Total pages in book: 59
Estimated words: 55263 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 276(@200wpm)___ 221(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55263 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 276(@200wpm)___ 221(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
I spotted the body before we stopped.
“We wanted you to look at him first to see if you recognized him,” Damien explained, mistaking my silence for anger.
I stepped from the cart and went to the body. He was on his back on a blue tarp with his arms at his sides. The map of his death was clear, with one bullet hole in his forehead and two grouped close together on his chest. His eyes were open and full of death. That stillness never failed to affect me—the complete absence of life, the stillness of death. The tension of life, long gone.
I’d seen death more times than I could count over the years, had been the instrument of death more times than I cared to even fucking count, and the stillness never left me.
“Who is he?” I finally remembered who I was and what was happening, and the words came out quieter than I meant. I kept my gaze on the dead man’s face, something vaguely familiar about him that I couldn’t pinpoint. Yet.
“Unknown,” Damien answered. “No prints in any domestic database. Possibly foreign, but based on his movement and gear, I’d guess former special ops.”
I stared down at the man’s face, and recognition hit. “The lost hikers,” I grumbled. “He was one of them.”
Damien’s brows lifted. “You sure?”
“Yes.” My jaw tightened. “They weren’t lost.” They were doing recon, and Ren’s instincts had been right. Again. “Find anything you can on him,” I demanded. “And look for a female associate because he wasn’t alone the last time he was spotted on the property.”
“There was a woman?”
I nodded. “They posed as a lost couple of hikers. I’ll get you a photo,” I promised, already pulling out my phone to text Ren about it.
Seconds later, the screen lit with the image of the couple and I showed it to Damien. “We’ll run it through all the databases we have access to.”
“Good.” I glanced at the body once more before I turned my back to it. Somebody had just crossed a line that there would be no walking away from—not for them, anyway.
On the way back to the house, I called Luca and filled him in. He swore under his breath and promised to move resources. The rest of the day unraveled in pieces.
I spent the rest of the day in my office, bouncing between conference calls with government bureaucracies who needed information about the bombing, with executives and fixers, with my lawyers at my side every step of the way. It was a shitshow of a day, but it was productive.
The phone rang again and I sighed, knowing that my hellish day wasn’t over yet.
“Boss,” my front-of-house manager at the Beverly Hills DeRossi’s Place said. “Some Russian guy came by with two cases of vodka. Said you approved it.”
“I didn’t approve shit,” I grumbled, my fingers gripping the phone until my knuckles ached.
“I figured,” he said with a dark chuckle. “Told him as much and got a black eye for my efforts.”
“They want a piece of the business,” I replied. “No matter how fucking good the deal sounds, I didn’t approve it.”
“Got it,” he answered easily. “Just wanted you to know.”
I nodded. “You did good, Steve. Thank you.”
“Of course.”
After that call, I sat at my desk and stewed in my anger until I thought I might fucking explode with it. This shit was happening in my absence, when I wasn’t there to protect my people. If I’d been there, the Russians never would’ve attempted this bullshit, but I wasn’t, and they were taking advantage. Fully and completely.
This distance made everything harder. I was forced to delegate when I am a hands-on leader.
Still, another fire was put out, and that shit should’ve felt good. Instead, I held my breath and waited for the next one.
When it didn’t come, I held my phone in my hand and stared at Ren’s name on the screen. I wanted to call her, badly. So fucking badly I could already hear her melodic voice, the smile she couldn’t help when she said my name.
Luckily, the phone lit up with my Aunt Valentina’s name before I could let myself be distracted. I hesitated on the first ring. I inhaled a deep breath and let it out slowly on the second. On the third ring, I answered.
“I heard about the fish plant,” she said without preamble, her deep smoker’s voice clear and loud in my ear.
I braced myself and waited.
“I’m not calling to tell you how to do your job, Lorenzo,” she continued. “You have enough on your plate. I just wanted to remind you that Grapevine Enterprises owns the boxing gym, the pop-up restaurant space, and the art lofts surrounding that facility.” She paused for effect and then spoke again. “They all have cameras.”
“Cameras,” I repeated the word as if it was new to me.