But it would be another half-hour of Alex doing a lot of glad-handing and small conversations himself, before he found his way to their group. He kissed Faye and Lucinda on the cheeks when he arrived. They were Kari’s friends, so he took them as his friends now, too. Then he placed his arm around Kari’s waist, and kissed her on the lips.
Faye and Lucinda elbowed each other. A man like Alex Drakos openly affectionate with their Kari was still surreal to them.
“Where’s Benjamin?” Alex asked Faye.
“He has a client getting ready to go on trial,” Faye responded, “and he had to attend a pre-trial hearing. He said he’d drop by if time permitted.”
“He’s a good attorney,” said Alex. “He has a bright future in the legal profession. Remind me, Kari, to give him a call when I’m in town again. I want him on my team.”
“I’ll be happy to remind you,” Kari said. “Faye will kill me if I don’t.”
They all laughed. But before Lucinda or Faye could make their pitch to join Alex’s hotel and casino team, a very familiar face entered the ballroom. Faye elbowed Lucinda, and Lucinda elbowed Kari.
When Kari looked, she was as shocked as they were. “What is he doing here?” Kari asked.
“Who?” asked Alex, and looked in that direction too. “Who is he?”
“That’s Paul Kurtz,” Kari said. “The owner of River City Consultants.”
Alex knew that name. The background he had ordered on Kari when he first met her turned up that name. “Your former boss, correct?” he asked her.
“More like her former tormentor,” said Lucinda.
Alex looked at Lou. “What do you mean?”
“He was unfair in his promoting practices,” Kari said. “That’s what she means.”
“Unfair is a kind way to put it,” said Faye. “He hired hoes to sleep with, and then promoted them above Kari time and time again. Then he forced Kari to train those airheads he hired, without giving her any recognition, nor a dime increase in pay. Kari finally quit, but it was a long time coming.”
Alex looked at Kari. She never seemed to catch a break. That was why it still disturbed him about that Natalie Corman situation. They were going along, smooth he thought, and then that shit hit the fan. With a lesser woman, it could have derailed them.
But Kari was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. She was willing to hear him out, before she threw him out. And she believed him. It could have gone the other way easily for somebody accustomed to letdowns. She could have saw the signs of danger, and ran as far away as she could get from him.
But she didn’t.
“He’s coming over, guys,” Lucinda said. “That fool is actually coming over here.”
And Paul Kurtz, the owner of RCC, came over with a big grin on his face, as if all was peachy-cream and he never had a moment’s ill-will toward Kari Grant.
“Mr. Drakos,” he said and extended his hand, “it’s an honor to meet you, sir.”
Alex did not shake his hand.
But Paul, being Paul, continued to smile as he withdrew the handshake. “I just wanted to say that it’s a great thing you’re doing. I know you didn’t have to build your casino here in Apple Valley, but you did it to help the people.”
“I did it to help myself,” replied Alex.
Kari could tell Paul didn’t expect that reply. But Paul continued to smile anyway. “And to help yourself, of course,” he said and grinned. Nobody returned his grin.
Then he turned his attention to the group. “How’s everybody?” he asked, looking at the ladies. “Hey,” they said dryly.
And when he turned toward Kari, his smiled increased. “Hi, Kari!” he said jovially. “Long time, no see.”
Kari didn’t crack a smile. Was this man for real? His actions on that job caused her all kinds of sleepless nights. And he wanted her to just forget about it?
But it was Faye, who remembered those sleepless nights too, who got to the point. “What do you want, Paul?” she asked.
“I know what he wants,” Kari said. “RCC, like many of our businesses around here, are suffering in this economy. He’s desperate. I can see it in his eyes. He wants his hands on one of those juicy contracts Alex has to offer. That’s what he wants.”
“Now that you mention it,” Paul said, not too proud to beg, “I was hoping, Mr. Drakos, that you would consider my company, River City Consultants, known here in town as RCC, to become the official marketing firm of your hotel and casino. I would be honored to sit down with you and give you a brief overview.”
