I nodded, recalling this part of the tale.
I picked up my fork and dug into my eggs, taking a bite.
“And as soon as TJ was there in the cigar lounge at White Box—”
I choked. Grabbing a napkin, I brought it to my mouth, coughing.
Those words.
Those two words.
Chills raced across my flesh.
“Are you okay?” he asked, knitting his brow and thrusting a glass of water in my direction. I waved him off. My blood had gone cold, and all my senses warned of danger. This was the same feeling I’d had as a photojournalist when situations in war zones became too dicey.
“What did you just say?” I whispered. The hair on my arms stood on end.
“About the cigar lounge?”
I nodded, fear racing over my skin. “The cigar lounge. Where was it?”
“White Box,” he said slowly, his brow furrowed. “Why are you asking?”
My palms turned clammy. “That name,” I whispered, my voice sounding haunted even to my own ears. “Your father said something the last day I saw him, something about White Box.”
Michael blinked, confusion in his blue eyes. “What did he say?”
Like a diver rising up from the sea, the memory broke through to the surface. “We were talking about work. His company. The missing rides. When you’d gone to the car to get an umbrella, I asked him how everything was going, and if he’d found out anything.”
“And what did he say?” Michael asked, gripping the table, his jaw tight, his eyes wide with concern.
Something so simple. So offhand. So nothing. It had never seemed like more. Until now.
Until it was.
I hurtled back in time to that last conversation.
Thomas Paige shook his head. “I didn’t get the job. But there will be others, I’m sure. I’m thinking of maybe switching to another limo company. Once I tried to move up at this place, it became a white box of information.”
I arched an eyebrow, my mind catching on the expression he’d used. I’d never heard that before. Perhaps it was an American saying I wasn’t familiar with. “What does that mean?”
“That’s what I heard some of the guys there calling it. Stuff was just erased. Rides disappeared. They called it a white box, and then one of them said it was the white box of information. I guess the guy who ran the place used that term. I was going to ask Sanders about it, since he drove him around, but I decided it doesn’t matter in the end. I’m just going to let it go.”
“What a funny little saying,” I said with a small laugh.
The check arrived, and so did Michael. “Got the umbrella,” he declared, joining us as the conversation shifted back to the future, to our plans.
With a crystal-clear recollection, I told the entire story to Michael.
70
Michael
The ground began to sway. The whole diner seemed unsteady. “Did he say who ran the company? I always thought it was a guy named Paul, but someone else owned it. West was his name,” I said in a barren voice, while my world seemed to spin off its axis.
Annalise shook her head.
I wanted to believe it was a coincidence. I wanted to reassure her that they were just two words. White box. But when my phone buzzed again in my pocket, and the name flashing across the screen registered, all I could think was that it wasn’t over.
I answered the call from Morris in a split second. “What’s going on?”
“Hey, Michael. Need to give you a heads-up. I’ve been hacked, and some of the online research I did into Luke Carlton was accessed. Someone put two and two together and figured out I was working for you. I got an anonymous call early this morning to keep my nose out of the case. Which is weird, since the case is over.”
My blood chilled to subzero temperatures, and instinct kicked in. Get the hell out of here.
“Any idea who it was?” I asked as I fished in my wallet, tossed a twenty on the table, and reached for Annalise’s hand. I pulled her up and walked out as I talked to Morris, scanning the diner from the booths to the foyer to the exit as we left.
“No clue,” Morris said, as I raced with Annalise to my car. “But I think I was followed as I looked into the piano shop. I think that tipped someone off. I’m sorry.”
“I have to go,” I said, ending the call as I made sure Annalise was safely in the car. I ran to the driver’s side, slid inside, locked the doors, and reversed out of the parking spot. In my rearview mirror, I spotted a bearded man in a silver sedan pulling out too.
“Michael, what’s going on?” Annalise asked, her voice quaking as I drove.
“Nothing good.”
I placed my phone in the holder, clicked on missed calls, and my heart sank when I saw John Winston had rung me twice.
As I turned onto the highway, I returned the call, but Winston didn’t answer.
“Shit, shit, shit.”
I gripped the steering wheel, trying to drive and connect the dots, but I couldn’t fucking figure out how they were all joined. The thing that kept nagging at me was why Sanders had been so goddamn evasive, and what, if anything, that man had to do with White Box.
Whether White Box was the club or something else entirely.
As I neared the exit for my place, my phone buzzed, and I wanted to thank all the stars above that Winston was calling back. I answered on speaker.
“What the hell is going on with the case?” I bit out.
“We’ve got some new information. I got a call from a federal agent this morning about some RICO charges that might be connected to your father’s case.”
My head swam with this news. “RICO? As in racketeering?” I glanced at Annalise, whose eyes were wide with shock and fear.
“Where are you?” John asked. “I’m leaving my colleague’s office. I’ll meet you.”
“Heading home,” I said, then rattled off the address.
“I’m heading down the elevator right now, so I should be there in twenty minutes.”
