Page 13 of Omega

He lifted a shoulder. “Depending on the weather, I’d say a month? Give or take a week either way.”

“I need some bridal magazines. Can you get some for me next time you go ashore?”

He nodded. “Sure thing.” A glance. “Roth would never say it this bluntly, so it’s up to me. This wedding will be extremely small and private. It’s not going to be a traditional wedding. It can’t be, not if we want to keep Vitaly off our scent.”

I didn’t mention that Rothhadsaid pretty much that exactly.

“So Roth wants to keep running,” I said.

Harris didn’t answer right away, inhaling instead, blowing out a stream of smoke, and then he did it again. When he spoke, he chose his words carefully. “Taking on a man like Vitaly Karahalios is no small undertaking, Kyrie. He’s out for blood, and he plays a long game. If it were just me, I’d go after him. If it were just Roth, I’d go after him. But it’s not. Not anymore. Vitaly has made it clear he’s willing to spill innocent blood, and that’s not a risk either of us are willing to take. Your brother, your mother, Layla, Roth’s parents, even Robert. Vitaly is aware of them all and will target them if we force his hand. He’s completely capable of slaughtering all of them if we go after him and fail to take him out the first time. It’s a complex situation, Kyrie, so I wouldn’t necessarily call it running. I would call it prudence. I would call it avoiding collateral damage.”

I nodded. “I guess I see your point. It just…it doesn’t sit well with me.”

“Me neither. But let Roth and me worry about that, okay? Keeping you—all of you—safe…that’s my job. So you just focus on planning this wedding.”

“Thanks, Harris.”

He nodded, extinguished his cigarette on the side of his now-empty beer bottle, then tossed the butt inside. “Of course, Kyrie.”

He started to walk away, but I stopped him as a thought occurred to me. “Harris?”

“Yeah?”

“Layla…she’s getting a little bit of cabin fever. Plus, all this is getting to her. The sudden change, life on a ship without work to do…it’s bugging her. So just…keep an eye on her, please? I don’t want her to do anything rash.”

“She is prone to making rash decisions, isn’t she?”

“Under the right circumstances, yes. When she decides she’s had enough, she’s capable of just about anything.”

Harris nodded. “I’ll have both eyes on her, all the time. Nothing will happen to Layla, you have my word.”

I knew Harris’s word was good, but I still had a strange, unsettling, niggling feeling in the pit of my stomach.

3

FAREWELL, MANHATTAN

I sat in the back of the car, a black Mercedes-Maybach Pullman limousine. It was luxurious beyond compare, soft and supple quilted tan leather, soothing classical music piped in crystal-clear surround sound via invisible speakers. There were a thousand other details that made the car worth more than half a million dollars. I sat in the rear passenger seat, staring out the window gazing up, up, up. Tinted, reflective glass rocketed skyward to a dizzying height, and I saw the face of a Manhattan highrise that had been the scene of a life-changing series of events for me. Up there, on the very topmost three floors was Roth’s former home.Myformer home, really. In what seemed like a lifetime ago I’d stood behind a pair of rich mahogany French doors, my heart hammering, waiting to meet the man who essentially owned me.

I’d been blindfolded. My heart had hammered like a drum. Fear had pumped through my veins in place of blood. Yet through it all, there had been an element of excitement. Seduction, even, that began from the first moment I’d heard his voice, sensed his presence, smelled the spicy undertone of his cologne, felt the brush of his fingers on my shoulder. He’d owned me, financially, but from that first moment, he’d also owned my body, my soul, my heart.

When we first made love, he’d taken possession of my whole being.

I could never go back, now. I could never be a normal girl, dating normal guys. Even if I wanted to—which I didn’t—the experience of Valentine Roth had ruined me for all other men.

And it had all started a few hundred vertical feet away from where I sat. The place where Roth was right now personally attending the sale of his building. His home, the core of his company. I wondered if he would walk the halls once more, visit the shower where we’d done…such delicious things to each other. The bedroom, where he’d finally allowed me, of all people, to see the real him, to know him, taste him, feel him.

I thought about the library up there, where Gina Karahalios had shot me in the knee and then kidnapped me. The hallway near the foyer, where I’d first encountered Roth…where I’d seen Eliza’s dead body. Eliza, Roth’s housekeeper, friend, and one of the few people other than Robert, Harris, and me that he truly trusted or cared for. Eliza, the namesake of our ship.

I inhaled sharply, then blinked. I ignored Layla’s curious glance at me and focused on breathing and pretending it was just another day. People passed by on the sidewalk just a few feet away, staring curiously, but the windows were mirrored, preventing anyone from seeing in.

Long, long minutes later—fifteen minutes, or maybe an hour, I’d lost track, lost in memory—Harris emerged from the rotating doors at the entrance, followed closely by Roth. God, Roth. All seventy-six-point-eight blond-haired, blue-eyed, gloriously gorgeous inches of him, clad in a trim black bespoke suit, crisp white button-down, no tie, top two buttons undone, striding confidently toward the limousine, unfastening the center button of his suit jacket as Harris opened the back door for him. I knew from his expression that my Valentine wasn’t in a good mood. He had on what I thought of as his “shit-kicking” face, brows drawn, lips pressed in a thin flat line, jaw muscles flexing, eyes glittering and shifting.

Harris took the driver’s seat, buckled his seat belt and checked his mirrors. “All set, sir?” He glanced in the rear-view mirror through the lowered partition between the front and rear seats.

Layla, sitting in a rear-facing jump seat, glanced from me to Roth and back, and then slid toward the passenger door. “Hang on, Harris, I’m coming up front.”

She exited and took the front seat beside Harris, who shot another glance back at Roth. A nod from Roth, and Harris pulled the long, powerful vehicle out into the stream of traffic, and then closed the partition.