No Dreams Allowed: A Billionaire Romance

by Sonora Seldon

  26

  Four days passed. Dave seemed to go back to work, sitting in on meetings and making calls, consulting with lawyers and engineers and market analysts. So far as I could tell, he was trying to cover the work Kristen had done before she left us and her fifteen-hour work days behind, but there was more.

  The media responded with nods and approving noises and smiling talk when he began reassembling what dumped bits of the company he could buy back – always at a loss because his competitors weren’t stupid, but he spliced things back together a division and a factory and a regional office at a time. Stock prices for Dallstrom Defense Systems spiked upward, and the President grumbled but said he might push for Congress to renew the company’s cancelled defense contracts. Charity donations slowed but didn’t stop. A CNN analyst told viewers that “grief over his sister’s loss has clearly brought the headstrong young David Dallstrom back to his senses,” and I wanted to throw a brick through the TV and shatter that asshole’s smirk into a thousand glass splinters.

  I stayed close because Dave wanted me close and because I was scared, and while the talking heads on the networks prattled and debated and smiled, I saw the real work that went on behind the scenes.

  Factories that were never officially on the books reopened and returned to manufacturing products that vanished into a network of buyers and resellers who only existed on paper. Government officials from Yemen called to discuss ‘procedural transfers,’ couriers from Dahomey delivered packages that disappeared, and Dave called countries I’d never heard of and spoke through translators to people who seemed nervous about staying on the phone too long.

  This did not look like making things right.

  But I kept my mouth shut and I trusted him to turn things around when the time came. After all, I didn’t know exactly what the sketchiness was all about, maybe some of it was just shady and not outright illegal, and how bad could it be?

  I trusted Dave to find a way to fight the monsters.

  I trusted him to not be one of them.

  While I waited for answers and for us all to emerge back on the right side of things, I took care of Dave. I kept him fed because now he often forgot about little things like eating. I got him out of the office whenever I could, because walking in the open air beneath the sun chases away the shadows, at least for a while.

  At night I loved him with my body. I kept him safe between my legs, taking him away to where nothing could haunt him. Usually we laughed and talked and tickled in bed, but not on those nights. Instead, he memorized me with his hands and mouth, exploring all the places that shivered at his touch and sucking my tender nipples until they ached. He spoke only to say over and over that he loved me. He said it and then he spread my legs wide apart and buried himself inside me, again and again, until we collapsed into sleep.

  The fifth day dawned bright and free of shadows – at the least the kind you could see.

  For the first time since forever, I found Luke Skywalker in my lingerie drawer, his tiny plastic hands brandishing a light saber as he claimed my bras for the rebellion.

  During a midmorning meeting, Dave authorized a charity dump of fifty million dollars into the account of Heifer International, and I told him we were heading out to Millennium Park to celebrate.

  We walked around, we slurped up an ice cream cone apiece, and we took each other’s pictures standing next to Cloud Gate, the giant mirror-bright metal sculpture Chicagoans call ‘the Bean.’ Dave seemed almost like himself as he explained how the reflections of the skyscrapers on its curved surface symbolized the transformation of the material world into a greater spiritual realm; when I replied that it looked like a Transformer had experienced a difficult bowel movement, he flashed his crooked grin for an instant and I knew my Dave was still in the house.

  Then lunch had to be skipped when a flurry of encrypted emails arrived from an unknown someplace, and the day went downhill from there. Lawyers were called, a shipment of something I probably didn’t want to know about was rerouted, appointments were rescheduled, I had to call the Gulfstream’s flight crew and alert them we’d be going to Irkutsk next week, and suddenly it was late afternoon.

  Enough, I decided, was enough. I told Dave we were done for the day, we swapped business casual for don’t-care-who’s-looking jeans and oversized t-shirts, and we took off in search of food.

  I had our driver drop us off at a random spot on North Clark Street, a part of town where pretty much every other building is a diner or a café or a full-service restaurant – unless it happens to be a pub or a bar, because North Clark has plenty of those too. I told Dave his legs needed stretching and we both needed feeding, so we’d walk until we spotted a likely sort of place to eat.

