Dangerous Alliance

by Kyra Davis

  “Micah Romenov,” Micah says, extending his hand. “And you’re Lander Gable. The lady and I were just talking about you, in fact.”

  Lander looks at his hand but he doesn’t shake it. Micah is clearly taken off guard by this, as am I. No one snubs Micah.

  Slowly, Micah withdraws his hand. “It’s funny,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest. “She was telling me that the two of you weren’t on speaking terms. But, well, here you are. No way to see that coming, right, Sweet?”

  “I’m not here for her,” Lander replies coolly. “I’m here to look at some letters written by Winston Churchill.”

  “Really! Now, don’t that beat all? I spent twenty-one years in England and here I am looking at Americana, and you’re a Yank here to look at letters written by the British Bulldog. Ironic, isn’t it?”

  “You work with my brother, don’t you?” Lander asks, ignoring Micah’s comment. “And my father?”

  “At times, yes, yes I do.”

  Lander nods and then turns his attention to me. “Please don’t take offense. I know it’s been a while since we’ve seen one another, but since he’s here, I’d like the opportunity to talk to Mr. Romenov alone.”

  I glance between Lander and Micah. This is ridiculous. We’re in a rare bookstore. This is not the place for a showdown. I look at the Faulkner on the wall. “Do you think it might be better if—”

  “We’re just going to talk,” Lander says softly, but solidly. “Whatever differences we may have, I think you know me well enough to know that I would never put a first-edition book in harm’s way.”

  I suppress a smile and turn back to Micah.

  “It’s okay, Sweet,” Micah says, his trademark smile completely gone now. “Let me talk to Mr. Gable.”

  Hesitantly, I step back and then turn and stride out into the front room, where Mandy is sitting at the desk, going over an invoice.

  “I was wondering when he was going to come in,” Mandy says as she makes a note on the paper. “Lander Gable was the main reason I hired you and we haven’t seen hide nor hair of him since you started!” She finally looks up and offers me a reassuring smile. “Of course, I didn’t realize then that you would become one of our top salespeople in less than three months. It’s really quite impressive, Adoncia.”

  I nod and glance toward the back. “Lander knows the man I was speaking with,” I hedge. “I hadn’t realized they were acquainted.”

  She waves her hand dismissively and leans over to file the invoice away. “The population at that end of the income bracket is rather small. They’re an insular bunch. We live in the world and they live in a village: Billionaire Village.” She laughs, and then quickly checks herself. “That probably wasn’t appropriate, and I don’t even know the other gentleman’s financial standing. I’m just making an assumption based on his acquaintance with Mr. Gable and the fact that he’s shopping here. And he has that Russian British accent. I assumed oligarch.” She rests her weight on her elbows, cups her chin in her hands. “He’s actually rather attractive.”

  “Who?” I ask, finally dragging my eyes away from where I just came. “Micah?”

  “We spoke while he was waiting for you. He’s a very knowledgeable man. Quite well-read. And he has a . . . a down-to-earth quality.”

  She’s got to be kidding. “He’s really not your type.”

  “Oh, I saw the tattoo hiding under his sleeve. I glimpsed it when he was gesturing. But I actually find that rather charming. A well-educated man with a rebellious soul.”

  “He’s married,” I say quickly.

  “Oh. Shame.” She laughs and raises one of her hands to her cheek. “Look at me, I haven’t made eyes at a client in decades. It’s not appropriate at all. But he was so charming.”

  “Yes,” I say, turning back again, “the forbidden ones always are.”

  She smiles and nods, thinking she knows what I’m referring to, but of course she doesn’t. Not really.

  And in that moment I realize that Mandy doesn’t actually know me. She knows my real name. But she associates it with a nice, motivated, well-read young woman who has a way with customers and marketing. Micah knows Sweet (a nickname he came up with himself and the meaning of my name, Adoncia), the scrappy but seductive trickster, intent on cutting corners in order to survive. Travis . . . Well, Travis probably doesn’t know what to think about me anymore. But he used to see me as the opportunist, a woman with no moral compass who will do anything he asks, including whoring herself out, if he pays her enough.

