****
It was a rundown dive in the heart of Atlantic City, and Felix Petropoulos couldn’t get up those rickety back stairs fast enough. And when he entered the building and ran down the hall, one of Misho’s henchmen tried to stop him.
“Where do you think you’re going, little man?” He grabbed Felix by the arm in more of a playful than a restraining gesture.
But Felix fought to break away from him. “I have to see Misho. I have to see the boss!”
His look was so stunned that the guard let him go. And Felix ran down that hall as fast as he could run, arrived at Misho’s office door and opened it without knocking. And then he ran right in.
But Misho Dukakis, unlike his henchmen, didn’t care how Felix looked. Nobody burst in on him like that! “What the fuck is your problem?” he asked his lieutenant.
“We got trouble. We got trouble, Misho!”
“Yeah, yeah, tell me something I don’t know. Tell me I won the fucking lottery and don’t have to do this loansharking shit anymore. Tell me that!”
“She’s alive,” Felix said softly.
And it was only then had Misho realized just how terrified Felix looked. The other truth: the she in that sentence needed no explanation. “Alive?”
“She’s alive, Misho. I saw it with my own two eyes. She’s alive!”
Misho, as stunned as Felix, jumped to his feet. “Does Drakos know?” he asked frantically. Now his eyes had terror in them too. “Does that fucker know?”
But Felix shrugged his shoulders. “How can I say?” he asked in his still-frantic voice. “Nobody can! How can we, people like us, get on his level to find out? But it’s the truth, Boss. She’s alive. I declare to you she’s alive. Narnia is alive!”
All life seemed to seep out of Misho as he sat back down. “If Drakos finds out,” he said. Then he shook his head, unable to begin to wrap his brain around the consequences. He looked at Felix again. “If it’s true--”
“It is true! I’m telling you it’s true!”
“If it’s true, and Alex Drakos finds out, then . . .”
“Then what, Misho?”
“Then heaven help us,” Misho said with stormy, terrified eyes. “Heaven help us!”
And Felix sat down too.
CHAPTER SIX
“If it ain’t the two Stooges,” Kari said with a smile as Jordan and Oz entered the kitchen from the mudroom. She had showered and dressed prettily in a colorful flared skirt and a tucked-in blouse, and was preparing breakfast when they walked in. Alex, thumbing through his cell phone messages, had already come down and was seated at the center island.
“Did she say the two stooges, Jordan?” Oz asked.
“That’s what I said,” said Kari.
“Oh, no ma’am. Stooges my foot,” Oz added, wiping his feet and coming in from the mudroom. “The two Musketeers, darling, if you must. I’m nobody stooge!”
Kari laughed. “Point taken,” she said.
Jordan hurried to the center island and sat next to Alex.
Oz sat next to Jordan at that same island. “And she cooks, Alexio,” he said as he sat down. “Is there no end to her talents?”
Jordan smiled. That Oz! “Hey, Ma,” he said.
Kari was always happy to see her only child. “I saw you out there on the links today,” she said. “How was it?”
“It was great actually. Mister D is teaching me a lot.”
“What about Oz?” Kari asked and then looked askance at Oz. “What’s he teaching you?”
Oz grinned. Jordan shook his head. “Not a darn thing,” he said, and everybody laughed. Oz ruffled up Jordan’s soft, low-cut afro.
Jordan, for his part, glanced over at Alex. “Everything okay?” he asked him.
Alex finally looked up from his phone. “Yeah, everything’s good,” he said, putting his cell phone in his pocket. He seemed to be getting older every second, as Jordan looked at those lines of age around Alex’s eyes. He looked tired to Jordan. He looked a little run down.
The truth was, Alex had a lot on his plate and instead of planning to drive to Florida with him and Kari, he should have been in his Manhattan office at that very moment planning what in the world was he going to do about all of those issues that needed resolving. Five different department heads and three board members had already texted him about very different problems. But to hell with it. His corporation could no longer be the center of his existence. Kari and Jordan, with a sprinkling of his kid brother Oz, had a right to claim that role.
