“Bailey called Roxanne and suggested she come check on you. Personally, I wouldn’t have bothered, but that wife of mine, she can be a whiny fuck when she doesn’t get her way.”
There he was, finally stepping forward to be seen.
“Showing your hand earlier than expected.” I gave him kudos for being straight with me.
“No point toe dancing around shit. You used my wife, that detail is worth a pretty penny.”
This time, instead of lashing out, I shook my head and laughed. Bailey had gone to the one person who had doubted us as a couple from the very moment she’d laid eyes on us, and this cunt thought he could use it as an excuse to visit and shake me down.
Me. Zane Teague.
“Consider that task checked on your to do list. Now, leave. And if you think I’ll forget about your little attempt to hustle me. Think again.”
He shrugged. “We’ll see.”
Roxanne shouted from somewhere outside.
“About last night, Roxy feels bad, but she shouldn’t, right?” He smirked. “In her condition she shouldn’t feel sorry for someone who forces her to do unspeakable, illegal things.”
Was that what she told him?
I was beginning to feel calmer. Having to deal with this irritating fucker was quelling the rage against Bailey. The prospect of having someone else on my radar that needed to be dealt with, helped more than I knew, and it became a conscious effort to either calm down, or kill him first and then move outside and kill his wife and her pup.
“I’d offer to help you straighten up, but I don’t give a fuck,” he sneered.
“You don’t get out of my fucking house while you can still, you’ll need a body bag and a gurney.”
Graham seemed satisfied that he’d gotten a rise out of me, had I have not been so raw over Bailey, then I wouldn’t have shown my hand and exposed just how much he irritated me. Even so, my days of being completely careless were a thing of the past.
Zane Teague was calculated.
“You’re still here.”
“The great Zane Teague isn’t all that scary,” he mocked and then switched his demeanor on a dime. “Coming, my love,” he shouted out the door, and turned back to me. “I’ll be in touch.”
I stayed put, my body too wired to move, it wasn’t beyond my current mood to chase him down the drive and rip his limbs off in front of his wife.
But fortune favored the brave, and I’d let him have this one supposed win, because the one who laughs last, always laughs the longest.
Once I was plummeted back into silence, my thoughts went back to Bailey. It was a devastating thought that what I had with Bailey meant so much more to me than her. To understand that she’d figured out I was in deeper than she was, was like a bolt of lightning striking me down and burning straight through the center of my soul. I’d never shied away from something I truly wanted for fear of the aftermath, and I thought we were the same on that page.
Maybe she wasn’t the right person because she didn’t want this enough.
I spun that around in my head.
I’d always seen Bailey by my side, the quiet strength that kept me going during troubled times. It seemed I was wrong about a lot lately. The stories I’d been telling myself about our unrequited love were pure bullshit and with that newfound understanding, I focused on trying to feel like me again.
The Zane Teague who didn’t get all butt hurt over losing a woman. The Zane Teague who wasn’t pussy whipped, but the one who did the pussy whipping.
I would go back to the mainland and focus fully on my business. I would sink myself into party nights and faceless pussy and not feel like I was betraying someone or waiting for my Bailey dream to come true.
I was Zane Teague and I’d overcome so much more than this to remain at the very top of my game. I wasn’t in the food chain, I was eating the fuckers beneath me who tried to climb it. I was clever, I was good at what I did, and I was alive and breathing.
I walked upstairs to my bedroom and retrieved my cell from the nightstand. Feeling more like myself, I hit the buttons like I was on autopilot and dialed.
“Z?”
“Have the jet ready to roll in a couple of hours, Bish.”
“On it.”
“Find someone to come in and decorate this place, an interior designer or some shit to freshen it up.”
Bishop went quiet for a mere second, he knew what this place meant to me. “What did you do?”
“Nothing that didn’t need to be done, look into selling it too. And one other thing. Roxanne’s husband,” I hesitated. “Green light.” It was our code, just in case anyone was stupid enough to be listening
Bishop’s voice came back to me after a few moments of contemplation. “What about Roxanne?”
“Decision pending. I’ve got a business meeting to attend to first but have the jet ready.”
“Roger that.”
Chapter Fifteen
The Yakuza.
Arguably the most prominent gang of crime lords on the island of Hawaii. They were cold, ruthless, and lethal. There was no mercy with those guys whatsoever. When you were in you were in, until you were out.
Dead kind of out.
You did business with them at your own risk and it had taken me over a year to get on a good footing with them. One of the reasons our partnership had been so successful was because I acknowledged that they were the bigger crime organization in Hawaii. There was no reason to exert any control, we had a mutually assured relationship, and that’s why it worked. I never went for turf; I never tried to take over. I came from a different angle and didn’t step out of my lane, and that was something they respected. I was no threat to their domain, and in return they helped maintain one of my more profitable business ventures—Girls.
On the flip side, they were fiercely loyal to one another. Only a handful of people knew everything, no one too far down the organization knew anything apart from the part they played. They took their secrets to the grave, and that happened through death—natural or instigated—or suicide.
