“Okay,” Alex said in a voice that seemed more resigned to the fact than accepting of it. “You look out for your friend. That’s what friends should do. But I want you to be careful. If it goes sideways you get out of there and let my guys handle it. Domestics can go off the rails rather quickly. As you know.”
Kari nodded her head. “I’ll be careful. You know I will.”
“Yes, I do. You’re my girl, and you’re a very sensible girl. But I still would prefer if you didn’t go at all.”
Kari would have preferred what happened between Alex and that woman didn’t happen at all, either, but it happened. “I’ll be careful,” she said again.
But she also knew, had Alex insisted, she would have gotten out. He and Jordan, her fourteen-year-old son, came first in her life, and she wasn’t messing that up, not even for Faye. But she knew Alex. If his men were not following and monitoring Faye’s car on that high-tech equipment he had installed in their car, he would have told her to get out and to get out now. Without debate. But because there was cover, and because he admired a woman who stood up for her friends, he didn’t push the issue.
But . . . “I don’t believe anything like that is going on,” Alex said. “Not with Benny. He’s not the type.”
“I agree.”
“But if there’s something wrong, and you can see that Faye will not listen to reason, you get the hell out. You think about Jordan, and me for goodness sake’s, and get out. And that part is an order, Kari.”
Kari still couldn’t believe it. The idea that some man would give her an order and she didn’t cuss his ass out still astounded her. But Alex was in that position now. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I know when to say when. I’ll get out.”
Her answer seemed to satisfy him, because he moved on. He asked about Jordan.
“He’s good. They just made him debate team captain at school.”
“That’s great! We’ll do something special for him when I get back.”
“Which will be?”
“I’m back,” Alex said.
Kari smiled. “Really?”
“Really. I’m taking care of some business first, but I should be home by the time you get there.”
“That sounds great, Alex.”
“In fact, I’ve got to get off this phone and handle it now. Take care of yourself, Karena.”
“I will. And you too.” He didn’t say he loved her, which was disappointing. But he rarely said it anyway. So she took it in stride.
But then Alex added: “I love you.”
Kari’s heart melted the way it always did when she heard those rare words. At least rare to her ears! And she smiled and placed both hands on the phone. “I love you, too, Alex.”
“All right,” he said as if it took quite the effort for him to expose himself like that. “I’ll see you later.”
“Okay.”
“And keep your ass safe,” he added, and he added it not as a joke, but as a serious order.
Kari smiled. “Yes, sir,” she said, and ended the call.
Lucinda looked back at her when the call ended. “What’s got you smiling?” she asked. “That cheater?” Then Lucinda smiled. “Just kidding! But all men are dogs. You do realize that?”
“Whatever, Lou,” Kari said with a twirl of her hand. She was so accustomed to Lucinda’s putdowns of the male sex that she ignored her whenever she spoke of them. She’d never been in a successful relationship in her life, but she always had advice for those who had. Even for those who knew, even in successful relationships, that there were going to be serious bumps in the road. Some almost devastating. Kari had the proverbial bruises to prove it.
And then, just as she was thinking about her own bruises, they made it to that house on Hippa Street, saw Benny’s car parked in the driveway, and a deeply bruised Faye suddenly sped up and slung in behind his car so fast she nearly hit it.
Kari reached for Faye just as Faye was about to get out of the car. “Faye, wait,” she said.
Faye turned and looked at her friend. Kari had a face that always showed, not so much compassion; she wasn’t sentimental like that. But her face always showed sincerity and concern, as if she knew how easily a good life could turn bad.
“What is it, Kare?” Faye asked her.
“You’re a very successful businesswoman,” Kari said. “You have a lot to lose. Don’t go up in there showing your behind. You’ll regret it later.”
Faye understood everything Kari was saying. And it was true. But she wasn’t like Kari. She couldn’t let her man do all that crazy shit Alex did, and get away with it. She wasn’t that kind of believing woman. She had to see it, then she’d believe it.