And Jordan looked again at Alex because he could see, in his periphery, that Alex was staring at his mother the way he often caught Alex staring.
Jordan noticed it early in their relationship. Alex would always stand kind of away from everybody else and would lean against a wall and just stare at Kari. His eyes would seem sensual at first to Jordan, as he saw Alex looking Kari up and down as if she always made him horny or something. But then his look would change and he’d look as if he loved her dearly and was thrilled to have her in his life.
But there was always a look of alarm in those eyes too. And Jordan could never understand why Alex would have those opposite emotions in his eyes whenever he looked at his mother. Was he thrilled to have Kari in his life, but scared too? Jordan never understood what was behind that fear.
But Alex understood it. And as he pulled out his suddenly ringing cell phone to look at the Caller ID, he understood it because he was still getting over it: he had a woman he actually loved. That was as foreign to Alex as a foreign land.
When he saw that it was his office calling, and not just anyone calling but his CFO, Matt Scribner, he rose from the island and moved slightly away from the crowd, to the kitchen table against the wall. He leaned against it and answered his phone.
But as Matt went on and on about the latest crisis, and how it demanded Alex’s full attention, Alex leaned against that table and kept his eyes on Kari. Kari was the woman he loved, but that fear Jordan saw in his eyes was real. Because love wasn’t a word Alex took lightly. It meant he was responsible for her in a way so compelling that it did alarm him. He would fall apart if something happened to her. He would be a basket case. And that kind of relinquishment of his own emotional power disturbed him greatly. He’d never done it before, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to do it now! But he’d asked her to marry him. She had his ring. There was no turning back.
“You hear me, sir?” Matt was saying over the phone. “They will walk if you don’t get there.”
“I heard you the first time,” Alex said over the phone, and continued to stare at Kari.
“So, Kari,” Oz asked, as he and Jordan had their backs to Alex and his phone call, “what’s for breakfast?”
But Jordan was surprised he’d asked such a question. “What’s for breakfast? What are you saying, Oz? Can’t you smell that bacon?”
Oz, who was still fresh from Greece, nodded his head. “Ah. I see. So that’s what that is. Pig!”
Jordan looked at Oz as if he was nuts. “Dude, I can’t. I just can’t. You have got to stop and smell the bacon sometimes. Not just pretty girls!”
Kari laughed, and even Oz did too.
Although Alex had ended his phone call and was smiling as he made his way back toward them, Kari could tell something was up with him. And when he walked over to her, she could not only see the sudden tension in his body, she could feel it. “Hey,” she said to him as if they hadn’t just had sex not an hour earlier.
“Good morning.” He wanted to kiss her, desperately, but they had an audience. But there was always something so sensual about Kari, so sweet and wonderful about her, that he couldn’t help himself. Despite the audience, he leaned over and kissed her on the lips anyway. He wanted to linger in his kiss because she tasted so good, and because he was still remembering how fantastic it felt to be inside of her earlier, but he didn’t. He placed his hand on her back and squeezed her slightly, but he pulled away. And to cover himself from any smart remarks fr
om Oz, who loved to point out how Kari brought out the softie in him, he did something he knew would get Kari’s ire. He grabbed a slice of crispy cooked bacon from the plate she had just sat it on.
As he suspected would happen, Kari quickly hit his hand. “Boy, if you don’t wash those dirty hands,” she said, causing him to drop the bacon back onto the plate. Then she looked back at Oz and Jordan. “All of you,” she added.
“I’ll race you, Oz,” Jordan suggested.
“Race me?” Oz asked. “Do I look like some kid to you, young guy? I’m a grown-ass man in his thirties no less!” Then he grinned. “You’re on,” he said, and then he and Jordan took off out of the kitchen, running to the powder room.
“I’m afraid,” Alex said as he went over to the kitchen sink and began washing his hands, “that you may not be gaining a brother-in-law as much as another child. A smart, tactical child. But still childish.”
