AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’ll double-check, but the guard in that lounge is highly experienced.”
Seconds after Lexie disappears, one of the men, Misha, and the prime minister’s daughter go off toward the dance floor. The Czech keeps an arm draped around each woman as they weave between tables.
“They closed the stall after the Romanian left the ladies’ lounge and went over it with a fine-tooth comb. There was nothing.”
The male target remaining at the table goes to the bar. The group is separated, which is never a good thing. “Hard to keep track of them when they’re spread out,” I mumble, mostly to myself.
“This is what we do every night, and we’re damn good at it,” Xavier assures me. “They’re surrounded by our people. I don’t care if they crawl under a floorboard. No one’s taking a goddamn eye off them.”
He sounds bitter. I’m sure his ego got bruised when I put Zé in charge of logistics. But I’m not in the business of soothing grown men’s egos. Not even my own. I do what needs to be done.
“The shot is zoomed in, behind you.” Xavier points to a large screen suspended from the ceiling near the back wall.
The Czech at the bar is talking to the bartender, who knows the score. I’d love to know what they’re chatting about. If we had more time to prepare, everyone would be miked.
“Why didn’t he just order from the waitress?” a young man operating a feed asks. “It would have called less attention to him.”
“Going to the bartender is the fastest way to get a drink,” I mutter, eyes glued to the feed. “And if he returns to the table before she does, he’ll have unfettered access to her cocktail.” I’m going to kill that bastard, and it’s going to be a long, drawn-out celebration.
“This could be what we’re waiting for,” Zé says, with an icy focus to his voice.
The screen on my left is homed in on the outer door to the ladies’ lounge, and the one on the right shows the area of the dance floor where the seventeen-year-old is shaking her ass more than is wise. She’s too precocious for her own good. When this is done, I’m handing over the tape of her dancing to her father. The prime minister needs to keep a tighter rein on his teenage daughter.
The asshole at the bar takes two drinks from the bartender and goes back to the table. He places his hand over one of the cocktails and inches the glass a bit to the side.
“Zoom in. More,” Xavier instructs a woman to his far left.
It’s only because we have the ability to rewind and freeze the frame that we know he used his thumb to push something into the cocktail while he moved the glass. Son of a bitch.
Lexie Clarke isn’t a predator. She’s prey.
4
RAFAEL
“The male target, at the table, just dropped something into one of the drinks,” Zé alerts our A team on the floor.
My outward demeanor is calm, but my stomach roils, much like it does whenever I’m anxious. A vestige of an unpleasant childhood.
Lexie comes out of the ladies’ room, finally, and makes her way back to the table. She was in there for a long fucking time, or at least it felt that way to me. With the camera zoomed in, she looks younger than twenty-three, and hot as hell. Not in a loud, too-much-smoky-eye kind of way, but she’s poised, and radiates fun and sass and natural beauty—right down to the freckles on her nose that she covers with makeup.
No surprise they targeted her. She would earn them a nice chunk of change when they sold her into the kind of life that sends terror through my veins. Those bastards need to be strung up and castrated.
You’re getting way ahead of yourself. Despite how it looks, you still don’t know who the target is—it might be the prime minister’s daughter. I glance at the Italian swaying seductively on the dance floor. She’d bring in a fat wad of cash too.
Lexie eases her way through the club, stopping when a young man blocks her path.
The command center falls silent. He looks like a college boy with access to Daddy’s credit cards, but he could be part of their game—a plant—and there could be others. Too many damn unknowns.
I’m seconds from aborting the operation when Lexie flashes him a cut-the-bullshit look and a smile as fake as Francesca Russo’s ID. They exchange a few words, and he lays a hand over his heart in an exaggerated way, as though she wounded him, before stepping aside to let her pass. The entire room lets out a collective breath.
She’s smiling as she walks away. A sassy, confident smile that reminds me of the one she gifted me right before I pinned her to the stone wall and kissed her.
Focus, Rafael. Focus.
“Either Ms. Clarke or Ms. Russo needs to accept the drink before our people move in,” Zé mutters to no one in particular.
It’s about to become real. The moment of truth. But the real truth is that I’m starting to feel a twinge of conscience for putting either the Russo girl or Lexie at risk—especially Lexie. All of a sudden, the ends justify the means feels like bullshit.