  Dave took my hand in his and we walked. We passed a Mongolian barbecue place, we glanced at a beer garden that looked nice but we hadn’t been walking nearly long enough, and we kept going. The sun baked us warm, I wished I’d gone with shorts instead of jeans even though my ample thighs are not exactly made for extensive public exposure, and Dave released my hand so he could slip his arm around me.

  I snuggled into him, my hip rubbed against his, and everything was okay. The air was thick with exhaust and sweat and the smells of bratwurst and steak and curry and pizza, a skateboarder darted past us, cooks and dishwashers stood in alleys taking smoke breaks, people hurried by on their way to places and appointments and lives that we didn’t have to worry about, and a siren wailed miles away because somebody else’s day was not okay.

  We were fine, though. Our only issue was whether we wanted to try the burgers and wings at Duke’s Bar & Grill, or maybe head down another block or so to Aloha Eats because everybody said they served an amazing plate of kalua pork, or if instead we should keep strolling along and pick some eatery we’d never heard of at random.

  I can’t emphasize the word ‘random’ enough. We’d started walking at a random spot, we could have turned down a random side street at any moment, and we were heading for we didn’t know where.

  There was no way they could have known we were coming. There was no possible way they could have been sitting around a table at a sidewalk café in the 2300 block of North Clark Street, waiting for us.

  But they were.

  We walked beneath the green-and-gold striped awning of the Armadillo Experience. I slowed down to read a chalkboard sign propped outside their open door that advertised the daily special, a waitress loaded down with plates of awesome and foam-topped glasses of beer came flying out of the door on her way to the sidewalk tables, and Dave came to a dead stop.

  “Jesus, look where you’re going, I’m WORKING here!” The waitress dodged around him like a pro, yelling in his ear and moving on in a blur as Dave stood stock still and stared at the table farthest from the restaurant door.

  At the far side of the sidewalk seating area, inches from the exhaust and traffic of the street, two men sat at a round metal table. I didn’t know the tall twenty-something guy with wild shoulder length black hair, but the man next to him? I’d only seen him once, months ago, but that was all it took. No one could forget that shaved head, the savage scar coursing down the left side of his face, and those dead eyes.

  Hi, Sergei.

  I grabbed Dave’s elbow and steered him to their table. He still seemed to be in shock, but that didn’t last – once we got over there, the tall younger guy jumped to his feet, came around the table, and wrapped Dave up in a bear hug that must have squeezed the breath right out of him.

  “David, my brother! I am happy seeing you, so much!” I’ll say – the guy punctuated his enthusiasm by pounding Dave on the back with one fist, and I could hear each impact thudding home like a hammer.

  Dave lit up and grinned almost like his old self beneath the blows, and the smile in his voice was even wider than the one on his face. “Anton, buddy! I bet the sheep back home miss you already, huh?”

  They half-hugged and half-wrestled while I stood back out of the way and pretended not to notice
the Glock holstered inside Anton’s waistband, because what’s a deadly unregistered weapon between friends? You’d better pray the Chicago P.D. and our fellow diners don’t spot that, sheep boy.

  Sergei coughed – faint, mild, and polite.

  Dave and his brother-in-spirit broke apart. Dave shook himself, grinned, and took a quick jab at Anton’s ribs before turning toward Sergei.

  The most wanted man in the world sat there wearing the same slide-off-the-eye forgettable shirt and slacks and scuffed working man’s boots he’d worn in Kansas. I figured he probably had something way worse than a Glock hidden under his short, utterly ordinary brown leather jacket, but I also figured that was none of my business.

  The two men scanned each other’s faces, looking for … what? Then Sergei extended his arm without a word, Dave reached down to him, and they did that elbow-clasp thing guys do when a handshake isn’t nearly enough. No rib breaking or back pounding, no words, and the silence between them said so much more than any of that.

  Then they separated and Sergei turned to me. “Miss Hamilton, you have not before met my nephew Anton?”