She snatched away from Kari and got out of her car.
“Faye, wait,” Kari said again as she began unbuckling her seat belt to get out too.
“Bring on the popcorn, Kari,” Lucinda said, unbuckling too, “because knowing Faye Church, it’s going to get dramatic. You know it and I do too.”
And that was exactly why Kari hurried out of that car, and she and Lucinda hurried behind Faye.
The realtor’s lockbox on the home’s front door had been opened and the key removed, so Faye pulled out the backup keys she kept for all of her properties and searched for the one labeled as the Hippa Street key.
“Aren’t you going to knock?” Lucinda asked.
“Nobody, not even my husband, has any business in that house without getting authorization from me, the listing agent,” Faye said. “And you want me to knock?” Faye showed what she thought about Lucinda’s suggestion by quickly unlocking and then opening that front door.
But when she opened it, and they stepped inside, Ramona was right about the darkness too. Every light in the place was off. Faye quickly turned on the living room light.
A part of Kari wanted to call out to Benny to protect him, because he was her friend too. But if he was up to what it appeared he was up to, then she wasn’t about to give him advance notice. It would not only destroy Faye, but it would break Kari’s heart if she knew a wonderful man like Benny was cheating on his wife, and it would hurt Jordan too. Benny was her son’s godfather, and he looked up to him.
Besides, Faye was moving so quickly that she would not have had time to give him any advance anything. Faye headed straight upstairs. Where the bedrooms were. Kari and Lucinda hurried behind her.
Every door was closed, which, to Kari, seemed odd, but when Faye opened the first bedroom door and didn’t see anything, she began to feel better. Then she opened the second door and found nothing. Then the door to the small master bedroom. Still nothing! They all looked at each other. But Kari also remembered that Benny’s car was parked in that driveway. Something was happening!
And that was when she saw it. And her heart dropped. “Look,” she whispered.
“Where?” Faye asked.
“Where?” asked Lucinda.
“There,” Kari said.
And both ladies looked where Kari was pointing. And that was when they saw it too. A hand was seen, as if somebody, a woman, was lying on the floor on the opposite side of the bed. Hiding.
Faye’s anger rose again. “I see your black ass, Alisha,” she said. “You may as well come out now!”
But nothing. That hand didn’t even move. Faye began hurrying around to the opposite side of the bed. Lucinda went behind her. Kari looked back. Her hackles were up. This was beginning to feel weird. And then Faye screamed.
“What?” Kari said and hurried to look too. And there she was. Alisha McKnight alright. But she wasn’t hiding. Or trying to be coy. She was dead. Her head had been busted open, and blood was everywhere.
Faye and Lucinda turned to run, to get the hell out, but they ran into Kari. And then Kari turned too, and they all ran out of that room and down those stairs.
But why was Benny’s car still in the driveway? Had he killed that woman and fled in panic, forgetting that his car was still there? All kinds of questions were running through their mi
nds. And Faye was even calling her husband’s name as they ran, as if he could be hiding in that house too!
But they weren’t waiting around to search. This was now a police matter. This was now time for Kari’s security detail to get the hell inside.
But as soon as Kari ran out of the still-open front door, to alert her security, gunshots from the woods across the street pierced through the night, firing directly at her and her friends, and nearly hitting all three of them. Kari pushed Faye and Lucinda back inside of the house as she turned and ran back inside herself, and she slammed the door behind them.
Just as she did, her security detail, parked just beyond the house, swerved to a stop in front of the house. The men Alex had hired to protect Kari were as stunned as Kari was. They expected drama, but not this kind!
But they sprang into action. They got out and positioned themselves on the passenger side of their vehicle, and they began firing back at the gunmen who were apparently positioned in the woods across the street. Alex men were sharpshooters and didn’t just shoot wildly, but two would stand and fire precision shots, while the other two covered them with a barrage of shots. They were quickly getting the upper hand.
But inside the house, Faye and Lucinda were screaming in terror. Not only was a dead body inside, but gunmen were outside! They felt boxed-in and horrified.