“Oz is full of life, that’s for sure,” Kari agreed. But she could still feel the stress between them. “Thanks for getting your brother to take Jordan under his wings too,” she said. “He so enjoys being with you and Oz.”
“Don’t thank me,” Alex said. “We enjoy having him with us.”
“How has he been doing on the golf course? I know you’ve taken him out ever since we’ve been here in New York.”
Alex turned to her as he grabbed a couple paper towels off the roll and dried his hands. “He did well. He’s a quick study. He’ll be the best in the family in no time.”
Kari smiled. Alex went back over to the stove and picked up the slice of bacon he had discarded when she hit his hand. He leaned his back against the drainboard, crossed his legs at the ankles, and chomped on the meat.
“I’m looking forward to the drive back to Florida,” Kari said. “I know you could have my new car shipped home, or get one of your men to drive it, but I’m so thrilled you’re letting me do the honors. I can’t wait to get on the open road behind that wheel.”
But Alex continued to chomp on the bacon, and he said nothing.
Kari knew then, for certain, that something was up and it was because of that phone call. “Are you okay, babe?” she asked him.
He was still chewing bacon and could only nod his head. But she could tell something was going on. “What’s wrong?” she asked him.
Oz and Jordan returned to their seats at the center island as Alex finished chewing the bacon in his mouth. But Kari wasn’t letting him off the hook that easily. She continued to look at him.
“Looks like I’m needed in Moscow,” Alex finally said as he rubbed his hands as if he was rubbing off debris.
Jordan looked at his mother. Uh-oh, he thought. She was not going to like hearing that news. Heck, Jordan didn’t like hearing it either!
And Jordan was right. Kari hated to hear it. “Moscow?” she asked. “When, Alex?”
“I’m afraid I’ll have to leave this morning.”
Jordan’s heart dropped. So did Kari’s. “What happened?” she asked. “I thought you said those negotiations are back on track. You said that just yesterday.”
“And they were back on track yesterday,” he said. “But now they’re off again. And if I don’t go, they won’t return to the negotiating table. I have to be there to drag this shit over the finish line. If it wasn’t the biggest deal I have in Europe at the moment, I would tell Matt and my guys what they could do with those negotiations. But it is the biggest deal. And I have to be there. I have to go.”
Kari nodded her head and didn’t say anything more, but it was Alex’s time to see the concern in her eyes. Because that was Kari. She had three dominant emotions that she could never conceal: concern, worry, and sincerity. Concern was ruling that morning. But Alex couldn’t figure out if her concern was for the fact that he had to do something she knew he didn’t want to do and travel again, or just the mere fact that he was traveling yet again!
Kari wasn’t saying. She served the men their breakfast: bacon, eggs, and toast with coffee. And as Alex sat at the island and ate with the other two, that look of concern only escalated. “You need to eat, too,” Alex said to her.
“Yeah, Ma,” Jordan agreed, showing his own level of concern. “You eat too.”
But Kari couldn’t eat a bite even if she wanted to. And after the news that had just been laid on her, she didn’t want to. She removed the apron she had around her waist. “I’m going to get some fresh air,” she said, and headed out back through the patio doors: away from the crowd.
Alex didn’t look at her as she left. He continued to eat. Oz and Jordan took peeps at him. They both wondered what was his problem? Why wasn’t he going out there to make sure she was okay because, in their eyes, it was obvious she wasn’t. Jordan even started to get up and go outside with her, but Oz held him back.
Oz knew his brother. And like him, Alex always did things his own way too. Alex knew Kari needed a moment alone, or she would not have left. He, therefore, finished his meal, drank his coffee, and then and only then, went out on the patio to reassure her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
She was on the patio, sitting at the edge of a lounger, staring out at the infinity pool in front of her. Alex walked over, stood her up, and then sat all the way back on the lounger and then pulled her down, between his legs. She leaned back against him. And for several minutes they just sat there.
It was Kari who broke the ice. “Is Oz going with you?” she asked.
