Kamal had been at the Powerplay condo for a full ten minutes when Teague finally arrived.
“Nice of you to join me,” Kamal snarked as his friend wandered in and headed to the bar.
“It’s been a hell of a day,” Teague grunted, pouring himself a generous slug of gin.
“Tell me about it,” Kamal echoed, holding up his own large tumbler of whiskey.
Teague leaned on the pool table where he could watch Kamal in the facing leather armchair. “You’re being pretty damned hard on Derek,” he said without preamble.
Kamal rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “He’s ruining his fucking career over a prostitute. Am I supposed to simply ignore that and facilitate his crash and burn?”
Teague sipped his drink thoughtfully. “I think you’re supposed to support him because he’s been your best friend since you were eighteen.”
“Well, if supporting him means encouraging him to act like an utter fool, then count me out.”
Teague shook his head and took another long drink. “So why am I here? I get the feeling it’s not to discuss Derek’s choices in women and career moves.”
“No, it’s to discuss the attempt on the president’s life.”
Teague whistled long and low. “You don’t waste words, my man. Did you see something that night? Get a hint of who it might be?”
Kamal stood and strode to the fireplace, where he leaned against the mantel as he talked.
“I told the president I would have my security staff look into it, so she gave us access to the evidence and I instructed my men to conduct an investigation in parallel to the one Homeland Security is doing.”
One of Teague’s dark eyebrows rose above an amber eye. “The president really authorized giving the Egyptian government access to the evidence?”
“Not the Egyptian government, my security detail, and while they are employed by the embassy, they are loyal to me and only me. The president knows I will ensure all information remains completely confidential. She also knows that I have access to information about Middle Eastern groups that the US might not.”
Teague nodded, seeming deep in thought for a moment. “And you’re going to tell me what you’ve found now?”
“Russian Bratva,” he announced.
Now both of Teague’s eyebrows worked their way into his hairline. “What in the world?”
“My thoughts exactly. But there is something else, and I am afraid the two things might be linked. If they are, I am up against a wall here.”
“Okay…”
“My father is ridiculously anxious for me to jettison this accord that I’m working on with the president. He calls me daily, pressuring me to tank the whole endeavor.”
“He hasn’t given you a reason?”
Kamal raised his glass in Teague’s direction before taking the final sip and setting it down on the mantel.
“He says something vague about business partners and trade issues. He also tells me President Abbas feels similarly but of course can’t express that in public. However, I sense something more significant is going on.”
“Has he ever done this before? Interjected himself in your embassy business?”
Kamal laughed bitterly. “My father would interject himself in anything that he felt like. He hasn’t shown this much interest or pushed this hard on anything in the past, but it’s certainly nothing new for him to pressure me about things in my life that shouldn’t concern him at all.”
“And do you think that these business associates he’s talking about are the Bratva?” Teague looked incredulous.
Sighing, Kamal paced the room. “It’s no secret that my father has a wide range of associates, some of whom aren’t upstanding citizens of any country. I’d like to think that he wouldn’t be asking me to risk my career—the same career that he’s wanted for me since I was a teenager—in order to pander to the wishes of Russian mobsters. My father is hardly without resources. I’d think he could stand up to some pressure from the Bratva. But the simple fact is, I don’t know.”
“So what do you want from me?”
“I want you to tell me how to tie up my assets so that my father can’t get at them and so that he won’t know until it’s done.”
Kamal watched as Teague stared at him in shock. His friends didn’t know all the details, but they knew that his family’s finances were vast and that he never divulged anything about them, but now he was going to let Teague in on the dirty details of it all.
Teague blinked once, then twice before a smile slowly crawled across his face. Kamal knew that his friend loved nothing more than complex legal maneuverings of money. As one of the top corporate attorneys in the nation, Teague had tied up billions of dollars in neat little international bows more than once.
“And we’re doing this why…?” Teague prompted.
Kamal breathed deeply. “Because something in my gut tells me that bad things are coming, and that it’s long past time for me to make sure I can survive no matter what my father might or might not do.”
“Okay, then,” Teague said, setting his drink aside and sitting on the sofa as he pulled out his smartphone and began typing furiously with his thumbs. “Tell me where every dime is and how it’s structured. If we’re going to do this without him knowing, we need to have everything ready to go before we ever press a single button.”
Kamal grinned. He’d called the right man for the job. If he could separate his money from his father’s, there was at least a chance that he could escape the worst of the fallout. Kamal had always trusted his gut, and it was telling him that the accord, the shooting, the Bratva, and his father were all linked somehow, and when the connections became clear, Kamal was determined to be as far away from all of it as he could be.
Chapter 8
It was Jessica’s favorite day of the week, and even though she knew she shouldn’t, she spent extra time getting dressed and putting on her makeup in the morning. When she was going to be appearing on camera, she allowed the staff to schedule the White House stylist to do her hair and makeup, but Wednesdays were a press-free day in her schedule, and also the day that she had a standing meeting with the Egyptian ambassador, so she chose more casual clothes and pretended she was an ordinary woman dressing for a day at the office instead of a day in front of reporters and a few million people.
