He expected her to storm off then. Like a scolded teenager, slamming the door as she went. But instead her hard gaze seemed to soften into something like curiosity.
“How’s Lucy?” she asked.
So that was how she was going to play it?
“You would know if you visited her.”
“Sure thing, grandpa.”
“I’m marrying her.”
Lou laughed. “A lot of good that will do you.”
“She needs something to look forward to. Something to hold on to.”
Her laugh cut short. “Wedding dresses or cakes or any of that bullshit? That’s what you think women hold on to.”
“Some women.”
“Says the divorced man who’s been single for at least the last ten years.”
“At least I’m spending time with her! At least I’m soaking up every second I have with her before she’s gone from the face of the earth! And when she is, all you’ll have left is your regret.”
Lou moved the vest to the other hand. And for a horrible minute King thought it was so she could pull her gun and put a bullet between his eyes.
But she didn’t. She was adjusting for the pain, some wound, old or new, was her giving her grief.
“Congrats on your engagement.”
She delivered this with all the enthusiasm of someone declaring their imminent death. Then she was gone.
20
Nico sat in the front row pew of his father’s church, San Augusto al Monte. He stared up at the figure of Christ, with the tears upon his face for all the misery of the world. Or perhaps it was not Christ he regarded with his upturned face. But the face of his own father. A face of misery, despair.
It wasn’t Nico’s father who had built this church. That was done by friars in the 1400s. But he himself had commandeered it from the mob boss with whom he’d apprenticed. Padre told him stories of Bellini when Nico was a little boy and how much Padre had learned from the hard man—what to do right and what to do better.
As a boy, Nico had no doubts that he would inherit his father’s empire. He was secure in his father’s love. That was until Konstantine arrived. He remembered the day everything changed, standing on the stone steps of the church beside his father. Padre had a package for Konstantine, no more than eight or nine years old, to carry across town.
I can do it, Papa, Nico had said. He was four years older than the boy. Surely at thirteen he was more capable than the green-eyed brat in his American sneakers.
No, his father had said. I need someone clever for this.
Had Konstantine heard these words, Nico would have likely attacked him on the street before the kid could get any ideas. But he was already running down the street through a cloud of pigeons, the brown paper package tucked under his arm. His father had spoken to him and him alone.
Who is clever now, Papa?
The life Padre Leo built for more than forty years had been seized by the very son he cast out. His legacy business turned over to the hands he wanted most never to touch it. How would God have felt, if Adam had returned triumphant to reclaim the Garden of Eden?
Of course, perhaps it would be easier to forgive the seizure of a mere garden.
Unless it was also worth more than three billion dollars.
The casinos, the firearms, heroin fields in Afghanistan. The cocaine pumping into Europe. A network of thousands of loyal men and women the world over. And all of it run by a single man. Paolo Konstantine. Every protocol, every decision, run by him first. As if he were their god.
Reclaiming his father’s life work was only the beginning. Once he repaid those few who dared to elevate him to his rightful place, he would be unstoppable. Whole markets had been left untouched and Nico was going to change that.
Humans. Sexual exploitation. An untapped market that Konstantine nor his father dared to harness. People were a commodity that could push the Ravengers’ three billion to eight billion or higher. Look at the Russians. Worth nearly ten billion and why? How did the Americans put it?
Sex sells.
And why not? People were so easy to acquire. So many displaced from their countries every day. War, famine or drought—a dozen reasons. It was no trouble at all to make them disappear, especially the children and women.
Narcotics had to be grown or manufactured. They took time. But people? They could turn a profit almost immediately. And their shelf-life was better. A drug offered only a single use. Put black tar in the veins or powder up the nose and that was it. More had to be ordered, made, shipped.
But one woman could be used over and over and over again. All night, every night for years. She could bring in twice as much revenue if a businessman like Nico spread her right. And she could be shipped too—anywhere to fill the demand. A whorehouse in Atlanta. In Budapest.
Perhaps Konstantine, not his father, had seen the possibilities. Or they hadn’t had the stomach for such an enterprise, but Nico was stronger and smarter. He would expand the Ravengers holdings in all the ways these two pathetic men couldn’t.
The steps across the stone floor echoed behind him. He cocked his head slightly, turning at the hint of danger. But it was only Gigi. A lanky boy of fourteen. Nico sat up at the sight of him, excited.
“Did you find what I asked for?” Nico said, leaning back against the pew.
The boy slung the black backpack off his shoulders and squat down on the floor to scrounge through it. “Yeah. Can we talk here?”
He blinked up at Nico from his place on the floor. Nico swept the church, eyes peering into every shadowed corner. But his orders had been followed. No one had approached him today as he sought guidance from his father in the nave. Perhaps they would have worried more if they’d known what was in his fevered heart. That he hadn’t in fact been seeking Padre Leo’s approval at all but had been basking in the self-righteous pleasure of knowing he’d accomplished the very thing that his father denied him.