  Anton winked at me as he ducked back around the table, his hair flying behind him and his half-buttoned grey cotton shirt billowing over the black tank top he wore underneath it. He grabbed the chair next to his, spun it towards me, and did his best to charm me silly with his high-wattage smile.

  “And now David’s beautiful woman will be sitting next to me!” He thumped the seat of what he meant to be my chair with one hand to emphasize the importance of this seating arrangement, and I decided Dave needed a little teasing.

  I turned to him with one raised eyebrow. “No fair – you never once told me Anton was smoking hot.”

  Dave slid around me in a heartbeat and planted himself between me and his pal. “Change of plan, I’m sitting next to Anton, who is not hot in this or any other universe – trust me, he’s covered with boils, he never bathes, and I’m pretty sure he’s gay.”

  Anton shook his head, still grinning. “So you are wishing, David, because always the girls like me better!”

  Not this girl – in my book there was Dave, and then there were all those other guys cluttering up the planet and pretending to be men – but I’d have bet serious money that Anton’s smile and those smoky blue eyes had dropped more than a few pairs of panties to the floor in various exotic locations around the world.

  You could almost forget who he was and the deadly things he and Sergei did for a living.

  How did Dave know these guys again?

  Before I got up the nerve to ask, a waitress happened by, drinks and food were ordered, and I decided to postpone uncomfortable questions while I inhaled the Armadillo Experience’s house specialty – macaroni drowning in three different cheeses, topped with toasted bread crumbs and chunks of grease-dripping bacon, served in an artsy little ceramic pot with a handle, and presented with a side of garlic bread for mopping up any stray bits of sauce that might escape.

  Across the table from me, Anton mowed through two servings of the same stuff and washed it down with Guinness ale, because growing boys need their calories and beer. On my right, Dave turned quiet and picked at his teriyaki chicken, forcing a smile onto his face when I tried to joke with him about his buddy being so hot and all.

  On my left, Sergei ate nothing.

  He took occasional measured sips from his glass of Carlsberg as his colorless eyes scanned the nearby tables. He shifted in his chair and watched the crowds hustling past on the sidewalk. A blue-and-white police cruiser rolled by, and he turned his head ever so slightly to watch its progress down the street.

  Anton didn’t miss that detail either. Between one mouthful of macaroni and the next, his eyes flicked to the street. He put his fork down and he looked back over his shoulder to watch those poor unknowing cops drive away from what would have been by far the biggest bust of their careers.

  Anton turned from the street and asked his uncle a question with only his eyes. Sergei shook his head.

  “They are men of the city only, not the federal government – I am thinking they likely know our reputations but not our faces, Anton. Finish your food.”

  “Guys, please try not to start a gun battle while we’re eating, okay? You’ll spoil my digestion.”

  Sergei switched on his dead-thing smile for a microsecond, Anton flashed me his panties-dropping grin – after aiming a final blank stare at the police car now disappearing around a distant corner – and Dave spoke up.

  “So do you guys want to tell me why you’re here? I’d like to think you came just to hang with us and check out Chicago’s vibrant macaroni and cheese scene, but that’s not it, is it?”

  “No, your woman wishes me to kill Gregor Szörnyeteg.”

  Whoa – way to get right to the point, fella.

  Dave turned and stared at me. “Seriously? I mean, the bastard totally deserves it, agreed, but you don’t know what the stakes are here, Cassie, you don’t know –”

  Sergei’s words were calm, level, and deadly. “She knows nothing because you tell her nothing, David. You wish to keep her in the dark to protect her, but darkness and ignorance are not safe. You think she is a delicate flower who needs to be sheltered from the truth, but I think the truth itself is what you fear.”

  Anton tilted his head to one side, curious. “Uncle Sergei, she wants Szörnyeteg dead why?”

  His uncle didn’t look around. “It seems he ordered the death of David’s sister.”