  There are nuggets of truth in all of their assumptions, and their misjudgments can be forgiven, since I’m the one who encouraged them. But even when you take out the parts that are wrong, none of them know the whole me. Not one of them.

  Which means the only one who does is Lander.

  Lander, the man I love. And the man I may have been a little too quick to trust.

  Moments later Micah walks out. He looks . . . angry. No, scratch that, he looks livid. I have never seen Micah lose his cheery façade. I know he’s a killer, but I always imagined him patting his victims on the back, telling them a joke, and offering them one last cigarette before blowing their brains out. But whatever transpired between him and Lander has him quaking with rage.

  “Is everything all right, Mr. Romenov?” Mandy says, getting to her feet.

  Micah simply stares at me. “This was a mistake,” he says in a low voice. “People who betray my trust are making the biggest mistake of their lives.”

  “That’s enough.”

  I turn to see Lander, leaning on a wall between the built-in bookshelves. He’s completely composed, completely calm.

  Micah doesn’t say a word, but his lip curls up into a kind of snarl that actually makes me take a step back. And then, just like that, he walks out.

  “What on earth . . .” Mandy’s sentence fades out uncompleted as she watches her short-lived crush leave the premises.

  “I believe you have some letters to show me, Adoncia,” Lander says mildly.

  Mandy glances at her watch. She’s discreet about it but Lander catches it. “I know you’re about to close.”

  “We’ll stay open for you, Mr. Gable,” Mandy says, as if that much is obvious.

  “I’d appreciate that. But you should go home. You can trust Adoncia to lock up.”

  “Mr. Gable, I really can’t do that. Adoncia is wonderful and you’re one of our favorite clients, but there is millions of dollars of merchandise in here—”

  “I know. I know because I’ve spent millions of dollars here over the years,” Lander says evenly. “You can trust Adoncia to lock up.”

  Mandy stands there, virtually wringing her hands as she weighs the enormity of what he’s asking against the enormity of what he spends. The play of conflict and distress across Mandy’s face would almost be comical if it wasn’t so disturbing.

  Because really, who is Lander to put her in this kind of position? Who is he that people should change the rules for him at the drop of a hat?

  He’s rich. That’s all. Just rich. And it’s his money that allows him not to play fair.

  And for the first time since I walked away from my own revenge, I feel a strong sense of real anger. Everything always has to be done by his ever-changing rules! He decides when I can’t see him and he decides when I will and I get no notice about any of it. He decides how we’re going to deal with my revenge. And worse yet, he just expects me to play along. He knows I’ll let him set the rules because he’s a Gable while I’m just me.

  Mandy takes a deep breath and rolls her shoulders back. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Gable,” she says, her voice as proper and quietly assertive as a school librarian’s. “Everyone here values your patronage, but I’m afraid I do not have the authority to leave Adoncia or you in the store without a manager present. It’s not an issue of trust, it’s an issue of protocol.”

  My respect for this woman has just gone up by dozens of percentage points. Lander offers her a small, approving
smile, clearly impressed in his own right. “Why don’t you call the owner. Francis, right?”

  Mandy wavers, but then turns back to her desk and makes the call.

  “Mr. Callow? I’m sorry to disturb you, but one of our clients, Lander Gable . . . Yes, he—” But Lander gestures to her to give him the phone. Confused, Mandy complies as Lander takes over the conversation.

  “Hello, Francis, I haven’t seen you in a while . . . Yes, I think you’re right, it was at Concours d’Elegance in Pebble Beach.”

  And in less than five minutes Mandy is showing me how to set the alarm, lock the doors, and close up. There’s a new sadness etched into the creases around her mouth and eyes. A defeat.

  And in this moment, mixed up in the love I feel for Lander, I feel something akin to . . . to hatred. I don’t know if it’s for him or for what he represents or just a product of my own frustration, but it’s there.

