Drake watched Grace. “Art supplies. Everything a painter might need.” Which was what? He floundered. “Ah, oil colors, watercolors, a complete range, ah—” Fuck, what were they called? “Canvases and the…thing they’re placed on.” He looked at Grace, eyebrows lifted.
“Easel,” she said softly.
“Easel. Listen, just ask the owner to give you something of everything. Find out who the best supplier in town is, only not—” He leaned forward to her. “Where do you regularly buy your supplies?”
“Cellini’s, on Broadway.”
“Not Cellini’s on Broadway. Stay away from there. Find out who is next best and go there. I want everything here by eleven tomorrow morning.”
“Yessir.”
Drake broke the connection.
Grace was sitting straighter in her chair, looking a little less like a truck had run over her. His respect for her went up another notch.
“I’ll pay you back, Drake. I don’t have my checkbook with me, it was in my purse, but I’ll—”
Drake put a finger over her lips, horrified. “Stop. Please stop. Don’t even think it. I’m the reason this is happening to you. All I’m trying to do is make you as comfortable here as possible.”
“Okay.” She drew in a deep breath. “I understand that I stepped into the middle of some kind of—hostile takeover.” She gave a little laugh that turned wobbly. She bit her lips and waited a second for control. “Very hostile. But I don’t understand why I’m involved. Why do they feel that somehow they can get to you through me? I’m nothing to you. I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. So why trash my house? Slash my paintings? What difference could that possibly make to you?”
Okay.
Drake had been hoping to put this moment off to when she was feeling better, when the adrenaline had worked its way out of her system and she wasn’t shaking. To when she could be wearing clothes of her own and not his and was feeling less of a refugee from her own life.
But what you want and what must be are two entirely different things. Drake understood that down to the bone.
“Words aren’t enough,” he said, rising from the chair. He put a hand on her elbow and lifted her gently up. “I must show you. Come with me.”
They walked in silence down the long hall. Drake thought briefly about somehow preparing her, but dismissed the idea immediately. It wasn’t a moment for words.
His study was at the end of the long, wide hall, essentially across the entire footprint of the building. It took them minutes to get there. They walked in silence, Drake utterly conscious of her hand in his, of her presence at his side.
She was making no bones of her curiosity, twisting her head left and right, noting the furniture, the rugs, the tapestries.
Drake wondered what she thought of his home. It was as far from the current New York style as possible. He liked color, soft fabrics, fine antiques, rugs. He often thought that perhaps he had Mongol or Tartar blood in him, since he always set up households that looked like caravanserais.
He stopped outside the door to his study. His inner sanctum.
Drake looked down at Grace, standing quietly in front of the door. She seemed to understand that he needed a moment to gather himself, and though she must have been quivering with anxiety to discover what lay behind it, she stood and let him take his time.
He could see long lashes, the curve of a high cheekbone, lush mouth slightly downturned. Beauty and grace. Courage, even. A woman of great worth. He’d never thought to see her outside this door.
Drake reached out to the door, a beautiful mahogany veneer over stainless steel, and touched a small glass panel. He pressed his thumb against it; a bright green light flashed, and with a soft whirring sound, the door slid into the wall.
Grace watched the door disappear and then looked up at him for permission to enter. The door framed darkness that had a cavernous feel to it. It was the largest room in the apartment and the darkness inside was dense and black.
It had to be done.
Drake pushed gently at her back and reaching to the side, flipped the light switch of the chandeliers. There were three of them, from Murano, and they made the room and its contents glow.
Beside him, Grace gasped. He tightened his grip on her elbow as her knees buckled.
Eight
Enrique Cordero lived in Crown Heights, home of the Bloods. Cordero had come up out of the gang to form his own, a professional organization a million miles above the heads of the street gangs, though he used some of the old gang members now and again.
He hadn’t used the excitable young punks forming the Bloods to get Drake, but he might as well have, for all the good they’d done.
Fucking amateurs.
Rutskoi had worked up a good head of steam by the time he made it to Cordero’s home. Compound, really. Thirty thousand square feet of what looked like a Mexican adobe hacienda plunked down five thousand miles north in a more unforgiving climate. The compound was surrounded by concrete walls two feet thick, with only one way in—a set of big featureless steel doors set in the wall farthest from the street. You had to drive all the way around, being tracked by surveillance cameras every inch of the way, and announce yourself to the monitor.
Cordero’s gatekeeper hesitated just long enough to be insulting, making Rutskoi wait a full five minutes. Finally, Rutskoi heard the loud metallic click of the gate’s electronic lock disengaging. The big steel gates slowly swung open and Rutskoi drove his rental straight in.
Shitheads, he thought sourly.
The internal courtyard was lit up like a prison camp, huge 500-watt spotlights in each corner. He had to work to keep from shielding his eyes with his hand, not wanting to give Cordero’s men the satisfaction. The overbright lights ruined his night vision, as they were meant to. He could barely make out two hulking figures looking like gorillas in jeans and parkas flanking the entrance to the house and knew that they could see him with almost brutal clarity.
Cordero thought he was so smart, but five of his men had let Drake go. He had fucking delivered Drake on a fucking platter and they had let him get away with hardly a scratch. The thought made him as angry now as it had five hours ago.
Rutskoi got out of the car, holding up his hands to show they were empty, and stopped right outside the door. The two men frisked him thoroughly, even feeling his balls and the crack of his ass. They were right to, a terrorist could hide a good four or five pounds of plastic explosive in underpants, but Rutskoi was no terrorist and they knew it. It was a power game and they had probably been ordered to do it by Cordero, who was an idiot.
“Go on in,” one of the gorillas growled.
“I hope you enjoyed it,” Rutskoi said, and both gorillas stiffened with rage while he walked through the door. That was petty. He didn’t have time to play games with bodyguards. It was a sign of his frustration and anger that he’d prodded the animals.
He stopped in the middle of the two-story atrium and tried to get himself under control.
Fuck! The one chance anyone had ever had to nail Drake, the one small piece of information on a weakness of his, and Cordero’s men had blown it. That window of opportunity was never going to open again. Drake would be more tightly protected than the Kremlin now. And all because Cordero had sent second-rate men.
If only this weren’t America. Rutskoi had no men here. If this had been back home and he could have taken care of it himself, Drake would be dead. After Drake gave him the codes, Rutskoi would be the sole proprietor of a kingdom and he wouldn’t have had to team up with a shit-for-brains like Cordero.
But he was in America, and he was teamed up with Cordero. That was the bottom line and he had to deal with it. Rutskoi rarely wasted time wishing that things were different. It was a hard world and only hard men got by.