Kari was too, but she had a man like Alex, a man who once was the number two for his father’s crime organization before Alex went legit. And he had taught her a thing or two.
She ran into the kitchen, to grab a butcher’s knife to give them some sort of weapon, but when she returned, somebody, unbeknownst to her battling security detail, was trying to force-open the locked front door. Faye and Lucinda began screaming even more and shaking their hands. But Kari knew she had to think strategically. She had to think of something!
“Get in front of the door,” Kari said to her friends as she took up position behind the door.
“Are you crazy?” Lucinda asked. “You get in front!”
But just as Lucinda uttered those words, the door was kicked open and both Lucinda and Faye found themselves staring down the barrel of a rifle. And the man quickly entered and slammed the door behind him as he rushed toward them, forcing them to scream even more.
“Shut the fuck up or I’ll shoot your fucking brains out!” he yelled as he rushed them.
But Kari came up behind the man, with the knife in her hand, and with the kind of force she wasn’t sure her small body could muster, she stabbed the man in his back. She knew she had to stab him deep, or he would blow her, and her friends while he was at it, to kingdom come.
And it worked. Kari stabbed him deep enough. Faye quickly grabbed Lucinda and pulled her sideways as the man’s gun went off, and he fell to the floor.
“Get his gun,” Kari was saying. She hurried to the window to see if her security detail was a part of the gun battle outside, so she didn’t have that to worry about too.
But Faye and Lucinda were still too traumatized to get anybody’s gun. They looked at Kari like she was nuts.
But Kari knew somebody had to act or there could be other men forcing their way inside. After being assured that Alex’s men were the ones shooting back in that car that had pulled up, she grabbed the rifle herself and told her friends to come on. “Come where?” Lucinda was asking as they ran behind Kari.
But Kari didn’t respond. They had two options: run out of the backdoor, where an ambush could be waiting for them, or run into the garage and barricade themselves inside.
She chose the garage.
They ran through the kitchen to the side door that led to the garage. Their hearts were pumping as if they were going to jump out of their chests. Faye and Lucinda needed a leader, and they latched onto Kari’s courage like a moth to a flame.
Kari never put herself out as anybody’s leader but her own, but circumstances kept forcing the issue. And she knew she had to rise to the occasion. Somebody had to!
She opened the door that led to the garage quickly. As soon as the door swung open, she was about to point that rifle to make sure nobody was waiting inside. But unfortunate for her, somebody was waiting inside. And she had her weapon already pointing. And it was obvious to all three friends that the lady in that garage, with that shotgun in her hand, trained on them, meant business.
“Hello, Alex Drakos wannabe wife,” she said in a heavily accented voice. “Drop your weapon or somebody dies. And the dead one will not, I assure you, be me.”
And Faye screamed. Because, in that garage, in a corner, was Benny Church, her husband. He was unconscious, bleeding, and badly beaten. He was also tied and gagged. Kari, who had looked at Benny, too, when Faye screamed, looked back at that woman.
Kari knew those people were not playing when that gunfire broke out. She knew it when she saw what happened to Alisha. She knew it when that man forced himself into that house. But if there was still a shred of doubt in her mind about their ultimate goal, that woman, with that hate-filled look in her small eyes, erased all doubt.
And Kari laid her weapon down and raised her hands. Fay and Lucinda, taking all their cues from Kari, quickly raised their hands in surrender too.
CHAPTER THREE
THREE WEEKS EARLIER
“Keep going! Keeping going! Keep going gotdammit!”
Alex Drakos was contorting his body in every way possible as the golf ball sailed across the fairway, onto the green, and nearly gave him a hole-in-one. But it ultimately died and landed nearly three feet short of the hole. “Dammit!” he yelled to let off the steam of the moment.
His younger brother, Odysseus “Oz” Drakos, grinned. “Bad luck, old man. And so close! Now step aside, if you please. Let me show you how it’s done!”
