Brash Boss Read online

  ‘She?’ I questioned.

  I had no idea why I’d asked him who he was talking about and from the slight uplift in the corners of his mouth I knew I hadn’t fooled him either with my nonchalant question.

  ‘Barbara Daniels, Boss.’

  Picking up a pen off my desk, I leant back into my chair, twisted my left wrist over to take a look at my Patek Phillippe watch and took note of the hour. It was just after five a.m. Then pinching each end of the pen between the thumb and forefinger of each hand, I began to roll it around in between them.

  ‘How long has she been in here?’ I asked, while still rolling the pen as I thought.

  ‘About an hour,’ he replied.

  For some reason unknown to me, a whooshing sound started behind my eardrums as my blood pressure rose. I was often to be found in the office above one of my casinos in the early hours of the morning, so it wasn’t that I was tired. I didn’t have high blood pressure and I kept myself fit by working out at least five days a week. I was cool under pressure, in business and in my very controlled social life. But today, knowing she was back in here and sat at one of my tables, irritated the hell out of me.

  ‘Exactly how long has she been in my casino, Franco?’ I enunciated each word slowly and waited for his reaction.

  His eyes jumped up from watching me look at my watch and found the cold, hard stare that had replaced the earlier look of welcome on my face.

  ‘Forty-seven… no that would be forty-nine minutes now,’ he replied, shifting his weight and standing just a bit taller as though he was now on parade.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Blackjack, always…’

  ‘I know, always at the blackjack tables.’

  What the hell are you up to, Barbara? And why the hell does it bother me so much that you’re in here doing it?

  I moved my chair and repositioned myself to quickly type what I needed to into my keyboard and then sat up straight to watch as the wooden panelling that covered the TV monitors in my office began to open up. I stood up in response, suddenly feeling too uneasy to sit still, and crossed my arms over my chest. Then with my eyes transfixed on the blank screens, I parked my ass on the side of my overly large desk and gave the voice-controlled software my next instructions.

  ‘All screens, blackjack tables.’

  No sooner had I given the state-of-the-art technology my instructions than it sprang to life. I ran my eyes quickly over the twenty flat screens that all showed a different table or angle, desperately trying to find the one I needed so I could see her.

  ‘Franco.’

  I didn’t have to go on any further, the demanding tone of my voice told him what I wanted.

  ‘B18,’ he replied.

  ‘All screens, convert to one screen, area B18.’

  And there she was suddenly filling the whole of one wall of my office. I took in everything about her with one quick sweep of my eyes. I hadn’t seen her in a few months, but I could see she’d lost weight and that her eyes looked tired. Everything about her body language and subsequent fidgeting, screamed anxiety. I took notice of people’s body language to give myself the upper hand in business, and it was obvious that she had arrived here straight after work, such was her desperation to be back at the blackjack tables. The striped silver and black waistcoat she normally wore as a croupier in a nearby casino had been discarded, and I could have placed a bet on it, if I was a gambling man, that it was probably shoved in a bag somewhere at her feet. She was wearing her simple white uniform shirt and I knew that had I been able to see under the table, I would have found her in the black fitted skirt and fine black tights that were also part of her uniform. She was trying so hard to blend into the background, when to me she stood out like the light shining from a lighthouse.

  My eyes watched transfixed as a piece of her long blonde hair, which had obviously been piled neatly on top of her head when she’d started work, fell out haphazardly and brushed across her prominent cheek bone. My fingers twitched on top of my bicep with something that I didn’t quite recognise, as she lifted a shaking hand and tucked the piece of hair behind her ear. To me she was showing how she was beginning to literally fall apart, she was vulnerable, and a vulnerable woman was my kryptonite.

  I watched her expertly, with one flick of her wrist, turn over the new card she’d been dealt, then her face subsequently crumble and fall. I’d seen it so many times before as it was how I made my living, but the look on her face devastated me.

  Barbara Daniels was the sister of Brody, who sang lead in Default Distraction, the same band my little brother Cade had found fame and fortune with. The guys in his band were also where Cade had found the solace and escape he had needed, away from our family at a time when I needed him well out of the way of the war that had engulfed us. As the years had gone on, while I was busy sorting out the consequences of the damage our father had done, they’d taken care of my little brother. In doing so, they had become like distant family to me, so I helped them out whenever a situation arose where I could. Within a large Sicilian family doing favours for each other, if that’s what you want to call them, is what kept us close, they tied us together to form strong family bonds. It made us indebted to each other, although generally as our family’s “Godfather” useful people were nearly always indebted to me. It was how our family had worked for centuries. I knew that the other guys in the band had helped Cade to deal with his past, and his demons. This had left me indebted to them whether they understood that or not.

  We’d been here before, Barbara and me.

  I’d notified Brody when she’d needed help before. Hell, I’d hoped that the rehab he’d placed her into had sorted her out once and for all, but I could see by looking at her body language on the screen in front of me that she’d fallen back down into the hole again. The way her face was now flushed in panic and carried a light sheen of sweat, showed me that things weren’t working out in her favour.

  I need to help her. But even more disturbing was the fact I wanted to help her.