The plan he fulfilled after ten long years of dreaming in the work camp. He manifested this moment. And he knew it. Every time the bullwhip was brought down across his back and his blood spilled on Russian soil. Every time a boot slid between his ribs or a fist made his ears ring, he’d thought of his father, thought of the moment he would pull this empire out from beneath him. His only regret was that he hadn’t been able to do it looking in the old man’s eyes.
But Konstantine was a lovely consolation prize. Seeing him fall, in some ways, would be even sweeter.
“I found these,” the boy said.
“Yes,” Nico said, placing an arm along the back of the wooden pew. “What do you have for me?”
The boy pulled out a paper folder with two pockets, one on each side. He removed a jumble of photographs with trembling hands, and handed them over to Nico. Pointing over the top of the photo as he shuffled through.
“He has a whole collection of photographs, just of her.”
“Seems obsessive,” Nico noted. But he understood why. It wasn’t only that the woman was beautiful, it was her strange talent. What was it about the darkness that made you want to look closer? “When were these taken?”
The boy took the top photo and flipped it over, showing the date stamped on the back. “Most of them are dated about three months ago. But some are even older. I think he started his collection years ago.”
Nico looked at him expectantly.
The boy cleared his throat. “I ran these photos to find the matching face. There were no names but Konstantine wrote something on the back.”
Nico turned the photograph over and read Konstantine’s small script “Lou. It’s a man’s name. Perhaps it isn’t for her.”
“Is it true what they are saying about her?”
Nico regarded the boy’s round face. It was still a boy’s face in every regard, even if his voice had changed. Soft round cheeks and eyes. No hint of facial hair.
“What do they say?”
“She captures men like a spider and eats them.”
N
ico smiled. The boy had the good sense to look embarrassed.
“Yeah, I don’t believe that,” the boy said, pulling himself up as if to make himself taller. “I think she’s like a ninja or something. She saved Konstantine’s life. Twice now.”
Nico gave him a hard glare and the boy fell silent, his eyes downcast.
Nico then regarded the photos dreamily. The woman clad in black standing in a shadowed bar, her hair pulled up off her neck, exposing a tender stretch of flesh. He could slit that pretty throat easily. He needed only a way to pin her dark wings to the floor long enough to do it.
He thought of the strange room that Konstantine built outside of town and smiled. Had that been your intention, brother? To betray her? Trap her and bleed her dry? Or perhaps only to keep her all to yourself…
If the woman was his only remaining ally, Nico could fix that. Once she knew what he was, and his intentions for her, she would turn on him. Then perhaps he wouldn’t even have to put the bullet between his eyes himself.
That had been his mistake after all.
He should have simply shot Konstantine in the head while he could. When he saw Konstantine, he would kill him quickly. If the woman didn’t beat him to it.
“That is all,” he said to the boy. The boy hesitated for a moment, clearly expecting payment. But one wolfish glance from Nico sent him running from the church without another word.
Now what to do about the woman. Nico looked at the granulated image of the woman watching someone else. A man perhaps. It was hard to tell, even though the unwavering gaze, a hunter’s gaze, was easy enough to recognize.
No matter what his father said, he was no fool. He knew that assets and allies would be what carried him through—carried his vision to completion.
Nico had a long, hard road ahead of him. It seemed a waste to destroy a creature so unique and valuable.
If only he could turn her against Konstantine. If only he could offer her what no one else could. He would simply have to figure out what her desire was. People were easy like that. Particularly women. Special talents and bloodthirst aside, she was a woman.
An offer she couldn’t refuse, he mused. And a reason to turn against Konstantine so that she wouldn’t stand between Nico and what needed to be done.
He settled against the pew, his shoulder blades rubbing against the cold wood. He looked defiantly into the face of the weeping Christ. The tears of a father who could only watch his wayward children and wait.
The bright image of the padded room flashed unbidden in Nico’s mind. With all its bright, unwavering light.
Yes, that was how he would do it. How he would change her mind and make her see the truth of it.
A dog, no matter who was master, still loved the hunt.
She could be trained like any other.
21
Konstantine heard the door to the closet click closed. He turned onto his side. Her blankets were bright with moonlight, tousled but empty. He rolled onto his back with a sigh, the sofa springs creaking. He placed one hand beneath his head.
The ceiling above collected long shadows from the room.
His body ached, but he had healed most of his wounds in the last few days, hidden here in her apartment. He should be grateful for her sanctuary. He seriously doubted she’d ever offered such a place to a man before. To women, perhaps. He’d followed her movements closely leading up to their encounter in June and since. Never too close to be noticed. But he was curious.
He wanted to know everything about this woman, how she lived her life, how she supported herself.
As foolish as it sounded, he wanted her. His urge to woo her was like any urge to woo a woman. But he understood that dinners, flowers, and myriad of attention and declarations would be not only ridiculous, but were likely to be met with a blade to the throat.
And simply showing her his erection—even if unintentional—hadn’t worked in his favor either. He had his eye open for the opportunity, certainly, but was unsure what the opportunity might look like.
