Alex and Kari both wore jeans and tucked-in shirts when they left Alex’s house and made their way to the safe house.  Alex, in an unhurried speed, drove his white Mercedes-Maybach to the edge of town and turned into a sparely populated farming community that barely boasted five houses.  Each house was self-contained within acres and acres of land.  The last house, on a street by itself and fronted by a briar patch, was owned by Alex.

“It’s way back here, isn’t it?” Kari asked as he drove farther and farther back to a small, wooden-framed house with, oddly, what looked like a five-car garage.  It was where the men who manned the house hid their automobiles from sight.  “It’s almost deserted-looking,” she added.

“That’s the idea,” Alex said.  “It was a good purchase for its intended purpose.”

Kari looked at him.  He looked relaxed in casual clothing, as he leaned his arm on his center console and drove with a lack of urgency that belied their intended purpose.  He also wore shades that kept that coolness vibe going.  But that was what she loved about Alex.  He handled all of their ups and their downs with a steadiness that helped to keep her steady too.

He parked his car on the narrow driveway, got out, and walked around to the passenger side.  Kari’s every instinct had always been to open her own door and get her own ass out of the car.  Every man she’d ever dated before Alex never opened any doors for her!  But she learned, from the first date she ever had with Alex when he flew her all the way to New York when she thought they were just going up the road to a local restaurant, to let Alex be who he was.  And he was, whenever he was around her, a gentleman.

He opened her car door, held the tips of her fingers, and assisted her as she stepped out.  And together, they went in.

Once they entered the home Kari quickly saw four men inside, all strapped with shoulder holsters and weaponry, all standing around as if they were awaiting further orders.  She also saw that the place did not have any typical house layout, but the living area was one big open room filled with uncomfortable-looking chairs and a few tables pushed up against the walls.  It was dusty and dirty and reeked of man, and it had no intention of being what its name implied: a safe home.  It might have been a safe place for the rest of society, but it most certainly wasn’t for the men and women unfortunate enough to be taken there.

Because Linda Drakos was also there.

Kari’s heart squeezed with hatred and anger when she looked in the middle of that room and saw that witch sitting in one of those chairs.  She was trying to style and look all dignified, as if she was just visiting one of her vacation homes rather than the prison that held her as guest of honor.

She reminded Kari of that woman that tried to run her over, that Courtney Tyson.  She had had a sense of entitlement about her, too, just because she’d been with Alex before.  All of Courtney’s experience with Alex had been in the bedroom, and Kari knew, by her own personal experience, what nights in bed with Alex could do to a girl.  But damn!  These women were taking it to the Nth degree.  It was insane!

The head of the security detail, a man called Juan, placed two chairs in front of Linda and wiped them off with the palm of his hands.  Alex sat Kari down first, and then he took the seat beside her.  Kari saw Linda actually spruce up her hair, her hair of all things, when Alex looked away from her.

She also crossed her legs and smiled.  “Hello, Alex,” she said.  She said nothing, by way of a greeting, to Kari.

Alex opened his thick thighs wide enough so that he could place the ball of his fists between those legs and rest them on the edge of the chair.  He also leaned slightly forward, looking particularly tense to Kari as if he was a volcano doing all he could not to erupt.

And it was true.  It took all Alex had, and some Kari had too, for him not to grab that bitch where she sat and strangle her ass.  He’d already warned her to stay away from Kari and to never step foot in Apple Valley again.  Right under his own men’s noses, even though she had been listed as number one to watch out for on his women from his past database, she had told him by her actions, and her arrogance, what he could do with his warning.

Now he was going to tell her by his actions what she could do with her arrogance.

But first he needed her to tell Kari.

“Why did you try to kill my fiancée?” he asked her.

A strange look came over Linda’s face when he referred to Kari as his intended.  Kari knew she was dying to say the word, to make sure she heard it right, but she also knew enough about Linda Drakos to know that she knew how to keep it undercover.

Linda, instead, smiled.  “Who said I tried to kill her?” she asked.

When Alex nor Kari were going along with her little scheme, she exhaled.  And took a different route.  “I didn’t try to kill her,” she said.

“Bitch don’t lie!” Kari was fed up already.

“I didn’t try to kill you!  It was self-defense.”