  I was still busy staring at her, because even under pressure and wearing her cheap uniform, Barbara Daniels was one amazing looking woman.

  ‘Yeah?’ Franco’s voice interrupted my train of thought.

  I turned my head away from observing her on the screens to look at him, he had his first two fingers pressed tightly into his right ear as he listened to the voice coming from his earpiece. I twisted my head at him in question.

  ‘Raul has just informed me that Miss Daniels has eyes on her… some of Barzini’s men are in the casino, Boss.’

  ‘Get her up here now and get Raul to escort them from my building.’

  Without saying another word to me, he started to relay to Raul my exact instructions and turned to leave the room at the same time to retrieve Barbara. This instantaneous reaction to my instructions was why I paid Franco the obscene amount of money I did.

  As my door shut behind him, I inhaled a calming breath. My whole body had jumped up quickly onto high alert as yet again my blood pressure rose higher, making every part of me twitch with the adrenalin that my sudden anger had released around my system.

  What the hell was Barzini playing at?

  ‘Call Antonio Barzini,’ I shouted out loud into my office.

  Chapter Five

  Barbara

  ‘Miss Daniels.’ I heard a deep voice behind me, closed my eyes briefly and let out a soft sigh. When I opened them again, I found the others sitting at the same table staring at me in question. ‘Would you come with me please?’

  ‘Shit,’ I mumbled under my breath. Without turning around, I knew who I was going to find behind me. I couldn’t remember his name, but I knew the voice and it belonged to Nico Morello’s head of security.

  You stupid woman, you shouldn’t have come in here. But I had, because so many other doors were now closed to me.

  Brody will find out.

  I was so fed up with my pathetic life, I could cry. I had just wanted one last attemp
t at getting my money back and then I could have paid everyone off. The cards had been going well up to about thirty minutes ago, when once again lady luck had turned against me and I’d begun to lose hand after hand.

  You should have stopped when it was going well. I heard the voice in my head and let a small laugh leave my mouth at my own stupidity. Because even I recognised that I had a problem, but the fact was I didn’t know how to stop. I’d spent time in rehab courtesy of my brother, who’d employed countless therapists for me to talk to and had bailed me out time after time. After everything he’d paid out for, I was ashamed to be in the same position again, but the roll of the dice and the flip of the cards gave me a buzz I couldn’t find anywhere else in my life, because my life was an empty void of nothing.

  Resigned to whatever my fate was, I started to pick up the small stack of chips in front of me and like the pretend high roller I was, I tipped the croupier with a few of them.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I offered the enquiring eyes taking in everything they could about my interaction with the suit behind me, ‘we’re old friends, aren’t we?’ I tried so hard to sound confident, but knew I’d failed spectacularly.

  I turned around on my seat slowly and stepped down gingerly. I hadn’t eaten in nearly twelve hours and I couldn’t trust myself not to make an even bigger fool of myself than I already had. Grabbing hold of the walnut-edged, green baize table I started to bend down low to pick up my bag from the floor.

  ‘Allow me.’ I could hear the pity in his voice as the guy whose face was familiar, but whose name I couldn’t have remembered even if my life depended on it, bent down to sweep up my bag with one arm.

  ‘Thank you,’ I whispered back to him, as the situation I was in and its probable ensuing magnitude started to play on my mind.

  Once he was back upright, still holding onto my bag, he used his other hand to take a gentle but secure hold on my arm. With apprehension building up inside of me I let him begin to guide me to wherever his boss had demanded he should take me. I walked along beside him, taking two steps to each one of his enormous great strides with my head cast down in shame. My eyes followed the brightly coloured carpet as it twirled and danced ahead of me in its bright reds and golds. The casinos were all the same in Vegas, brightly coloured with flashing lights to tempt you in. They promised you everything and once they’d taken all you had to give, they spat you out like the trash you were.

  And here I was, the trash.

  Suddenly, the toes of my worn-out black shoes hit the gold coloured metal edging strip of the carpet. We had reached the hard wood of one of the many walkways that threaded themselves through the casino and had strangely come to a complete standstill. I lifted my head to try to work out why and heard a gasp leave my mouth as I saw two of Barzini’s henchmen being walked out of the casino by several of Morello’s security.

  What had I been thinking?

  It was an unwritten rule, or perhaps it was written down somewhere in the “mafia handbook,” that other families didn’t enter the property of their rivals. Even a nobody like me understood that. I grasped what had very nearly just happened and knew that it would all have been down to me and my stupidity. I owed Barzini so much money that his men had taken the decision to follow me in here. God knows what would have become of me if they’d managed to lay their hands on me before the huge man stood next to me had. Luckily for me it seemed, I’d been seen by the security and rescued.

  I knew my time to pay up had run out two days ago and Barzini wanted what he was owed. An involuntary shiver ran down my back at just what my fate could have been at their hands, or worse still the blackmail they could have demanded from my brother Brody. Although, I still couldn’t believe Barzini had allowed his men to enter one of Morello’s casinos, because Nico’s reputation preceded him, and he must have taken into account the sort of trouble that could erupt between him and a Morello.

