Authors: Lora Leigh
Stalking into the breakfast room nearly an hour later, he
found Diego at the breakfast table. Just what he
needed that morning, a healthy dose of dear old pop.
"Ah, good morning, Ian." A smile creased Diego's
swarthy face as he laid his forearms on the table and
regarded him with something resembling pride. "I trust
you slept well?"
Could his morning get any worse?
"Morning, pop." It was the most disrespectful
title Ian could come up with. It was the one thing that had
earned him his stepfather's ire when he used it.
John Richards wasn't a man to stand on ceremony, but he did
demand respect, and he earned it. Ian
could call him John or Dad, his choice, John had informed
him. But call him pop again and he would
show Ian a pop he wouldn't forget. Ian almost smiled at the
memory.
Diego frowned. He didn't like the title any more than John
Richards had.
" 'Father' would be a much better greeting,"
Diego informed him, not for the first time.
"Too stiff." Ian moved to the sideboard, piled
his plate high with fluffy scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon,
and toast. For all his faults, Diego had an excellent cook,
and she seemed to have grown fond of Ian.
"'Father' sounds like something from the
fifties," he continued, passing over the fruit and various sweets
the cook had laid out as he turned and moved to the
glass-topped breakfast table.
Sunlight spilled through the open doors and tall windows
that surrounded the room as Ian took his seat
and let the little dark-haired maid pour his coffee.
"Thanks, Liss." He smiled as she moved back.
"You are welcome, Mr. Fuentes." Her lilting
English was a little shy, but Ian had learned early just where
this little cat's loyalties lay. And they weren't with him.
"Set the coffee on the table, Liss," he directed
her. "And then you can leave."
She looked to Diego. The obvious cut was irritating.
"Liss, he didn't give you the order, I did," he
told her softly, meeting her dark eyes with the promise of
retaliation in his own gaze if she didn't do as ordered.
"Of course, Mr. Fuentes." She set the silver pot
in the center of the table, between him and Diego, and
then headed for the wide double doors, the short skirt of
her uniform swishing.
"Close the doors behind you," he ordered, before
nodding to Mendez to follow her out. The other man
would stand guard at the doors. Deke and another bodyguard
stood guard at the patio and the fourth
had positioned himself at the door leading to the kitchen.
Only Deke knew his true purpose there, but the other three
were slowly proving their loyalty to Ian
rather than the cartel.
"I do not like how you require that I serve
myself," Diego snapped as he reach for the coffeepot and
refilled his cup. "I have the servants for a
reason."
"And I'm always amazed that they survive it." Ian
grunted at the thought of the perversions the maids
shared with Diego. "But I see no reason to have to
kill one of them because they overheard the wrong
thing."
"You should not discuss business with breakfast,"
Diego instructed him. "It is bad for the digestion."
"Right now, business is bad for health, period."
Ian sipped at his coffee as he stared back at Diego. "I'm
canceling our relationship with the Radacchio consortium.
My men were hijacked on the way to the
delivery point and I lost two of them. We nearly lost the
shipment."
The report of the lost coca shipment hadn't been as bad as
learning that the two men he had lost were
handpicked agents he had put in place. That pissed him off.
"Sorrell?" Diego narrowed his eyes thoughtfully
as he watched Ian.
Sorrell was the reason Ian was there. The elusive
terrorist, as yet unidentified, had managed to slip
through every net that several countries and more than a
dozen law enforcement agencies had attempted
to use to catch him.
"That's what I suspect." Ian shrugged as he dug
into his breakfast. "Valence Radacchio claims otherwise,
but the strike was well prepared and centered where
security should have been the tightest. They
dropped the ball, and rather than getting embroiled in a
blood feud with them, I'd rather sever ties
instead."
"Valence has worked with me for many years,"
Diego mused. "He has always moved our product
through Colombia and onto the ships. If we sever this
relationship, we will be forced to forge a new one."
Ian shook his head. "We move our own product. Why use
a middleman when we have the necessary
manpower and the network to do it efficiently? It saves
time, money, and risks."
The product, of course, was drugs. Radacchio collected the
bales of cocaine from the processing
warehouses and transported it across the mountains to
waiting ships. From there, he delivered it to
various points to another drop-off where others then
collected it, broke it down, and shipped it to other
points.
Until Sorrell had begun hitting the processing warehouses.
The first thing Ian had done when he took
over the Fuentes business was to relocate the warehouses
and have his men deliver the goods to
Radacchio instead.
"Is Valence aligned with Sorrell, do you think? Or has
the bastard merely managed to obtain information
about our supply lines?"
Ian shook his head. "I don't know and I don't care.
But Radacchio knew the location of the former
warehouses. We changed our locations and began delivering
to them rather than having them pick up the
bales from us and the hijackings stopped. Now this strike?
I'm inclined to once again cut them out of the
loop. We'll see what happens then."
"He will not be pleased over this," Diego warned
him. "We pay him well for his consortium's work."
