by Leah Wilde
“She lived at work?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said thoughtfully. He took a sip of his wine before continuing. “You know, she might still be around. She’d be in her sixties, I think, or somewhere around there. We’ll have to look her up next time.”
Next time, he said. I wanted to cry, and I figured it must have shown on my face.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked, more concerned this time.
“Yeah, I’m fine. You’ve just been so good to me, Hawk, and I’m afraid that all that’s going to have to end soon,” I answered, trying to explain how I felt without giving away why I felt that way. I couldn’t tell him that I was about to steal the Golden Diamond and never see him again.
“It doesn’t have to,” he said. “I’m probably going to regret saying this, because I’ve never really let anyone in, but if you want a place to call home that’s not a hotel suite, I’d be happy to fix up your own space in my house.”
“If I stayed there, you know I’d want to stay in your bed,” I told him matter-of-factly.
“But you’d need your own closet space and a bathroom or whatever. We’d have to work something out.” He talked quickly, nervously, and took another sip of his wine.
“I don’t want to put you out, Hawk. You’ve been really good to me, and I’ve never been one to stay in one place too long, so it’s really not anything personal. It’s just probably going to be time soon.” I nodded as I finished.
And I was saved by the steaks arriving.
“Oh, finally, I get to see what this best steak in town is all about,” I joked, changing the subject.
We ate in silence, partly because of the awkward tension between us, and partly because of how flipping amazing the steak was. It was tender, succulent, and juicy. There was so much flavor in it, and it had the perfect texture as I bit into piece after piece.
It made me want to sink my teeth into the man sitting across the table from me. It made me want to put him in my mouth and feel his tender flesh between my teeth and across my tongue.
It was a good thing he had a meeting to go to after dinner, or else I was going to make things so much harder by fucking his brains out on the couch downstairs or in the pool.
As he finished his food, he sat back and downed the rest of his wine.
“Alright,” he said as he got up and dabbed the corners of his mouth with his napkin. “I’m really sorry to have to go like this, but I’ve got to run. The car is outside. You’ll have two drivers with you. I had another one ride my bike out so I could take it to the meeting. Don’t wait up. I’ll be late.”
He kissed me on my forehead, such a delicate, tender gesture it broke my heart again.
“I’ll see you when you get home tonight,” I told him. “I hope everything’s fine with the MC. Maybe you can tell me about it when you get home tonight.”
“I doubt it,” he said as he started to walk away.
“Wake me.” I had to throw that last little bit out there.
If everything worked out, though, I wouldn’t be at the house waiting for him when he got home.
Chapter Twenty-One
Hawk
The text had read, Emergency meeting tonight. Offer on diamond and info on FT.
I had done something I couldn’t remember doing since the day we had started The Forsaken Ones, though. I texted back, Dinner with FT, can’t run off, will be there after.
I had never put off the MC for anything, much less for a woman. A piece of ass, really. It wasn’t like she was my old lady or anything like that. She had made that abundantly clear recently, and her talk at dinner about how it was all going to be over soon made me nervous.
Either shit was getting too emotional for her, or she was about to try to pull something. Maybe her boss was going to try to pull something, and she was going to have to get out of the way for it to work.
I didn’t know exactly what was going to happen, but I could feel it. Something big was on the horizon, and I wasn’t really sure I would be able to stop everything before it all came crashing down on me.
I was greeted outside by my driver with my vest and the keys to my bike. I handed him my black suit jacket and tie, and I threw my colors on over my shoulders. I nodded back to the driver standing by the Mercedes, and he walked back to the car. I had my men trained. They didn’t even really have to ever speak to me. They operated with an almost military efficiency.
Felicity had been right, though. My life now was a huge jump from my life growing up. Damn right, it was, I wanted to tell her. I had fought my way up to where I was, sometimes literally, and I didn’t need someone trying to make me feel guilty for enjoying the fact that I could afford really good steaks now, when I couldn’t even afford candy bars as a kid.
I didn’t have time to think about that. I needed to figure out what the guys knew about her and what we had going on with potential buyers for the Golden Diamond. I put on my helmet and fired up the bike. She roared as I sped off down the street to the clubhouse.
I rolled up into the old shop and the guys were waiting on me. They shut the bay door behind me and greeted me as I got of the bike.
“What’s going on, brothers?” I asked them. They usually weren’t waiting on me right when I came in.
“We’ve got to talk,” Rex said in a serious tone.
“When you said you were eating dinner with Felicity, we almost drove out to find you,” Vice added, slapping a hand down on my shoulder and gripping it.
