“Your able-bodied staff is more than capable of handling them until we can determine who the threat is on his life.”
“Why is this so important to you?”
“I owe him, and I always pay my debts.”
“What did he do for you?”
“That is a need to know.” She stood, pulling out a folder from her bag and tossing it on my desk. “Look over these pieces and give me a price for appraisal.”
“I already told you I can’t do it.”
“You know you want to. You like the game of finding the fakes from the real thing.”
She was right, but I wasn’t going to admit it. I wasn’t secret-agent material, but it was a hell of a lot of fun to discover a master forger when no other person around had caught on.
“You’re so bossy.”
“That’s the only way to be, bella. Now get your man out of town.”
“You seem to think higher of my abilities than I do. And what excuse could I possibly give him?”
“Pretend you want to go on a honeymoon. You’re a princess, sometimes you need to act like one.”
I sobered as the gravity of why Bri wanted me to leave with Sebastian hit me. “I won’t lie to him. Lies are what caused the mess between us.”
“I swear, you’re so annoying with your ‘tell the truth’ ideals. Sometimes a little white lie keeps danger from invading one’s world.”
“Some people are trained to lie. I’m not. I suck at it.”
“That you do. Remember that time I told you to tell the art dealer his statue was a fake when it wasn’t? You nearly stuttered your way into a heart attack.”
I pinched my lips together. It was my one-and-only time working face-to-face with a target.
“I prefer to focus on my skills as a markswoman in stopping said dealer from running away with his stolen goods.”
“You shot the tires out of his car, from the roof of the building. I hardly think that was a good use of the hours I spent teaching you to handle a long-range rifle. If you’re going to shoot, shoot the perp, not the car.”
“You may have taught me to shoot, but Ana’s the one who honed my skills.”
“Well, she quit so now you’re stuck with me.”
“Whatever. I’m not going to lie to him.”
“I’m not telling you to lie. Besides, he’s like a human lie detector.”
“I really hate you sometimes.”
“It’s okay. I love you all the time.”
Sebastian
“What’s the emergency?” I said to Lucas as I returned to Jonas’s townhouse.
The last thing I wanted to do was come back to this godforsaken place. I had hours of calls to make to all of my family’s allies, informing them of the change in power.
But the cryptic text Lucas sent, saying, Urgent, get your ass back to the house and put a man on your bride, had me driving back in an hour and putting everything else on hold.
Assigning someone to protect Isa wasn’t a problem. I’d had a man on her since the moment I learned I was engaged to her. The combination of my people with her personal detail would keep her as protected as possible without keeping her under lock and key.
Instead of answering my question, Lucas said, “If you don’t kill him after this, I will. It’s in his bedroom.”
The thought of going into the room where the old man had spent the years since Mama’s death with his near-underaged girls made me want to hurl. It hadn’t even been a month after Mama’s funeral when one of his women had paraded through the house as if she were queen of the manor.
She’d learned she was disposable a week later when she was replaced by another beauty with a killer body and no ambition but to land a man by spreading her legs.
We made our way into the musty, over-decorated house. We entered the bedroom to find a group of soldiers emptying drawers and one digging through a safe that looked freshly installed.
“Bring them here,” Lucas said to Kurt, who seemed to have a slight edge of worry on his face.
“Sir, you need to see this.” Kurt handed me a file folder and then positioned an open laptop in my direction.
Inside the folder were more pictures of Isa, but these were shots designed to be part of an investigative profile, similar to the one I’d had made on her. But instead of details on her whereabouts, it had information on her sexual history and physical measurements.
The coldness I’d felt when I’d seen the pictures from earlier in the morning returned.
As I flipped to the last of the documents in the folder, I found a transcript of a phone conversation Jonas had had a little over six months ago with Carson Malkovich, a known member of a Russian family trying to create a stronghold in Germany. A family who specialized in the very thing I’d spent my last assignment stopping. The sale of humans.
They discussed past transactions and payments, but it was the end of the conversation that had me ready to find the bastard, beat him until he begged for death, and then leave him to freeze on the banks of the river.
Jonas: Payment of forty million Euros upon completion of job. She’s a prime piece of ass to populate your next generation.
Malkovich: I don’t want a washed-up woman. I want her in breeding condition.
Jonas: The boy will use her but he won’t hurt her—she’s too much like his whore mother.
Malkovich: What guarantees do I have that this won’t blow up in our faces?
Jonas: I know my organization and my men. Their loyalty will always be to me. You’ll have to trust me.
Malkovich: I trust no one.
Jonas: You still owe me for what happened to my Hannah.
Malkovich: I owe you nothing. My men did what you arranged. It was your responsibility to have your daughter with you.
Jonas: You want the girl or not?
Malkovich: Forty million and the girl. Immediately upon delivery.
Jonas: Excellent. Now to get the boy.
The rage coursing through my body took all my effort not to let loose. My mind was swimming. All these years of not knowing, of wondering, of searching.
I clenched my fists. Jonas had been responsible for Mama and Hannah’s deaths. He’d destroyed an amazing woman and a sweet little girl.