“Self-defense?” Kari asked.  “You walked into my house and warned me off of Alex, slapped me like I was some flunky of yours, and you were thinking I was going to do what?  Just let you walk back out?  Even after Alex cut your face, and no amount of plastic surgery and makeup can hide that scar, dearie, sorry, you still tried that bullshit!  And you call that self-defense?”

“I was going to leave.  You’re the one who came at me.  You’re asking what did I expect you to do.  What did you expect me to do?”

“What you went there to do,” Alex said.  “Try to kill her.”

“You have it all wrong, lover,” Linda said to her ex-husband.  “If I would have wanted to kill the bitch, the bitch would be dead.”

Alex jumped up from his chair so fast that he knocked his own chair over.  He grabbed Linda as if he was lifting a feather and threw her toward the wall.  Kari jumped up in shock while his men backed up in delight, as Alex hurried over to Linda, grabbed her up again, and slammed her against that wall.  Only this time he grabbed her right arm and twisted it behind her back until everybody in that room could hear a bone crack inside of it.

Linda cried out in pain!

Alex leaned against her, with his mouth to her ear.  “Now you listen to me, you stupid bitch,” he said.  “I told you to stay away from Karena.  I told you to keep your ass out of Apple Valley.  But you decided it was worth the risk and came anyway.”

Then Alex leaned back so that she could observe his fiercely cold eyes.  “You know me,” he said.  “You know what I will do to you.  But you came anyway.  Why?” he asked.

That smirk on Linda’s face was gone.  She was in so much pain veins were appearing on her forehead.

“Why?” Alex asked again, as he twisted that arm until he broke another bone inside of it.

Even Kari cringed when she heard that second pop.  But she was without sympathy.  Linda had brought this day, and this hour, onto herself.

“Why?” he asked again, as if he was going to give her another break.

“Speak up, fool,” Kari was inwardly pleading.  She needed to know, maybe even above Alex, what this was about.  Why did she risk everything to go see Kari and warn her off of Alex?  She needed to speak up!

And Linda did speak up.  As soon as it appeared that crazy Alex was going to take it to an even higher crazy level, she spoke up.  “Because of Cate,” she said with tears in her eyes.

Alex was up against her, and Kari some feet away from her, stared at her.  Cat Drakos was the daughter Alex had with Linda.  Cate was the daughter Alex pressed charges on when she and her now-deceased brother embezzled north of twenty-eight million dollars from a charitable foundation Alex financed.

Cate was still an uncomfortable subject for Alex.  “What about her?” he asked his ex.

“Her day in court, on her appeal, is coming up.  The lawyer says she’ll walk free if you’ll testify that you were mistaken and she didn’t steal that money.  She’s been in prison for so long.  She has suffered so much.  I came because I love her, and I’ll do anything for her!  Unlike her own father.”

Kari understood a mother’s love.  She’d go to any length to look out for Jordan too.  But not if he stole millions of dollars.  He’d have to pay for that.

Alex understood a mother’s love too.  Kari had shown him what it looked like.  He understood a mother’s love.

But not this mother. 

He leaned even closer against Linda, and he placed his mouth so close to her ear that he could see the wax inside of it.  “Cut the bullshit,” he said.  “Tell me why you tried to kill Kari.”

“What do you mean?  I told you,” Linda said nervously, and leaned over and looked into his eyes.  Didn’t he see the tears in hers?

  He grabbed her arm again, ready to twist it again.

But she quickly, to Kari’s surprise given how stupid she’d been up to that point, gave in.  “Okay,” she said urgently.  “Okay!”

Alex relaxed his grip.  Now, he hoped, they were going to get somewhere.  Kari even walked up to them, too, to hear this story for herself.

“I knew Courtney Tyson from her modeling days,” Linda said, “and I knew what kind of financial trouble her cosmetics company was in.  She was supposed to do it first.”

“Do what first?”

“Warn Kari off.  That was the plan.  Just warn her to stay away from you.  If it looked like that would work, then Courtney was to walk away and wait and see if Kari did as she was told.  But if Kari resisted, and put up a fight about it, then Courtney was to do whatever she had to do to take care of it.  She got paid based on results only.  She tried to take care of it.”

“Killing herself was her idea of taking care of it?” Kari asked.

“That wasn’t what she planned!  She planned to run your ass over, back up, and then take off.  That was what she planned to do.  But it didn’t work out that way.”