“What’s going on, guys? What am I missing here?” Suddenly, I was concerned. I had been sort of laughing and shrugging off who Felicity possibly was, and it was starting to feel like I should have just run her off as soon as I thought something wasn’t right.
“Let’s go back to the office. Alvin and Ace need to be part of this discussion,” Rex said.
Talk like that usually indicated that someone was in deep shit, and I didn’t like feeling like that person was me. Still, I took my seat at the head of the table, and everyone else sat on the sides where they usually did. There was no indication I was being kicked down as the head or kicked out altogether.
“Let’s go ahead and get started,” Rex said before I even had a chance to greet Alvin or Ace. “There are two reasons why I called this meeting. One of those probably could have waited until tomorrow, but the other reason couldn’t wait, especially after you put that reason before the meeting. Now, I understand, Hawk, you were at dinner. Unless someone was dying, I wasn’t going to expect you to jump up and run out, but you were at dinner with the reason I wanted to talk to you.”
My stomach sank.
“I found out who she is and who she works for, and that also tells me why she’s hanging around. After tonight’s meeting, you need to get her out of your house.”
“Okay, but who is she?” I asked. “Let’s get all the information before we start talking crazy.” I didn’t like the way I sounded, defending her, but I didn’t want to jump to conclusions without any information.
“Her name is Felicity Tarren, just like she told you, unless that’s a kind of permanent alias, but I don’t think it is. The weird thing is she usually does use aliases when she’s working, and I’ve run across a few of those, like Scarlett Price and Poppy Lane,” Rex explained.
“I’m partial to Poppy Lane.” Vice laughed.
“Anyway, kudos for getting her to use her real name with you. Apparently that is not the norm for her. Also, she works for a black market jewelry dealer who simply goes by Kleo,” he continued.
“Kleo,” I said thoughtfully. “I was trying to think of her name earlier and couldn’t for the life of me. Thank you. Wait, she works for Kleo?”
Rex nodded.
“That means she’s after the Golden Diamond.”
“But you knew that already, right?” Alvin chimed in.
“Yeah, I suspected it, but I didn’t really take it seriously,” I said, growing exasperated. I had all but convinced myself that she had sought me out because
of my reputation with the ladies. There were times when I thought she was after the diamond, but I never took it to heart. She’d been too good in bed, and too eager to sleep with me or do whatever else I wanted to do.
But that was the kicker, wasn’t it? She was too eager.
“Man, I’m such a fool,” I said, shaking my head.
“Nope, she’s that good, Hawk,” Rex said flatly. “She’s got a pretty impressive list of possible marks, so she’s got to be good at getting to people. Plus, she wouldn’t work for Kleo if she wasn’t a badass. You know this.”
I laughed. Kleo was huge. She was a big deal. We had pretty much stayed out of each other’s way all this time because she specialized in jewelry, and we handled money itself for the most part. The Golden Diamond was our only real venture into the jewelry market.
“There’s no chance we can get Kleo to buy it, is there?” I joked.
“You know she doesn’t buy a damn thing,” Vice said.
“Yeah, that’s why Felicity is sent to procure pieces for her boss.” I closed my eyes.
“Where is she now?” Ace asked in his heavy voice.
“She’s at the house. I’ve got to get rid of her after this.” I dreaded going home and confronting her. It had to be done, but I didn’t want to do it.
“Alright, we’ll make the rest of this quick,” Rex said.
“Yeah, what about this buyer?” I asked.
“Wealthy legit jewelry dealer. He’s offered us three billion.” Rex was very proud of his number.
“Is there a name?” I asked.
“Tony Espersen,” Rex read from a piece of paper in front of him.
“Do we know anything about him? Can we trust him?” I continued to probe.
“Whoa there, buddy.” Vice laughed. “You’re letting this jewelry thief stay in your home, but you want to vet this dealer?”
“Well, my little thief is alone with my security guards, so the diamond isn’t going anywhere. Furthermore, I haven’t spent almost a week banging this jewelry dealer, okay?” I snapped back at him.
“Fair point,” Rex added. “Fair fucking point. But I’ve verified the guy. He’s legit, and he’s exclusive. He only sells to wealthy European collectors. He said he doesn’t fool around with American buyers because they don’t have any real money. I’ve checked on some of his clients, and no, we’re all practically homeless compared to these guys.”
“Well, damn. Are we going to let it go for three?” I asked.
“Why not?” Ace chimed in unexpectedly. “This Golden Diamond brings a lot of trouble with it. I’d like to see it gone.”