My father had a fucking conniption when I kicked off my plan to work with them, it would either make us or break us. As a new boss in the Teague family though, I was able to come at it from a new angle. There was no history of old rivalry, because my family didn’t need them and never thought them worth the trouble.
Our one understanding.
If they wanted access to me directly, I wanted the same in return, and that usually only happened when there was an issue on the horizon.
I called for a cab, and when the same guy arrived from the previous night, it showed the strength in just how on the pulse those guys were. We drove through street after street, winding up the mountains of Hawaii through the lush green forest ranges, until a well-guarded mansion came into view. From more than a mile away, the area was protected. No one who wasn’t welcome there would get close. I’d been to that particular place only a handful of times as they usually switched the venues up. It was like a shell game, a very effective one.
The huge Spanish-style mansion stood behind a ten-foot-high brick wall, in acres of hilly ground, and as we passed through the wooden gate there were more men stood around with guns slung over their shoulders. Unnecessary really, I was one man and I wasn’t even armed. Had I brought a gun they would have taken it off me before I got two feet on terra firma after the ride up there. It would have been a pointless accessory that had set the wrong tone for why ever I’d been summoned here.
“This way, Mr. Teague.” A short guy from an open set of patio doors beckoned me in his direction.
At the top of the stairs was an outdoor office of sorts, a coffee-stained dirty table, and the chair they offered me had its fabric ripped. I knew it wouldn’t be the only office. They would never let me get too deep inside their lair, and it was just another way to show me my place, show me that right now, I wasn’t worthy of anything other than this crappy space.
We were business colleagues with a shar
ed interest in an enterprise, my enterprise, and that was as far as it went.
“Yosh,” I greeted the guy only a couple of years my senior who was waiting for me.
“Zane,” he replied with a smile. That was a good sign. He leaned over and shook my hand, which was an even better sign.
I took the empty seat across from him and he stayed silent, but never took his eyes off me. “I’ve got a jet waiting on the runway,” I prompted.
“Rumor is you’re making more than you’re declaring from our venture.”
“Rumor is wrong. I’d also be interested to know who is talking about my business.” If he was right and someone had been bumping their gums about my operation, then that was a wrong which would be easily righted. The penalty for betrayal was always death.
“In my world we oversee our operations closely.”
I stayed quiet for a moment, buzzing inside. He had the audacity to suggest I’d been slack on the management front. “If you’ve got something to say, say it.”
He leaned forward, happy to have toyed with me and be settled under my skin. “One of my guys went to a private party a few weeks back, swears one of the girls brought in for entertainment was in the shipment the week before.”
I rolled that around in my head. My customers paid top dollar for fresh girls, no previous experience, not used and second hand, but more than that, someone was selling what was mine.
“I’ll look into it,” I said smoothing my beard. “I’d appreciate discretion while I do. Letting this get out would affect the schedule.”
“It would, and I’d hate to have to charge you shipping interest just because there’s a delay in distribution.” Now, that was more like the Yakuza. They’d find a chink in your armor and go for the shakedown.
I ignored him and stood up. “I’ll be in touch.”
As I got to the patio door, I saw my cab roll up at the bottom of the hill.
“There’s another party scheduled soon; I’ll forward on the details.”
Nodding, I walked out.
Bishop had a little time to do some digging, but in my experienced bones, I knew it was unnecessary.
Graham Elks had shown his hand early and him and Roxanne were the one thing out of place in my organized operation. His bravery at getting away with it so far had made him cocky, and it would be his undoing. I would have come across this information sooner or later, but because it had been pointed out to me by an associate, an associate who now viewed me as weak, the punishment would most definitely fit the crime.
Chapter Sixteen
My home in L.A. felt like a mausoleum, unwelcoming, sterile and emotionless.
Exactly what I needed.
I knew where I stood with stone cold. Stone cold was how I needed to be to survive. It had served me well in the past and it meant I made decisions for the right reasons, and this time around I would only make the right decisions, nothing based on emotions.
“Getting the impression your vacation wasn’t all Havaianas and hot Hawaiian honey’s.” Bishop said with a smirk, evidently thinking he was one fucking funny bastard.
“No.”
“Not even the odd cocktail umbrella and wave ride?” he asked.
I looked at him wondering when the fuck he thought it was acceptable to question me or even worse, chit chat. I took him back to business. “What have I missed?”
Thankfully, he got the message quickly. “The usual.”
It was a mere twelve hours after landing, and I was desperate to get sucked back into work. I needed the familiarity of it all to console me. My mood since finding her fucking goodbye letter had me switching on a dime, one minute I wanted to create hell and damnation on the earth, the next I was ready to get familiar with the bottom of a liquor bottle. Part of me still regretted not dousing sixty-seven steps to heaven in gasoline and setting it on fire. When I went back there to find a new manager for the girls, I’d need to find somewhere else to stay too.
My surprise return would have tested Bishop’s intelligence gathering skills a little, but nothing he couldn’t handle. The minute he got my call he would have busted his balls trying to figure out what the hell had gone down. His main motivation would have been fear that I’d overstepped some gang boundary with the Yakuza, and we needed to plan either a negotiation for peace or a mop up of bodies. But mainly, his need to know would have been based around coming up with a plan on how to handle me.