“I’m with Kari,” Alex said. “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
But Paul didn’t seem to understand. “I will be honored to sit down with you,” he said again.
Alex decided to be blunt. “I will not be honored to sit down with you,” he said.
Paul understood that response, but was surprised by it. “Excuse me?”
“Kiss my ass,” Alex said, to laughter from the Faye and Lucinda. “Is that clearer?”
Paul just stood there, his fat face turning red. “I was only making a business proposal, sir,” he said. “I don’t understand the insults.”
“Was it business when you refused to promote Kari?” Alex asked. “Or was it personal? Personal between you and your whores, that is?”
Paul swallowed hard. He glanced at Kari with hate in his eyes, but then he looked back at Alex.
“My decision is personal too,” Alex said. “Between you and I, that is. You will never get any contract that I am offering. Not ever. In fact, if you step foot into any business I own, including that hotel and casino, it will be the last business you step foot into. Now get the fuck out of my face.”
Kari was not an eye-for-an-eye kind of person, but it felt good to see Paul chopped down to size. His disrespect and unfairness caused her to leave the best job she ever had, and it could have turned out disastrous for her. Leaving a job with no prospects for another one was never smart, and she had a kid to raise! But fools like him, Kari felt, placed women like her in tough spots like that all the time. It was his time to be in that tough spot.
Paul looked at Kari. “I’m a big man in this town,” he said to her. “When your boyfriend marries that actress and has left you high and dry the way we all knows he will, then we’ll see whose business is desperate. Life can get very lonely for Maid for Mom if I put a word out to my colleagues in this town.”
“Why you nasty son-of-a-bitch,” Faye said with clenched teeth, but Paul only smiled that disgusting smile and walked away. He was heading for the exit.
“What a piece of work,” said Lucinda.
But if the ladies were outraged, Alex was downright livid. “I’ll be back,” he said to them, and was about to follow Paul.
But Kari was panic-stricken. This was still Apple Valley. She didn’t want him in jail because of some idiot like Paul Kurtz. “Alex, wait,” she said, grabbing him by the arm. “He’s not worth it.”
But Alex looked into her eyes. And his look made it clear to Kari that when it came to retribution, she was to never question any move he made. “I’ll be back,” he said just as forcefully, and Kari, reading him right, released his arm.
And Alex, like Paul, left the building.
But where Kari might have been distressed, Faye and Lucinda were happy. “Get the popcorn, Lou,” Faye said happily, “and let’s go watch the drama!”
Lucinda laughed, and she and Faye hurried behind Alex.
Kari shook her head. It was no laughing matter to her. But she followed them outside nonetheless.
But there would be no fireworks. By the time the ladies made it outside, Paul was inside of his Dodge Ram pickup truck with the window down, Alex had his arms resting on the window frame talking to Paul, and nothing, from what they could see, was going down. But Kari knew Alex. Something was going down.
And she was right. Alex was talking with Paul, alright, but only after he had grabbed Paul’s hand in an apparent handshake, taken his thumb
, and bent it back so far, and with such force, that it broke. And then he continued to bend it until it completely separated from the bone. Paul was in so much pain that he was sweat-filled and red as fire.
“Nobody threatens Kari Grant,” were the words Alex was saying to Paul. “You threaten her ever again; if you even think about threatening her ever again, and I will not simply break your thumb. I will break every bone in your body. And then I will kill you.”
Paul looked at Alex with horror in his eyes. He’d kill him just for threatening a nobody piece of shit like Kari Grant? Was he insane? Nobody would kill somebody over her!
But that look in Alex’s eyes didn’t lie. Paul knew what he was looking at. This man would kill him over Kari Grant! Over Kari Grant! Who was this guy?
