The Hook Page 12

  She’d murmured the sexiest “Pleasure to meet you” he’d ever heard when she’d enclosed his hand in both of hers for a shake. He’d liked that. Her ass had swayed in a zebra-print skirt when she’d hurried up from the table to fix his coffee on one of her boss’s directives. He’d really liked that. And in the guest services corridor, he heading to the men’s room and she leaving the ladies’ room, she’d cut into his path and kissed him—and he’d let it happen. Only when her hand slid from his chest down toward his crotch did he interrupt her, because her effect on him had been too weak and he’d known without going through the motions of trying to force arousal that, ultimately, they’d both be left unsatisfied.

  Magdalene would’ve joined the parade of women who’d fantasized, tried to gratify, or were hungry for commitment, only to wind up pissed off when he didn’t measure up to expectation. So he’d rejected her as considerately as he could, but she still had sulked through the rest of the business dinner, hanging on to a daiquiri.

  “No, thanks, Magdalene,” he said, declining the drink and any ideas she might be entertaining about a do-over of their last encounter. “A bottle of water’s fine.”

  She removed the cap from a bottle and presented it with a smile as she gave his suit a once-over. “I’m working closely with Attorney Constant today. Your brother, Jeremiah, hasn’t arrived yet. If you’ll follow me, I’ll escort you to the conference room upstairs.”

  Milo walked with her to a flight of stairs, and as they ascended, she said, “Milo, I feel I should warn you.”

  He stopped, looked over his shoulder. “About?”

  “The group is stepping back from your father’s case. That’s why Attorney Constant called you and your brother. Where things stand now, the Henderson property and the majority of his remaining assets will be forfeited if they’re connected to the game fixing. The Nevada Gaming Commission has produced enough evidence of unregulated gambling activity that your godfather has been trying to pass off as his casino’s profits. The casino’s licensed and the side sports wagering, of course, wasn’t.” Magdalene’s expression turned earnest. “The NFL’s conducting an independent investigation of all his moves as owner, but there are enough former players and staff coming forward, very quietly, to make the initial charges stick. One of those players is Jimar Fray.”

  Jimar Fray was the former defensive Villain whose cash-bought illegal tackle had sent Milo into surgery. After a personal foul penalty and an expertly prepared public statement apologizing for conduct that injured an opponent, he’d slipped out of the league and hadn’t found a job with another team. After rehabbing himself, Milo hadn’t come for Jimar. He’d on some level accepted the incident as gameplay and had wanted to move on—until his father had admitted to paying Jimar to stop Number 85’s block and rush assaults on the field by any means necessary. Jimar continued to lie low, and Milo was waiting him out.

  But now… “He’s out of hiding?”

  “He’s talking now.”

  “Constant and Spencer want to wash their hands, huh?”

  “With no one to defend, they have to cut their losses. Your godfather’s casino’s on the block, too, since it headquartered the gambling ring. Allegedly. Just waiting for convictions. And, uh, it doesn’t exactly help that Luca split while the feds and the NFL have him under investigation. Pretty sure he’s looking at federal custody and losing all his toys.” She smoothed her hand over his sleeve. “I’m telling you this so you aren’t blindsided.”

  “Why are you telling me this, and not my brother?”

  “You were the man at that business dinner sitting at his father’s side and ready to fight for him. Your brother wasn’t.”

  No, because Jeremiah was smart. A former Villains athletic trainer, he’d come to a point where trying to reclaim the Villains hadn’t seemed worth it, and now he was gunning for a PhD and had his former rival, Waverly Greer, cheering him on at every checkpoint.

  The damn kid had had it right all along. Yeah, that made him smart.

  “Why else are you debriefing me?” Milo asked Magdalene when her hand remained on his sleeve.

  “I …” The hand fell away. “I took a huge risk, telling you all this, putting myself out there like that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of a stupid crush. Because I thought I might have a good-looking football player to myself for a little while. Because the attorneys are dropping Luca and I thought that if I didn’t act fast, I’d lose the nerve to show you that I like you.”

