“Taking Jordan to a bar was like lying to us,” Kari said. “He knew we wouldn’t approve of something like that. He knew we wouldn’t.”
“You’re right about that. But he takes reckless risks. He has all his life. That’s always been my problem with him. We should have kept Jordan away from him.”
“Jordan would hate us if we did. He loves Oz. He’ll defends him, no matter what, you know,” Kari said. “When I was in the room with him, he was defending Oz.”
Alex looked at her. “Defending him in what way?”
“He says Oz only had a couple beers just like he said. He says he didn’t smell any alcohol on him at all, or he never would have gotten into that car with him.”
“He said that?”
Kari nodded. “That’s what he said.”
“But he reeks of alcohol right now.”
“Jordan said he smelled it after the accident, too, but not before.”
Alex thought about that. “That means his drink may have been spiked while they were at that bar,” Alex said.
“Right,” said Kari. “And after that crash, whoever spiked his drink may have been following them, waiting for that crash to happen. They might have found Oz unconscious, thought he was dead, and doused him with alcohol.”
“To take away any suspicion about whatever drug they might have put in Oz’s drink?” Alex asked.
“That’s what I’m thinking, yes,” said Kari.
“Good thought,” said Alex, and immediately pulled out his cell phone.
“What are you doing?” Kari asked.
“Calling the doctor. Both Jordan and Oz need to be checked out, just to be on the safe side, and he can also take a blood sample from Oz, get it to his lab, and find out what’s in his system. That’ll tell me what I need to know.”
“And if Doc finds that he was drugged?”
“Then the ballgame changes. You guys will have to be on lockdown here at The Drakos.”
“Alex!”
“At least until I can get back in town, yes, Karena. That will be an order. And there will be no debating that order, especially from you.”
Kari rubbed her forehead. Sometimes being married to Alex was so complicated she wondered if she made the right decision.
Alex could sense her burden too. That was why he wrapped his arms around her tighter, and pulled her closer. “It’ll all work out, baby,” he said. “But it will be inconvenient until it does.”
“That’ll mean increased security too,” Kari said.
“Around you and Jordan, absolutely.”
“And Oz too,” Kari said.
“And Oz too,” Alex admitted. “Although he never thinks he needs it. And the men in the field that I’ve assigned to this matter will be increased substantially, too, from merely cleansing a car wreck to finding out who else was in that bar with Oz and Jordan last night. And we need to know who that woman actually is.”
Kari leaned against Alex. If she thought it was going to be hard on her, she knew it was going to be that much harder on him. And he had the biggest deal of his career to get back on track! And the losses he’d already suffered. It was a tough time all around.
But then they heard Jordan cry out, and their hearts sank. It felt like a jolt to them. Like a sudden, dramatic escalation.
“Mom! Dad!” Jordan had yelled out as both Alex and Kari jumped up and ran out of the kitchen and all the way to Jordan’s bedroom in no time flat. Oz, who had been in one of the guest bedrooms, ran into Jordan’s room too.
Jordan was seated on his bed, and his TV was turned on. “That’s the lady,” he said anxiously to them, pointing his remote control at the TV. “That’s her on the news right there. That’s her right there!”
All three adults looked nervously as Patricia’s picture flashed on the television screen. The newscast showed a distraught looking man, a man they quickly realized was Howard Berringer, the brand new governor of Florida, walking briskly. Reporters’ microphones were shoved in his face.
“I want answers and I want them now,” he was saying as he walked. “My daughter was on a date with the brother of Alex Drakos, and now she’s dead?”
“Your daughter was on a date with the billionaire Alex Drakos, Governor?” asked one reporter.
“I didn’t say she was on a date with Alex Drakos,” said the governor. “Get your fake news straight. I said she was on a date with Oz Drakos, Alex Drakos’ brother. And then suddenly they find her body two hundred miles away from where she and the Drakos brother were last seen together? And his brother hasn’t said a word? The police suddenly can’t find him? I want answers and I want them now!”