And now he was going to sell my wife to a man who not only had killed my mother and sister but every one of his women after torturing them first.
The room seemed to still as if everyone was waiting for my reaction. I’d spent too many years schooling my responses to give anything away.
Taking a deep breath, I turned to Kurt and took the laptop he held. That was when I noticed the only soldiers in the room were those who’d been with me since I was a teenager. None of the ones from earlier in the morning were here.
If Lucas had removed everyone who was under Jonas, he had to have suspicions about loyalty, especially after what Jonas had said in the transcript.
I glanced at Lucas, who gestured with his chin to the computer. “Take a look at what we found on the surveillance footage from the family airstrip an hour after Jonas left here.”
My gaze shifted to the screen. There was a picture of Jonas boarding a plane.
“That’s not one of our jets.” I studied the luxury aircraft.
“It’s Malkovich’s.”
“Who cleared it to land? Ben?”
Ben was one of my men—he would never betray me.
Lucas’s gaze grew harder than before. “No. Andre found his body half an hour ago. Ben was shot and then his throat was slit.”
That was the signature move for Malkovich’s people.
Fuck. Ben had a wife and kids. He’d moved to the airfield believing it was a safer position than being my security detail.
Jonas had planned all of this. He’d sacrificed a good man.
“Why the fuck didn’t we get a warning the airstrip was in use?”
“Because Jonas ensured we wouldn’t.” Kurt pointed to the screen.
Circled in bold red were the faces of Dax and Samu
el Walter. They stood at the base of the stairs of the plane Jonas boarded, and from their demeanor, they weren’t just with Jonas, they were with Malkovich.
How long had they played both sides?
The sense of betrayal was a punch to the gut. They were two high-ranking lieutenants in the organization, who’d been around since Opa had run the family. I’d trusted them. They’d helped me get my head on straight after my mother and sister’s murders. They’d played at loyalty to the family above all things.
Liars. They sacrificed the life of one of our men and put my wife in mortal danger.
Those bastards were going to learn the cost of siding with anyone other than the family.
“Did they come back after dropping Jonas off?” I asked, to no one in particular. This time I couldn’t hide the rage boiling in me.
Lucas answered, “Yes. They’re in the basement. I have them searching the files for information on Jonas’s safe houses.”
“I’m sure they liked that task.”
Dax and Samuel were at the top of the food chain under Jonas, but with me they wouldn’t have that place. They’d have to prove they were worthy of their positions.
That was a moot point now.
“They haven’t quite grasped I’m your second and if I tell them to scrub toilets, they need to shut their mouths and do it.”
“Kurt, you’re in charge. Secure the room. I believe it’s time to have a chat with the Walter brothers.”
Not bothering to see if my instructions were followed, I turned and made my way to the basement.
As I approached, I heard Dax say, “They’re beauties. Too bad you don’t have a taste for them.”
“Shut the fuck up. If anyone hears you, Weber won’t think twice about ending us,” Samuel responded.
“The boy needs us. We know all of his father’s secrets. How else is he going to locate him?” The amusement in Dax’s tone said he had no qualms about double-crossing me.
I slowly stepped into the room, my men staying quiet behind me. Neither Dax nor Samuel noticed my entrance.
“You’re too cocky. You saw the way he watched his woman. This isn’t going to be as cut and dry as everyone believes.” Samuel opened another box. “Why the fuck does one man need all this useless shit?”
“That’s not our business. Boss wanted it kept. All you have to do is follow the plan.”
It was time to make my presence known. “Mind sharing this plan? Especially since I’m your boss.”
Both men froze.
I walked up to them. “I gave an order.”
The way their eyes shifted back and forth as if they were looking for an escape had me almost hoping they’d try something. The men were big, but untrained from years of giving orders.
“Not sure what plan you’re talking about.” Dax rose from his perch over a box and came toward me. “We’re just following Flynn’s directive.” There was a sneer in his words that had me holding back the urge to backhand him.
I held out a hand, and immediately, Lucas placed the switchblade Opa had given me before his death into it, the very one he’d used when disciplining his soldiers.
At the sound of the knife opening, Dax made a run for the window, the only way out. Before he could make it a few steps, I grabbed him by the hair, threw him to the ground, and stabbed the knife into the hand he was about to use to leverage himself up.
“What’s gotten into you, boy?” Dax roared.
Pressing a foot to his throat, I leaned over him, pulling my blade free, and almost immediately Dax kicked up, trying to knock me back, but I shifted and stuck him with the blade in the ribs.
“Stop struggling or I’ll make sure with one twist of my wrist, you’ll breathe out of a tube for your short foreseeable future.”
Blood seeped from Dax’s hand and from the wound in his side where my knife sat.
“Listen, dammit!” Samuel shouted. “The money’s not worth your life.”
Dax’s eyes bulged as I pressed the hilt of the knife deeper, but he didn’t move.
