Page 6 of Malicious Marriage
The sight of her sitting in that chair looking an absolute vision in a sleek black dress that clung to all of her voluptuous curves in the most tantalizing way is burned into my mind. Her warm face with eyes sparkling with tears and the fullest, reddest lips I’ve ever seen in my entire life flash in my mind every single time I blink.
But it’s not just her unbelievable beauty that haunts me. It’s the way she spoke to me. After her initial shock at seeing me, she spoke to me like I was a real person—an individual. She didn’t immediately try to appease me or blow smoke up my ass. She didn’t ask about business or money or even the party, to anextent. She expressed a very human feeling of being alone, and it’s a feeling I painfully resonate with.
Even now as I sit at the head of the conference table listening to old men snap back and forth about the benefits of this new weapons deal with the Russians, and the issues we’ll run into with border control and the cops, all I want to do is walk back into my office and find Clover sitting there.
Don, my advisor, smacks his hand down on the table and immediately launches into an argument with one of my generals about the best course of action in tackling shipments from state to state. It’s a non-issue because I’ve already made up my mind. We’ll ship them in bourbon crates. Easy to hide a couple of hundred weapons in crates securely designed to cart alcohol across state lines. Our only concern should be the Russians themselves, considering how often they screw over their own families, never mind complete outsiders like us. But our money is good and hopefully, that will keep the Russians on our side for a while longer.
If they’re distracted by this weapons deal, they won’t notice us feeding our drug supply into the territory they stole while the Savoy family was under the rule of my father. Territory I plan to reclaim when the time is right.
Clover.
She pops into my mind once again, so I slip my hand into my pants pocket where her compact mirror rests. She left it behind in her rush to escape my party, and I tried to chase her down after I found it, but she had already vanished from the party. So now it’s mine. A mirror that’s gazed upon her face as often as I want to, one that’s witnessed everything from her smiles to her tears.
My fingers still ache from the urge to reach across to her and stroke away her tears. That would hardly have been appropriate.We’re strangers and she was sad, in need of an ear, not a man hanging over her like that.
And yet I constantly wonder, if I had done that, would she have stayed? Would I have been able to spend the last hours of that party deep in conversation with her and feeding my soul the best meal it’s had in years?
Would I have learned her last name? My people are looking into her, but it’s taking as long as this blasted meeting. Running my fingertips around the edge of the compact mirror, I trace the twisted metal pattern just as Don wins his argument and looks to me for approval. I smile as if I’ve been listening the entire time and thankfully, before he can say anything, the door opens and one of my guards slips inside.
“Boss.” He speaks low with his lips half an inch from my ear. “Found what you were looking for.” He quickly slips a piece of paper into my open palm and steps back.
The table falls silent and the weight of curious expectation lands on me in the form of eight pairs of eyes. They expect something on this paper to do with the family, the business, or even the Russian deal.
It’s none of those things. In black pen is a single name and an address.
Clover Byrne.
I know that name. Byrne is one of the Irish families, if I recall correctly. Not exactly in the same circles as mine, but they had a handle in the drug market decades ago before moving on to money laundering, rigged casinos, and more.
So, my Clover is a Byrne.
Interesting.
“Dean?” Don’s voice cuts through my thoughts, and I immediately scrunch up the paper, then stand.
“That’ll be all,” I say as I button my suit jacket.
Several disappointed sighs follow me out of the room, but I no longer have the desire or patience to listen to them all argue among themselves. I already have a plan in mind and it’s their job to follow it, not question me at every step. Half the men in that room just want to feel more important than they actually are.
I make it as far as the kitchen before Don catches up with me. “What was all that about?” His eyes dart down to my hands, likely seeking out the paper.
“Nothing.”
“It’s hardly nothing,” Don snaps. “We still have to discuss whether we’re letting the Russians handle the entire overseas shipment or not.”
“We’re not. I already locked the Kuznetsovs into a seventy-five, twenty-five favoring us. It’ll be our people on the ships. We take the bigger risk and we get the better stock.”
“And when were you going to tell me?” Don plants himself in the kitchen doorway, forcing me into a conversation I really don’t want to have.
With little choice, I head for the fridge and grab a bottle of water. “If you’d asked me this morning, I would have told you, but you kept insisting everything should wait until the meeting. Listening to everyone clash isn’t exactly how I want to spend my morning.”
“But it’s necessary to hear your people out.”
“Is it? The idiocy alone is enough to make me want to fire them all.”
“Dean.” Don’s tone turns sharp. When he talks like that, he really tries to emphasize that he’s four years my senior and thus somehow knows better.
“Don.”