The governor hurried away from the reporters, got on a waiting helicopter, presumably to get to the location of his daughter’s body’s discovery, and took off.
Kari could hardly believe it. She was looking at Oz. “She was the governor’s daughter?” she asked him.
Alex was looking at Oz too. “I thought you picked her up at that bar.”
“I did!” Oz said.
“He did,” Jordan said.
“Then why did her father say she was on a date with you?” Alex asked.
“I don’t know why he’s saying that,” Oz responded. “Maybe she texted him that we were on a date when she went to the restroom.”
“But it was a lie?”
“It’s a lie!” Oz insisted. “I don’t know why she’d tell him that lie when we literally had just met. Just like I don’t know how I was reeking of alcohol after two beers, and why I was woozy behind the wheel of my car. Something’s going on here, brother, and it’s not my doing!”
Alex let out a harsh exhale. He should have known it wasn’t going to be some simple explanation like reckless drunk driving. He should have known!
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Selinda Clarke sat by the pool with her glass of Scotch in her hand and her boy toy by her side. He was a tall, dark, handsome drink of water and all she could think about was getting out of that chair and taking him to the pool house for “activities.” But Dajalla showed up.
“What have I done now?” she asked her hard-driving son.
“Get lost,” Dajalla said to her boy toy.
The young man, well acquainted with Dajalla’s temper, got up immediately and hurried to the opposite side of the pool to await further instructions. Dajalla sat down where he had vacated.
“You are so rude sometimes,” Selinda said in her heavy Caribbean accent. “Do you realize how you are, Dajalla?”
“It didn’t work,” Dajalla said.
Selinda frowned. “What didn’t work?”
“Your task was to get Oz Drakos out of the way! An accident of some kind. But just get him out of the line of succession so that Drakos, after I make my appearance and reclaim my family, can’t suddenly transfer all of his fortune to his brother. That was your task.”
“And it was performed!” Selinda said. “They even covered him with alcohol to make sure it was ruled a drunk driving incident at his inquest.”
“They don’t have inquests in America,” said Dajalla.
“Why not? I don’t know what they call it in the States, but surely they have some investigation at the time of a death.”
“He didn’t die!” Dajalla yelled. “That’s the point, Mother. Oz Drakos did not die!”
“But the man I hired said he was dead. He said he went to the wreckage site himself and saw that everyone inside had died. Except for the girl.”
Dajalla frowned. “What girl?”
“Some girl he had picked up at a bar. She had been thrown from the car, but she was still alive when he arrived at the wreckage. So he finished her off. He hit her head on a rock. But Oz Drakos, he said, was already dead.”
“Then he lied, or he didn’t bother to check a pulse or anything else because Oz Drakos lived. And you know who else was in that car that I’m sure he failed to mention?”
“Who?” Selinda asked.
“My son,” said Dajalla.
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Selinda leaned up in shock. “What?”
“Didn’t you tell him not to do anything to harm Jordan?” Dajalla asked.
“Why would I tell him that? He wasn’t on a mission to kill some kid. He was on a mission to kill Oz Drakos only. The girl was just a pickup.”
“But my son, our goldmine, was in that car with Drakos’s brother. He was there!”
“At a bar?”
“Yes! His uncle had taken him out drinking with him, yes! He almost was killed too.”
“But he survived, yes?” Selinda asked anxiously.
“No thanks to you and that bumbling rascal you hired to do the job!”
“But he survived, Dajalla, at least tell me that?”
“Yes, he survived, Mother. Or I wouldn’t be having this conversation with you. It would have been a different tune I would have been singing had you blown the billions I intend to claim!”
Selinda exhaled. She knew Dajalla was blowing smoke. He would never kill her. But had that golden child died in that car accident, she also knew she could have been banished, or harmed severely in other ways. She knew just how close a call it all was.
