by Scott, D. D.
Roman never let me slip a bit from his steel strong grip. And he coached me with positive Tinker Bell thoughts all the way down the building. How my Bond could recite Tink was beyond me, but I’d take it, plus I made a mental note to always be packin’ pixie dust.
No sooner had we landed with a super soft tap, tons more finesse than I’d ever found myself landing with on the stage, I heard gun shots pop-pop-popping all around us.
Before I could even completely stand up, Roman had shoved my upper torso down below his arm that was closest to me, then shoved me into a limousine that appeared to screech to a halt in front of us without any warning whatsoever.
“What the…?!” I screamed, deciding that must be my new P.I. mantra.
“Who’s shooting at us?! I thought Lowell was still thirty-six floors above us,” I screamed, now wedged under Roman, trapped between his pelvis and super strong thighs and the limo’s backseat floorboards.
“Lowell is still in the conference room, My Luv,” Roman said, his breath heating up the back of my neck as he spoke. “That’s probably his baby brother Larry.”
And then he laughed. He fucking laughed, while I was in the midst of having a heart attack due to being penned underneath him and not for the reasons I’d like to be in this position.
“So there’s, well, there was, Ludwig. And now we’ve got Lowell…and Larry?! Anyone else L-for-Loser-Kohn I should know about?”
“Since you put it that way, we should probably count on their sister Lucinda rearing her rather gorgeous head too,” Roman said, his body rolling across the floorboard with mine as our limousine driver was apparently now in full, defensive tactical driving mode.
“Great. It’s like The Three Stooges and their sister too,” I said, deciding humor was a much better option than freaking-out about the spray of bullets zinging and pinging off what was apparently the bullet proof glass of our car.
And to think, all of this, and all I’d wanted, just three days ago, was a bottle of Naked Juice from my local Jiffy Mart.
Chapter Ten
So there I was, riding the floorboards of Roman’s limousine, while he was riding me. And talk about one helluva wild, wild ride.
Raulf can drive now. Oh my God can the guy haul some serious ass in a stretch mobile to boot! I’m not sure where he learned to drive like this. But I’m sooo signin’ up!
I don’t think there was a corner of Vienna we didn’t hit on just half the monster car’s wheels. And thank the gods above too for bullet-proof armor and glass ‘cause that came in way handy.
And here I thought it was only in the movies that people drove like this while being shot at by bad guys.
I’m here to vouch for the fact it’s real. Very, very, over-the-top real.
“Shall I fire our rocket booster missiles, Sir?” Raulf’s voice echoed through our rear portion of the car, and although I was pinned underneath Roman’s armpit, I could still hear his ultra-smooth, calm and assured voice.
As if it were an everyday thing to hit some button and fire missiles out the back of your car.
“Sounds good, R. Go for it,” Roman said, as sure as and as casual as if he’d ordered an iced tea.
I was totally now living the life of a Bond Girl. I mean it. Complete with my very own Bond on my back, and a super, cool-as-a-cucumber Q, now known as R, as my chauffeur.
I told y’all my Roman was no Walker, Texas Ranger type.
Hell, I half expected a martini bar to materialize in our part of the car while we were dodging the Kohn kamikazes. My TG was no iced tea drinkin’ sap, he was a hard-liquor man like 007 Bond.
On just a few wheels, we swung into some secluded, private entrance of Hotel Bristol, whose staff somehow knew we were coming and had the security gates already drawn back for us.
“I think we’ve successfully lost ‘em, Sir,” Raulf said, the dark tinted window between him and us lowering so I could see a casual, but oh-so-satisfied grin covering his face.
“Or blown ‘em to beyond smithereens,” I said, still hugging the limo’s carpeted floor even though Roman was now off of me and trying to smooth my uplifted skirt back over my exposed ass cheeks.
Good thing I’d worn my nicer panties.
If my new gig as a Bond Girl wanna-be was gonna involve my ass hanging out, I’d want to make sure I showcased it in the best fashion-forward lingerie I could get my hands on.