  And she wants you to like her, dumbass. On a shallow level, he did. But below the surface was emptiness.

  “I’m not here because I want to be liked,” he said, continuing up the stairs. “I’m here for business. And you wouldn’t want me, Magdalene.”

  “How do you know, without giving me a chance? One kiss isn’t enough to show you the possibilities.”

  “It is, though. One kiss is enough.” One impulsive kiss that shouldn’t have happened but was inevitable—like a tragedy destined to screw up what had once made sense—had been all he’d needed on Cora Island with Izzie. One touch of her mouth had convinced him that he’d needed more and urged him on until he’d gotten to the point where he couldn’t quit replaying it as though he were reviewing films and trying to discern where he’d botched a game-winning reception. “Another kiss isn’t going to happen for us.”

  “What changed?” she asked.

  Izzie had changed. But so had he. And they were meeting in the middle, figuring themselves out as they figured out each other. How fucking problematic was that? “I can’t hold up more than a professional relationship with you. And hey, going back to what you told me, after this meeting, we won’t have even that. If a football player’s who you’re after, this city’s got a team full of them. Take a page from the men who sign your paycheck and cut your losses.”

  Magdalene clicked her teeth together. “Message clear, then. Are you going to request a different assistant? I’m sure Attorneys Constant and Spencer will be accommodating, but I hope you’ll reconsider reporting my…conduct.”

  “No. Let’s finish this.”

  Together they strode into a glass-walled center office finished in black, silver, and white. Assembled were Chuck Constant and Waylon Spencer. The men had enough respect to spare him the toothy grins and claps on the back before gesturing to a leather seat across from them. At the head of the table Magdalene sat before a stack of files and a tablet.

  When Jeremiah entered, frowning in a way that reminded Milo of himself, Magdalene closed the door, resumed her seat, and said nothing, as her bosses launched into their resignation announcement. The men weren’t in a sharing mood. They pressured him for information he didn’t have, complained about paddling knee-deep into Luca’s case only to be screwed over, and ultimately announced that when—or if—he returned to Nevada, he’d need to find himself new representation.

  Luca’s case was a sinking ship, and now that his lawyers had figured out that abandoning it was their only route to a lifeboat, the people who were left behind to drown were Milo and his brother.

  “We didn’t invite you here just to say ‘we’re done, get out,’” said Chuck, motioning for his assistant to fork over a file. “Milo, Jeremiah, the management of Futuro needs to be addressed.”

  Milo glanced across the table at the assistant, but she continued to sit silently, feigning extreme interest in her files as she had with a daiquiri months ago. “Management of Futuro? Isn’t that tied into Dad’s—”

  “Got to stop you there,” the attorney said. “There are a few technicalities you boys aren’t aware of. Anne Tarantino took ownership of Luca’s eyewear company decades ago. He’d apparently given it to her as a gift, and for whatever reason they continued to let you believe he was managing it. She took a few precautions, setting up trusts and savings bonds, that sort of thing, all right? But look, it was arranged for an independent entity to silently manage the company in the event o
f her death. Should Luca die, become physically or mentally incapacitated—you get the point—the responsibility to maintain Futuro as a privately held company, take it public, or dissolve it entirely would fall on the two of you equally. It’s protection.”

  “Our father’s MIA,” Jeremiah said. “His mind is fucked, but who can confirm whether he’s incapacitated at all if he can’t be found?”

  The attorney flipped pages, frowned down at the paperwork. “After a twelve-month waiting period, ownership would transfer. If you want to expedite the process, you’ll find out where he’s hiding. If you want to go for insanity—I’ll say it one more time—you’ll find out—”

  “We get it,” Milo said. But he wasn’t concerned with hanging on to a family-owned company. If Luca had ever seen in himself the mental slippage that others could see, then he’d had to consider the insanity route. What did he have to gain by vanishing and leaving behind all of his possessions?

  Again, the thought occurred that Antony Grimaldi was involved.

