He was a negotiator—she’d seen plenty of evidence of that the day before—so he would respect a well-planned negotiation. It wouldn’t be safe to rely only on his good will, though. She would look hard for some leverage. Something she could hold against him if she needed it.
Immediately, though, right now, she needed to establish with him that there would be a negotiation and that he would give up something for the work that she did.
“So, look,” she said in a business-like tone and as light as possible, “I’ll help you the best I can and I’ll make a success of your launch. Whatever it is. In return, afterwards, you’ll formally hand full control of the club back to my father.”
His eyebrow lifted a fraction of an inch. “You aren’t in a position to negotiate here, Princess.”
“You could be mistaken about that.” Still keeping it light.
She sat back. “I’m agreeing to remain in your captivity as a hostage to keep Daddy sweet. But you need to keep in mind the kind of a night you’re talking about, the people you want to impress with it.”
She looked up to check that she had his full attention. “You want to have me in charge of that, not Daddy. He is a genius with hospitality and he’s great at making the guests welcome and comfortable. He’s the perfect club proprietor.”
She gave him a moment for it to sink in. “But in terms of style, music, what’s cool right now? He’s not what you’d call cutting edge, Mr. Agostini. You leave that to Daddy and your guests will be bopping to a swing-era big band.”
She had already established that Pierce Agostini knew nothing about DJs or any of the key aspects of the running of a club. Now she hoped that he understood that she would be the key to making his night a success.
A smile played across his lips and she saw him struggle to stifle it. “All right, Princess. For your very valuable help and assistance, I shall willingly make an appropriate concession.”
“Oh, no. We settle it now. I’ve told you what I want.”
“I thought you wanted to negotiate.”
“I did. We have. I know what you need, and I’ve told you my price, Mr. Agostini.”
His eyes flashed. Was that frustration, admiration, or simply anger? Through the screen, she couldn’t say. He closed his eyes and nodded. “All right, Princess.”
“You know I’ll need it in writing.”
“You know, in my line of work, we don’t use contracts and have the courts to fall back on.”
Her voice was firm now. She felt that she had some control of her future at last. “I believe in your ‘line of work,’ you’re a man of honor, Mr. Agostini. I just want you to write down what we said and I know that you’ll keep your word. The whole thing would go a whole lot better, though, if you would just let me know what it is that we’re supposed to be doing here.” She gave him a pleading frown. “Let me do my best for you. I’m not going to sell your secrets to the Russians, you know.”
He snapped back, “Good analogy.” It felt like a slap in the face.
“Really?” Her voice tightened and rose. “You’re not serious.”
“How would I know whether you were or you weren’t?”
“What are you saying, that I could be feeding information to that guy you called over in the parking lot? I don’t know the depths of your paranoia, Mr. Agostini. I don’t have any information. And you know that the first and only time I ever saw that Russian was yesterday, from the back of your car.”
“You could have seen him in the club.”
“If he’d ever been a guest at Hotsteppa’s, then I would have seen him for sure. That’s how I know that he has never been there.”
He glowered. “You should be meeting Dino soon. I just spoke to him and he’s waiting for you. I’ll see you back here.” And the screen went black.
Pierce paced around the apartment. Something was really going off the rails here. How had he wound up in a position where he was negotiating with the hostage? When she said she wanted something, his instinct was to want to give it to her.
Why does this girl make me feel this way? What makes her so different from all of the others? What is it about her?
All his life, he had relied on his instincts to make decisions. Now he was beginning to wonder if they were somehow turning against him. Like a part of him had changed sides. This was madness.
Now was not the time for a course of navel-gazing. The biggest and most important deal he had ever even considered could easily turn into a puff of vapor.
Hell, a deal was only an imaginary thing, a wisp of an idea, until you got people ready to buy in and bring some cold, hard cash. You started with a vision and then you did everything you could to turn it into a reality. A big part of that was getting other people to believe in it, and money was a sure sign of belief.
He needed to consider carefully the list of potential investors. He had to prepare a prospectus. He had to make certain that everything would be in place for a launch that would be mind-blowing. Spectacular.
His decision to put Princess in charge of running the club for the night had not been an easy one. When he chose Hotsteppa’s in the first place, it was partly in thinking that old man Grace’s years of experience would bring the right element of glamor and pizazz, to give the event the zing that it absolutely must have.
When he met with Tobin Grace earlier that day, Agostini had begun to wish that he’d gone with his other choice of club instead. The management of the Laguna were weak individuals, he already knew that and it was a big part of what swayed him toward Hotsteppa’s.