Terror gripped Paul Kurtz. He heard all of those casino guys were as corrupt as they came, and many of them were Mafia. Was this guy, who he thought was so straight laced, one of those guys too? “I won’t tell anybody,” he said in a voice he knew was trembling. “I’ll never, as long as I live, tell a living soul anything about our conversation. And I’ll never threaten Kari ever again.”
Alex smiled a smile so charming it stunned Paul. “Then off you go,” Alex said, backed up from the truck, and Paul, glad to be out of the presence of such madness, sped away.
“Ah,” Lucinda said, “Alex Drakos is apparently all talk, and no action.”
“Nothing to see here, folks,” Faye agreed, and the two ladies took their imaginary popcorn and went back into the building.
But Alex turned toward Kari, and Kari was staring at him. And they both knew better than that.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
They had only just stepped onto Alex’s private plane, ready for the thirteen-hour flight to Greece, when the crew chief approached them.
“I apologize, sir,” he said, “but you have a call waiting on your secure line.”
Whenever Alex received those kind of calls, Kari knew he was going to take it. Although he rarely discussed his business with her to begin with, those calls made it particularly true.
And when he excused himself and headed into a room that was, even on his private plane, guarded by Security, Kari decided to mingle.
The flight crew knew her by now, and were more than happy to entertain the bubbly Floridian. What the women liked about her was how easily they could talk to her, and how she never seemed to talk down to them, nor look down on them. She, the women felt, was one of them.
What the men liked about her was the reality of her position. Alex Drakos was fucking her. She either had gold between those legs, they thought, or was golden herself. They thought this mainly because of the current trip: he’d never taken any of his other ladies to his homeland before. Not even his former wife.
By the time Kari mingled as long as she could without feeling the tiredness within her body, she retreated to Alex’s bedroom. A bedroom, she still couldn’t believe given that it was on a plane, that seemed as big as her house.
But this wasn’t her first time at the rodeo. She knew her way around this time. She ran herself a bath in the luxurious tub, removed her clothing, and got in. She didn’t even bother to lock the door because Alex’s people knew, like they knew all their other duties, to never ever disturb them there.
She was able to lean her head back and relax. She never thought it would be possible the first time she got on his plane. Mainly because it was their very first date, and it was a daunting reality. Now it felt more comfortable. With each trip, Kari felt that she was getting more comfortable. But that didn’t mean, she also knew, that she was completely relaxed in his world. That, she knew, was going to take more time.
Nearly twenty minutes later, Alex came out of the room where his secure call had been conducted, anxious to see Kari again. He hated being a preoccupied host. Especially on a trip like this. So when he entered the bedroom suite, and saw her reclining in the tub, he relaxed too. Then he removed every stitch of his clothing, and got in behind her.
Although Kari’s eyes remained closed when he lifted her body and got into the tub behind her, she smiled warmly. “Hurry up, Pedro,” she said jokingly, “before Alex comes in.”
Alex laughed. “Not even funny,” he said.
“Then why did you laugh?” Kari asked him.
“You make me laugh. What can I say?”
Kari liked that answer, and leaned the back of her body against the front of his.
And what she loved about that moment, as they reclined and relaxed in the tub, was the serenity of it. Alex wasn’t trying to have sex with her, although she knew he eventually would, but he was just holding her. She used to dream of a relationship like this, where a man could be satisfied just being with her. But it never happened before. Now that it was happening, and happening with a man like Alex, it was as scary as it was exciting.
“It’ll be great to see your old stomping ground,” she said.
“It’ll be great to see yours. We must go to Miami someday.”
“You’ve been to Miami many days.”
“But only to South Beach. I wish to see that part of town you hail from.”
“Sounds like a serious deflection to me.”
Alex smiled. “Perceptive Kari,” he said. “It was meant to be.”
And it concerned Kari. He never liked to talk, in any detail, about his life when he lived in Greece. “Why?” she asked.
“My family is not your regular family.”
“You’ve said that before. They aren’t the Brady Bunch, I know. But since even the Brady Bunch probably weren’t who they pretended to be either, that’s no big deal to me. But what do you mean by that? Give me an example, Alex.”
