“You didn’t get away with it,” Alex said as if it was a fact, not a question.
Kari was shaking her head. “I did get away with it. But Vito didn’t. They searched his hospital room and found nothing. But they didn’t stop there. To my shock, and to Vito’s shock, they searched every room on that floor. Every single room. When they found that wad in that boy’s backpack, they not only arrested the boy, but they arrested Vito too. They knew he put that dope in that kid’s room. But they figured the kid worked for Vito, and that was why that dope ended up in his backpack. And they had no doubt I was the one who put it there.”
“Did they arrest you too?” Alex asked her.
“They cuffed me and took me downtown, yeah. But they let me go. The prosecutor was a black lady who didn’t want me caught up in any white man’s shit, she told me. She ordered the cops to drop the charges against me. I wasn’t charged. But Vito and that innocent kid was. He was eighteen, Alex. He’d just turned eighteen.”
“What happened?”
“Vito got out on bail, but the kid couldn’t post bail. I begged Vito to get him out, or I was going to go to the cops. Vito claimed he would do just that, but he never did. And that night, that boy’s first night in jail, somebody killed him.”
Alex let out a harsh exhale.
“I can’t swear to it,” Kari continued, “but I believed it was Vito’s people who did it to shut him up. They needed him to be the scapegoat. And it worked. After he died, the prosecutor had to drop the charges against Vito. The kid was the one who had the drugs. That guy who supplied them, if he was their informant, they weren’t going to expose him. Vito got off scot-free. I guess I did too. The only person who suffered was the only person who had nothing to do with it. A kid just three years older than Jordan is right now. I killed him, Alex. That moment I walked into his hospital room and put those drugs in his backpack, was the beginning of the end of his life. I did that. Nobody else. It was all my fault.”
Then Kari asked for absolution from Alex: “Wasn’t it?” she asked him, as if she needed him to say no, it wasn’t her fault at all.
But Alex was not that kind of man. “Yes,” he said. “Your actions caused his death.”
A tear fell from one of Kari’s eyes, and she nodded. She knew it too.
Alex stood up, and lifted Kari up. Then he did something remarkable. He didn’t bash her. He didn’t call her the lowest thing crawling. He pulled her into his arms. Kari sobbed in his arms. She sobbed for that guilt she felt all those years ago, and never paid penance.
As Alex held her, he thought it through. And then made a decision. “What does Maggio want?”
“Ten million,” she said. “Or he’ll go to TMZ and tell what happened. He might not have a smoking gun, but they’ll do the research and find out it did happen, that that kid was accused alongside Vito, and that he died in jail. He thinks it’ll at least derail your chances of ever becoming an ambassador. And it’ll derail our marriage, and you seeing me in any positive light.”
She said this and looked at Alex.
But Alex seemed focused on something else. “Call him,” he said. “Set up a meeting.”
Kari, surprised, looked up at him. “You want me to meet with him?”
“Tell him you’ll give him whatever amount he wants. You’ve got to shut him up,” he said.
And those words alone made Kari even more acutely aware of just how seriously Alex took Maggio’s threat to derail his chances, and that he, too, believed how that one episode in her past life could easily derail her current life. What she didn’t know was how Alex felt about her now.
But that was a conversation for another day.
“I’ll set it up,” she said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Kari’s Rolls Royce drove up behind the boarded up factory on the outskirts of Apple Valley, and stopped in the parking lot beside a BMW already parked there. Maggio Margolis, beaming with excitement as if he knew, once he reminded her that he had the goods on her and could ruin her life, she’d come through for him, stepped out of the BMW. Chicks like Kari Grant, he believed, had too much to lose to risk it. He buttoned his suit coat as the backdoor to the Rolls unlocked, and he got inside.
But his smile turned to a fast frown when he saw Alex Drakos sitting in the backseat. When he looked on the driver seat, behind the steering wheel, it wasn’t Kari either. It was the man he knew to be Odysseus Drakos, Alex’s crazy younger brother. Another man was on the front passenger seat.
Oz was smiling as he looked through the rearview at their guest. “Surprise,” he said. Then his smile disappeared. “Get your ass in the car.”
“I don’t understand,” Maggio said. “I was supposed to be meeting Kari Grant.”
“Meet her husband, Alex Drakos,” Oz said. “Now get in!”
But Maggio was still hesitant. Drakos was a rich businessman. Surely he wouldn’t try any underhanded shit. But he also knew what Drakos did to Money Visconni. He wasn’t going anywhere with that man.
He turned to run back to his BMW, but he felt what he knew was the barrel of a gun against his back. When he turned, the man on the passenger seat got out of the car with a gun in his hand. And he aimed it at Maggio.
“Give me your keys,” the man said to him.
“What?” Maggio asked.
Maggio looked at Alex. What kind of bullshit was this? But Alex was looking straight ahead. Maggio handed the man his keys.
“Now get in the car,” the man ordered. Maggio was too smart to argue with a gun. He got in the Rolls.
The man closed the door, and Oz drove away. When Maggio looked back, the gunman had gotten into his BMW and was driving away, too, but only in the opposite direction.