‘Course the fact Roman had his hands down there too wasn’t bad either.
Raulf laughed, a dignified, gentlemanly, but soul-felt sound then said, “Or yes, My Dear Zoey, perhaps we did, what did you refer to it as, “blow ‘em to beyond smithereens”. Either way, you’re safe now. Let’s get you inside, shall we?”
With that, he rolled up the window, opened his door, then proceeded to open our door to God-only-knew what next.
“Thank you, R,” Roman said. “That should be all for a bit. I’ll call you when we’re ready for our next step.”
“As you wish, Sir,” R said, almost I swear bowing his head to Roman before closing our door with a light whoosh and returning to his chauffeur’s seat.
Roman took my arm and led me into another private entrance to the hotel. The damn place had so many secret passageways there’s no way I dared go in or out of here alone. I’d never make it back into our pad.
“We’ve got to talk,” he said in a quite nonchalant way considering the hell-fire and scaling skyscrapers purgatory we’d just been through.
“Yeah. Probably a real good idea at this point,” I said, making my tone match his.
To hell if I was gonna let him see me sweat all the bullets on this one.
As he ushered me into our suite, he turned to me and held out his hand.
“I’ll need your brooch for a moment,” he said then without waiting for me to ask why or offer it to him, removed the gorgeous piece from the lapel covering the spot on top of my heart.
As his warm hand glanced over the skin on the side of my neck, I shivered.
Funny thing was, I didn’t know if the reaction was fear or arousal based. With Roman, it could quite possibly be both. The man had a way of making every endorphin I had scream for more of him while my brain said wait a minute, you gotta know what the hell you’re really getting yourself into first.
“Roman, I just don’t understand all this,” I said, wrapping my hand around his hand that now held the brooch.
I could tell by the ever-so-slight pulse thumping against the top of his knuckles that my reach had surprised him. Good. ‘Cause, from my perspective, the day had sure been full of surprises.
He hung his head then looked through a thick lock of coal black magic that came between us, his eyes begging me to accept only what he was about to offer me.
Which, by the way, the jury was still out on whether or not I’d take what I imagined would be only a partial answer.
“I’ll be able to fill you in a bit, but, for your own protection, you’re going to have to trust me on what I cannot tell you.”
“I’m not good with secrets, Roman. Not good at all.”
He placed his free hand over our already joined hands and squeezed ‘til I could feel the edge of the brooch dig into the tips of one of my fingers.
“That’s something you’re going to have to get used to now that we’re partners in all this,” he said, his eyes, for the first time that I’d seen, showing a hesitancy and vulnerability that played a real number on my conscience and my heart.
“We’ll see about that. But in the mean time, I’m all ears.”
“In that case, let’s get started,” he said, leading me once more into the fire-lit library.
After shaking-up for each of us a more-than-stiff martini—told ya this was getting more Bond by the minute—Roman pressed a button on the side of the largest bookcase in the room then directed me to watch the wall on the opposite side of the case.
Within seconds, a large screen came down from the ceiling.
Roman then removed two books from on
e of the case’s shelves, somehow folded ‘em into a tray, and, I don’t know, pulled some kinda projector outta his ass for all I knew.
But what I did know was that we now had a projector, and I shit you not, a projector with part of my brooch now plugged into the side of it.
“What the…?!”
Roman choked back a laugh, but he was not kidding me one bit, I knew he was laughing at my shock and awe, but frankly, I could care less if he thought my amazement was for his amusement.
“Let’s just say your brooch has more value than your average fashion accessory,” he said, blinding me with the projector’s light bulb which he was now shining straight over my head and onto the viewing screen.
There, right before our eyes, appeared a ton of video perusing every document Roman and I had been examining before we were so rudely forced to propel out the ladies’ room window of the multiple-floored banking high-rise.
“So I take it my brooch is a video recorder?” I asked, obviously noting that that was the case but kinda at a loss what else to say at this point. “Sweet.”