  As soon as the security guy holding on to me was certain that Barzini’s men had seen us together as they passed us on their way out of the building, he started to move again and walked us towards a bank of elevators. As we walked, in my shame I faced the truth. The problem was I hadn’t been thinking properly again for the last few months. My stomach turned over in terror at the realisation I hadn’t a clue how to conduct myself anymore in real life. My gambling was so far out of control, I was now a liability to anyone who knew me.

  The elevator doors opened on a whoosh and we stepped inside. The doors closed and only then did the large man with me press his thumb onto the security panel. The elevator ascended quickly.

  ‘Is Mr. Morello aware that I’m here?’ My voice was hesitant as I asked the question that I already knew the answer to. But the compulsion to break the silence between the two of us was strong. I felt uncomfortable that he knew just what a sorry excuse for a human being I was, and I needed the conversation between me and the nameless stranger to try to bridge the gap between us.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, offering me only the one word.

  The doors of the elevator opened and instinctively I wrapped my arms around myself, before stepping out to follow him.

  ‘This way,’ he politely offered, holding out his hand as he directed me off to the left. He needn’t have bothered, as I’m sure he remembered that I’d already done the walk of shame before.

  * * *

  ‘Go in, Mr. Morello is expecting you.’

  I put my hand out towards the door handle, but before I could open the door to whatever my fate was, I turned back to him, feeling the need to at least thank him for making sure I had been kept safe this evening.

  ‘Thank you… Hmmm…’

  ‘It’s Franco.’

  ‘Thank you, Franco.’

  ‘It was the Boss’s orders, nothing to do with me, Ma’am,’ he replied brusquely as he turned to walk away, back to the elevator that had delivered us.

  I turned back towards the closed black door and placed a shaking hand onto the brushed silver handle. Taking in a deep breath, I began to hesitantly place downward pressure onto it.

  ‘Come in, Barbara,’ came a deep, demanding voice reverberating through a tiny speaker set above the door.

  Of course, he would know I was standing here.

  I looked up at where his voice had come from and noticed a camera at the same time. I tentatively offered the camera a small smile and pushed the door open wide enough for me to walk through. In my peripheral view, to the left I could see the large frame of Nico Morello sat behind his enormous desk. Unable, in my shame, to make eye contact with him yet, I turned around quickly to push the door closed behind me. The door was heavy and I knew instantly that it would have closed by itself, but I needed those few seconds to compose myself.

  The catch clicking into place made every nerve in my body jump.

  ‘Take a seat, Barbara.’ The deep, brash voice that only minutes ago was demanding I enter his lair, had taken on a slightly gentler tone.

  ‘Thank you, Mr. Morello.’ Still without looking at him, I moved myself into position and sat down gratefully onto the chair in front of his desk.

  ‘So, let’s get straight down to it, shall we? What does Barzini want from you?’

  The question he had just projected into the room was now hanging between us. I swallowed deeply, hoping to clear the sudden constriction that the interrogative and fear-provoking question had caused.

  With no words seemingly available to me at the moment, I continued to look down at my hands. I could only guess what a complete mess I looked to him. My body was in an utter state of panic and had been for at least the last few days, if not weeks. I hadn’t slept properly in forever and the dark lines under my eyes could no longer be effectively covered up with make-up. My cheap uniform clothes were beginning to hang off me and it was only because Pearl was feeding me once a day that I was actually eating anything at all.

  ‘I…I.’ I tried to answer him, but no words were coming out of my mouth. I lifted one of my clammy hands up from my
lap and placed it to my throat. Over the top of his desk my eyes finally found his dark brown orbs and I watched as alarm spread over his face. He stood up suddenly, sending his chair crashing into the wall behind him.

  My vision went blurry and my view changed as I fell.

  I felt a pain in my shoulder as the world went black around me.

  Chapter Six

  Barbara

  ‘She’s awake, Boss.’ I heard a male voice speaking over the top of me and then the same voice spoke again. ‘Hello, Miss Daniels.’

  Slowly, the world came back into view. I swept my eyes down myself and noticed I was lying down on a dark coloured, uncomfortable couch. Moving my eyes, but not my head, I took in the room with its light grey walls and solid, heavy-looking black furniture.

  Morello’s office.

  An older man, who was smartly dressed in a dark grey suit. was stood next to where I was lying, holding my wrist in one hand and looking at his watch.

  ‘You’re safe… you don’t need to panic… you fainted.’

  ‘I’ve never fainted before,’ I voiced to myself and to anyone else who was listening.

  ‘Well you’re either not very well or have just had a shock,’ he replied.

  ‘Luca you can leave us now.’ A deep booming voice filled the room.

  A smile spread over the older man’s face and he placed my arm back down onto my white shirt and released my wrist. I instinctively placed my hands together and started rubbing my thumb over the hand that the stranger had been holding, trying to offer myself a modicum of comfort. Staring up at the ceiling I sighed out loud, unable to hold in my disappointment in myself, then slowly I started to move my head as I tried to search out my dark-eyed interrogator. The door clicking shut behind Luca as he left on his boss’s orders ramped up my heart rate as I waited for Nico to speak again.