“What will you tell the men?” he murmurs. “You said so yourself if you told them about the drugs, I’d be dead within a week.”
I sigh and run a hand through my hair.
“I’ll tell them you’ve become a danger to yourself. I’ll tell them you’re a drug addict and this is for your own good.”
“And make me look like a loser who can’t control himself?” he protests.
I bite down another response. That’s not how he looks.
That’s what he is.
“And, because we’re old friends, I’m going to handle these drug shipments myself.”
“What, you’re going to sell them?”
My hand strays to the golden letter opener on the desk. I pick it up and press it into my opposite forefinger, idly twisting it, glaring at him as the sharp edge pricks my skin, and a bloom of red rises and drips.
“Never ask me if I’m going to deal drugs again,” I warn him. “Never fucking say that. I’m going to get rid of them. I can’t believe you did this, Maury. I really did think better of you.”
I drop the letter opener and pick up a pad of paper and a pen. Both are branded with the word Mystique in calligraphy.
I toss the pad at him. Maury fumbles, drops it, then leans down, and picks it up with a loud huffing noise.
I throw him the pen and this time he manages to catch it.
“All the locations of the shipments,” I tell him. “The addresses. Where in the houses they’re hidden. Now. Before I lose my patience.”
“Okay, okay,” Maury says, clicking the pen, sweat sliding in buckets down his forehead. “And Kristian, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for it to come to this.”
I turn my back to him, my gaze coming to rest on a photograph of me and him as boys, standing in front of a glistening lake together. We’re holding up a giant fish. Dad’s in the background, grinning over at us, and I remember how Mom smiled as she took the photo.
I know that Maury is talking about more than the drugs.
I didn’t mean for it to come to this.
He’s talking about the path his life has taken.
I understand that to some extent, but at the same time, men in our position have to be vigilant, disciplined. I haven’t become one of the most powerful men on the East Coast – in both legitimate and mob businesses – by indulging in drugs and booze and women every chance I get.
I hold the fucking line.
I don’t let distractions into my life.
“Boss,” Maury says.
He hasn’t called me boss while we’re alone in a long time, but he must be able to sense how quickly and inevitably my rage is growing.
I turn to find him placing the pad on the desk. His handwriting is a scrawl, but I can read it. There are three houses, with the hiding places written next to them in parentheses.
“This better be all of it,” I snarl, turning the pad over.
“It is. I swear. And … boss.”
“What?” I snap.
“Who talked?” he says. “Who ratted on me? Whatever else I did, the last time I checked, ratting is the lowest of the low.”
I shake my head slowly, disgusted.
“Nobody ratted, you clumsy bastard,” I growl. “You’re not as sneaky as you think you are. You’ve been acting strangely for weeks. I put a tail on you.”
I pick up the notepad and head for the door.
“Stay here,” I tell him. “If you try and run, I’m putting a bounty on your head. At two million, you’ll be dead before sundown. I’ll send some of the boys to pick you up.”
“I’ll stay here,” he whines. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah,” I sigh, pushing the door open. “You’ve already said that.”
CHAPTER THREE
Kimberly
“Please be quiet, okay?” I whisper.
I place the bag on the floor of the basement and unzip it. Tinkerbell sticks her head out, grinning, her tongue lolling.
She always loves an adventure.
She sees this as one big game.
I wish I could somehow explain to her that if she makes too much noise when the potential buyers are upstairs, she could cost me my job.
“Okay?” I go on, as she climbs from the bag and starts to sniff around the basement.
I’ll have to tell the buyers that they can’t see the basement today for some reason. I haven’t thought of an excuse yet. Maybe I can say that the flooring isn’t complete yet or something like that.
This is a new home, after all.
The driver laughed when he realized what I had in the bag on my lap. Vinnie was an older man, probably around sixty, with a bald head and a big round face.
For a second I thought he reminded me of Dad, but then I realized he reminded me of my make-believe idea of what Dad was like. I was too young when Dad died to remember anything about him.
“Please don’t tell anybody,” I murmured to Vinnie, running my hands over Tinkerbell’s fur as she popped her head from the bag.
“Don’t worry, miss,” he said cheerfully. “Your secret is safe with me.”
Now, Tinkerbell walks around the basement, shifting her leg and making as if to pee on the brand new washer-dryer. I quickly dart over to her and scoop her up before she can, and then cradle her to my chest one-handed as I use my other hand to collect her puppy pads from the bag. I spread more than a dozen of them around the basement, covering most of the floor. Hopefully, that will catch any accidents.
Once that’s done, I reach into the bag and take out a small Chihuahua-sized bone with chunky chicken pieces attached.
That gets her attention.
Her ears perk up and she trots over, sitting down with her mouth open, her tongue twitching hungrily.
She’s normally only allowed one of these every couple of days, but it’s the only way I can think to keep her quiet for a couple of hours. She likes to take her time with them, gnawing then slowly, sometimes just lying with her cheek resting against the bone.
I toss it across the room and she darts over to it, leaping on it, letting out a whine of contentment.
