“What did they look like? Did they speak Russian?”
“Nah, man, no Russian. One guy had a Russian accent, but that was it. They were white dudes, all normal looking.”
I glanced at Vince, who just shrugged.
“Okay, Juan. Thanks a lot.”
I turned to leave.
“Hey, man, what about me?”
I looked back at him. “Carlo and Joey here are going to rough you up, just so you know that if you speak of this to anyone, we will kill you.”
“Hey, man!” he yelled, but Joey had already punched him square in the jaw.
I walked away, Vince at my side while Carlo and Joey beat Juan senseless.
“What do you think?” Vince said when we were upstairs.
“I don’t think it’s the Russians,” I said, “but we still don’t have proof.”
“You believe that guy?”
“Yeah,” I said, nodding, “I do.”
Vince shrugged. “Okay, boss. What now?”
“Now we go home and eat some fucking dinner.”
He laughed as we headed back out onto the street.
Truth was, I wasn’t sure where we needed to go. It was becoming clearer and clearer to me that the Russians weren’t the ones behind everything, but that left a huge question mark.
Was is one of our own? Was it one of theirs, working on his own? Or some totally different third party?
I needed more information, but it was so frustratingly scarce. We had our guys keeping tabs on the area’s market, looking for any large influx of olive oil, but so far there was nothing.
Unless the guys were unloading their goods in some different state, then they were still holding on to the stuff. And I doubted that they’d move the stuff between states; that’d make it a federal offense.
We climbed into the car and began to roll back toward the compound. My head was spinning, a mix of hunting down the shipment and Natalie’s body.
Chapter Twenty-Three: Natalie
I was practically buzzing with excitement as I walked away from the stables.
I couldn’t believe Lucas. He always acted like such an asshole, such a confident dick, but he had been tender, almost kind. He was interested in my life, he had asked questions, and he had even told me things that seemed private.
It was almost like he wanted to open up to me.
And yet he still held back. I could sense it, sense that there was something more to him that I couldn’t access.
I wanted to figure it out. I wanted to know him, wanted him to give me everything all at once. I knew that was greedy and not fair, but it was the truth. I was falling into him, becoming his, and I hadn’t even realized it until those moments in the barn.
Plus, there was the way he made my body feel to consider.
I bit my lip, not thinking at all as I wandered into the house. I was starving, which was mostly why I had left, and my head was completely in the clouds. I wandered around at random, thinking about what had happened.
About his hands on my hips, his cock between my legs, the dirty way he spoke, the strong way he commanded me to show him my ass.
Everything he said and everything he did worked to overwhelm me, to make me dizzy.
Dizzy with a lust and a desire that I hadn’t ever felt before.
Almost without thinking, I unlocked a door and pushed it open. It was dark inside, but I heard some strange noises. Confused, I took a step inside.
I instantly regretted it.
Spread out on the ground was a single white sheet, and on that sheet were two bodies. The room was a storage closet, but I wasn’t looking too closely at my surroundings.
It was my mom and the driver, Franklin. He had his face between her legs, and they were both completely naked.
It took half a second to understand the scene. Franklin was furiously eating out my mom right there in the closet.
He tipped her head back, and we made eye contact.
“Oh my god!” she yelled. “Oh my god!”
I stepped back, completely in shock, and slammed the door shut.
Holy fuck.
I backed up and started walking away as fast as I could.
I couldn’t have seen that. Camille wouldn’t be so stupid, so reckless. She wouldn’t cheat on her brand-new mobster husband with one of his staff barely a month after having married him.
But clearly she would, because I saw her doing it.
Oh my god, disgusting!
I wanted to burn that image from my brain, to purge it from my mind. It was so gross, so wrong, so nasty. I practically sprinted down the hall, and it took me a minute before I figured out that I was one floor down, directly below my rooms.
I climbed the stairs and found the right door. I unlocked it and slammed it shut behind me.
I had just seen my mom cheating on her new husband.
I had never, ever seen my mom having sex. At least not that I could remember. And I really, really never wanted to repeat that as long as I lived.