“I second that,” Alvin agreed.
“Me, too, honestly,” Vice said. “If we can get rid of it before you have to get rid of Felicity, maybe you can salvage whatever the hell you guys have going on.”
“I doubt it.” I sighed. It seemed pretty much inevitable that I was going to have to run her off as soon as I left the meeting.
“Well, fearless leader, what do you think about the number?” Rex asked.
“When does he want to make the deal?” I asked. “We need to let this thing go, and three billion is decent.”
Everyone clapped and cheered to hear that we were finally going to make a deal on the diamond.
“I’ll talk to him tomorrow and see what he wants to do about it. You just make sure that girl you got at your house doesn’t snatch it up and run off with it in the meantime. We can’t afford to lose this sale, okay?” Rex looked at me with a serious, stern look in his eyes.
“Got it.”
“Alright, now go,” Vice said. “We’ve handled business. You need to get back to the house and run that fine piece of thieving ass off.”
“On it.” I couldn’t even laugh. I felt sick to my stomach knowing that I had been fooled by her so easily. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I had known what she was up to the whole time. I just chose to ignore it. Dammit!
“Hey, call us if you need any backup, if your boys at the house can’t handle her,” Rex called after me as I left the room.
“We don’t mind getting Forsaken on her,” Aced added, smacking his fist into his palm.
“I know, guys. Thanks. I’ll let you know what happens.” I hurried out of the room and raised the bay door to get out of the garage.
I pulled out my phone and checked the time. The meeting had somehow taken over an hour. Well, it had been an hour since I left the restaurant. Surely she hadn’t had time to do anything by then.
I hopped on my bike and sped out of the garage towards the house. I was only a few minutes away. Surely everything was alright.
I didn’t have any missed calls or messages from security, which told me that there hadn’t been any emergencies at the house.
I should have known. I should have researched her immediately. I should have asked all the important questions right up front. I should have done so many things differently, like kicking her out of the bed the next morning to send her on her way so that I didn’t have to deal with someone snooping around my house and trying to steal from me.
If Kleo had been willing to buy the diamond, I would have been more than happy to sell it to her to get it off my hands. I knew she could find better buyers than I could anyway. She worked on the black market, where prices went through the roof. People paid ridiculous amounts of money for things that no one else could get them. The Golden Diamond was right up her alley.
Now that I knew she had sent someone to infiltrate my home and take the diamond for her, I was ready to sell it for any amount just to keep her from getting it. I was tempted to tell Rex to kick the price down to one billion just to get rid of it, but if the guy was ready to buy at three, we needed to make it happen.
I had never heard of Felicity Tarren before meeting her, which really bothered me. Knowing that she worked for Kleo, I knew that she didn’t work small cases. Kleo only dealt with big-ticket items, which meant that Felicity was the nameless thief behind some of the biggest heists in recent history. Anything that I knew Kleo was behind, it was probably Felicity who had actually done the work.
That meant that there was a distinct possibility that she had been successful in getting the Golden Diamond from me already, and I just didn’t know it yet.
I gunned the engine and sped up, overcome with a sudden sense of urgency to get home and make sure everything was alright.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Felicity
I waited a couple of minutes after Hawk left to get up from the table and leave. I wanted to make sure he wasn’t sitting outside watching for me, but I also needed to hurry. I didn’t have long. If it was an emergency meeting, it meant the guys knew who I was and wanted to make sure he knew what kind of trouble he was in.
Just as he had told me, there were two drivers outside. They both sat up front on the way back to the house.
“So, how long have you guys been working for Hawk?” I asked after getting into the car. They didn’t answer. They stared straight ahead like robots. Hawk had definitely trained them well, I observed.
Hopefully, I had been trained better.
I pulled out my phone and texted Kleo.
Hawk is at a Forsaken meeting. I need my bag from my room.
Will have a driver by soon with it, she replied a moment later. Meet him at the gate.
As we pulled into the driveway, I looked outside and spotted all of the guards. Hawk had men everywhere, and most of them were supposed to be hidden. One of the benefits of not talking to his drivers was that I had a chance to check out the outside.
One of the downsides of having bright red hair was having to figure out how to hide it when the time came to be sneaky, especially when I didn’t have my equipment. I was going to have to find something in his closet.
Time was of the essence.
Once they dropped me at the door, I hurried upstairs without running. I dug through his closet and through his dresser drawers. I found a hoodie tucked behind all of his t-s
hirts in the closet. It was a small black hoodie. It didn’t look like anything that would have fit Hawk.