I wish we could leave her at the apartment, but we’re not really supposed to have pets and some of our neighbors have already complained about her barking. Whenever she’s left alone, she whines super-loud, too, so loud that the whole building can hear her.
I reach into the bag and take out her portable water bowl, shaking it open, and then grab a bottle of water to fill it up.
“I won’t be long, girl,” I tell her. “Please don’t do anything silly. I’ll check on you as often as I can.”
She glances at me briefly, but mainly she’s focused on the bone, her jaw moving methodically.
“Okay,” I sigh, turning back toward the stairs. “Showtime.”
I stand at the edge of the room with a clipboard in my hand and a big realtor smile on my face. Alexis is always telling us that smiling and looking sexy is half the battle for female realtors.
I make do with smiling.
With my curvy body and thick blonde hair – horse-thick, the cheerleaders in high school used to say – I’m not exactly the sexy type.
Jackie hates when I talk like that. She says I need to get more self-esteem. But the fact is every time I look in the mirror, I feel a pang of harsh self-judgment that I can’t seem to shake.
People mill around the house, their voices rising into the air. Couples discuss how this room would make a good art studio, how the TV could go here, and on and on, and it’s my job to make it seem like there’s a bidding war going on behind the scenes. I need to drum up interest.
But mostly I’m just waiting for Tinkerbell to grow bored of her bone and start yapping. That’s probably why every noise is making me wince.
“Excuse me,” a lady’s voice says, calling me out of my thoughts.
I look up to find an elegant older lady, her gray hair styled down to her shoulders. She wears pearls on her ears and her neck.
“Yes?”
I say, making my fake smile even wider.
“We were just wondering if all the bathroom floors are heated?”
I glance at the clipboard where Alexis has hastily scrawled some notes concerning the properties. I curse silently when I realize I don’t know the answer for sure.
The lady keeps staring at me, her own fake smile twitching, a flicker of impatience flitting across her vision.
“I think so,” I say, my voice trembling a little.
I really need to get it together.
Screw Alexis for her incomplete notes.
The lady nods briefly.
“Ah, okay,” she says. “Then I think we’ll just keep looking around.”
I watch as she walks across the room to her husband. He’s at the buffet table, staring down intently, rubbing his hands together as his wife approaches. They exchange some words and then head toward the door.
They pause when a small, angry dog starts yapping from downstairs.
I cringe and start across the room, toward the basement.
All eyes turn to me and I just know that this is going to get back to Alexis. The lady with the pearls, especially, seems like the type to report my behavior and my lack of preparation for the company.
And even if my lack of preparation isn’t exactly my fault, I know that Alexis won’t take any of the blame.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter, squeezing between a bald man and his husband who is very inconveniently loitering in front of the basement door.
“Is that a Chihuahua?” the bald man says. “That sounds just like ours, doesn’t it, honey?”
“Just as rat-like,” the man says with a wry smile.
I smile and laugh, but it comes out phony-sounding.
Tinkerbell’s barking has become more frantic. My chest tightens at the thought that she’s somehow trapped herself down there, or hurt herself in some way. I’d never be able to forgive myself if something happened to her while she was in my care.
Worse, I know that it would tear Jackie to pieces.
I barge into the basement and hurry down the stairs, almost tripping in the skirt Alexis insists all the female realtors should wear.
Tinkerbell has her back to me, barking furiously at the wall. At first, I have no idea what she’s doing.
But then I see it.
She’s scratched away a piece of the wall that looks like it’s made out of painted cardboard, a pretend section that makes it seem like it’s a part of the solid brick. Now the cardboard lies in tatters and there’s a small jagged hole.
I move closer, wondering if my eyes are deceiving me if somebody spiked my non-alcoholic champagne upstairs.
In the fake section of the wall bundles and bundles of white powder are stacked atop each other, clearly visible through the translucent plastic they’re stored in. Duct-tape runs from one end to the other, but it doesn’t cover the whole area.
I can see the drugs.
That must be what they are.
Cocaine stored in the walls.
What the hell is going on here?
“It’s okay, girl,” I whisper, moving over to her quickly.
I lean down and take her into my arms, cradling her to my chest. I squeeze onto her tightly and stroke my hand over her ears and the back of her head, up and down her body. She’s trembling, all amped-up from her discovery. She’s very acutely affected by anything new. She once went berserk when Jackie changed her shampoo.
I stare at the bundles. I should count myself lucky that Tinkerbell stopped with the cardboard partition and didn’t start burrowing into the packages themselves.
She’s still trembling in my arms, energy racing through her, as though she knows how evil the consequences would be if she found her way into one of those packages.
Suddenly, I feel sick, wrong, like the worst sister in the world.
I put Jackie’s dog at risk.
“Hello?” somebody calls from the top of the stairs.
I recognize him. It’s the bald man, the one who asked me if Tinkerbell is a Chihuahua.
“Is everything okay down there?”
