Repercussions that a woman, who’d been shielded and cosseted all her life, would never understand.
Even when her family had been targeted, her father had paid to make sure their enemies were taken down.
While Dagger Daniels wasn’t in the mob, he definitely had a ‘kill first, ask questions later,’ policy.
"And she’s learned that lesson?"
I shrugged. "For now. I’m sure she’ll find a way to get into the faces of the wrong people along the way."
"You want to bang her?"
"Got a dick, don’t I?" I picked up my phone, scrolled through the gallery, found a couple of pictures of her, then showed her to him. When he whistled, I hummed. "Exactly."
"You want to keep her alive to have her as a side piece?"
"Not sure a woman like her could ever be a side piece," I admitted with a low voice.
"What’s that supposed to mean?" Finn sputtered.
I didn’t have a clue, didn’t even know why I’d said it, just knew that I meant it.
She wasn’t a Harriet Crossley, wasn’t the two-buck whore of Manhattan. And God love those kinds of women. I had no issue with them spreading their legs for me whenever I clicked my fingers, but they weren’t the marrying kind.
Savannah Daniels wasn’t a slut, nor was she the marrying kind. I didn’t have a goddamn clue what she was, but fuck, when Jemima had deep-throated me this morning, it hadn’t been her mouth I’d imagined doing the swallowing, but Savannah’s.
Six hours later, I found myself outside her apartment building.
I half expected that I’d have to break into it, or, at least, get Conor to help me out by corrupting the security or whatever the hell it was he did, but when I pressed on her button, she let me in.
As I strolled into the foyer, I discovered that Savannah’s father was definitely paying her bills because she’d been unemployed for a good two months now, and this place was not cheap.
Whistling under my breath, I nodded at the doorman, then strode to the bank of elevators and summoned one. As it arrived, I thought about what I’d said to Finn earlier.
I fully expected for her to have made leaps and bounds in her investigation, but once that was done, I didn’t think she’d quietly leave things behind.
Not when this was all she was working on.
My mouth pursed at the thought, because if she carried on digging, I’d have no choice but to kill her. I really didn’t want to have to do that. But she’d give me no alternative if she didn’t leave well enough alone.
Everything that her editors had told me, indicated that she was incapable of backing off and backing down.
That’d lead to more shit along the way, however.
I’d told Da I’d deal with the problem, and there was no avoiding that we both knew what that meant. I wasn’t a troubleshooter, for God’s sake. Dealing with problems typically meant that someone’s blood got spilled. Rarely, if ever, mine, and most definitely the problem’s.
With that in mind, I turned over the situation in my head.
Acuig Corp. had recently been buying up a ton of companies under Finn and Kid’s new strategy to spread the net as far as we could over Manhattan’s skyline. The companies didn’t matter, the real estate did, but that meant we had interest in a lot of diverse industries.
I knew, for example, that we’d recently taken over the building where TVGM’s studio was housed.
As I stepped out of the elevator, my Brioni shoes sinking into the deep scarlet plush of the carpet, I headed over to 0789 as I contemplated whether or not Savannah would accept my gift with grace. I doubted it. Grace wasn’t something I’d associate with her.
She was, I thought, pretty similar to her name.
Hot, steamy, but capable of enduring the worst hurricanes and coming out on top.
The door was open when I approached, which was indicative of the building’s safety, and when I stepped inside, I found chaos.
Even better, I found Savannah, leaning over her computer, notes everywhere, pads everywhere, a white board out in front of her, laden down with faces of pretty much everyone I knew.
As I closed the door behind me, I decided not to disrupt her. I’d come to collect all of this, whatever the hell it was I had my eyes on, but she was definitely in the middle of something.
Something that might make this problem go away.
The apartment was light, breezy. Not what I expected from her. She wasn’t a pallid kind of woman. No wishy washy blues or pinks for her. But that was what I got.
I’d expected something as rich as the hallway—scarlets and golds. Instead, I’d have said it was the opposite. The place was lived in though. Comfortable.
The white sofa was massive and, the only word I could use to describe it, was squishy. There was a huge bump in the corner unit of the sectional, where she evidently spent a lot of time. A large knitted blanket was artfully draped over it, and there was a coffee table beside it too, with a stack of books and a coffee mug resting on top of that.
The sofa was the centerpiece of the entire room. Though it was neither opulent nor elegant, I could easily see her sitting there. In fact…
I twisted around, trying to see if she had a cat.
I could see her with a cat.
Curled up on that sofa with it, reading and plotting some story. Some revenge or whatever.
When I found one, tightly packed into a small ball, I smirked to myself, glad that I’d read that right at least. The Siamese blended in with all the other colors in here, very tonal and neutral. Which was, I thought, why I was so surprised.
Savannah wasn’t either of those things.
Barely twenty-five minutes in her company and I knew that.
Stepping over more sheets of paper, I headed for the white board and looked at what, essentially, was a crime board.
What looked like Paddy’s autopsy report was tacked on here—how the fuck she’d gained access to that I had no idea—then there were the major players of the Albanian mob back then as well as our family.
A lot of the guys on our side were dead. That’s why we had the Old Wives’ Club. Lots of widows left behind as their men were buried six feet under thanks to the Firm and the many wars my father had engaged in back when he was my age.
"Is it true?"
I jolted a little, the blast with the past taking me back in time. "Is what true?"
"That your father ran a sword through Milao Jurkavic because of what he did to Paddy?"
Grimacing, I muttered, "Is that story still going around?"
She hummed without looking up. "It is, and I highly doubt it’s a story."
"Urban legend, then."
Now, she looked up, and her eyes glinted with humor. "I’m sure there are many urban legends floating around the city because of your people, but I don’t think this is one such occasion."
If someone had told me that a semi-smile was capable of triggering a semi-boner, I’d have told them to fuck off and take some more laughing gas because that was the level of ridiculousness from that likelihood.
Yet, here I was, my dick hardening as I saw the faint curve of her lips twitch higher, and that knowing gleam in her eyes… She wasn’t trying to turn me on, was just calling me out on my bullshit.
Fuck.
I almost growled under my breath, but though I could easily have turned this into something else, could have coerced her into bed, could even have fucking seduced her if I wanted, I did none of those things.