“Now I must intervene,” said Dajalla. “I wanted more time to get my spiel together, but time is no longer on our side. I must act now, before our window of opportunity closes, and it can’t be open again.”
“That shooting in New York showed us his security pattern,” said Selinda.
Dajalla looked at her. “How did you get that to work?”
“One of our clients, who owed us a lot of money, was going to be killed if he did not do exactly as I told him to. His wife was unfaithful. That was a fact. We managed to get Mikey, his new driver, to feed us info only, for a great fee, of course, and he mentioned, a few days ago, that Drakos and his wife would be in New York for a meeting. I got our client to do a favor for us. He was to have one of his wife’s lovers meet him at that restaurant, and then, when Kari Grant went to the restroom, which she inevitably would, he was to ask the man to follow him into the back too. And then attempt to kill him. The sound of gunfire should show to us Drakos’s elaborate security scheme, which it did. I had that test run at the same time the opportunity to have our guy in Florida set Oz Drakos up to die was occurring.”
“Which didn’t work,” said Dajalla.
“No, it did not work,” Selinda admitted.
“That’s why I must act now before your preliminary work ruin it altogether. I’ll only get one chance to make a good impression.”
“But so soon,” said Selinda.
“Thanks to you!” said Dajalla angrily. And then he got up, and left the poolside.
Selinda shook her head. Her man almost blew it all. “Idiot,” she said out loud, just thinking about how close a call her fumble had been, as the pool boy slithered his way back to her side.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The ride down the elevator was a painful one, as Kari didn’t want Alex to go, and Alex didn’t want to leave. But they both knew he had to leave. Oz had already spoken with the police. They confirmed he had called in a stolen vehicle report the night before, and therefore they had no car to inspect and nothing else to arrest him on. The toxicology report Alex’s personal physician had ordered came back positive for a drug whose effects were exactly as Oz had described his wooziness, and his blood alcohol level didn’t register, which meant there was no way he had consumed the kind of alcohol that his clothes reeked of. Oz had been set up.
“What are we going to do about it?” Oz asked. He and Jordan were in the elevator too. They were also walking Alex to the private exit on the back side of the hotel. And Jordan was as sad about his departure as his mother was. “If your men discover who’s responsible, what do you want me to do?” Oz added.
“It depends on who the culprits are,” said Alex. “If they’re mob-affiliated, then you have a dog in that fight. If they aren’t, then you don’t. You stay out of it and let me handle it my way. Understood?”
Oz nodded. His body was still reeling, not just from the injury he sustained in that car wreck, but mainly from the beat down he took from Alex. He was in no position to defy his brother again. “Yes, I understand,” he said.
“Your main job is to stay put and take care of my family,” said Alex. “But Kari’s in charge, you hear me? You do exactly as she tells you to do or you will answer to me again. Do I make myself clear, Odysseus?”
“Crystal,” said Oz.
And then the doors to the elevator opened, and Alex was being escorted down the short corridor that led to the private exit. The atmosphere was already heavy. Now, seeing the pain in Kari’s eyes, and Jordan’s eyes, it was sad too.
Alex pulled them both into his arms when they arrived at the double exit doors and his bodyguards opened both doors for him to walk through. “I’ll be back as soon as I can get back,” he said.
“Why can’t you let somebody else handle it?” Jordan asked him. It was always his question to Alex whenever he had to leave town.
“I wish I could, Sport. But I have to seal this deal myself. Or it won’t be sealed.” Then he stared at Jordan. He was a smart kid, but very vulnerable too. Too vulnerable for a young man who would someday take over an empire that would hopefully still be as vast as it currently was constituted, and it concerned Alex. But he knew it was his fault. He needed to be home more, grooming Jordan and preparing him for the eventual takeover. But the empire wasn’t secure enough for him to ease up yet, and that was the problem.
“Take care of your mother until I get back,” he said to Jordan. Then he glanced at Oz. “And your uncle,” he added.