  Outside the conference room, Milo and his brother walked in silence. Jeremiah wore his anger quietly, but the gritty despair screamed in the restless clenching of his fists and the jumping lightning streak of a vein above one eyebrow. “I didn’t look after Dad. She asked me to.”

  “Mom?”

  “Yeah. She asked me to do that, then we lost her, then I took some steps back. I didn’t walk into his warfare. You did that, moving back into the house.”

  “A houseful of staff made stuff convenient when I was trying to get back on my feet,” Milo said.

  “Nah, you can hang on to the ‘good son’ badge, Milo. He loved you for taking care of the family. He was proud of you.”

  “His love and his pride put me on a surgeon’s table. I don’t want to hear all that. I want to find him. I’m in limbo, on hold like fucking Futuro. I have to face him.”

  “What if you can’t face him?” Jeremiah stopped him in the hall, his voice low. “We never said this, but it’s been three weeks now and I can’t sleep through a damn night anymore because I’m thinking that this is more than just a man on the run. Waverly sits up at night with me, trying to convince me that I can’t start grieving that man until I know he’s really gone.”

  A week had passed since Milo had traveled to the Seychelles. Izzie had nothing to report. Neither had Remy, nor Thora Whit. But that didn’t mean his father was dead. People said dead men tell no tales. They didn’t know Luca Tarantino. In the flesh he wreaked trouble. Beyond the grave he’d be merciless.

  “Go home,” Milo said to his brother. “Go home and kiss your woman and tell her she’s right. You can’t grieve him yet.”

  Jeremiah hesitated, shooting a hand through his short hair. “Don’t say you’re in limbo. Dad said that shit right after Mom died, and you know what he did.”

  “Married, divorced, married, divorced.”

  “Yeah. Don’t do that. Don’t get married without warning me first.” He looked him in the eye then. “’Cause I’m giving you that respect now. I’m marrying Waverly.”

  Milo could’ve asked if Jeremiah knew he was certain he could trust her, could’ve advised him to hold off on account of what he’d been told about her DEA friend’s involvement in forcing open the Pandora’s box that held all kinds of diseased secrets. Instead, he said, “She sits up with you at night when you’re stressing. Damn straight, you’re going to marry her.”

  “I’m moving on. You compared yourself to Futuro—so take it. You and I don’t need the money, but your life’s in intermission and it’s time to change that.”

  Milo had grown his NFL income and hadn’t been as compromised by bad business endeavors as many former players ended up. His finance analyst suggested he capitalize on the circumstances of his retirement and open a physical therapy center. His agent kept coming to him with commentator offers, but the man now knew Milo wanted to be back on the field. He wanted his feet back on the turf, and not even his brother knew his undertakings and that an NFL comeback might be the only sense of rightness that’d help him sleep through the night.

  No, he wouldn’t be moving on from professional football, but he’d be moving forward with his life.

  “I need to go,” he said to Jeremiah. “I know a woman who needs to move on.”

  ***

  The bushes were different. That was the only physical change Milo detected about the Tarantino family mansion when he parked his truck in the driveway. They’d been cut down to circles and slim cylinder shapes, and no longer had the uniqueness or, shit, personality, they’d had when a certain woman had lived here.

  All while Izzie was trying to sculpt the house to become her home, he’d battled her. He’d resisted her influence, tried to ignore her sexiness, concerned himself with the fact that she’d been wrong for his father. He should’ve realized his father had been wrong for her.

  Though he kept his entry keys, Milo entered the house as though he were a guest. It wasn’t his home. Nadia, who greeted him graciously at the door, with her uniform pressed and spotless as though she still had an employer to answer to, wasn’t his housekeeper. But he’d come here to change that.

  “What can I do for you?” Nadia asked, allowing him to drift from one room to the next.

  He almost stepped into the room that held the baby grand piano, almost walked right in and started playing. He almost forgot, just that suddenly, that this place wasn’t his home and the piano wasn’t his to touch. “You can come work for me,” he said to her, facing her in time to see the crease of wrinkles deepen on her forehead. “I have a condo that’s half the size of this house and only half as clean. You can save me, Nadia.”