He knew from the start that he would need people around him who could pull the evening together. The premises were nothing. You could do it in an art gallery, a warehouse, on a ferry. It was the people, that sense of how to present an evening, an event, and a place.
Without that—without the flair—it wouldn’t matter where the thing was staged. It could the Guggenheim; it would still just be a big, echoing room.
Meeting with Tobin Grace had made him think he’d made the wrong choice, until he had the idea of putting Princess in charge. Now it was starting to look as if she might try to take charge of him.
He could not have that.
Calhoun said, “Miss, we’re just going to come off the road to go into—” he pointed ahead, “—do you see that little town there? Looks like something from the old west, don’t it? We’re to pick up Dino there.”
They drove into a low-rise town, where the main street storefronts all had painted wood sings. Dino waved from the sidewalk in a gray frock coat over a brocade vest with a loose bow tie. His patent shoes were black and pointed.
He was standing in front of a lounge bar that actually looked like a place where people would want to lounge. The bottom halves of the huge plate glass windows were frosted, and heavy red velvet drapes were tied back halfway down.
He beamed at Princess as he climbed in. “Hello, sport. It’s great to see you again, and looking so fine today.” His smile was contagious.
“So,” he smiled as he looked her up and down, “Isn’t Pierce Agostini a lucky man to have you in his tender care.”
“Not so tender,” she said sullenly. “And I’m not in his care through any choice of my own.”
“Is he not looking after you? Is he not taking good care of you?” Dino made a sad face as he looked at the shopping bags.
“He’s doing what suits him.” She folded her arms.
“Don’t be so fast to judgement. You may not know all there is to know about Pierce Agostini.”
“He kidnapped me, Dino.”
“I’m sure it was nothing personal.”
“I know that he’s a gangster. A hoodlum. That he’s a ruthless criminal and he’s taken my daddy’s club from him by force.”
“Listen, Princess, I knew Pierce Agostini a long time. Since we were in high school together. We were in a pretty comfortable neighborhood, but his daddy went through some bad times.
“Pierce grew up tough because he ha
d to. He’d started to run his first gang in high school.”
“Forgive me, Dino, but you aren’t making him sound very angelic yet.”
“Wait up there.” He smiled and held his hand palm downwards. “Don’t be too impatient, Princess.” His lips pressed together as his head shook. “There was a kid, Knuckle we all called him. People thought it was because he was hard, but the only scary thing about Knuckle was his face.
“Not what anyone would call a looker, you know? People would say, ‘Only a mother could love him.’ Only Knuckle didn’t have a mother. Got herself killed in a skiing accident.
“She was on a blue run, sheets to the wind, I mean loaded, trying to impress the hell out of her ski pro, who she was shtupping at the time. Well, she shtupped right into him. Slammed the both of them into a redwood.
“The father took to drinking. After that, Knuckle more or less brought up his brother and two sisters, single-handed. And himself. Took care of his Pa, never begrudged him a thing. Forgave his drunken rages. Brought up his little sister. He was the man of the house. If anyone ever said a word about his Pa, Knuckle would tell them, ‘You got no idea what that man’s been through.’
“Anyway, so one day Knuckle got wind of a move Pierce was going to make on a local coke crew. Snuck around their lab, some lockup in a sketchy part of town. Started a fire out in back of it.
“Half the crew busted out the back, guns ready. Knuckle backed a van in through the front. Held up the whole gang. Seven or eight of them there at the time.
“Pierce had no clue about Knuckle trying anything like that. When he heard about it, he was wild. I mean he was raging. ‘That dumb kid, what does he think he’s doing? Get himself killed like that. If he goes down, what’ll happen to his family?’
“Anyway, Knuckle made it out of there with the coke. The whole stash as far as anyone could tell. Torched the place on his way out. Certainly no one was ever heard of again buying rocks from the South End Crew.
“Knuckle got the stash squared away and everybody thought ‘end of story,’ right? But the South End second-in-command, Janos, real asshole. Razored face, attitude to match. Late one night, he got the jump on Knuckle.
“Way smaller and outclassed, Knuckle hardly stood a chance. Plus, Janos produced a blade about yea long.” Dino held his hands out, wider apart than the width of his hips. “Knuckle fell back, thought it was going to be lights out. Janos lunged at him. He caught the blade on his forearm. Helluva mess. Made a turn to get away, used his other elbow for guard. He flukes a crack on the back of Janos’ wrist, blade sliced Janos’ guts wide open.