"Then he can find another client, one with a bit less
paranoia than it seems I possess." Ian's smile was
tight. "I don't have time for a drug war, Diego. We'll
do it my way first."
Diego's black eyes gleamed with excitement.
"The wars spice up life, Ian." Diego grinned with
all apparent anticipation. "They keep you on your toes."
"I'd been a ballet dancer if I wanted to dance on my
toes, pop," he said.
Diego sighed in regret. "Radacchio will demand a
meeting to discuss this."
"Then tell him he can talk to me. And that's another
thing; either I run this shit or I don't. Stay out of it.
Don't try to negotiate with Radacchio like you did the
Misserns last month. I won't be happy."
The announcement had an angry frown creasing Diego's face.
"What do you mean by this?" he burst out.
"Stay out of what business? Fuentes business? I remind
you, I am the Fuentes. It is my business."
Ian lifted his head and stared back at Diego silently.
Diego flinched as Ian stared back at him unblinkingly.
"I do not like this," he muttered. "I am not
so old that I cannot be a part of my own business any longer."
"You have your job."
"Bah. My job. It is no job to oversee the farms and
production of the coca. A child could do this."
"We have a deal," Ian reminded him, his voice
hard. "Don't fuck me over on it, old man, or I'll be gone
even faster than I made it here."
It wasn't an idle threat. If he couldn't control the
cartel, then Ian didn't have a hope in hell of drawing
Sorrell in. He knew it, and Diego knew it. To safeguard the
business from being forcibly taken by the
terrorist, Diego needed Ian. Ian needed control.
"You are hard, Ian." Diego sighed. "Harder
than even I believed. More so than my investigations into
you revealed."
"I'm a product of my childhood, pop," he bit out.
"Remember?"
Diego grimaced. His black eyes were, for the barest moment,
bleak with sorrow. It was a sorrow Ian
refused to acknowledge, even to himself. He didn't care
about Diego's past regrets, his hopes or his
dreams, no matter the illusion Ian allowed him that he did.
All he cared about was catching Sorrell and
delivering him and Diego Fuentes into the hands of justice.
Or, their heads on a platter. The latter if he
could get away with it.
"If I could go back, I would give my life to have
spared you that pain," Diego said softly, with apparent
sincerity.
"There's no going back." Ian shrugged. "Just
think, it made me hard enough to straighten your little world
out, pop. We haven't had a successful hijacking or a missed
load since I arrived."
"For a man who does not enjoy war, you shed enough
blood," Diego griped. "And refuse to allow me in
on the fun. I was pleased though. The agents of the U.S.
that you uncovered last month will steal no more
information from us, yes?"
The men he had killed had been perverted monsters posing as
American agents. They had worked for
the DEA, drawn their pay, and given just enough information
to make them viable. Until they tried to kill
Ian in the name of that bastard Sorrell.
Killing agents was something Ian preferred not to do, but
when a man had the barrel of a gun aiming in
his direction, he did what he had to.
"I have to head back to town this morning." Ian
glanced at his watch and grimaced. "I'm meeting one of
our lawyers at the casino. One of our Miami clubs seems to
be losing a tidy little profit. I want to know
why."
"Why did you not have him come here?" Diego
stared back at him in angry confusion. "You do not go
running like a hound to the underlings, Ian. They come to
you."
"Good idea, pop." He sneered. "Let's just
throw a party for all of them so they can scope out our
security and hit the house in the dead of night. Why the
hell do you think so many of your friends end up
dying in their beds from an enemy bullet?"
Diego's expression flickered with anger. "I am aware
of the risks to this life. I have lived many years and
survived many attempts against mine. We are Fuentes. We do
not hide and we do not scrape to those
beneath us by observing their rules. They come to us."
"And Sorrell has managed to turn some of your most
loyal associates his way simply because of your
arrogance," Ian snapped. "Let's not make this
harder than it already is. I'll be back in a few hours. Until
then, try to stay out of trouble."
Diego hated nothing more than being talked to as though he
were a child, and though Ian tempered it,
there was nothing he delighted in more. He was afforded
very few pleasures in this little game he was
playing and he took them where he could.
"Should I consider myself under house arrest while we
are at it?" Diego burst out angrily as Ian made to
leave the room. "You will not tell me who I may or may
not invite into my house."
Ian shrugged. "Invite them all for all I care. I don't
sleep deep enough for anyone to slip into my room
unawares. You do, though. I'd remember that."
He opened the doors and stepped into the foyer before Diego
could say more.
"Mendez, have Deke and the others join us
outside," he ordered the waiting bodyguard. "We have a
lawyer to meet."
Ian strode through the marbled foyer to the front door,
almost grinning as the houseman rushed to open
the wide doors ahead of him.
He stepped onto the sunlit portico, gazing at the ferns,
palms, and swaying greenery that surrounded the
large circular driveway and sheltered the paved road that
led from the gated entrance. The entire
property was enclosed by a ten-foot stone wall that Ian had
had wired for security. Guards were posted
around the property, and the additional training Ian had
insisted on had paid off several times when