  Dave’s sort-of brother leaned forward on his elbows, suddenly looking a whole lot more like a wolf than a poster boy for the hotness of Eastern European men. His eyes went cold. “Then I say we go and end him now, Uncle, right now. I will cut his throat myself, for my brother David.”

  I did not doubt for one second that Pretty Euro Boy would do it. I could visualize it happening, and my stomach informed me it was done with food until further notice.

  Sergei waved away his nephew’s words with a hand, still not looking around. “I am considering the matter, Anton.”

  My worse self decided to throw a little fat onto the fire. “Then you might want to consider that while we were in Dubai, that Hungarian asshole said something about how you were an old wolf and Dave had pulled your fangs.”

  That got to him. Sergei raised an actual eyebrow. “He said these things, truly?”

  Dave nodded. “Yep, and he also said maybe you were getting sentimental with age.”

  Anton chuckled, changing back to a smiling, normal, non-murdering guy in an eyeblink. “Everybody is thinking Uncle shaves his head to be better showing off the scar, but I think it is so nobody will see how little hair he has left, yes?”

  Sergei rolled an eye at him. “Anton, one day you will be in a fight and someone will grab you by all that long hair, and then whose throat will be cut?”

  “Not mine, because I am young and can move fast!”

  The older man sighed. “You see what I put up with from my sister’s boy?”

  I took Dave’s hand in mine, but I didn’t look at him.

  “Sergei, you said I had to hear a story before you’d take the job. Why?”

  “David knows why you must hear about Milena.”

  Dave’s hand clamped around mine until my knuckles went white. “Sergei, no.”

  “Then your father did tell you this story?”

  “He told me about Milena the night before he died. He told me all the worst stories then, even the ones he wouldn’t tell Kristen –”

  “And I can tell those stories too, David, if you make it necessary. As one example only, would you like Miss Hamilton to hear about the Michigan operation?”

  I yanked my hand away from Dave and turned to stare at him. “Geez, what the hell happened in Michigan?”

  Anton leaned back in his chair, folding his arms. He looked through us, past us. “Michigan was bad. Uncle and I were there to clean up only, but it was very bad.”

  Sergei leaned forward by a tiny fraction.
He spoke in a whisper, and I could barely hear him over the rumbling traffic and the voices from the other tables.

  “David, do not make the mistake I made, all those many years ago. Do not think that you can save those you love by selling your soul to monsters.”

  “I TRIED to shut them down!”

  A few heads turned at nearby tables, and Dave lowered his voice. “I tried to sell off all the dirty bits of business Dad had going around the world, remember? I sold everything with a connection to those assholes, I gave the money to charity, I tried to make things right, and now Kristen’s gone! And guess who’s next, if I keep up with my stupid dream of fixing the world?”

  He grabbed my hand back. “Cassie will be the next one to hit the ground bleeding and dead! Then I won’t have anything left, and then they’ll start killing the company’s employees, bombing who knows what everywhere, and how many more people am I supposed to sacrifice?”

  Sergei folded his hands on the table. “I am thinking your father must have had such thoughts long ago, and so he turned down the road that made him into a monster. Do not choose that path, David.”

  The world narrowed down to that table and that single moment. I looked into Dave’s lost eyes, but I spoke to the man who topped Interpol’s ‘most wanted’ list.

  “Sergei, what happened to Milena? She was your girlfriend, right?”

  He nodded. “Yes. I was in those days what you would call a revolutionary – my people were weak and the slaves of the strong, and I thought I could buy their freedom with violence. Einar Dallstrom lived in another world far away, but he noticed my talents and thought I could be useful to him – but I did not care to sell my soul, and so I turned down his offer of money and support. I hung up on him, and I remember that I laughed.

  “A week later, I went to visit Milena in her village. The sun was shining, the dirt road I walked was empty, and that seemed curious because it was a market day. But a beautiful young woman with the soul of an angel loved me, the day was bright, and so I was not troubled by the empty road.

  “Perhaps two kilometers from the village, I saw a dead dog. Deep gouges in the road showed where it had scratched at the dirt like a mad thing as it lay dying, and its mouth was full of bloody foam.