“Lucia’s very talented.” He smiles and looks to Rinaldo. “Her father must be very proud of her.”
There is no doubt in my mind—slight relation or not, Beni’s hitting that.
Rinaldo just smiles back, and it’s clear he has no idea. Then again, he might be all for it. He’s wanted Lucia to settle down and gift him some grandchildren for a while now, but hasn’t managed to come up with a suitable mate. Maybe he even brought Beni over from Italy for that very purpose.
All I know for sure is that I’m not on the approved list. Rinaldo’s made that clear.
“Rinaldo, here’s the paperwork we discussed before.” Becca bumps me with her hip, and she moves between me and my boss. She makes no excuses, and the slight look she gives me out of the corner of her eye tells me the act was intentional.
“Thank you, my dear,” Rinaldo says. He takes a binder from her hands and places it on his desk. “Have you met Evan?”
“Not officially,” Becca says as she turns to me with a large, pink smile. “I remember him from a couple of years back when he visited the club.”
I’m not sure which club she means—Rinaldo owns several and I’ve been to all of them at some time or another. New people usually put me on edge, but knowing she’s been around the business for a while relaxes me slightly.
I shake her hand, and she gives me a playful smile and wink. I resist rolling my eyes.
With the introductions complete, everyone begins to file out of Rinaldo’s office to head out to accomplish their tasks for the day. Returning to the couch, I grab my duffel bag and toss it over my shoulder.
“Wanna get a beer?” Jonathan asks.
“Sure,” I say. “I took the bus here, though.”
“You and your damn public transportation.” Jonathan shakes his head.
“The Volvo died on me,” I reply with a shrug. “I need to get a new battery.”
“No worries. I’ll drive.”
“That’ll work.”
We start to head out the door, but Rinaldo calls me back.
“Evan, stick around a minute.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll wait for ya outside,” Jonathan says.
Once everyone has left the room, Rinaldo steps over to the mini bar near his desk and takes out a large bottle of scotch. I don’t ask what he wants to talk about; I just wait until he’s ready to speak.
“How are you, son?”
A significant amount of the tension I’ve been feeling all morning vanishes with his use of the term “son.” I’ve gone through enough therapy to understand why it impacts me so much—orphaned, raised in a convent with limited male role models, and never having any real roots to anyone or any place. The desire to belong to someone is ingrained in me. I’d felt some sense of family in my early years as a Marine, but Eddie-boy, the communications guy, is the only one from my unit left alive.
“I’m fine, sir.”
He tips the bottle to the glass and then pauses, raising an eyebrow and challenging my words.
“Really,” I say, “I’m okay.”
Rinaldo pours a glass half full of amber liquid and offers it to me. I decline, and he takes a sip himself.
“You all settled into your new place?” he asks.
“For the most part. I don’t have a lot of stuff, and the place was already furnished, so there wasn’t a lot to do.”
“Are you ready to be a full-time member of this organization again?”
“I am, sir.”
He stares at me for a long time before speaking again.
“I only let you leave because I knew it wouldn’t last.”
My chest tightens. I look away for a moment, swallow hard, and take a deep breath.
“She’s a good girl,” Rinaldo says. “She wasn’t right for this life, and you can never separate yourself from it.”
I don’t have to ask to know he’s talking about Lia. I mistakenly thought taking her out of Chicago would keep us both away from Rinaldo and his business. I couldn’t stay away though. I don’t know if it’s loyalty to Rinaldo, devotion to the business, or just my need to find someone in the crosshairs of my rifle, but I couldn’t remove myself from this life.
Understanding that he’s right doesn’t make it any easier to take his words. He knew. He knew all along that being with her would fail.
“You could have said something before I left.” My words sound harsher than I intend.
“Would you have listened?”
I close my eyes for a moment and clench my teeth. I fight against the urge to pull out my gun, but I’d never actually harm Rinaldo. I don’t want to shoot him; I just want to shoot someone.
I feel his hand on the side of my face before I see him move toward me. I look at his eyes and his soft, concerned expression.
“Sometimes you have to see for yourself,” he says quietly. “I knew I couldn’t convince you then. You had to experience it. I didn’t want to see you hurt, son.”
“You knew she’d leave me?”
“It was a matter of time,” he says with a nod. He drops his hand from my cheek, and the cool air from the room gives me a chill where our skin had met. “She’s not going to come back.”
“I know that. I don’t want her to.”
Rinaldo takes another swig from his scotch. I’m tempted to rethink the offer of a drink. Alcohol consumption is not a normal pastime for me, and I’m definitely not a “drink to forget” kind of guy, but a drink does actually sound good right now. Maybe more than one.
“Are you ready for business?” Rinaldo asks.
Focus on business is a better remedy.
“It has all my attention.” My confirmation is enough for him.
“I want you completely involved in all the channels. Guns will be back in your hands, obviously, but also the caviar and meth. There are the legitimate businesses as well—the clubs, uniform manufacturing, and car lots.”
“We’re dealing meth now?”
“Dealing, no.” Rinaldo takes a folder from the top of his desk and hands it to me. “Transportation from the south and distribution to Chicago dealers, yes. You should recognize the local names.”