He looked at Alex. “What are you going to do to me?” he asked. “I don’t know what this is about.”
“It’s about your efforts to blackmail my wife,” Alex said. And then he looked at Maggio with a hard look. “That’s what it’s about.”
Maggio couldn’t deny it. He’d look like a fool denying it. That man wasn’t out there for his health. “It wasn’t my decision,” he said.
Oz looked at him through the rearview as he drove. Alex was already looking at him. “Whose decision was it?” he asked him.
“We need to make a deal.”
“I already have,” said Alex. “You aren’t dead yet. Whose decision was it?”
Maggio exhaled. “Paddy’s,” he said. “Paddy Jupe.”
“Jupalani again?” Oz asked. “That scoundrel? What does he have to do with this?”
“What about Paddy Jupe?” Alex asked Maggio.
“After Kari married you,” Maggio said, “Paddy heard that I was running my mouth to certain individuals about having the goods on Kari, and I’d give that information to the highest bidder. But nobody was biting. Nobody wanted to mix it up with you. Then I heard from Paddy.”
“What did Paddy say?”
“He said he couldn’t use the info, but that I should get the money from Kari directly. He said she’d pay a king’s ransom to make that all go away, now that you were up for that ambassadorship.”
Oz glanced at Alex through the rearview. Alex was staring at Maggio.
“He said you can’t afford any bad publicity,” Maggio continued. “He said your wife wouldn’t allow her past actions to cause you any grief. I was shocked that I hadn’t thought of it myself. So I gave it a shot. But I was just testing the waters. I never dreamed she’d go through with it.”
“Good, because she’s not,” Alex said.
“Then where are you taking me?” Maggio asked.
“Safe house,” said Alex.
Maggio knew what that meant. They were taking him to the place where he was going to be killed. They were taking him to his grave!
And he wasn’t allowing that.
As Oz drove that car, he eased his hand down to his pocket. But he waited for his moment.
It came when Oz turned a corner, causing the car to lean into th
e curve. As soon as it did, Maggio pulled out his gun and aimed it at Alex. Oz, seeing it, swerved the car enough that it dislodged Maggio from his seat and caused him to misfire. Because he did fire his weapon.
Alex, realizing what Maggio had done, reached over and grabbed his hand, the hand that contained that gun, and lifted it into the air, away from him. It fired off several rounds.
Oz continued to swerve the car, to keep Maggio off balance, as the two men fought for their lives in that backseat.
But Maggio, a big man and much younger than Alex, was strong as an ox. He put up the fight of his life.
He was stronger than Alex, but he wasn’t smarter.
“Spin it!” Alex yelled to his brother, and as soon as he said it, Oz slung the car into a purposeful spin, and Alex reached behind Maggio and opened the car door behind him. Then, before Maggio could realize what was happening to him, Alex pushed him with all the strength he had. Alex pushed him out of the car and the car’s tail end did a spin right into Maggio, almost ripping his body apart.
Oz slammed on brakes, and the car came to a halt.
Alex jumped out of the backseat and ran to where Maggio was now lying. Although it was obvious he was dead, Alex checked his pulse anyway to be sure. When he got no reading, he was sure. He was dead. And he got back into the car, and Oz sped away.
He looked at Alex through the rearview. “That was close,” he said to him.
Their hammering hearts proved just how close.
CHAPTER THIRTY
After Alex showered downstairs inside the penthouse, he made his way upstairs to the master bedroom. Kari, sitting up in bed with the bedspread covering her nakedness, heard when he first entered the penthouse. She laid there waiting. When she heard the shower running in one of the rooms downstairs, she knew it had been a tough meeting and he was cleaning off the filth he had to wallow in. Kari, feeling awful that he always had to clean up her messes, waited for him to come upstairs.
When Alex finally made it upstairs, he wore a bathrobe and had the look of a man who did what he had to do and had no regrets about it either. He exuded that kind of confidence.
“Still awake?” he said to her as he made his way around to his side of the bed.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Kari said, watching him. “How did it go?”
Alex removed the robe, revealing his naked body, and got in bed beside her. Only he laid on his back. “It went,” he said.
“What did Maggio say?”
“He said Paddy Jupe gave him the idea.”
“Paddy Jupe again? But he’s dead.”
“He gave him the idea before he died.”
“But why would he want to have anything to do with Maggio?”
“I don’t know,” he said, then he took Kari’s naked body and laid it on top of his own. “Maggio mentioned that ambassadorship,” he said.
That surprised Kari. Her stomach lying on top of his stomach, she was able to look at him. “He mentioned it how?” she asked.
“He claimed Paddy said I can’t afford any bad publicity right now. Presumably because it would hurt my chances.”
“Oh, right,” said Kari. “Oh man,” she added. “I am so sorry, Alex!”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about. He wanted to extort money from you, and instead of paying him out, you did the right thing and came to me. I handled it.”
Kari wanted to ask how, but she knew not to ask any such thing. She laid her head back on his chest, and he held her.
“And by the way,” he said.
Kari looked at him.
“You’re still perfect in my eyes.”
Kari was shocked. “I am?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“But that boy, Alex.”