  She smiled. “Milo, I’m not leaving until I’m forced out. The house still belongs to your father.”

  “It won’t for long. I want to see you taken care of.”

  “It’s about loyalty.”

  “God, Nadia, the era’s ended. Dad’s not your boss anymore.”

  The housekeeper settled her hands on his cheeks, patted the bristly stubble with the heels of her hands. “You have this beard, but you’re looking like him now. You and Luca wear tiredness the same. My, but both so handsome.” She sighed, releasing him. “My loyalty isn’t to him. It’s to Anne.”

  “Mom wouldn’t have asked you to stay here forever.”

  “Of course not. She was my friend, and so smart.”

  So smart. “Did she tell you about Futuro?”

  “There were two heads of household when she was alive. She stood beside your father, not behind him.” Nadia finally nodded her confirmation. “I knew she controlled the company and wanted a soft place for you and Jeremiah to land, if it came to that. But I don’t think it was because she didn’t trust her husband.”

  “He gambled—hell, he taught Jeremiah and me cards and had Antony schooling us in high-risk table games. If he was hooked all along, he curbed it for Mom.”

  “Suppose he turned to it after she died. That’s what my heart says, and I feel sorry for him. Grief took too much from that man.”

  “Are you still here because of sympathy?”

  “No, I told you—for Anne. She asked me to help her maintain a home for her family. I’m still doing that. You left before, Milo, and didn’t come back to stay until after the injury. But you did come back.”

  “The house is wrapped up in Dad’s mess, Nadia. You will have to leave.”

  “Until then, I’m staying. Let me do this for Anne. I want to know that I made every effort to keep my word to her. Okay, Milo?”

  “All right.”

  She turned toward the kitchen. “Now get in here and eat something. You’re all muscle-bound now, but you’re not eating enough. Or sleeping well. I can tell, you know. I’ve a good mind to feed you turkey so you can rest.”

  “Is that the tryptophan thing you’re talking about? Yeah, that doesn’t work on me. I can eat turkey, if you got it, but I’m still going to be wide-awake and
bothering the hell out of you until you get out of this place.”

  Nadia sighed. “I don’t have turkey, smartass. That was a bluff.”

  “So I called your bluff and you’ve got nothing to back it up?” He tsked. “Tell you what. I’ll settle for that box you and the others packed up for Izzie Phillips. You still have it?”

  “That woman?” Nadia made a rude noise, pretended to spit. “Ah, I understand. The house has been feeling off since Luca brought her here, and now I know why it still does. Bad aura. Yes, her things are in a box off the main hall.”

  “Hey, Nadia.”

  “Yes?”

  “We can’t blame her for what went wrong. I thought I could, but I was wrong as fuck for it.”

  Without comment, the housekeeper left the kitchen then came back a moment later with a packing box that contained random stuff. It wasn’t clothes or jewelry, but a scatter of items from a mini-flashlight to a palm tree keychain. Pawing through, discovering a tiny wooden tic-tac-toe game, he thought about how Izzie had looked standing on Villa Soleil’s veranda with candlelight touching her and that incredible “Should I smile or shouldn’t I?” smirk.

  Prying into her privacy and taking the fast-track to learn about her past, Milo had cheated himself out getting to know her. He deserved that sense of loss.

  Milo’s phone vibrated and he pulled it from his pocket.

  Izzie Phillips. And, according to her text message, she needed a favor.

  ***

  Twenty-four hours hadn’t passed yet, but Izzie considered her friend Toya missing. The evening before Toya had swept out of the apartment, kissing her son on the head and thanking Izzie for agreeing to babysit while she took care of something.

  Izzie hadn’t pressed her for particulars. Something as an answer to “What are you going out for?” and somewhere as an answer to “Where are you going?” comprised their vague ways of saying “It’s none of your business and I don’t feel like sharing.” She’d gone out for somethings twice over the past week, gathering camera-phone photos to send to the bloggers, who’d forgiven her Los Angeles fail and had offered her the opportunity to redeem herself with fresh material.