Damage Control
“A surprise I arranged today.”
Extra curious now, I’m excited to see whatever this might be. We enter the bedroom and he flips on the light, and then guides me to the closet. “Ready?”
“Yes. I’m dying to see whatever it is.”
He opens the door and I walk inside while he flips on this light as well. I gape then, at the rows of women’s shoes and clothes lining the closet. “Oh my God. Oh my God.”
“You can take anything you want back and I’ll get you a credit card tomorrow.”
I whirl on him. “No. No, I don’t need a credit card and Shane, this is too much. I don’t need all of this.”
“But I want you to have it. I want to take care of you.” He snags my hips and walks me to him. “Please look at it and enjoy it. I need to go, but tell me how we did when I get home.”
“Shane—”
He kisses me and then says, “You’re beautiful,” and then he’s gone, leaving me standing in the closet. I stare after him, a tight ball of emotions beginning as a pebble in my chest, my body frozen in place as that pebble grows and expands. I squeeze my eyes shut and replay the past. I was fourteen and my stepfather had come home after being gone for several days without a call. He’d greeted my mother by going down on one knee and handing her a blue Tiffany box. Flash forward, to the moment he’d put the necklace on her neck, and then cupped her face and said, “You’re beautiful.”
My eyes snap open and I face the row of clothes, tags from expensive brands dangling from several sleeves. This would be the fantasy for many women, but it is not mine. Shane has secrets. Shane has money and power and I am enthralled. I am in love. Have I become my mother?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
SHANE
With Seth by my side, I pull on my suit jacket as we exit into the public portion of the Four Seasons garage, where no one expects us to depart. One of Nick’s men waits for us there, and we quickly exit the hotel facilities and hit the highway. Our destination is Nick’s private facility, which I readily agree to visit if it means a solution to get Martina out of my company and life, especially with Emily asking questions I can’t answer. We make a fast exit to downtown, but it turns out Nick’s facility is on the other side of town, so we get stuck in one of Denver’s many traffic jams; a twenty-minute drive transforms into forty-five. Considering I don’t know the driver from Adam, Seth and I ride in virtual silence, and my mind lingers on my need to kill Emily’s curiosity over my morning visitor. I’m not giving her a drug cartel to fear on top of the Geminis. I’m going to make this go away and she never has to know about it.
When finally we pull into the parking lot at our destination, the sight of an old warehouse does little to instill my confidence in Nick and his team. The private state-of-the-art garage we enter begins to sway me in the other direction. The building houses a half-dozen motorcycles and a classic Mustang, and a massive cobra painting on one wall.
Seth shrugs into his suit jacket that he’d abandoned somewhere along the way, and steps to my side. “Nick calls his team the Cobras.”
“Calculating and lethal,” I say. “Let’s hope that proves true in what he has to say tonight.”
“It does and it will,” Seth assures me, motioning me toward a door, where our driver swipes a badge and then keys in a code.
We follow him into an enclosed area where he presses his fingers against a panel and another door pops open, and my skepticism over Nick’s operations begins to fade, at least a little further. Nick is waiting for us when we finally enter the warehouse, wearing a navy-blue FBI T-shirt, a piece of his past that he keeps trying to drag into my future.
“This way to the conference room,” he says, his stocky build and hard stare speaking of skill and confidence, while his graying blond hair speaks of experience, which I remind myself is valuable.
Seth and I fall into step behind him, moving through a surprisingly high-tech facility. The main room we’re presently occupying is split into three parts: a boxing cage, a firing range, and a cluster of computer terminals.
“It’s an impressive facility,” Seth comments. “One of the selling points when I contracted Nick for Brandon Enterprises.”
“I’ll be impressed after I hear what you brought me here to hear,” I say dryly.
“We have options to present,” he assures me. “Good ones, in my opinion.”
I cut him a look. “You keep saying that and you usually don’t repeat yourself. It makes me wonder, who are you trying to convince? Me or you?”
“Just offering reassurance.”
“Another thing you never do,” I remind him at the same moment that Nick stops at a towering, steel-framed door and waves me forward.
Stepping into the next room, I discover a massive round stone table, as well as an aquarium against the far wall. I claim one of the twelve gray leather chairs around the table, my gaze flicking over a stack of files a few feet away, and then lifting and landing on a framed Godfather movie scene covering almost the entire wall in front of me.
Nick claims the chair to my right, following my gaze. “Badass, isn’t it?”
“I’m not sure how to feel about you idolizing a gangster,” I comment, while Seth claims the seat to my left.
“It’s Pacino I love,” Nick explains. “The man’s a chameleon; he becomes whatever he want to be whenever he wants to be, like many of our adversaries. Something that picture never lets me forget. It keeps me sharp.”