I look at the top sheet of paper from the stack. I know most of the names. Everything else is a bit of a surprise to me. I’ve only been on the periphery of the legal businesses under Rinaldo’s umbrella in the past. I don’t even deal much with the laundering of my own money. I just keep it stashed away in cash.
I know plenty about the guns, caviar, and clubs.
“Everyone knows you,” Rinaldo says. “They know who you are, and they know what kind of influence you have. You are the best I have to keep everyone in line.”
“Are people skimming?” I ask.
“It’s always an issue with the new managers,” Rinaldo replies with a shrug. “More with the clubs than anything else.”
“I can take care of that.”
“I am quite sure you can.”
He’s right. I’m already forming plans in my head, based on the club managers. None of them will be too difficult to handle. If anyone is, they’ll be replaced.
“The thing is,” Rinaldo says, continuing, “I’m not sure it’s the clubs this time.”
“I’ll check it out. Dig into some numbers. I’ll figure out where money is going.”
Rinaldo and I go over a few more details about caviar importation. They’re all tasks I can handle, and I’m not concerned. I prefer sticking to the killing, but I am always pulled into the other ventures. Rinaldo trusts me to get the job done, whatever it may be. We go over some numbers before he switches the subject.
“I’m thinking of sending Nick away,” Rinaldo says. “Since Milena came into his life, he has less interest in the business than he had before, which was little to none.”
“At some point, he’ll become a liability,” I say.
“I would rather send him away than have him end up on the wrong side of your rifle.”
I raise an eyebrow and gi
ve him a little nod. If it needed to be done, I wouldn’t hesitate, but killing Rinaldo’s offspring isn’t something I’d look forward to doing.
“I could send him out West,” he says as he taps a finger against his lips. “We need eyes in Seattle, and considering what a mess they are right now, I don’t think he’d be in much danger.”
“It’s too soon. It’s unlikely, but if Landon Stark or someone else gets a notion that we had something to do with Franks’ death, Nick would be an immediate target.”
Landon Stark, former trainer of death-match participants for the Seattle mob had gone missing shortly after I killed Joseph Franks and sent the Seattle folks scrambling. They haven’t recovered, but it’s only a matter of time. Landon is also the mentor and father figure to my half brother, Sebastian Stark. Sebastian has no idea of our relationship and had nearly succeeded in killing me during a tournament game in the Arctic. I’d traded my life in exchange for killing Franks and removing the hold he had over Sebastian. In return, Sebastian had agreed to let everyone believe I was dead.
That didn’t last long.
“Landon is still missing,” Rinaldo says.
“He was a SEAL,” I reply. “He just might stay missing forever.”
“Do you have any suggestions?”
“If you put Jonathan to task, he might find him eventually. It would take effort though. If Landon is determined to remain missing, he’s no longer a threat. It might not be worth the expense in time.”
Rinaldo nods in agreement as he drums his fingers on the top of his desk. It’s not a customary habit for him, and I wonder what has him on edge.
“Sir?” I cock my head a bit to the side, but he just stares at me. “Is there a problem?”
For a long moment, he says nothing. Then he walks over to his desk and unlocks the top drawer before speaking.
“I want to show you something.”
Rinaldo pulls out a ledger in a green binder and opens it up near the back. A spreadsheet with a lot of numbers, calculations, and graphs takes up most of the page.
“See anything?” he asks.
Narrowing my eyes, I look closely at some of the numbers highlighted in yellow. There are a few lines that don’t match up. The amounts are small, but there are a lot of them.
“Someone’s taking quite a chunk.”
“Looks that way.”
“How did you find it?”
“Becca pointed it out,” Rinaldo says. “When she took over the books, she went back a few months and audited the accounts. The skimming seems to have stopped about the time she came on board.”
“Who was the former bookkeeper?”
“Beni did it part-time when he first arrived,” he tells me. “I think it started before then, though. Before he took over, it was Justin Taylor. Remember him?”
Rinaldo stares at me pointedly.
Yes, I remember Justin Taylor. He hadn’t been just a bookkeeper; he had also been Rinaldo’s tournament fighter. I had been doing a job for Rinaldo last year while Lia had been visiting one of her professors about a project. Justin seemed to think I was getting paid too much for what I did and stuck his nose into my business. He’d gotten in my face about dumping bodies where they could be found, and I’d added his corpse to the pile.
“I remember.” I try to sound apologetic, but I don’t think I pull it off. If Justin had fought in the last tournament instead of me, I might not have lost Lia. I also wouldn’t have found out I have a half brother. I don’t consider the information an even trade for her leaving me though.
“He was good with the numbers, despite getting hit in the head a lot. Justin even had a bachelor’s degree in accounting. Becca doesn’t have any kind of degree.”
I turn a couple of pages, making note of the dates where discrepancies were apparent.
“Did you track where the money was going?” I ask.
“Not a trace.”
“Has Jonathan looked?”
“Not yet.” Rinaldo pours himself more scotch and swirls it around in the glass. “He’s been working on some new security for the warehouse. He wants to be able to control all of it from his damn phone.”
