Two

Barcelona, Spain
August 2015

Michael looked at the woman sitting next to him. Her name was Pia Cordova and he was going to kill her father.

“What’s the matter, baby?” Pia said in his ear, relying on proximity rather than volume to make herself heard over the frantic pulse of music that flooded the club’s VIP lounge. “Don’t you like me?” She gave the front of his shirt a light rake with her manicured nails. He imagined she was trying to turn him on, but she was doing a piss-poor job of it. He made himself look at her, forced a leering smile onto his face. She was beautiful, in a bleach-blond, fake-breast sort of way. The only child of one of Europe’s premier arms dealers. She’d have been his type a couple of years ago—eager to please and easy to forget.

These days he’d rather stick his dick in a bear trap.

As it was, he could barely look at her, let alone do what came next. A sharp kick was delivered to the bottom of his foot. He shot a glare at his partner. Ben had a woman in his lap and his tongue down her throat and still managed to give him a hey, asshole—get with the program look. Time to nut up and do his job.

He leaned into Pia and smiled. “Like isn’t really the word I’d use to describe how I’m feeling,” he said in heavily accented English. Nuzzling her neck, he pressed his lips to the tender spot behind her earlobe. “Let me get you a drink. Vodka?” He tilted his chin at her empty glass.

Her lips curved into a predatory smile as she took his hand, running it up her smooth, naked leg, pushing his fingers beyond her skirt’s too-short-to-be-decent hemline while she licked at his earlobe. “Getting me drunk isn’t necessary,” she purred.

With Ben still giving him the stink-eye, Michael forced his hand higher. “I want to take care of you …” His other hand caught her chin as he lowered his lips onto her open mouth, kissing her until she was splayed against the black leather couch they sat on, panting.

Standing, he grinned down at her for a moment before he turned and headed for the VIP’s private bar, shouldering his way in. He got the attention of the same bartender he’d been using all night—a petite blonde with a pixie cut and sly brown eyes—and held up two fingers. As soon as she saw him she nodded, continuing to mix the drink for the waitress who was waiting next to him.

“I thought it was you, but I was unsure.”

Michael secured a puzzled look on his face before turning. “Do I know you?” he said in the same thick German accent he’d been using all night, giving the man behind him a remote smile, his gaze straying to the long raised scar that slid down the side of his face into a hook near the corner of his mouth. It gave him a perverse satisfaction to know that the mark hadn’t faded over time.

The smile returned, causing the scar to crinkle. “Come on, I won’t ruin your game. I just wanted to say hello,” the man said. “It’s been too long.”

Not nearly long enough.

Michael looked past the young man in front of him. Two armed guards were standing a few yards away, and he smirked. “I see Daddy still won’t let you cross the street by yourself,” Michael said, sufficiently knocking the smug look off the man’s face. “What are you doing here, Estefan?”

“My father’s businesses have grown in your absence, Cartero,” Estefan said with another self-satisfied smile. “I am his second-in-command these days.”

“Good for you,” he said with a disinterested shrug—as if he hadn’t been keeping tabs on Alberto Reyes and his ever-growing reach. As if the idea of killing both Estefan and his goons wasn’t fighting to take precedence over the job he was currently working.

His bartender slid two drinks across the bar. A Kettle One and a water, both on the rocks. The water was marked with a lime wedge, but she tapped a manicured finger against its rim, just in case, and he smiled at her. Pia’s vodka had enough Rohypnol in it to tranquilize a horse.

Michael reached into the breast pocket of his suit to pull out a thick stack of bills held together with a wide silver clip. He peeled off a few hundred Euros. “Pour Mr. Second-in-Command whatever he wants—the rest is for you,” he said, picking up his drinks before he turned and looked Estefan full in the face and gave him a wink. “See you around, kid.”