“Wait,” I said, as tension gripped me. “Who’s behind it? Who’s involved? I need to know. Does it have to do with White Box? Is White Box a part of this?”
John started to answer as I reached my street, but the words came out choppy. My phone was cutting out. Fucking hell.
“What did you just say?”
John kept talking, but only words like informant, protection, guns, and drugs were clear enough to make out. The rest was garbled. Finally, the line died, and a minute later, I pulled into the parking garage at my building.
My pulse pounded dangerously fast. As I cut the engine, I met the gaze of the woman I loved, and saw so much fear in her eyes, but a toughness too.
“Let’s get inside and wait for John,” I said, and she nodded.
I slammed my door, walked around to the passenger side, scanned the lot, and when I was confident it was all clear, I opened her door. She stepped out and I tugged her close, wrapping an arm around my Annalise and scanning once more.
My breath fled my chest.
All the alarm bells in my head sounded. By the door to my building stood a man I was far too familiar with—waiting for me.
“It seems we have business to settle.”
71
Charlie
Normally, I liked to delegate—have my men handle petty tasks like shaking people down. But sometimes you had to clean up your own mess. Like Michael Sloan. He was a tough one. He was too close, he knew too much, and he had figured out more than he should.
He’d connected the dots, according to what my man eavesdropping at the diner this morning had told me. That was something no one else had ever done. Not since years ago, when Michael’s father had come way too close for comfort.
Since then I’d operated cleaner. Neater, under the radar. But with the case blasted open, I’d had to dart and dodge.
Now it was time to do my own dirty work. And I hated doing my own dirty work.
“Your mother was easy to manipul
ate into doing what I needed her to do. I fear you might not be so pliable,” I said, stepping away from the wall of the parking garage and walking closer to the blue-eyed son of the man I’d convinced Dora Prince to have killed nearly two decades ago.
“You’re right on that count,” Michael said crisply. “This won’t be easy. There are people who know you’re involved.”
I waved that concern away, stopping at a green Lexus as Sloan grabbed the auburn-haired beauty with him and pushed her behind him. Fucking redheads. They were nothing but trouble.
I nodded and clucked my tongue. “You’re right. There are people who know enough to be dangerous, like you and her. But that’s going to end soon, isn’t it? Unless you want to come work for me? Your mother did, for all intents and purposes.”
Michael’s eyes narrowed, burning at me, his jaw set hard. He was like a fuse waiting to blow, and I was going to enjoy every second of setting him off. The man was too good, too pure. Watching men like him turn into animals was such a high.
“This isn’t about her. This is about my father,” he spat out, seething.
But I wasn’t scared of Michael. I wasn’t scared of a thing. I’d let go of fear many years ago. After my brother was killed at age nine in a robbery back in my home country, I’d vowed to never let anyone fuck with my family again. Not Thomas Paige, sniffing around my limo company all those years ago, asking far too many questions.
And not Dora Prince.
Damn shame she went to prison. She would have made an excellent lieutenant in my organization. A bit too emotional and unpredictable, but she was willing to act, especially when I’d threatened her children that one time she tried to back out.
Oh, that woman was willing to protect them. I really should visit her one day and thank her. But I’d deal with that another time.
Right now, I had her pesky oldest son to shut up.
I extended a hand in Michael’s direction, even though I was twenty feet away. The nerve of him saying it was about his father—the boy didn’t realize he still had so much left to lose. “Or perhaps it’s about you, and the only chance you have before you,” I said, scratching my chin. “As I see it, your only way out is to come work for me.”
Michael shook his head. “Never.”
“You can do it. Everyone is corruptible if you threaten their family. It worked for your mother,” I said, as Michael shifted his eyes to the woman behind him.
“I’m not working for you, Charlie,” he bit out as the redhead cowered.
“But you do work for me. I hired you. I knew who you were, and look what happened.” I flashed my winning smile. My plan had worked like a charm—ingratiating myself with the security brothers, making them think I cared deeply about doing the right thing. Donating to the community center. Playing the concerned citizen. “You wound up liking me. We got along so well, Michael. Cleaning up the city together. Ridding Vegas of those nasty Royal Sinners I wanted to eradicate. You helped me get rid of the bad apples from my street crew—like TJ. He was a good one at one time, but he was giving me a headache by the end, so turning him in was a win-win, and you made it so easy for me to be helpful.”
Michael clenched his fists, holding in all his rage. Ah, what an absolute delight to watch the carefully controlled Michael start to boil over. “What do you want?”
I stared at him like he was insane. “What do I want?” I repeated. “Isn’t it obvious?”
I took a step closer. Michael moved back, the woman now sandwiched between him and the back of his car. “Use your brain, Sloan. I want you to stop asking questions. If you can’t do that, you can go ahead and join your father.” I reached behind my jacket and took my gun from my holster, my eyes on Sloan.
Who moved like a goddamn cheetah. Before I even raised my weapon, Michael’s gun was pointed at my face.