“You were a child yourself. You were nineteen. Just a year older than he was. And you thought you were in love. I told you love trumps everything. Including good sense.”
Kari smiled through her tears. “Thank you, Alex,” she said, and laid her head back down.
Then his cell phone rang. He listened for a long time on the other end, said a few words, and then ended the call.
Kari looked at him. “Who was that?” she asked him.
“The White House.”
Kari was surprised. “The White House?”
“The president is requesting my presence, at his residence, for dinner tomorrow night. Me and my bride,” Alex added.
Kari’s heart dropped. “Me? At the White House?”
Alex nodded, smiled, and rubbed her hair. “Yes,” he said.
“But why would the president want . . .. You think it’s because he’s made a decision on that ambassadorship?”
“That’s what I’m thinking, yes.”
“If it’s a no, why would he invite you to the White House?”
“That’s what I’m thinking, too,” Alex said, and then they both smiled. And he held Kari tighter.
But the timing, however, wasn’t lost on either one of them.
But not an hour after that dinner, on an isolated road heading to the airfield that housed his private plane, Alex and Kari were under assault by a big, pickup truck and a determined gunman.
They were rear ended by that gunman, their driver was shot and killed, and Alex had jumped over the seats and taken control of the steering wheel of the SUV they were traveling in. The truck that had rear-ended them and killed their driver ultimately lost control, drove off road, and landed in a lake. Alex gave his gun to Kari, and dived in after the gunman.
Kari was scared when Alex left her in that SUV. But she held that gun like she aimed to use it, and waited for his return. And when a car suddenly drove up and parked behind the SUV, she ducked down, ready to handle her business.
As soon as she saw a gunman approach the SUV, and aimed his gun at her as soon as he saw her, she didn’t give him a chance to get it right. She fired on him as soon as she saw that he was armed. He let off a round, too, but she had beaten him to the punch. He fell.
But then a second gunman appeared. And fired his own weapon before Kari saw him coming. She was hit once, and then twice. Maybe even a third time, but she wasn’t sure. Everything got blurry.
She remembered hearing Alex’s voice. He was screaming and yelling. Then she heard footsteps running away from the SUV, and then a car speeding away.
Then she saw Alex. She was going from complete blackness, to Alex’s face.
Alex had flung open the back passenger door, praying that his wife was going to be okay.
But she wasn’t okay.
She was lying on her back, with her big, beautiful, soulful eyes looking up at him as if she couldn’t believe what was happening. As if she, like the truck driver that tried to kill her, was nearing her last breath too.
And the blood, on her stomach, told Alex why.
He touched the blood as if he would only believe it if he touched it. He wanted to grab her, and hold her, and make it all right again, but he knew he couldn’t. He had to get her help. She needed help, not a hug. He had to get her where they could save her life!
He jumped behind the wheel of that SUV, flung it around like it was a sportscar, and sped back where they had come from: back toward DC. “It’s going to be alright, Karena,” he said as he pressed the button inside the SUV and was calling 911. “Hold on, you hear me? Hold on, baby. It’s going to be alright!”
It was the most terrifying drive of Alex’s life, and he’d had a lot of terror-filled drives. But none of those other times compared to this.
Because the life of his wife, his beloved and badly injured wife, was hanging in the balance.
And Kari could feel the SUV speeding away, but she could feel herself speeding downward too.
Because she was fading.
She could feel it through every pore of her body.
She was fading fast.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“Wanna fuck?”
Oz Drakos looked at the woman that had so boldly propositioned him. He was in the casi
no, walking around and minding his own business, and here this hot chick walked up to him and propositioned him. Just like that.
He wasn’t even tempted.
“No,” he said, and kept walking.
It was one thing for him to come onto a woman bold like that. It was another thing altogether when she came onto him that way. It was a double standard and he knew it. But he couldn’t help it. He wore the pants in every relationship he’d ever had. He started it, and he ended it. All of the power was always going to be with him.
“Sir? Mr. Drakos, sir?”
Oz turned to the sound of the slightly hysterical voice. When he saw that it was Lee McCrae, the newly-minted head of hotel security, he smiled. Now that was one piece of ass he definitely planned to fuck. “Yes?”
“It’s Mrs. Drakos, sir,” she said.
Oz’s smiled left. “What about her?”
Lee looked flustered. “She’s been shot, sir.”
Oz’s big eyes stretched. “What?”
“She’s been transported to a hospital in DC. I just got word from Tino Castellano in New York. He’s on his way there now. He told me to notify you.”
“And my brother?”
“He’s okay, sir.”
Oz suddenly felt the sense of urgency. “What plane did they take?”
“Mr. Drakos’s private plane.”
“Get the crew of the corporate plane ready. Tell them I want them ready for takeoff ASAP.”
“Yes, sir,” Lee said as Oz began to rush off. “Where are you going, sir?”
“To tell Jordan,” Oz said. “I don’t want him to hear it from anybody but me!” And Oz ran. With his long hair flapping against his back, he struck a mighty pose to all the ladies in the casino. They all took note.
But Oz didn’t take note of any of them. All he could think about was Kari, and what Jordan was going to do when he heard the news.
Alex Drakos: For My Lover Page 17