“Yes. Now that he’s in America, I’m still attempting to figure out what role he might play in my organization. Besides, those Russians can be a handful. I might need extra muscle.”
Kari smiled. “You? The man who works alone? I doubt that.”
“So do I,” Alex said with a smile of his own. “But Odysseus seems to think he can be useful.”
“More than likely there’s some Russian woman he used to date that he wants to get back over there and hook up with,” Kari said.
Alex laughed. “That’s sounds more like it!”
They both enjoyed that laugh, but then reality set in again. And it wasn’t funny.
It was Alex, this time, who broke the ice.
“I know I was supposed to drive back to Florida with you and Jordan,” he said. “In your new car.”
Kari smiled weakly. “I was very much looking forward to it.” Then a thought occurred to her. An awful thought. What if Alex forbade her from making that drive without him? She quickly turned and looked at him. “We can still do it,” she said. “Drive to Florida, I mean. You’re still going to let us do it, aren’t you?”
Alex loved the fact that when it came to safety matters, Kari always deferred to him. If he told her she could not make that drive, she wouldn’t. She might hate his decision, but she wouldn’t defy it.
But he knew how much she was looking forward to it. “Yes,” he said, “you and Jordan can make that drive. But you do not go a mile over the speed limit, and you be careful.”
“I will. But I’m sure you’ll have your goons following me just in case.”
Alex smiled. “Don’t you worry about that,” he said, and they both laughed.
But then Kari turned back around, and reality struck again. “I know you need to go,” she said. “And I understand why. That Russia deal has been in the works for a long time. But I just thought . . .”
Alex didn’t ask her what she just thought. He waited for her to tell him as he stared at her sincere face.
“I thought that after we got engaged,” Kari continued, “it would be different. I didn’t think all of your world travels wouldn’t suddenly stop, but that you would be able to manage them better. For me and Jordan’s sake. I thought all of those spur-of-the-moment trips would become a thing of the past.”
Alex placed his arms around her. “It will get better, baby. That I am promising you.”
“It has to be different, Alex. You can’t continue to want to rule the world and have Jordan and me too. Like backups. No, Alex.” She was shaking her hea
d. “I’m not subjecting my child to anybody’s seconds. I’m not subjecting myself to that.”
Alex held her tighter. He knew he could lose her, and it was a frightening thought. But having her in his life, and the emotional toll it took on him, was frightening too. He was walking a tight rope and knew it. He had to make sure his fear of loving her didn’t cause him to purposefully contribute to losing her.
“I’ll slow down,” he said. “After Moscow, I’ll slow it down considerably.”
Kari had been promised that before, and it didn’t happen. Now it just sounded like wishful thinking to her.
There was another lull in their conversation, as they sat quietly at the pool, but then Kari garnered the courage to do it. She hated to do it, but she knew, if she didn’t, it would set the parameters of their relationship forever. Parameters, over time, she knew she would live to resent.
“Until you slow down, Alex,” she said as she turned and looked him dead in the eyes, “we may have to postpone this marriage.”
It was a gut punch to Alex. He didn’t see it coming! She was all but telling him that he could talk until he was blue in the face, but the proof would be in the pudding. She was not going to be his wife until he proved to her that he deserved her. A part of Alex, that vicious part, became angry, and it showed on his face. He was not accustomed to any woman treating him this way! Who the fuck did she think she was?
But as he looked and saw the sincerity in Kari’s big, beautiful eyes, he knew she was only doing what any self-respecting woman should do. She was only doing what no other woman in his life had ever done: she was betting on herself. She was betting that she was good enough to deserve the best from the man she loved. Not, as she said, his messy seconds.
Alex never respected any human being more than he respected Kari. No matter what, and at what cost, she always stood up for what she believed. He stared into her eyes with a look that bordered on wonderment. And he knew she was right. He had to get his shit in order or he was going to regret it. He was going to be the fool who gained the whole world, but he lost the most important person in this world to him.
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