Jordan Grant laughed as Alex smiled and stepped aside. They were on the back nine of the golf course that also happened to be on Alex’s expansive New York estate, and Jordan was having the time of his life with the two men.
“Jordan,” Oz said in that lofty, Greek-accented voice of his, a cigar pressed between his teeth, “unlike my brother here, I think I’ll take the 3-wood, please.”
“Oh, come on, Odysseus,” Alex said. “That won’t take you where you need to go, and you know it. I want competition, not a cakewalk.”
“I never do it the way it’s supposed to be done,” Oz said with a smile, “but somehow I always get it done. Imagine that? Give it to me, Junior. I want to give this brother of mine a much-needed lesson on how to get it right the first time.”
Jordan handed Oz the golf club he requested. Jordan had learned a lot about golfing from Alex, and he was their caddy for the day.
“Hold this,” Oz said, handing his cigar to Jordan.
Alex interceded and took the cigar instead. He dropped it and crushed it underfoot.
“Now, brother,” Oz said to Alex, pointing the 3-wood, “look and learn.” And then Oz began shaking his hips and positioning his club behind the ball.
But Jordan looked at Alex. For some reason, he didn’t like people to minimize Alex, not even in a joking way. He felt that same way about his mother. “That was a great shot, Mister D,” he said to encourage Alex.
Alex looked at Jordan and smiled. He didn’t need the encouragement, but he liked the kid’s heart. But Oz, as he usually did, put in his own two cents. “When you say Mister D, Junior,” he asked, “of whom are you referring? My brother, or me?”
“I’m referring to Mister D,” Jordan said. “You aren’t Mister D. You’re just Oz.”
Even Oz had to laugh at that. And he teed off hard down the fairway, and, after the shot began to sail, began contorting his body too. He was dressed, oddly enough, like a Scottish golfer, throwback style, in ivy cap and knickerbockers, and it suited him, Jordan felt. Oz was flamboyant by nature and could get away with flamboyant attire. But despite Oz’s bravado, even Jordan could see who really taught whom a lesson. Alex’s ball went farther and straighter. Oz’s ended in the rough near a pack of t
rees.
“Bad luck, old man,” Jordan said, mimicking Oz, and Alex and Jordan laughed and high-fived. Oz managed to smile.
“Okay, Jordan,” Alex said. “It’s your turn.”
Jordan and Oz both were surprised. “My turn?” Jordan asked. “But I’m the caddy.”
“Not with me, you aren’t. You are a golfer.” Alex pulled out the relevant driver for Jordan to use, and he handed it to him. “It’s your turn,” he said.
Jordan smiled wildly, handed Alex the golf bag, and accepted the club. And he went to do his thing. It was hilarious, because he barely struck the ball at all, but Jordan still was thrilled. He barely struck it, and it petered out in less than ten feet from where they stood, but he struck it!
But then a helicopter flew in and landed on the helipad on Alex’s property. Although it was on the complete opposite side of the estate, Oz could see the writing clear enough to see that it had The Drakos Corporation, in those deep dark letterings, written on it. “Uh-oh, brother,” he said, “looks as though your company hails you. And in a big fucking way.”
Alex stood there, leaned on his golf club, as his Security Chief Valentino Castellano, known as Tino, jumped off of the helicopter, jumped onto a golf cart that was waiting with driver onboard, and began the trek across the vast estate to the golf course where the boss stood.
But the boss, Jordan noticed as he looked at Alex, appeared to be more upset than curious. There were always interruptions. Not a day went by when Alex wasn’t needed for something. There had never been a day, that Jordan could recall, when Alex could enjoy himself without being forced to excuse himself to handle a call, or to receive a business partner, or to catch a plane. Jordan, knowing his mother as well as he did, wondered just how much of this she was going to take.
When the cart arrived at their side, Tino jumped off and made his way to Alex. “Good morning all!” It was early morning: barely seven am.
Alex Drakos: His Dangerous Affair (The Alex Drakos Romantic Suspense Series Book 4) Page 2