“Yes,” I call, forcing my voice to remain steady. “In fact, it’s better than okay. It’s time for you all to meet Clear Sky Realty’s new mascot.”
I lower my voice and whisper in Tinkerbell’s ear.
“Come on, girl. I’m taking you upstairs. I don’t care what Alexis says. I shouldn’t have left you down here in the first place.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Kristian
I sit across the street, gripping the steering wheel hard, trying to keep my breathing at something like a regular level.
The confrontation with Maury has got my blood boiling.
It’s just another reminder that I can’t rely on anyone.
Mother and Father are the only people who’ve never let me down, and one of them is dead.
My gaze moves over the house. I’m gratified to see that the workmanship is topnotch. It’s a large five-bedroom with a long pristine garden surrounded by a white picket fence. It’s built of colorful yellow bricks, giving it a unique, almost old-fashioned sort of look. With the city framed behind it across the river, it looks like somebody has plucked a suburban house and dropped it right here on the outskirts of the city.
I’ve already spoken with Vinnie, a good man who can be trusted. He told me that the contact from the realtor company we’re using is different today. Usually, it’s a woman named Tina.
But today it’s changed.
A woman named Kimberly who’s never been to these new builds before.
Something about that makes me suspicious.
It could be the paranoia that comes along with a life like this, always having to be aware that a meeting could turn into a gunfight at the drop of a hat. My men have informed me that Maury is being watched in his home now, with no access to drugs or drink as I ordered.
Maybe it will straighten him out.
If not, he’ll have to leave the organization, and count himself damn lucky that his fate isn’t worse.
I watch as people walk in and out of the house, tension rising up inside of me.
A new realtor, an open house.
It’s too much activity when I know what’s inside, hidden behind a false partition in the basement.
Fucking Maury and his goddamn mistakes.
He could’ve hired this Kimberly to retrieve the drugs for him in the event that anything went bad. Maybe it was all part of his plan, a backup so that he could keep them. Maybe Maury has more allies than the street kids I’ve already questioned.
Dissent in my ranks—it makes me clench the steering wheel even harder, my knuckles turning the color of bone.
I live an uncomplicated life, one of working out, business, and focus. I don’t indulge in easy women like the weaker men around me do.
But that has more to do with the fact that I’ve never found one I wanted to give my attention to.
I’ve never felt it, whatever the fuck that means.
All I know is that when I see the woman I want, I’ll know it. It’ll be like a punch to the chest. I won’t have to think about it for even a second.
As the years have worn on, I’ve become more and more certain that that’s never going to happen.
Mother implores me to be less fussy.
I’m her only son and she wants some grandchildren one of these days. It’s not like I don’t want kids, heirs, but I’m not just going to take a woman for the sake of it.
I hate the way they throw themselves at my feet, the mob women, the hangers-on.
I know I could have any number of women.
Princesses from other crime families, socialites, women society tells me I’m supposed to be attracted to.
But over the years, I’ve come to be sickened by the looks these women give me, hazy and subservient over glasses of champagne. Several of them have flat-out told me that they’d do whatever I wanted them to. All I have to do is give the command.
At a party,
they’d let me take them to some quiet room and fuck them, just screw them, and why? What for?
When I find a woman – if I find a woman – I want it to have some kind of meaning beyond the mere mashing of our bodies together.
I let out a savage laugh, forcing myself to loosen my grip on the steering wheel.
I know that I’m not going to find this mystical person, so I might as well stop thinking about it. All I can do is focus on making the Cameno Family the best it can be.
And right now that means waiting for this open house to end so I can go in there and correct Maury’s mistake.
I watch, using the patience I’ve gained from years of working this job. People begin to leave half an hour later, couples walking hand and hand, heading out toward their cars. I stare hard at the house, wondering if there’s still anybody else inside.
Word of this Kimberly still has my alarm bells blaring within my mind.
In my world, being paranoid isn’t a negative trait.
It’s about survival.
It’s better to assume that the situation could turn deadly, rather than have it turn deadly when you had no idea it was going to happen.
Finally, the front door opens again and a woman emerges onto the front lawn.
I lean forward and stare at her hard.
She’s wearing a white shirt, black pencil skirt, heels, and black tights. Her blonde hair falls in wavy down to her shoulders, a little messy as if she’s ripped it free from a ponytail and let it cascade down.
My body goes tight, my heart hammering.
Her shape is curvy is the best way, her hips wide and made for grabbing, the sort of hips that will be perfect for when she gives me children, heirs.
I try to laugh off the thought.
I’ve just laid eyes on this woman and now I’m thinking about putting a child inside of her.
But I can’t laugh it away.
My manhood is a stiff rod in my pants, even from this distance where I can only make out the features of her face vaguely. She wears a wry smile, muttering something under her breath as she turns to lock the door.
Fuck, when she turns, she leans forward, and her tight-fitting skirt hugs onto the juicy bulbs of her ass. My balls start to ache and throb with the effort of holding back my desire.
Claiming His Forever: An Instalove Possessive Age Gap Romance Page 2