Ten minutes before Kamal was due to arrive, a knock sounded on her office door.
“Yes?” she called out, glasses perched on her nose as she sifted through a particularly dull legislative proposal on reducing carbon emission standards.
“Madam President?” Vanessa queried, putting her head into the room like a chicken. “I realize it’s early, but I wanted to let you know that the ambassador is here whenever you’re ready.”
Jessica’s heart jumped, and she fought back the urge to smooth her hair. “It’s fine, you can send him in. It’ll be far better time spent than this carbon credits bill that Fiona is making me read.”
Vanessa laughed, then disappeared, returning a few moments later with Kamal in tow. “Would you like anything sent in?” she asked.
Jessica looked at Kamal, secretly hoping that he wasn’t hungry or thirsty so they wouldn’t be interrupted by the staff.
“No, thank you, I’m fine,” he said, smiling at Jessica and sending blood pumping through her head like crazy.
“I am as well. Thank you, Vanessa.”
After the chief of staff left, shutting the door behind her, Kamal and Jessica both stayed where they were, gazing at each other, frozen in some sort of lust-induced haze. Because Jessica could feel it, the heat in his stare, the tingling in her core, the tightening in her breasts. She knew that this was dangerous, it was foolish, it was likely to destroy everything she’d sacrificed so much for, for the last six years.
“We…” She cleared her throat, but it was really her head that needed to be cleared. “We should get started. I think we were looking at how to handle missile silos?”
He nodded, s
tepping closer to the massive desk that separated them. “Are you well?” he asked softly. “I’ve been worried about you—since the shooting.”
Her heart tumbled from her chest to her gut, and she knew he could see it, because he stepped to the very edge of her desk, leaning forward, hands on the top, and then he seared her to the core with nothing more than his eyes.
“Madam President?”
She swayed toward him, blinking as she drifted into his heated gaze. And then she had the overwhelming urge to explain it to him. To make him understand how she’d arrived here, why she couldn’t do certain things, what it was that she craved so completely but could never attain.
“John had only been gone for a few hours when they came to me,” she said quietly. “They asked me to take his Senate seat, and I said yes. But I only did it because I thought he was going to come back.” She inhaled a shaky breath. “For the next week, I thought that they’d find him alive. I was saving the seat for him. But he never came back. And then I was a senator.”
Kamal’s eyes watched her sadly, and she sank deeper into her office chair, but he remained standing, looking down at her as she said words out loud to him that she hadn’t told anyone but Fiona and her late father.
“John’s parents were destroyed. The country was in mourning. And all I knew was that it made everyone happy to have me do it—take his place. And it distracted me. I hurt so badly, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to wake up every morning, but with the entire country’s expectations on my shoulders, I didn’t have a choice.”
Jessica was so swept up in her recollections that she didn’t notice Kamal moving around the desk until he was kneeling in front of her, his hands landing alongside her hips in the leather chair.
“And one day, you woke up and realized that you didn’t want it all. But by then, it was too late.” His voice was soft and his hands were gentle when they cupped her face. Her heart raced, and she wasn’t sure if it was because she wanted his touch so badly or because she knew she shouldn’t allow it.
“One morning, I woke up and realized I didn’t want it all,” she echoed. His thumbs caressed her cheekbones as he quietly pulled her toward him. She didn’t resist, even as every instinct in her was shouting to stop.
“I think, Madam President,” he breathed out as his hands wound their way into the thick hair at the back of her head, “that it’s past time for you to do something that you want to.”
“I thought we agreed to be friends,” she whispered back as his lips hovered above hers.
“We did,” he murmured, and his lips brushed against hers as a series of tiny explosions cascaded through her chest.
“Kamal…”
“Shh. It’s your turn, Jessica.” His lips covered hers again, and she knew then that she was lost. Lost to the sensations, lost to the feelings, lost to the sheer decadence of having an extremely sexy man kiss her like she was the most precious thing in the world.
As her lips naturally parted for him, his tongue invaded, sliding through her mouth seductively while his hand pulled her hair to adjust the angle of her head. She gasped when he nipped at her lower lip, heat and electric shocks zipping through her and landing in places so long neglected, Jessica had nearly forgotten they existed.
Kamal groaned, and she eased closer to him, craving more—more contact, more sensation, more warmth. Kissing Cade Jenkins had been enjoyable; kissing Kamal Masri was indescribable. Then they were both moving as he stood, bringing her with him, never losing contact with her mouth.
When they were pressed to one another, ankle to lips, she rejoiced in the feeling of having a big, tall masculine form to mold against. My God, it had been so long, she fought the dueling urges to strip down or to cry. It was all too much. All at once, with no warning, with no future.
Kamal pulled away slowly, gazing at her with a look of adoration. “Shh,” he soothed, while she struggled to maintain her composure beneath his hands, his gaze, and his compassion.