“House cleanup is scheduled. What the fuck went down?”
“Good.” I ignored his question, but still he waited, hoping I’d grown a vagina and was in the sharing kind of mood.
Proving he had his finger on the pulse he ignored me ignoring him. “Did a hurricane pass through that part of the world that I missed on the weather reports?”
Clearly the direct approach was needed. “Stop fucking pushing.” There was no other way to be, dragging this shit up went against my plan to leave it all in Hawaii and get back to normal.
“I’ll get it listed then, if you’re sure?”
His tactic changed from asking outright, to saying shit just to get a reaction. I looked up from the report I was reading and glared at him. “Leave it alone, Bishop.”
“What?” He grinned, “How’s Roxanne?”
“Heavily pregnant.”
“No shit?” The grin disappeared and his face probably looked how mine did when I met her and spotted her baby belly for the first time. It was a relief to find out that he also hadn’t been hiding this from me.
“Very pregnant and very happy. We’re going to need a new manager out there, but we definitely need to deal with her husband.”
“Boss.”
Finally, he’d got the message, now we could get on with business.
“What’s the deal with Mickey?” Bishop’s eyes flared; it was clear nothing had improved on that front. “Is the rot spreading?”
“Gut says yes, but still working on evidence.” This was music to my ears. The distraction I needed. “Not sure I like that look, Z, although we both know where this is going.”
I nodded.
“Anything particular we don’t like about Roxy’s old man?” His face showed an unnatural eagerness.
“Got the word that someone’s using the merch in Hawaii for his own ends, gut says it’s him.”
Bishop’s face went stone solid. “Seriously?” he replied, his tone was low and serious.
“Yeah, the Y’s felt it important to let me know. They have intel there’s a bit of a party soon. Look into that.”
He knew what that meant and from the clench of his jaw, I could tell that he was pissed that another organization had got the drop on information about our own operation.
“On it,” he confirmed. “I didn’t have to wait long for him to reach the same conclusion as me. “Fuck, this means… possible purge.”
This was the way of the Teague’s, something that was drilled into you when you got into bed with us. Betray us, and there was no coming back.
My blood bubbled and frothed. It was impossible to ignore the excitement. For once, I was feeling something else other than disappointment deep in my core and the way Bishop was eyeballing me, he sensed my excitement too. “Looking that way,” I returned, feeling the adrenaline pulsing through my veins.
Bishop left the office to make the arrangements as my cell rang and bobbed around with vibration on the desk next to me. When I saw it was Jameson, the last thing I wanted to do was answer, even speaking to him was a connection too close to that fire breathing, she-devil, twin sister of his.
“Can I call you back?”
“Will you though?” he barked.
“Yes.”
“Why don’t I believe you?”
Just because we were business partners it didn’t mean we had to speak every fucking day, which was probably how our friendship worked growing up, and now our business relationship. My biggest issue with Jameson right now was his ability to get under my skin very quickly, something he also shared with
Bailey. “If I say I’ll call then I’ll call.”
“Well, just in case you forget, family dinner at the weekend.” After my mom died, I got used to eating with their family when my father was out of the country, when that became a more regular occurrence, so did the expectation that I would take part in family dinner parties.
This though, right now, was something I did not want to do. Before I laid eyes on any Roach, I would need to bash some heads, or kill someone and heal the pain inside me. A Roach dinner party couldn’t be the scene of that madness. “I won’t be here,” I responded, my tone uncompromising.
“You’ve just been away.”
“What are you? My fucking wife?” I asked, pinching the bridge of my nose and then looking at my watch wondering whether it was too early to get drunk.
“Both me and Grandma live in hope of the day you may actually find one. Just a simple, ‘Yes, Jameson, I will be at dinner on Saturday night,’ will suffice.”
“If I’m back from the road trip, I’ll come.”
He went silent, he knew what my road trips entailed, he also knew that things were about to go south if I didn’t hit the road and get under the skin of whatever I felt was wrong.
Still I had no intention of being there. If I planned this trip correctly, at best, I’d be in Vegas elbow deep in pussy, and the woman who shared his DNA would be a distant memory.
“You’ll be there,” he replied, irritating me further.
“And still you talk like you have a vagina. Do you want to be my wife?”
“Saturday, motherfucker, oh, and stay safe, watch your back.” That was the only acknowledgement I would get over the traceable, tappable phone line, about what I was about to do before he hung up.
Feeling over being confined in the four walls of my office, I knew I needed out of there, I’d had more than enough of the Roach twins pushing my buttons for one day and I’d only spoken to one of them.
After the office and all the irritations that came with working, I had that edgy feeling again. That burning desire to get rid of some energy before the scales tipped into that familiar place of restless rage. I had a home gym and it did its job, it kept me in good physical condition and fit in around my often crazy schedule, but the thought of escaping one set of walls to go and be alone in another wasn’t on the cards.
Disruption Page 14
