There were some positive murmurs and I could tell that I was winning over the crowd.
“Together we can do this, but we can’t do it if we’re fractured. You’ve followed me this far. Follow me a little bit farther.”
“I’ll follow,” Kasia called out. I nodded at her.
“Me too,” Anastasia said.
More echoes of “me too” and “I’ll follow” began, and I smiled as the girls put their fists in the air.
Just then, the elevator doors dinged open. All heads turned to see Wyatt step out, his hair wet, wearing only a thin white T-shirt and short black shorts. He blinked at the crowd of angry and intense women staring at him.
“Well, hello ladies,” he said.
There was a general murmur and all of that energy dissipated. People began to walk off as Wyatt walked over.
“Bad timing?” he asked.
I nodded. “The girls are unhappy. One of the mercenaries tried to rape one of mine.”
“Fuck,” he said.
“They killed him.”
“Good.” He looked grim. “I’ll talk to them.”
“Thank you. I’ll handle the girls.”
“Good.” He nodded at me. “We’re close, Louisa.”
“I know. The men are downstairs.”
He walked back to the elevator. He gave me a nod as the doors shut.
That was almost good. If he hadn’t walked out, I knew that the speech would have worked. But Wyatt came in at the exact wrong moment.
He was a symbol to those girls of everything they stood against. He was a handsome, powerful man, and they hated men like that. They didn’t know any better. Men like him had taken advantage of them for so long, raped them over and over, and now they hated most men. But Wyatt was trying to help them, maybe in his own way, but it was working.
He wasn’t their enemy, but that was impossible for them to understand. All men were the enemy, and that was all there was.
We needed to make changes if we were going to win. Despising all men was one thing we had to fix. I had to show them that Wyatt was on their side and that the mercenaries were important. Otherwise, everything was going to be lost.
I headed back to my room to think, leaving it to Kasia to talk with the girls.
25
Wyatt
Unrest in the ranks was very, very bad for Louisa. I spoke with the captain of the mercenaries, and he said that the guy who tried to rape that girl was a rotten asshole from the start, and the he didn’t condone what he did. The guys weren’t angry about what happened to him, which was good. I promised them more pay and left it at that.
I just hoped that Louisa could hold up her end and keep her girls in line. We needed every single person she had right now. She was severely outnumbered to begin with, and any sort of unrest inside her organization could be fatal.
She couldn’t afford a coup or a strike. She had to keep it together. We had the guns, we had the mercenaries, and all we needed was a big, juicy target.
A few days passed. I had to leave the city again for work, but I was able to come back as soon as that was over.
Ethan and I checked back into our usual hotel in the usual room. I wasn’t back in my suite for more than ten minutes before the phone began to ring.
I answered it. “Yes?” I asked.
“Mr. Carter, you have a call holding from a Mr. Barone.”
“Put him through.”
The line clicked.
“Wyatt?”
“Arturo.”
“How the hell are you?”
“I’m fine.”
“I tried your cell, but it was dead.”
“Just got in, haven’t had a chance to charge.”
“Come to the compound,” he said. “I want to talk business.”
I frowned, uncertain. “Okay,” I said. “I can do that. How did you know I was back in town?”
“I know everything that happens in this city, Wyatt. See you soon.” He hung up.
I checked my watch. It was ten in the morning. All I wanted to do was shower and drink some coffee, but I couldn’t ignore a summons from Arturo.
“I’m going,” I said to Ethan. He gave me a little nod and went back to his laptop.
I changed quickly, called down for a car, and was on my way ten minutes later.
It was never good when Arturo called me to him, but maybe this was the right timing for it. We did need a target to go after, and Arturo was notorious for letting things slip in our conversations. The man was old and he loved to brag, which made it easy to pry things out of him, even when he was being careful.
He had no reason to be careful around me, which was valuable.
I made it to the compound a half hour later, and I followed that same porter through the halls. I had a pretty good memory and could recall the route we took to Arturo’s office the last time I was there, but the porter was taking me a different route. We followed another circuitous, winding route, and eventually he stopped in front of a plain set of doors.