So he’d taken to watching her instead. To get a sense of anyone, one must look at what they do with their time. What they cared about.
She enjoyed slaughtering men. But that would hardly make a fitting gift. Gifting a lioness with a pig when she could bring home the gazelle was insulting. But what else did she love?
The aunt, to be sure. And also the retired DEA agent in New Orleans who lived above some occult shop in the French quarter. But most of her time was given over to hunting mules.
To his surprise, it had a symmetry. A rhythm that suited her.
She didn’t go for the highest men in charge, those who would be simply replaced with another power-hungry mind. She went for the workers. The reliable soldiers who got the work done. Those on whom the bosses relied to exert the will—those, who if missing, brought production lines and shipments to a grinding halt.
It was brilliant.
Many of her targets were his own men and she had cost him more than enough trouble and money. But he was not her only target. She seemed to target all the drug cartels indiscriminately. And the Ravengers were far from the only one in business.
True she once focused solely on the Martinellis and their intricate connections. But since his brothers and father were dead, it seemed her only ambition was to undo their influence brick by brick.
For that reason it had been easy to step in and offer a bargain to his late father’s cousin, a partnership that had merged the Martinelli empires with Padre Leo’s Ravengers. This was what Padre Leo himself had wanted—though he had had no idea of Lou Thorne’s part in this acquisition. How she had all but gutted the operation from the inside out, so that by the time Konstantine arrived on cousin Giuliani’s step, the deal was done.
And by appearing as an ally he had prevented a bloody takeover between their two tribes. He let Giuliani Russo run his cartel and Konstantine focused on the Ravengers.
What Lou knew of this arrangement, he had no idea.
Her time seemed mostly focused on dismantling the Mexican cartels in the last month or so. It was their drug lords she purged from the streets. And with their sixty percent market share on America’s unquenchable demand, Konstantine couldn’t be upset by that.
And what if what she desired was the Ravengers? If in exchange for her body and soul, he must give her the 3.3 billion dollar empire, lock and key?
Could he betray Padre Leo? A man who’d protected him and entrusted him to look after his legacy in exchange for the woman he desired?
He wasn’t sure.
And he feared that day, that decision, may be rounding on him sooner than he’d like.
Yet he couldn’t handle her the way he would any problem—decisively and directly.
To do so surely meant chasing her back into the shadows, and away from him. He didn’t think she was interested in business alliances.
If she carried her father’s ideology in her own mind, she meant to undo the entire drug trade. Including his own. And if that was what it took to have her…
He sighed into the empty apartment, looking at the future with unease.
A flash of light caught his eye. He sat up on his elbows, searching for the source.
It was the island cabinet. The light shining through the trim would’ve been impossible to see, if he hadn’t been lying in the dark.
The light clicked off and Konstantine repressed the urge to feign sleep.
A moment later, the closet door popped open and she strode inside. Her boots moving soundlessly across the wooden floor. La mia leonessa. No wonder the men never hear you coming.
She entered the kitchen and pulled a glass down from a cabinet shelf. He listened to the faucet run. The filling glass caught the moonlight from the windows.
He wondered what it would be like. To have a home with this woman. To hear her moving about it in this way, dressing, showering, cooking…knowing that she belonged to him.
He would settle for belonging to her.
; What a pathetic romantic you are, he chided himself.
She stared down at him, water glass in her hand, the side of her leg pressing into the sofa.
He met her gaze from the flat of his back, silently praying she would sit on the end of the sofa. That she would put a hand on his thigh. Or better yet, put down the glass and climb on top of him completely, letting the weight of her body sink onto his.
She only stood there. “Nico fucking hates you.”
He laughed, surprised to hear such a filthy word from such a pretty mouth. “I’m aware, mia cara.”
“Are you aware he beheaded eight agents on live television and gave you all the credit?” she asked with an arched brow. “You’re on the news.”
His laughter died. He swung his legs off the sofa, throwing himself onto his feet. “Vaffanculo! I need to make some calls.”
She took a long drink of the water, her eyebrow arching.
“Please,” he added. “If you are not currently engaged.”
She finished her water and put the glass on the coffee table.
She went to the picture hanging on the wall and removed it. Konstantine was unsure if he should act surprised, indifferent, or sorry.
Apparently a reaction was unnecessary. “You’ve been snooping.”
“My apologies,” he said, and hope she noted the sincerity in his voice. “I was bored.”
She snorted. “And the most interesting thing you found?”
“An armory where your cookware should be.”
She stiffened. “You think women should be cooks.”
“And men. We are all responsible for feeding ourselves, aren’t we?”
The safe popped open and she removed three magazines and two pistols. She put the ammo in the pockets of her black cargo pants and then the gun in the waistband of the small of her back.
“Are you eyeing the guns or my cash?” she asked as she closed the safe and put the picture back in place. “You have plenty of both.”
Under the Bones Page 15