I chuckle. Jonathan has an app for everything.
“Do you want me to check it out?”
“Not yet.” Rinaldo finishes the drink in a big gulp and sits down. “Becca is running the numbers again to be sure. You just be aware and check out the club managers. Make sure we didn’t miss something there.”
I nod and rub at my temple. I can’t shake the damn headache I’ve had for the past two days. No amount of caffeine or ibuprofen seems to help, and I’m finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate.
“What has you on edge?” Rinaldo asks as he leans forward on the desk.
“Not sleeping.” It’s nothing new, and he knows it.
“I need you at your best, Evan.”
“I know. I am.”
“Not if you aren’t sleeping.” Rinaldo narrows his eyes. “How are you spending your evenings?”
I give him a half-smile and shrug. He knows my preference for hookers.
“I hope you aren’t giving the competition your money.”
“No, sir.” I look at his expression carefully, but I can’t determine if he seriously thinks I’d pick up one of the Russians’ girls or not. “I stick to the far south.”
“Have you picked out a favorite?” This time Rinaldo’s expression gives away his concern. The last steady whore I acquired ended up with her brains all over his basement storage room.
“No, sir. I haven’t done any repeats.”
“Going to keep it that way?”
I consider his question for a minute. I’m not going to lie to him.
“I’d rather not. I don’t want to have to go looking for it, and having a steady one on the side makes it easier. I just haven’t found one I like. I’ll be careful this time, though.”
“I hope that’s a lesson you’ve learned.” His voice is stern and fatherly.
“It is, sir.”
“Good. Back to business talk.” Rinaldo leans back on his desk and looks up at me. “I need someone to take over the gun sales.”
“Who do you have in mind?”
“I was hoping you would have a suggestion.”
“Beni makes sense, but I don’t know if he’s ready for it. He hasn’t been around long enough to do it on his own, but he could shadow you for a while until he gets the hang of it. Jonathan is capable, but I wouldn’t use him long-term. He’d get bored, and that could end up turning into sloppy. You need someone who can focus on the task.”
“What about Becca?”
“I don’t know her.” I rub at the chain around my neck, wondering when I had put my dog tags on. I don’t remember doing it. “Where did she come from?”
“She was running one of the clubs up north,” Rinaldo says. “She’s good at books and numbers.”
“I don’t have an opinion.”
“Form one.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What about Lucia?”
I’m treading on dangerous ground, and I know it. I also know Rinaldo expects me to speak my mind when we’re alone, and I’m not going to paint a picture of puppies and rainbows when the subject matter is a pile of dog shit.
“She can’t handle the pressure,” I say simply. “She’s great at the diplomacy, but she’ll never be able to handle the rough decisions.”
Rinaldo closes his eyes for a moment, sighs, and looks back at me.
“I’m afraid you are right.” He finishes his drink in one gulp before setting the glass on the desk with a thump. “I thought she was getting better at all of this, but that fiasco with the Russians and the division of caviar sales were enough to make me consider a vasectomy.”
I can’t help the half-smile that appears but keep myself from laughing out loud. It’s a little late for that sort of action anyway, and Rinaldo’s a devout Catholic. Well, in name anyway.
“What if she started doing m
ore of the bookkeeping?” I suggest. “You know you can trust her. That will open Becca up for other opportunities, assuming she’s able, and you really think she’s with us long-term.”
“Not yet,” he says with a shake of his head. “I want you to get a better feel for her first.”
I glance at him sideways, wondering just what he means by that.
Rinaldo laughs.
“Feel free to use what you have at your disposal,” he says. He gestures up and down my body. “They can’t seem to resist you. I think you are better off sticking with your hookers though.”
I chuckle a little, but I’m also relieved. I didn’t want to have to pursue some chick to get information on her. Thinking of Becca in such ways reminds me of the other new woman in Rinaldo’s employ.
“Can I ask you something, sir?”
“Of course.”
“Felisa has been around for a few months, correct?”
“Yes, she has.” His voice is guarded.
“Are you going to keep her around?”
“I plan on it.” He studies me for a moment. “You don’t approve?”
“Does Lele know about her?”
“Of course she does,” Rinaldo says with a snort. “She brought her here from New York.”
“Does she know about her?” I ask again with more emphasis.
Rinaldo leans back against his desk and looks at me for a long moment.
“It’s not what you think,” he says.
I’m completely unconvinced. He looks away from me, no longer meeting my eyes, and I’m certain there’s more to it.
“What is it, then?”
“It’s none of your damn business. That’s what it is!” Rinaldo suddenly yells. “Now you have your assignments. I suggest you go and get prepared for them!”
I blink a couple of times, somewhat in shock. Rinaldo has given me more than my fair share of lectures, but raising his voice to me is new. He has his hands balled into fists as if he would actually hit me. For a moment, I wonder if he will try.
He doesn’t. Instead, he turns away from me, sits at his desk, and rubs his fingers into his temples. He refrains from addressing me again or even looking up.
“Yes, sir,” I say quietly before turning around and heading out of the room.