“Janos survived, but solid food’s off. He wears bags and tubes and he can’t walk more than twenty or thirty feet. Cops knew it was self-defense but they wanted the stash. So, they went after Knuckle with an attempted homicide.
“So, here’s the thing. Pierce fitted up some DNA bullshit, got a slick mouthpiece to stand up in court, proved beyond reasonable doubt that it was him in the struggle. Took the rap for Knuckle. Did the large end of three to five federal time.
“When he got out, he came back like he’d been away on a cruise. Knuckle tried to thank him. He said, ‘Forget it. You seen what this did for my rep? How’s your old man?”
“So, why did you call him Knuckle?”
“Great kid, solid gold. But knuckle is all that keeps his ears apart.”
His smile was as sincere as his clothes were deceptive. She asked him, “What’s with the flashy duds? Are you going to a costume party?”
He just smiled back. Somehow, the fact that he didn’t offer an explanation made her trust him more. “Well, it looks good on you, anyway. A Stetson, and you’d pass for Wyatt Earp.”
Princess was glad that she had negotiated a deal with Pierce before she heard Dino’s tale. She tried to picture Agostini in that story. It made her see him in a new light. She felt a new respect for him, and a sting of something nervous that made her light and tense at the same time.
The thought of seeing him in New York made her chest swell. She wondered whether it really was compassion that drove him to take the rap for Knuckle. Of course, Dino could have made the whole thing up.
Agostini sat on the couch in the loggia with the lights of Manhattan at his feet. He worked the laptop, with a tablet and two phones on the table. The elevator bell dinged and he heard the doors glide open.
When he turned he saw her, wedged between Dino and Calhoun, the sight of her lifted him, even if she was wearing her scowl. Maybe because of it. He was getting used to the heat of her glower. Both of the men dwarfed her height, but his eyes were straight on her.
The flurry of elaborate shopping bags that Calhoun could barely handle struck Agostini as like an avalanche of chaos. Agostini did not laugh or even snigger at Calhoun’s burden, although it took an effort. He looked at Princess. She glowered back at him as he rose and stepped toward the elevator.
He had brought her pretty much by force into this situation, but she was so unfazed by it all. The sight of her made his heart sing. At the same time, when he looked at her, he had a feeling of things swirling out of control.
The worrying part was the way that, on some level, he welcomed it. He found himself thinking, Maybe you’ve been too much in control and for too long. Which was ridiculous, right? Being too much in control reminded him of the saying, “You can’t be too thin or too rich.”
Too thin he could see, in fact. Most of the women he’d been with were way too thin. It wasn’t healthy. The runway models, they didn’t even look healthy most of the time—they looked like they needed treatment. Look at Princess, now. She was a good, womanly weight.
But too rich? What could that even mean? Well, it wasn’t something that she was ever going to have to worry about. Not if his meeting with her father that morning was anything to go by. There wasn’t the smallest risk of that man becoming too rich.
If there ever was a way for her to inherit that club, it would either be a financial hole in the ground or an actual hole. In the ground. After the meeting, Agostini had thought he should make some inquiries, so he made a couple of calls. The answers hadn’t come back yet, but Agostini felt sure he knew what they would be. He hadn’t seen much cause for optimism.
A part of him thought, She ought to know. She has a right to be told.
Calhoun struggled with Princess’ bags as Princess buzzed around him, all the way to her suite. Agostini had already taken to thinking of it as “The Dungeon.” He smiled as he drew Dino aside and out to the loggia. There were things they needed to get caught up on. “Nice duds, Dino. Destry rides again.”
“That girl.” Dino looked over his shoulder to make sure she was out of earshot. “Pretty rare kind of a fish you’ve landed there.”
“How did she seem on the way back?”
Dino stopped and his eyebrows shot up. He took Pierce by the shoulders and held him at arm’s length. “How did she seem?” Slowly, he shook his head. “Maybe I got it wrong. Maybe she’s landed you, old buddy. Never thought I’d see it happen.”
“It’s business, Dino. You know what I need her for.”
“You know about the Stockholm syndrome thing—the captive’s supposed to fall in love with the kidnapper.” He sat on the couch. “You may be doing this the wrong way around.”
Agostini said, “Get out of here, Dino,” as they sat around the table. “You want a bourbon? I got some eighteen-year-old Elijah Craig.” He called to Callaghan to fetch a bottle and glasses.
Perfectly Bad: a bad boy romance Page 10