“What about Fleck and Brown?”

Linda frowned.  “Who?”

“The guys who own?” Alex couldn’t even remember the name of that place.

“Star Fleet,” Kari said to him.

“Yeah, them,” Alex said.  “Did you hire them too?”

“Courtney hired them.  But at my direction, yes.”

“And the guy who tried to take Alex out?” Kari asked.  “Did you hire him too?”

Alex really wanted the answer to that question.  He already knew who had hired that Munich shooter.  But Linda didn’t know he knew.  If she gave a different answer, he’d know she was bullshitting him.

“No,” Linda said.

“So you’re saying that shooting isn’t related to what you’re doing?” Kari asked.

“I’m saying I didn’t hire the shooter.  I hired this guy named Max Rogan, who owed me, and he hired the shooter.”

Alex exhaled.  She wasn’t bullshitting him.  At least up to a point.  Because something still wasn’t adding up for him.  He stared at Linda. “Why?” he asked her.

“We needed to get Kari out of the way,” Linda said, “so that you would have room for your daughter in your life.”

Alex frowned.  “You’re back to that bullshit again!”

“It’s not bullshit, Alex!  I love our daughter!  I’ll do anything for her!”

But Alex knew his ex-wife.  He was still staring at her.  “And for who else?” he asked her.

Kari glanced at Alex.  Who else?  What did he mean?

Alex slammed Linda’s back against that wall again.  “Who else do you love, Linda?” he asked angrily.  “Who else will you do anything for?  Who else?” he yelled this time, and he was about to slam her again.  But she relented.

“Oz,” she said, crying.

Alex and Kari went still.  Oz was Odysseus Drakos.  Oz was Alex’s younger brother and the current head of the Drakos Crime Family in Greece.

“I love Oz,” Linda continued.  “And I’ll do anything for him too.”

“You’re telling me Oz is bankrolling this?” Alex asked Linda with a fixed frown on his face.

“He’s the one who made me do it,” Linda said.  “I told him it wouldn’t work.  I told him it was destined to fail.  But he said I had to do it!  He said you turned your own father over to the enemy for them to savage and kill like wild animals.  He said you destroyed their family, and their family business because it was never the same again.  Now they have to fight for the scraps like the other families had to.  He said you had to pay.  But he felt, if he focused on Kari first, you would feel the greater pain.  He’s mad, Alex.  He wants you to bleed like he bled.”

Alex was thrown.  There was no doubt about it.  Not that he would put it past his brother.  Oz had hired men in the past to try and take him out.  But he did that knowing Alex would survive their attacks.  But he was bankrolling people to take Kari out?  That was the part that stunned Alex.  That wasn’t the kid brother he knew!

But did he even know his kid brother anymore?

But just as he was about to ask for more.  Just as he was about to get Linda to quote him chapter and verse what Oz said, did, and didn’t do, they were rocked by what appeared to be an explosion from the back of the house.  An explosion that ripped a wall-sized hole into the entire backside of the house.

And then, almost simultaneously, as Alex’s men drew their weapons and ran toward the explosion, teargas was dispersed inside the house that knocked them back.

When the explosion first occurred, Alex’s jumped onto Kari and fell on top of her.  But as soon as he realized teargas was being released, and they could end up passed out in that house, he grabbed Kari, stood her up, and they both ran for the exit.  Gunfire began to erupt, but Alex had one priority and one priority only: get Kari to safety.  Get Kari out of harm’s way!

He ran out of that house with her so fast that he was practically dragging her along.  Then he put her in the driver seat of his Mercedes, threw the keys in the car, and pressed the Start button.  “Get the hell out of here,” he said.  “Don’t look back.  Just get out!”

“You come with me, Alex,” Kari pleaded.  “She’s not worth you dying over!” 

“So she can remain around to terrorize you even more?  No,” he said.  “I’m getting that bitch.  Now you get your ass out of here!  I mean it, Kari!”  His heart was in pain, because this could very well be the last time he saw her.  But if she was safe, he felt he could survive anything.

And Kari knew he was going to do what he had to do.  And she couldn’t add to his burden.  She backed out swiftly, and she sped away.

And Alex, with his gun drawn, ready to fight to the death, hurried around the back side of that house.