“You could say that,” Roman said, coming to sit beside me, a small remote control fitting neatly into the palm of his hand.
“So let’s go over the pieces of the puzzle we’re now building against Sonja Medici,” he said, pushing a button of some sort on the remote which caused our table top to light-up like that ultra cool table they have on Human Target.
We now had all these screens, computers and electronic notepads right at our touch-screen fingertips.
I could get used to this stuff.
Amazing. Freaking amazing.
“I mean it, Roman Bellesconi. Who the hell are you?!”
“One thing at a time, Plum Puddin’,” he said, his cocky grin making it clear he was enjoying the suspense a lot more than I was.
Okay. Truth. This Mystery Man approach was hot. And did, in fact, turn me on. Although, I could do without the skyscraper scaling and machine gun and missile-firing car pursuits.
“First, let’s just see who is Sonja Medici,” he said.
“Okay. Game on, MSB.”
“MSB?” Roman asked, and based on the rowdy twinkle in his eyes, he appeared to really want to know what the initials meant.
Or maybe it was the glare of the projector bulb shining in his retinas.
Nope. His curiosity was peeked and in a good way too. I just knew it. Call it my Thug Guard telepathy. But I was onto his subtle changes in curiosity.
There was this mood, that we had now, his fun-loving curiosity. Also, his ‘I’m mildly annoyed, so spill it, Looney Tunes’. Then his ‘curiosity is about to kill both the cat and us, let’s get the hell outta here’ look. So I was definitely going to take advantage of him whenever the fun-loving version was in vogue.
“MSB is my latest name for you. Standing for…My Secret Bond.”
This time he didn’t hold-in his laugh, and the sound of such a natural and easy spirit flowing from him was something I could get used to hearing.
The guy was somehow even hotter when he gave into the boyish audacity of an unchecked laugh.
“Sounds like the name for a weapon,” he said, shaking his head then raking through the forbidden curls sweeping his forehead.
“It could be. You are my secret weapon,” I said, looking at him with an intensity that rocked me from my momentary ‘bout of complete confidence.
Maybe my adrenaline surge from the day’s events had finally surged out.
Suddenly, though, just as soon as it had bolstered me, I felt quite overwhelmed by all we’d been through and done today.
“Are you okay, Witherspoon?”
Roman tilted up my chin with the smooth but strong edge of his closest hand, his strength somehow oozing through my skin and straight to my soul, shoring it up for who knew what else to come our way.
“I’m getting there. Just kinda letting the whole scene sink in a bit.”
“I’ll tell you one secret. In these kinds of set-ups, knowledge is your power. By knowing more than your enemies, you win,” he said while brushing two unruly pin curls out of my eyes.
After both his wisdom-filled warnings and then his unexpected touch, my body jumped and surged with conflicting emotions.
I swallowed my fears, focused on the sheer determination and grit in his expression and decided that knowledge was the one type of weapon I was good with.
I could learn anything and use it to control peoples’ perceptions. I’d made my fashion styling empire outta that uncanny, natural ability, and I could put it to work for us now.
“So…we know Sonja accepted kickbacks via and through the separate companies she controlled,” I said, swallowing a stiff jolt of my martini to chase down my fears.
“Correct,” Roman said turning back to face our screen, his hand lingering just a moment too long on my chin for me to think he hadn’t enjoyed resting it there. “She created three Bank M funds, feeder funds, in effect, that fed cash to McCall. Cash, it looks like, somewhere in the vicinity of $3.5 billion dollars from various European investors.”
“Maybe she didn’t know the extent of McCall’s sixty-five billion dollar scheme, but she sure as hell was bought-off for persuading her fund managers to find McCall more investors,” I anteed up, rather impressed with my ability to “get” this Ponzi-scheming world.
“Exactly,” Roman concurred, telling me with his raised eyebrows that he was also impressed with my deductive skills. “Since 2006, Bank MediKohn really beefed-up its expansion into Russia.”
“Ahhh. So in enters our Russian Mobsters.”
“Yes. As well as Ludwig and Lowell, Larry and soon Lucinda.”