  We watch her leave and then I watch as Lander locks the door after her. After her, the manager of the store! This woman who has dedicated her life to Callow’s.

  I feel Lander move close behind me. The lapel of his jacket scrapes against my blouse. “I shouldn’t be here,” Lander says.

  I scoff and step away. “Then tell me, Mr. Gable, why are you here?”

  Lander blinks in surprise and then sighs in apparent exasperation. “I know you’re angry.”

  I move to the wall and let my fingers run across the bindings, the bindings of history is what Mandy calls them. “What did you say to Micah?”

  “We’ll get to that in a moment.”

  I let out a rueful laugh. “Very well, we’ll deal with the things you’re concerned with first. So yes, you’re right, I am angry,” I finally say. “The problem is, you don’t know why.”

  “No, I understand. I know you wanted me to reach out to you during this time. I didn’t. It would have been too risky.”

  “Ah, but you’re an investment banker,” I point out as I trace the engraved gold font of an eighteenth-century treasure. “Minimal risk leads to minimal gain.”

  “And stupid risk will lead to ruin.”

  I pivot slowly, offering him a slow, menacing smile. “It’s only stupid if the prize isn’t worth it.” I wait for that to sink in before adding, “I’m not angry that you didn’t call. I’m hurt, Lander, but I’m not angry about that. I’m angry that you think you can decide when and how you come back. I’m angry that you think you can override the manager of this store in order to get what you want.”

  “I can override her.” I can see his jaw tense as he’s pushed into the defensive.

  “And I can get away with stealing a shopping cart from a homeless person, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to do it. I don’t need the shopping cart and I don’t need to humiliate people for no reason.”

  “You’re on edge.”

  I close my eyes and silently count to ten. The worst thing any man can do is tell a woman how she’s feeling when she’s in the middle of telling him off. You’d think that would be obvious, but most men never get it, and Lander isn’t an exception to that rule.

  Which makes me wonder what other rules he’s not an exception to. “I want a cutoff date.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “When will the Justice Department be pressing charges? Give me a cutoff date, because after it’s passed, if nothing’s happened, I’m going to roll up my sleeves and do things my way.”

  “You don’t trust me.” For a second, and it really only does last a second, I think I see him deflate. But then immediately he’s hardened again. The powerful Gable man who dishes it out but never, ever has to take it.

  “Trust you?” I repeat. “You’ve made it hard.”

  “Have I?” he asks, a sharp edge creeping into his voice.

  I look at the books in glass cases that are displayed behind him. Stories of battles and conquest. “You’ve always known,” I say quietly. “You knew back when we were still gathering evidence. You knew you were going to ask me to step aside. You knew that even when you were first asking me to work with you. You never intended for this to be a full partnership—”

  “That’s not true.”

  “—and you never intended for the two of us to last.”

  “It’s a relay race, Adoncia. You did most of the legwork for the first few laps. You gave us the head start we needed. Now this is my leg of the race. I’m just bringing it home.”

  “And the story you told me about why I had to step aside, it was so thought-out. So convenient. How could I argue with it?”

  A new understanding crosses his face. “Care to tell me what you’re suggesting?”

  I raise my eyebrows, almost tauntingly. “Suggesting? You think I’m suggesting something?” I cluck my tongue. “What we have here is a failure to communicate. Let’s start again, shall we?” I pull out a chair and sit down, crossing both my legs and my arms, leaning back so that I can glare up at him. “Tell me another story, Lander. Tell me a story about your mother.”

  He hesitates, clearly taken off guard. Ever so subtly he shifts his weight away from me. “My mother?”

  “Yes, that’s the reason you’re so desperate for revenge, right? Your father led you to believe that your mother was being taken care of, that her cancer was in remission while you were at Oxford. And while you were there she died because it was all lies, right?”

  Lander doesn’t say anything. His posture has gone from straight to rigid.

