Perfectly Damaged: Luka : A bad boy mafia romance

by Alice May Ball

  Her lips tightened. Her toe kicked a little faster, and whatever was out the window, she peered even harder at it. There was a pause before she said, “The club doesn’t need renovating.”

  He smiled. “You’ll have to allow your new owner to be the judge of that.”

  “You aren’t my owner, Mr. Agostini, new or otherwise.” Her eyes were still fixed on the side window of the car.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I think I do. That’s exactly what worries me.”

  “You’ve nothing to worry about, except for planning our launch event next week.”

  “Launching the club?”

  “No,” he told her, “we’re launching a financial instrument.”

  “A what?” She sounded pissed.

  “You don’t need to think about what it is that we’re launching. I’ve got that well in hand. You just concentrate on getting what we need in place for the event.”

  “If I don’t know what we’re aiming to launch, Mr. Agostini, how will I know what we need?”

  “Okay, here’s what it is. It’s going to be an invitation-only event, for the very cream of the financial circles. The richest and most powerful investors. Them and some girls. You should probably be in charge of recruiting the girls.”

  He leaned forward, closer to the screen. The look in her eye had changed, but he couldn’t see exactly how. He watched as she gently bounced on his buttery leather.

  She didn’t turn her head from the window to speak. “You assume that all of the most important and powerful investors are men?”

  “I don’t assume it, Princess.” He lifted the legal pad. “I’m looking down the list of them right now. They all have men’s names.”

  She chewed the inside of her cheek. “So, there we have it.”

  “Only a select few of the select few will be invited, and only a handful of those will actually make the cut. It has to feel like a major event.”

  “Are you going to send me that guest list?”

  “I’ll give you a copy ahead of the night. A lot of them will be club members already, so you’ll know them, and I definitely want your insights. We need a world-class DJ.”

  She still looked like she was mad as hell about something, but he was starting to think that he would just have to get used to that and let it wash over him. She said, “That’s going to be pretty difficult.”

  “Why? New York is full of superstar DJs, isn’t it?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Usually. The Miami conference is this month and DJs from the whole world will be there. No amount of money will get any of the top names away from that party.”

  Her look told him that he hadn’t the first clue about DJs. Whatever she told him, he would have to believe it. Pierce narrowed his eyes.

  “I don’t want to spend all that much on a guy to put some mp3s together. How hard is it?”

  In no hurry, she drew breath. “Much harder than you imagine. Obviously.”

  He brightened. “Good.”

  “Good?”

  “Yeah. You obviously know plenty about it. This is where you get to earn your keep.”

  “My keep?!” Now Princess faced the screen. Her eyes blazed. Even his laptop screen showed the smoldering heat in her face. She said, “Do I have to remind you that I’m being held hostage? My keep is the most basic responsibility you have as my captor.” And she sat back. On the bench of his Chrysler, between the big shopping bags.

  It was a cliché, but she really was gorgeous when she was mad. Even on the little computer screen. He’d heard that said endlessly about women, but he hadn’t ever thought it before. He said, “I should get a badge made up.”

  “What?”

  “ ‘Hi, I’m Pierce, and I’ll be your captor this week.’ I should draw up a customer survey. ‘Would you recommend Pierce Agostini to your friends-slash-colleagues as a captor?’ ”

  “You think you’re pretty clever, don’t you?”

  He thought about that. “I guess I do, kinda. It’s probably a failing.” His cellphone rang. “Okay, gotta go. I guess you’ll be a couple hours on the road. You’ll be stopping to collect Dino before you get back to Manhattan. See you when you get back.”

  It was all coming together beautifully.

  Princess fumed after he hung up. Not a word about leaving this morning, no “sorry I didn’t leave a note.” She folded her arms tight and stared out the window. Other than asking him directly, she could see no way to find out what happened. If anything. Happened.

  She clenched her teeth, crossing her arms and legs even more tightly. Staring outside through the window, she hunted for something to fix on, any focus for her concentration. Anything to stop her from wondering.

  “Calhoun, how long have you worked for Mr. Agostini?”

  He was slow to answer. “We go back quite a few years, Miss, I can tell you.”

  “What kind of a man would you say he was?”

  An even longer pause before he said, “I’d say he’s the kind of a man that’s employing me, Miss.”

  She wasn’t going to get too far with that approach.

  “Calhoun, could we stop by Hotsteppa’s on the way back?”

  “I’m not sure that would be such a great idea, Miss.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I think there’s a lot of contractors about the place. Could be a bit messy. And we wouldn’t want to be getting in their way.”

  She was about to snap back and say, I’ll be the judge of what “we” want, but she really needed an ally and Calhoun was the only available candidate. Work with what you’ve got.

  “Tell me about when you came over from Ireland.”

  She saw his eyes in the mirror, sparkling with a look that said, Well, it wasn’t yesterday. But, amiably, he answered, “There seemed to be a lot of money all over in the nineteen nineties. Ireland wasn’t only green from the grass. European money was what we thought it was.” He spoke like he was telling a tale to a child. That was okay—Princess was happy to listen to him talk for a while.

  “Turned out we were all a little bit green, too. Most of what looked like money was actually debt. A lot of people got into a lot of trouble, through no fault of their own.” He described a financial boom, followed by a massive crash. His own part seemed to be in providing what he called, “Services of a personal nature. Usually in support of account management.”

  She frowned. “You make it sound like sex work.”

  “There often was a physical component to the work. Not normally as enjoyable for the subjects, though. The ‘service users,’ as you might say.”

  Princess thought that she was catching his drift. “Did they all survive?”

  He paused. “I don’t know if it’s really something that you want to be asking questions about, Miss. Around people like Mr. Agostini, and others like myself and Callaghan, I’d suggest you put a little collar and leash of restraint on your quite natural curiosity, Miss.”

  His voice and his expression in the mirror were light and pleasant, but his message was plain.

  The view of Pennsylvania through the window improved very little over the next hour or so. It did nothing to take Princess’ mind off the question that she was trying so hard to avoid. She tried looking at it in other ways.

  What if she had? What if last night, half or two-thirds of the way down that tequila bottle, she’d got all the way down, underneath his fine suit… Oh!

  No, she couldn’t let her mind wander off that way. Quickly she turned to, what if she hadn’t? As soon as the thought formed, a sag of disappointment slackened her stomach. She felt an almost tearful loss.

  Her mind fled again to the view. It was still completely dull. She had an image of herself on a rock, climbing higher as the tide came in. Slipping. Holding on as hard as she could. And slipping as the water rose. Lapped higher. Nearer. Like it would drink her.

  There was a noise like a bell and the screen in the back of the seat in front of her lit up again. It was Pierce.
When his face appeared on the screen, midway to looking up, her insides buzzed and crackled.

  Tiny shudders and quivers rocked along the strands of nerve in her arms and her legs. The electric charge emanated from a hollow howl in her core and burst up from her stomach. An ache between her thighs radiated to her hard, sore breasts.

  She couldn’t say whether the explosions were fireworks or the start of a war. All she knew was that she was fighting for control of herself. And she wasn’t winning.

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “Are you all right?”

  She felt a chill. “Yes. I’m fine. Of course I am.”

  A frown darkened his brow. “We need a cocktail created especially for the night. Something special and memorable. A signature mix.”

  “Yes.” That was all she could manage while she collected her thoughts.

  She knew the club, she knew the clientele, she had good contacts and she knew the business. She would make a phenomenal success of his launch, whatever it was. Exceed his expectations, and use that as a bargaining chip.

  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.