I didn’t flinch. I’d stared down more frightening men. I’d stared down death. Besides, Michael wasn’t tough enough. “You’re not your mother’s son,” I hissed. “You’re your father’s son. You don’t have it in you to fire that thing. You’re too good, like he was. So we have two options. You either work for me, or we say goodbye.”
“I’ll take option three,” Michael said, his finger closing in on the trigger.
72
Michael
The devil moved quickly, hissed even faster, waving his gun in the direction of Annalise. When I’d moved closer to Charlie, she was no longer completely shielded behind me, and when he darted to his right to aim for her head, my only thought was to protect her. In both slow motion and terrible fast-forward, I moved back, shoving her farther behind me with my free hand as I pulled the trigger.
The bullet barreled through the air, on track for Charlie’s head. But keeping Annalise out of harm’s way had the twin effect of shifting the target by inches.
The last thing I saw was the bullet ripping through the devil’s arm.
Then a feral yell tore from the man’s throat.
My world warped as my own gun clattered to the ground. Like thunder after a bolt of lightning, the pain came a few seconds later, cutting through every cell in my body.
73
Annalise
With a bone-shattering thunk, Michael crashed to the concrete, his skull whacking the floor of the parking garage. Blood poured from him, leaking all over his shirt, turning it crimson.
Everywhere.
His chest bled absolutely everywhere. Terror dug roots into every corner of my body. My throat burned with tears, and my lungs tried to escape from me as I cried.
My head roared in protest, my mind shouting no, trying to deny the horror. I dropped to the ground next to Michael, grasping, desperately trying to do something, anything, as I fumbled for my phone.
Panic welled up inside me, spilling over, suffocating me as I grabbed it from my pocket.
Not again. This couldn’t happen twice. I couldn’t lose someone I loved again. But the blood . . . it was on my hands, my face, all over him. My hand pressed against his chest. Oh, thank God, his heart was beating still. But there was so much red. I couldn’t see a thing through my tears, wasn’t even sure I could hear past my own cries. Somehow I stabbed the numbers 911 on the keypad with blood-covered fingers before I screamed out a sob, the phone clattering to the ground.
Then a long, low moan fell on my ears.
It didn’t come from Michael.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I jerked my head toward the sound.
Ten, perhaps fifteen feet away, the man who’d shot Michael had dragged himself upright. He clutched his left arm as it bled through his jacket sleeve. With his right hand, he groped around for his gun on the ground.
In the distance, shouts burst through the late-morning air—maybe from inside the building, maybe from somewhere else in the parking garage.
I didn’t know where they were coming from, or who was on the way.
I knew one thing and one thing only.
The man had found his weapon, and he was reaching for it.
74
Dora
Eighteen years ago
I’d decided. I was backing out. I told Luke at the fabric shop where we’d agreed to meet that morning. There in the last row, amid buttons and ribbons, I wrapped my arms around his neck and said, “I can’t do it. I can’t go through with it. But I can’t be without you either. I’ll leave him, and we can be together. I don’t need money. I have you.”
He smiled warmly, that smile I loved. “Of course, Dora. Just talk to Jerry Stefano and call it off.”
I drew in a sharp breath. The man I’d hired to kill my husband terrified me, with his cold eyes and his even colder heart. He wouldn’t be happy. His eyes had glittered when I’d told him the price for the hit, and I was sure he wanted the money. “Can’t you tell him?”
Luke shot me a sad smile and shook his head. “Oh, honey, I want to. But you know how this works. I need to keep my distance. The only way I can run the street operations for Charlie is b
y keeping myself clean. The less people suspect me, the more I can do his bidding and the better I can do. The more I earn in the next year, the better the chance we can get away. I promise, baby. Give me one more year to close out my deals, and then we’ll find a way to get out of town with all the kids.” He pressed his hands to my belly. “Including ours. I wish I could feel the baby kicking,” he whispered.
I smiled. “Soon. Another month or so.”
But Stefano didn’t take the news well when I tried to cancel the hit, nor did Charlie. The man in charge of the city’s burgeoning drug operation summoned me, picking me up for a drive one day while my kids were in school.
I got into Charlie’s car, and he talked as he drove out of my neighborhood. “Good to see you again,” he said. We’d met once before.
“Yes, you too,” I said, even as nerves prickled down my backbone.
“I hear you want to back out.”
I nodded. “I do. I can’t go through with it.”
He flipped on the blinker to turn right. “Ah, but therein lies the issue, Dora. You can, and you will.”
I shook my head, holding my ground. “I thought I could, but I need to move on from all this.”
He glanced at me, knitting his brow. “From what? You’re my top dealer. You run a magnificent route. I have plans, Dora. Big plans. You can work with me.”
I swallowed, sucking in all my fears. “I can’t do it.”
He slammed on the brakes and pulled over to the side of the road, then stared at me. “It’s too late for you to make that choice,” he said in a snake-like hiss.
“Why?” I asked, my voice quaking.
“You’re in too deep. Your husband has gone too far. His questions threaten my business, and when my business is threatened, my family is too. I don’t like having my family threatened. You understand that, right?”
My Sinful Love (Sinful Men Book 4) Page 24