  “What I don’t get is why your mother didn’t just tell you herself. Why didn’t she just pick up the phone and say, ‘Lander, I’m sick and your father took away my insurance.’ ”

  “I told you, my father must have threatened her. Perhaps he told her he wouldn’t pay for my education anymore if she was open with me.”

  “You already had a bachelor’s at that point. What was there to freak out about? You could have taken out loans for Oxford if your father stopped paying. Oooh”—I push out my bottom lip in mock sympathy—“were you intimidated by the whole student loan process?”

  “Why are you doing this?” His hands slip into his pockets. Is he restraining himself? Trying to keep from hitting me? Holding me? I don’t know.

  But I do know that he’s in pain. I can hear it in his voice. I’m hurting him. I feel the pain in my own gut. It almost flattens me. But I don’t know how to work with those feelings. Anger is something I’ve mastered. Falling back on that is easy, even instinctive. “The whole reason you want revenge, the reason you originally thought we were so suited as partners, is because of this one event, no? So I’d just like to get a better handle on that event.”

  “You’re being ridiculous.”

  “Am I? See, here’s the thing, Lander. I don’t think your father had to threaten your mother. I think she kept her illness to herself because she wanted to keep it to herself. She wasn’t forced to do anything; rather, she chose to make a sacrifice. And if that’s the case, then you’re not motivated by revenge. You’re motivated by ambition.”

  He doesn’t say a word. If someone were to walk by the store quickly they might mistake him for a mannequin. Even his expression has gone blank. The only movement I can see is the vein in his forehead quivering ever so slightly, silently letting me know I’ve hit my mark.

  I wait, wait for his comeback, wait for him to argue. But then something in him shifts. His eyes drift toward the window. “I told Micah that over the last few months I’ve identified five separate HGVB bank accounts linked to his organization. I told him that I put a freeze on the accounts and that if anything happens to you, or if he gets within a mile of you again, I will alert the Feds and they’ll simply seize the accounts and claim them as illegal funds. There’s millions of dollars in those accounts, so I suspect he’ll play ball. When I’m satisfied that he’s behaving himself, I may let him withdraw some of the funds.”

  I don’t know what this means, not exactly. Should I be flattered that he’s trying to protect me? Or is this simply another magic trick
, making me look this way when I should be looking that way?

  “The US Justice Department will be announcing the charges against HGVB within the next forty-eight hours,” he continues. “So there, there’s your damned cutoff.”

  For a moment we just stare at each other. Was I really wrong? Is he the man he says he is? I want to ask him, I want to beg him to prove it to me. I want him to force me to trust him again.

  But you can’t force someone to trust you any more than I can force myself to be more trusting. So I hold my tongue, waiting for him to say something else, something that might fix this.

  But he just turns his back and walks out into the darkness, leaving me here all alone with Einstein, Angelou, Faulkner, and Churchill.

  chapter twenty-eight

  * * *

  The day it happens starts strangely. It’s not that the weather is unseasonable, or that I woke up at an odd time or anything like that. But I did wake up with a feeling. Anticipation, fear, excitement, sorrow—it takes me a few minutes to place them all and figure out where they came from. Some came from the heartache of seeing Lander. Of turning our reunion into a confrontation. Some came from my exchange with Micah, because although Lander told me I’m protected from him I don’t quite believe it. No one is ever safe from Micah once they make him an enemy.

  But mostly? It’s knowing that the charges are going to be brought against the Gables. Today, tomorrow, I don’t know which, but if Lander is right it will be soon. Still in my nightshirt, I go searching for the remote control and then, with a shaking hand, I turn on the TV. The first news show I find is picking apart a Hollywood sex scandal. The next station is in the midst of covering racist remarks by the owner of a billion-dollar sports team.

  But the next is talking about HGVB.

  They’re talking about HGVB!

  They’re saying that HGVB has allowed Iranian money to flow through its US branches. That it laundered money for banks associated with terrorists, drug cartels, and Russian gangsters. “This,” the news anchor says ruefully, “could be a game changer.”