“My brother,” he said. “His name is Odysseus.”
“O-who?”
Alex spoke the name as it sounded, rather than as it was spelled: “O-DISS-SEE-US.”
“Odysseus,” Kari said, trying that name on for size.
“If you’ve ever read Homer’s Odyssey or Iliad, it would ring a bell.”
“It was required reading in school,” Kari said. “But I didn’t read it.”
Alex laughed. “Okay.”
“I got the name,” Kari said. “But what about him?”
“That ambush Reno Gabrini spoke of?”
Kari’s heart went still. “What about it?”
“I have been told that my brother, Odysseus, was behind it.”
Kari leaned sideways and turned her face toward him. “Your own brother?”
“Yes.”
“But . . .” She could hardly believe it. Then she realized something more. “But I thought Vito was behind that ambush,” she said.
“That was what I was led to believe. Including by Vito himself. But his uncle, and it turned out to be his real uncle, was really the muscle behind it.”
“But I thought,” said Kari, “it was his uncle who was behind the Vegas ambush.”
“Vegas, yes, and the earlier one in Florida. He was behind both. But he got his marching orders, according to him, from my brother.”
“To kill you?”
“Yes.”
“But why, Alex? Why would your own brother do such a thing?”
“That is why I am going to Fiskardo. To find out if he did such a thing.”
“Is he capable of ordering his own brother’s death?” Kari asked.
“Capable? Yes,” Alex said. “It is possible that he ordered the hit. But is it probable? That I am not sure about. That’s why I’m going to Fiskardo.”
“Am I going to meet him while we’re there?” Kari asked. She wanted to see this monster face to face.
But Alex only wrapped his arms around her, forcing her to turn back around, and he held her tighter. “We’ll see,” was all he would commit to.
And then she heard a phone ringing. Alex reached outside of the tub, where a platform of buttons was placed, and pressed one. “Yes?”
It was his crew chief. “It is ready for transmission, sir,” he
said.
“Okay,” Alex responded, and then pressed a different button. Just as Kari was about to ask him what was ready for transmission, a screen dropped from its perch against the bathroom wall, and suddenly what appeared to be a YouTube broadcast was on the screen.
Kari’s heart tightened when she saw that it was Natalie Corman.
“I’ll make this short and sweet,” Natalie said. It appeared to be her and a camera, and she was facing the camera head on. “When I made the announcement that Alex Drakos had proposed to me, I thought everybody would understand that it was nothing but a joke. But, to my horror, people took me seriously.”
She attempted to smile it off, but Kari only saw fear in her eyes, and embarrassment. “It wasn’t true, folks, okay? I was joking around! I’ve only dated Alex Drakos a couple of times, and that was it. No on-again, off-again relationship. Nothing. We are not engaged, okay? That engagement ring was something I purchased because I feel women should empower themselves.”
“No that heifer isn’t trying to turn her lies into women’s rights,” Kari said, staring at the screen.
“Yes, that heifer is,” Alex responded, staring at the screen.
“So, I say to everybody who believed me, you have to remember how good an actress I am.” She smiled after saying that.
Kari shook her head. “Do these people have any morals?” she asked.
“None,” responded Alex. “If I would not have threatened to sue her ass and expose her myself, her charade would have continued.”
“And to Mr. Drakos,” Natalie Corman continued, “I say that I owe you an apology, sir, and I apologize profusely. I did not mean to hurt you nor your loved ones with my flippancy. Please forgive me.”
And then she was out. And the screen went black.
“Lying motherfucker,” Alex said.
Kari turned toward him again. “Is that enough for you?” she asked.
But Alex looked at her and reversed the question. “Is that enough for you?” he asked.
Kari nodded. “I could have done without the women’s empowerment line, but yes. Yes, it is. But you know people are going to believe whatever they want to believe anyway.”
Alex Drakos 2_His Scandalous Family Page 11