Normally, Oz would laugh and take such a suggestion as a joke. But not this time. He remained dead serious. “What if they did her too?” he asked his brother.
All of them looked at Oz. “What do you mean?” asked Alex.
“What if the same people who drugged me and tried to set me up killed Patricia? What if she didn’t die in that car crash?”
“But she was thrown from the car, Oz,” said Kari.
“But what if they staged that too?”
Alex stared at his brother. “Do you recall if she put on her seatbelt?” he asked him.
Oz shook his head. “I thought she did,” he said. “I’ve been trying with all I had to remember if she did or didn’t, but I can’t remember for certain. But I thought she did.”
“What about you, Jordan?” Kari asked him. “Do you remember if that girl wore a seatbelt?”
But Jordan hunched his shoulders too. “I wasn’t paying any attention to that,” he admitted. “I know I put on mine, though.”
Alex did as he always did when he was in deep contemplation: he opened his suit coat and placed his hands on his hips. “Her body’s already been discovered, so we can’t check it. But what Odysseus is saying is possible. It’s possible.”
“But the governor’s daughter being there at all is already another mighty coincidence,” Kari said.
All of them looked at her. “Meaning?” Alex asked.
“Of all the women Oz could have picked up on the night somebody tried to set him up, it turns out to be the governor’s daughter? And the governor’s seems to want to blame Alex for it, instead of Oz?”
“Good point,” said Oz.
“It’s like it’s not even about his daughter’s death,” Kari said, “but Alex’s money.”
Alex and Oz both saw exactly what Kari meant.
“As if they want a wrongful death lawsuit that they know I would pay dearly to make go away,” Alex said, “given what such bad publicity could do to my business interests.”
“Are you saying the governor loves money more than he loves his own daughter?” Oz asked.
“It’s possible,” said Kari. “You never really know what some people are capable of.”
Alex knew that to be true too. “Quietly contact my CFO,” Alex said to Oz. “Have him check out the governor’s finances.”
Oz was surprised. “Can he do that?
”
Alex didn’t respond. Kari looked at Oz. “He can,” she said.
Oz nodded. “I’ll order him to do it then,” he said.
“And have our guys dig deeper into the governor’s relationship with his daughter,” Alex said. “I’m talking beyond the public images they portrayed. I want a deep dive into it.”
Oz understood. “I’ll get right on that myself.”
And then Alex exhaled. He knew he had promised to be back within a matter of days for Jordan’s surprise birthday party, even if he would had to leave the negotiating table once again to get there. He would try everything he could to get there. And then he said his goodbyes to his family.
But when he leaned over to give Kari a peck, his peck lingered, turning into a passionate kiss. Oz and Jordan looked away as Alex and Kari held each other tightly, and as Kari fought back tears. Alex going away was always hard, but that time was especially hard.
But he had to go.
As always.
He left out of those double doors without looking back. Leaving, to Kari’s disappointment, had become too familiar to him.
CHAPTER TWENTY
And two days later, on the day of Jordan’s surprise birthday party, Kari woke up alone.
She opened her big, brown eyes and stared at the empty space next to her. He was supposed to return home two nights ago. Then he said he’d be home last night. Now she wondered when would he come at all. Next week?
She rolled onto her back. It wasn’t that he was always gone. He’d been very careful in their young marriage to make sure she and Jordan came first. But it was just that he was always gone LATELY. Like the past month. Almost every other day he had to leave town, or even the country, and she was waking up alone.
Not that she complained any of those other times. She didn’t say a word. Long before he ever met her, she knew Alex owned an empire that didn’t run itself. He had to do what he had to do and she completely accepted that when she agreed to marry him.
But today was Jordan’s birthday, and he was turning sixteen. She had meticulously planned his sweet sixteen surprise party for weeks, and all of his friends were expected to be there. Alex had to be there too!
Alex Drakos: Branding Her Again Page 9