“Do you think the Kohns work for Sonja or The Russians?” I asked, interested since the bank carried a combination of their last names and being as the more we found out about both their banking and them, the more dangerous our life became.
Someone or several someones carried a will to stop Roman and I no matter what that took to accomplish, even if that meant hiring out for murder.
“I think they work for both, but may not know that. Anyway, I’m obviously not worried about Ludwig, now that he’s out of the picture. Lowell and Larry will be a piece of cake to take care of,” Roman said then took a deep, very measured breath. “Lucinda, on the other hand, is a real handful.”
“How so?” I asked, unable to see how anyone could be more of a handful than machine gun-toting and spraying kamikazes like Lowell and Larry.
“You’re about to find out,” Roman said, clicking off the projector and turning to face me head-on.
Not sure I liked his current curiosity face-scape at all, I felt myself flinch.
His dark and dangerous swagger was now in full swing across his strong, espresso-strength features.
“Lucinda is the brains of the Russians’ entire Cozy Cash Operation, and she also happens to be a huge, huge fashionista.”
His arched eyebrows, adding emphasis to his words, now made me nervous as hell instead of hot as hell.
But I now got it. And got it loud and clear.
“So while we’re conveniently dress hunting for my Camilla de Vil, we’ll be hunting Lucinda and her Mob Squad?”
“Oh no, Plum Puddin’. Lucinda and her Mob Squad, as you call ‘em, will be hunting us,” Roman said, polishing off the rest of his martini in one super-smooth swig of reassurance.
Great, I thought. Can’t wait. We’ll have kamikaze mobsters, and catfights too, alongside our couture-filled, European Fashion Week catwalks.
Suddenly Camilla de Vil appeared to be a much easier nut to crack.
“So I’ve got what one week for you to teach me everything you know about London, Milan and Paris Fashion Weeks,” Roman said, taking the rest of my martini and downing it like a champion.
“Yes. The European Spring Fashion Weeks kick-off in London next week, followed by Milan then Paris,” I answered him, starting to think another martini sounded awful good while trying to put all this into pe
rspective. “And you’ve got one week to teach me all-things-Lucinda Kohn.”
Roman, evidently reading my mind, poured us each another martini, shaken not stirred, then raised his glass to mine.
“To us. Fashions new It Couple,” he toasted, the clink of his glass to mine, jolting my soul with the mirage it painted.
“Yes. To us. And to the secrets we keep,” I said, honing-in on the dark cloud dirtying his eyes more than the severe shaking of the frost-bite worthy gin making a murky mess of his martini.
Chapter Eleven
Roman and I may have secrets we were keeping from each other, but Finding Oscar-worthy gowns and Russian Mobsters were no longer on the list, I thought, packing my final day’s wardrobe for our European Fashion Weeks adventure. Those cats weren’t just outta the bags, but were also about to take walks down Europe’s hottest runways. And we were gonna be there to catch ‘em.
If Roman hoped to use my world to reel-in Lucinda Kohn and the other big, Cozy Cash fish, he had a lot to learn about my clientele.
After a few months’ worth of Housewives of Beverly Hills episodes, packed into only the last few days, he was starting to get a picture of the everyday villainesses a stylist of my caliber dresses.
I think he was beginning to wonder how I differentiated Camilla de Vil from the rest of the Red Carpet pack. There weren’t many of ‘em that weren’t total divas.
I’d started by giving Roman a hint into the materialistic worlds of my clients and the attitude permeating that world, but now I was about to show him the material goods as well.
This year’s secret to Oscar and Awards Season success was sure to be all-things-vintage.
Before boarding the private plane R had arranged to shuttle us to London for the first of the Spring Shows we’d be attending, I’d organized a field trip of sorts to Vienna’s top vintage boutique.
With the help of Vienna Vintage, my Secret Bond—aka SB for short—was about to take a walk into the past, albeit a couture, hand-selected collection of the best the past has to offer to the glamorous present of the rich and famous.
