular predilection that can get him Life in prison if I expose his bad deeds. He’ll help us anytime we need him.”
“And what will this exercise entail?”
“Let Alex know what his wife will do when a wrong has been committed. And what he himself won’t do. It’s an exercise in creating a little tension. A little tension in a relationship, as my old man used to say, is always the beginning of the end. But, mainly, it will create bad publicity. Alex cannot afford bad publicity right now. Not when that ambassadorship is within his grasp.”
“What about those businessmen you’re in league with now?”
“They’ll get theirs. Their goals are not our goals, but I can give them what they want on my way to what we want. They want those sorry-ass properties around The Drakos. We want to bring down The Drakos. Big difference, but same road to travel to get there. But we won’t get shit unless Alex is in a weakened state. Bad publicity will give it a good start.”
“And if this shit backfires?”
“It’ll backfire with Alex thinking he thwarted a group of crooked businessmen trying to steal land he legitimately owns. We, my friend, will still be in the clear.”
Paddy’s boss laughed. “I like those odds. Keep me up to date.” And then they ended the call.
Paddy exhaled. Although the current plan appeared to be working, he hated when a plan failed, as the one involving Hector Estrada failed miserably.
“Fucking Hector!” he yelled, and tossed his phone aside.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
As soon as Kari escorted the maid into her office, and Kari walked behind her desk, the maid didn’t hold back.
“I was raped,” she said.
Kari had expected it to be about the extra rooms each maid had to take on to accommodate the fact that they had a zero tolerance policy for any maid who did not clean as they were trained to clean and was automatically terminated. They had terminated quite a few bad maids. Good maids like Elena were forced to take up the slack.
When Kari heard that dreaded word, she was shocked. “Raped? You were raped?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“When, Elena? By whom?”
“Just now. By the guest in room 4409. He forced me, Mrs. Drakos. I didn’t want it. I told him I didn’t want it.”
“Of course you didn’t want it,” Kari said, hurrying from behind her desk.
“He forced me!”
She pulled the maid into her arms, who was now sobbing. “I know. Please don’t cry. I know you didn’t want that to happen.”
A couple knocks were heard on Kari’s door, and then the door opened, prompting the maid to quickly pull away from her and turn her back to whomever had entered.
It was Toker de Bergeron, Kari’s direct supervisor. “Knock, knock, you there, Kari?”
Kari was upset by the intrusion, but realized Toker, as her boss, also needed to know.
But he wasn’t alone. With him was a black woman, a tall, sleek black woman in skin-tight spandex pants, a tucked in blouse, and a blazer. What Kari also noticed was that the woman had a holstered gun on her hip.
“Sorry to disturb you,” Toker said as they made their way on in, “but I wanted to introduce to you our brand new head of hotel security, Leslie McCrae, before you got away.”
“Everybody calls me Lee,
ma’am,” Leslie said with a smile, glad to finally meet a sister in power at The Drakos, as she extended her hand to Kari. “Very nice to meet you.”
She had a smile that could charm birds from trees, Kari thought. “Nice to meet you, Lee,” she said.
But Toker, who, by nature of his job as overseeing the basic operations of the hotel, got to work with Kari on a regular basis. He felt he knew her. And he knew when she wasn’t quite right. “What’s wrong?” he asked. Then he glanced over at the maid in the office.
“We’ve got a problem, Toke.”
“What kind of problem?”
Kari walked over to her office door, the door Toker and Lee had left opened, and closed it.
Lee had been nervous about meeting the wife of the owner of such an elaborate operation. But when she saw that Mrs. Drakos was actually a black woman, her nervousness was replaced with happy shock. It seemed like such a lily-white operation going in, with nothing but whites in the upper echelons of the hotel brass, as far as she had seen, that she just assumed the wife would be in that same vein too. Lee thought that she, as the black chief of hotel security, was going to be their one and only minority near the top. She thought wrong.
When Kari returned to her guests, she folded her arms. “One of our guests just raped one of my maids,” she said.
Even Lee was surprised. And before Toker could respond, she immediately went into what she knew best: security. “Is he still here?” Lee asked.
Kari looked at the maid. Elena finally turned around, her arms folded too. She nodded. “As far as I know, yes, ma’am,” she said.
“What happened?” Toker asked the maid.
“He raped me,” Elena said. “I do my job. I always do my job. I knock. Nobody answer. So I go into room. When I go into room, he there in the bedroom. I say, ‘I come back later.’ He say, ‘no, come here.’ I think he show me something I need to clean. So I go in bedroom.”
Her tears returned.
“Keep going,” Toker said.
Alex Drakos: For My Lover Page 10
