Jeff Abbott - Cut and Run

But Paul was why monarchy fell out of favor. You could have a king with an idiot son and piss away the empire in no time flat and leave the loyal subjects with no jobs. And one did not walk away from the Bellini family with all the information Eve had. You didn’t list on your resume the millions of dollars you laundered or how many hits you knew the Bellinis had ordered. Frank was already relegated to being the club’s frontman; God knew what job Paul would give her, probably stuck in a back office counting bar receipts.

If he doesn’t kill you.

She had been afraid of Tommy, of course. The fear kept you alive, the caution of every step you took. He could be kind, generous even, but if you crossed him, you lost money, you lost a finger, you lost your life. He held himself to high standards of performance. Paul wanted respect he couldn’t yet command and seemed to have little regard for her or her abilities. Piss him off and she would sink like a stone in the waters of the Ship Channel, sporting concrete sandals and three bullets in her head, one for each decade of service.

The door opened and Bucks stepped inside. He shut the door behind him, gave her a bright, snappy smile.

‘Don’t you know to knock?’ she said.

‘This isn’t your office.’

‘No, it’s my boyfriend’s office. What do you want?’

‘Peace and quiet,’ he said. ‘This place is too loud. Not conducive to clear contemplation.’ Bucks sat down on the leather sofa like he was used to lounging in the office.

‘Shouldn’t you be guarding Paul?’

‘From what? Attack of the killer tits?’ Bucks said.

‘That tall redhead up there, Robin? I thought you were sweet on her.’

‘She’s sweet on me. There’s a difference. Plus how involved am I really gonna get with a stripper? I can’t take her home to mama.’

‘I was unaware you had such lofty morals.’

‘All this lust, it shows a lack of discipline and self-control.’ Bucks leaned back against the leather. ‘You handle Paul’s money. Makes you important right now. Seems to me I ought to be protecting you more than him.’

‘I’m feeling safe, thanks.’

‘Chad Channing says you can never feel safe because complacency blocks you from your goals.’

She didn’t know who Chad Channing was and didn’t care.

‘So you giving our friends any money?’ he asked.

She let a beat pass. ‘No. You are. Paul wants you to handle the exchange, honey.’

‘Naturally.’

This guy had Paul’s ear, so she decided to try. ‘This deal, Bucks, I have serious reservations about it. These guys are looking for a back door into Houston. They’ll crush Paul soon as they get their foot in the door.’

‘Paul and I can handle them,’ Bucks said. ‘Look at Kiko and Jose. They don’t have four neurons between them. Bet neither one of them even got beyond high school.’

‘Baby, getting a degree means you spent less time learning the actual business we’re in,’ Eve said.

‘This seems like every other business I studied at Wharton.’

‘You won’t find an MBA case study on the Bellinis.’

‘So what do you recommend?’

‘Find out a little more. Why they’ve approached us. Why aren’t they dealing this coke in Florida?’

‘Or take a shortcut,’ Bucks said. ‘Kill them and steal their coke. That’d be one way to sweeten the deal.’ He gave her a crooked, half-mad smile.

Eve stared at him.

‘You ever seen a frijole popped? They lose all command of their English. Blabbering all this Spanish bullshit, begging for their lives. Doesn’t occur to them I don’t speak Spanish, so it’s not helping their cause any.’ Bucks leaned forward, put his elbows on his legs.

‘Killing people on a whim is what got the Bellinis in trouble before.’

‘I might fire your ass on a whim.’ Like the power was his.

‘Honey,’ she said. ‘I’d watch how you talk to me. I’m higher up than you in this family, and I’m telling Paul what you said about killing them.’ She picked up the phone, dialed the extension for the private suite. Bucks yanked the phone away from her, shoved her back onto the floor. Then he was on top of her, his fingers working into her neck. Not closing around her throat but digging into the flesh.

‘I was joking about popping them. I’m not joking now,’ Bucks said. Pain exploded from her neck, coursed along her arms, her chest. ‘See what I got here? This is all the flesh around the carotid. Now. I start to squeeze, the lights go dim. I shut it off and that’s all you wrote. Or I nick it… just so… and we have a mess on Frank’s nice rug.’ He brought his lips close to her ear, the weight of him crushing the breath out of her. ‘You. Don’t. Fuck. With. Me. You understand?’

‘I… understand,’ she said, large black circles dotting her vision.

He got up, helped her to her feet, eased her into a chair. She watched as he went to the bar and poured a glass of water, brought it to her. ‘You’ll have a distinctive bruise tomorrow.’ Like he was proud. ‘Wear a nice scarf. You got one?’

She nodded, stunned. She took the water.

Bucks knelt down before her, put both his hands on her knees. The intimacy of it was worse than hitting her.

‘Now let’s be friends,’ he said.

She nodded, but seething, suddenly more mad than afraid. ‘I understand you and Paul,’ she said. ‘I understand the juice you got in your blood right now. This is exciting. Way more exciting than energy trading, right?’

Bucks gave a slow nod.

‘But these guys, they will kill you and Paul without missing a heartbeat. They won’t grab your neck and play around. They’ll shoot you dead and not think about it again for the rest of their lives.’

‘That’s why I should kill those guys and get their goods. Now.’

‘That would start a war we couldn’t win.’

‘You’ve got to start thinking big, Eve.’

She couldn’t help it. ‘You’ve got to start thinking, period.’

Bucks frowned at her. His hand moved to his back where she knew he wore his pistol under his jacket. ‘You’re not being a team player, Eve, and I can’t support this negativity. It ends now.’

The office door opened, Frank stumbling inside, the Miami wiseguys in tow.

‘Hey,’ Frank said. ‘They want to see that photo of me singing with Donna Summer.’

Bucks stood and smiled, easing his hand away from his holster, folding his arms across his chest. ‘Great. Then you boys ready for a ride back to your condo? Me and Eve are done talking for the night.’ He grinned at her. ‘This is gonna be our best deal ever, isn’t it, Eve?’

She nodded slowly, putting her hand on her throat and hating him.

A hundred and seventy miles south of Houston, Whit Mosley couldn’t sleep, and he walked from the guest house he lived in at the back of his father’s property, past the blue quiet of the pool, up to the main house. His father, Babe, sat at the kitchen table, finishing a chocolate milkshake, eating the sweet slurry with a spoon.

‘Hey,’ Babe said. ‘You want one?’

‘No,’ Whit said. ‘You won’t sleep if you eat that.’

‘Sleep is a thief of time.’

Whit sat down across from his father. ‘Irina asleep?’

‘Zonked.’ Irina was his father’s much younger wife, a year or two younger than Whit, wife number five, a Russian girl Babe had met through a marriage-oriented service and brought to Port Leo from Moscow. ‘She’s tired all the time. Tired of me being sick.’ He shrugged. ‘She won’t have that much longer to worry about it.’

‘Daddy.’

‘Whit, it’s okay.’ No self-pity colored Babe’s voice. ‘She’s too young for death, to be a widow.’ He licked chocolate from his spoon, ran a hand over the blondish gray stubble on his head. ‘She’ll go on. And she’ll always love me. But she ain’t gonna go back to Russia, and she don’t have her citizenship yet, so if she remarries kind of quick, don’t hold it against her.’ He clinked his spoon back into the glass.