“Now I want you to tell us everything. You leave anything out, you’re dead. You hedge, you’re dead. You lie to me, you’re dead. And you,” I said to Samuel, who remained near the boxes he’d been opening. “If he leaves anything out, or prevents me from protecting my bride, you will suffer a slow, torturous death. Make sure no detail is missing.”
Pulling out the knife, I wiped it on Dax’s shirt, handed it to Lucas, and rose.
“You know the drill. Extract every last detail from them and make it painful.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Contact Benz and set up a meeting.” I knew I wouldn’t have to say more than that. Lucas would handle everything.
Now all I had to do was convince my wife to leave the country without letting her know my father had planned to sell her in order to take back his empire.
14
Sebastian
I arrived at my penthouse a little before six in the evening to find bags in the foyer. Some were mine and others were the ones Isa had delivered the morning of our wedding.
Why the fuck would Isa have packed for me? Where was she planning for us to go?
Then I stopped. Had someone called and told her I was taking her away? That still didn’t make sense. No one would overstep, especially not Lucas and especially not after word got out that Dax and Samuel were permanently removed from the Weber infrastructure.
“Isa.”
There was no response. I made my way toward our bedroom. Our bedroom. That’s what it was. And I’d be dammed if it wasn’t going to stay ours. If Jonas thought he could double-cross me, take the money Opa allotted for him, and still remain king, then he had another think coming.
As of five minutes after I saw the pictures of him boarding the plane, I’d sent word to every family, ally or not, that any aid or harbor rendered to Jonas Weber meant a declaration of war.
I’d lost my mother and sister to Jonas’s schemes. I was not going to lose Isa.
Hell, to protect her, I’d done the one thing no one would ever expect me to do. I’d gone to Russo Benz.
The man hated me on principle. Knowing I had nothing to do with the deal Opa made with his father didn’t change his anger at losing control of the empire he’d built. I had a great deal of respect for the man—he’d taken the small organization his father had left him and created something ten times bigger.
He was a hard, ruthless man, but there was no doubt in my mind that he loved his daughter and would do everything possible to keep her safe.
When I told him what Jonas was planning, he had nearly lost his mind with the drive to take out Jonas. But he knew the rules and he couldn’t move on Jonas without consequences to the rest of us. Isa now belonged to me. He’d agreed to use his resources to keep an eye on Jonas through his Russian connections as well as my territory while I was away with Isa.
It was a show of trust I’d given Benz that no boss with my sized organization would ever have given. This gesture had shifted something between us, and I knew I had an ally.
As I entered the bedroom, the last words Benz had said before I’d left his house lingered in my head.
There are three things you need to do, and I will pledge my loyalty to you. Take care of my little girl, treat her right, and make her happy. Whatever you did to hurt her, fix it. I know my girl knew you before yesterday. I saw it in her eyes when the chapel doors opened. I’m not going to ask how. I’m not going to ask when it started. All I am saying is bring her back to the Isa I knew.
Isa was his heart. It wouldn’t matter to him that she still hadn’t forgiven him or his wife for forcing the marriage. She was his baby, his only child.
I had a new respect for him. He didn’t view having a daughter as a liability. As far as anyone knew, Russo never kept a mistress to have other children with. This was a standard practice among organized families. For a mobster, he’d taken his marriage vows as a sacred bond. Something I had no problems doing as w
ell.
“Isa?” I called again, right before the sound of rushing water hit my ears.
Moving to the bathroom, I pushed open the door and was hit by a billow of steam. The silhouette of Isa’s curvy body through the frosted glass of the shower enclosure was like a peepshow. One only I’d ever enjoy.
There was a possessiveness when I saw her. I’d felt it that first night in the club. I’d felt it more and more as we’d met for our coffee dates. And now that we were married, I felt it to the depths of my dark soul.
My cock hardened as I watched her pour liquid onto her sponge and lather her body. Her movements weren’t meant to be seductive, but my body didn’t care. I shouldn’t want someone like this. I’d fucked her all night.
No, she’d fucked me all night. I’d let her hold the reins—well, for the most part—so she could purge her rage at me. Now we were in new territory, one we’d both have to learn to navigate.
She did things the way she wanted. I knew she wasn’t stupid—as Benz’s beloved daughter she couldn’t be. But as my wife, it was a whole new level. This would have to change. She wouldn’t be able to go anywhere without proper protection. She had her own protection, but I trusted her life to no one but my own men.
Once I was naked, I stroked my cock and moved to the shower. She still had no idea I was in the bathroom, watching her.
She jumped as I opened the door, dropping her sponge and turning to face me, her back against the shower wall.
The multiple showerheads beating against her skin made her look like a literal wet dream. She was perfect, the right curves in the right places, a mouth meant for wrapping around my cock, and eyes so blue, it felt like she could see into the depths of my soul.
She studied me, her gaze lingering on my cock, watching me pump the hard length from root to tip. She licked her lips, and I almost groaned. He nipples grew hard and her skin flushed, not from the heat of the water but her growing arousal.
I released my grip, letting my dick smack against my stomach, and closed the stall door without taking my focus away from her.
Leave Me Breathless: The Black Rose Collection Page 98