“It’s okay,” he whispered, pulling her into him, her head against his chest as his hands rubbed light circles on her back. “Nothing has to change. You just looked like you needed a kiss. It’s all fine now.”
“Six years,” she replied as if that explained everything. “It’s been six years.”
But Kamal seemed to understand her as well as she understood herself and acted as though it made perfect sense to him.
“And now maybe you’re moving to something different, but there’s no rush, no need to feel pressured. We are friends, and if sometimes we are friends who kiss, that is okay.”
She nodded quickly, nearly overcome by emotion as he moved away, rounding the desk and taking a seat in an armchair on the other side.
“Now, I do believe we were discussing the missile silos in the Middle East, Madam President.”
And Jessica Hampton, first woman president of the United States, sat at her desk and discussed the nuclear capacities of the major players in the Middle East while she sat across from a man who had just taken a very significant step toward holding her presidential heart in the palm of his foreign hand.
Kamal was racked with guilt. He’d been to see the president for their weekly meetings for three weeks in a row, and he’d still not revealed to her what his staff had learned about the attempted shooting. If the Americans knew anything new, she hadn’t shared it with him either, but she wasn’t obligated to. He’d been the one who’d committed to help her discover more about the shooting. He’d fully intended, and in fact wanted, to find out who had done this. Yes, truth be told, Kamal had wanted nothing more than to ride in on the proverbial white horse and rescue the damsel in distress—even if that damsel was the most powerful person on the planet.
But then the myriad pieces of a complicated puzzle had started to appear, and he was afraid of what he’d find once he dug deeper, afraid of what the evidence might say about his own father. So, he’d been holding back. Learning more bits and pieces from his security detail each day, and keeping it all close, refusing to allow the information to go to the Americans until he felt like there would be no surprises.
His guess was that when his father had been unable to obtain Kamal’s cooperation in ending the accord, the Bratva had taken matters into their own hands. His father’s increasing desperation to have the accord torpedoed fit with the theory, as did the fact that his men had discovered the Bratva were working on a drug deal that included much of the region the accord was trying to police.
But Kamal hated that he was keeping all of that secret from Jessica. He was often the keeper of secrets; he’d been charged with state secrets, business secrets, family secrets. Sometimes it felt like his entire life was nothing but secrets. But now he felt guilty, and angry. If Jessica ever discovered that his father might be involved with the Bratva, well, she’d certainly not be kissing him behind closed doors in the Oval Office.
Not that any more kissing had occurred since that first time. He’d sensed she needed some distance, a chance to feel that she had the situation under control, both for her own personal vulnerability and for the sake of her professional ethics. And he was fine to give her that for the moment, particularly since he had the shooting hanging over his head.
Because while he’d heard no rumblings that the US had discovered anything significant about the shooting, Kamal wasn’t naïve enough to think that his staff were the only ones who could gather intelligence. If Egyptian probes had uncovered the signs pointing to the Bratva, the Americans couldn’t be far behind.
“Mr. Ambassador?” Tariq leaned into the open doorway of Kamal’s office.
“Yes. Come in.” Kamal motioned for Tariq to enter and sit.
Tariq closed the door behind himself, alerting Kamal that this wasn’t going to be a discussion about the latest football scores from the English Premier League.
“I have more information on the shooting.”
Kamal sighed, tension radiating through his back and neck at the thought of what Tariq�
�s highly skilled agents might have uncovered.
“It appears that the Bratva have begun ferrying the drugs into the region as we’d heard they were planning. But they’re doing it through legitimate channels, shipping them via an Egyptian company…” Tariq’s voice faded away as he raised one eyebrow. Fuck.
“And I suppose that company is owned by Masri Enterprises?” Kamal asked rhetorically.
Tariq was visibly uncomfortable but looked Kamal straight in the eye as he answered, “No, sir.”
Kamal was admittedly surprised as he leaned forward and pinned Tariq with a hard stare. “Then who?”
“President Abbas’s company, sir.”
Kamal let out a long, low whistle. “Well, that certainly puts a new spin on things.”
“It puts Egypt in grave danger,” Tariq said solemnly. Kamal could only nod in agreement.
“And how are they managing to dump those drugs into the region?”
“There is a loophole in the current laws, Mr. Ambassador.” Tariq went on to explain the intricacies of the trade laws, and Kamal could see immediately why the accord would be against the Bratva’s interests. It was going to restructure all the regulations that were allowing the Bratva to run drugs disguised as aid to war-torn countries in the Middle East and do it in plain sight, right under the noses of the Americans and the UN.
“This puts you in an awkward situation, Mr. Ambassador.” Tariq spoke the blatantly obvious.
“Yes, it does. President Abbas has the authority to remove me, send me home, or worse, assign me to a post in someplace like Kazakhstan.”
“If it’s any consolation, we can’t find any indication that President Abbas has personally been involved in this arrangement. His company is enormous, it’s possible that this was simply a transport contract that someone lower in the company signed off on.”
Kamal looked at Tariq with one eyebrow raised. The man didn’t seriously believe that, did he?
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