A few days after Tristan dropped Colleen off at the Nice airport, he was taking afternoon hot chocolate on the middle deck of his yacht.
She would’ve been better off taking a private plane. He was going to insist next time.
One of the ship’s staff brought him his tea and biscuits, and Jian came bounding up the stairs. His ribs and shoulder had healed well. “I’ve rebooked your appointment with my tailor for tomorrow since we so rudely missed our appointment last month. I took the liberty of chartering a private plane to Milan because driving for three and a half hours seemed excessive. We’ll catch a helicopter to Nice from the heliport tomorrow at nine a.m.”
Tristan raised one eyebrow at him. “And if I had plans for tomorrow?”
“Nothing is more important than proper fashion, Mr. King.”
“Do we have to have another conversation about that Mr. King business? After all we’ve been through, it seems silly to stand on that kind of formality.”
“I prefer it, sir.”
Tristan shook his head. “How much did you make off the GameShack stock dividend?”
Jian raised one eyebrow. “Enough for a tidy down payment on a house nearby in France after Anjali and I are married in a few months, but not enough to start calling you by your given name.”
After Tristan drank his tea and listened to the seagulls shriek and the waves lap at the side of his yacht, he descended into his computer office and opened a secure video chat software for an appointment.
The call opened, and a mature woman with brilliant silver streaking her dark hair that draped in loose curls around her face answered. “Hello, Tristan.”
Her husky voice seemed kind, almost maternal, though a bit nasal from her New Yorker accent. A few laugh lines gathered at the corners of her eyes when she smiled at him.
Tristan drew his face into a similar smile. “Hello, Dr. Bell.”
She inclined her head almost affectionately. “Before we start, I have a quick update on your Butorin situation. The last few problematic members of that bratva have been eliminated. At this point, their leadership is scattered to various prisons around the world or eliminated. We absorbed anyone with interesting skills and adequate assurances into our organization. They won’t be a problem to you or Ms. Frost anymore.”
That, at least, was a relief. “Thank you, Dr. Bell.”
Somewhere in his head, the words Dr. Bell had the same ring as saying Godfather.
“Your information made it easier to mop up that competition, so it benefited both of us. Tell me about your progress this week.”
Tristan slid his notes into view on another screen. The brevity of these meetings was one of the reasons why Colleen hadn’t caught him yet. “I am continuing to refine the new computer program that produced the Butorin information for us, Anti-Anonymity. With the next iteration, we will be able to not only follow persons of interest but tag anyone they associate with and gain information on them, too. There will be an algorithm in place to determine the likelihood of whether these people are members of an organization that we are concerned with or mere casual contacts. For instance, let’s say a person frequents a particular coffee shop and prefers a certain barista to make their coffee. With a few contacts, the barista will be tagged. However, if the barista doesn’t associate with anyone else of interest to us for a pre-determined amount of time, they will be dropped from the algorithm to a very low level of surveillance unless something changes. That should reduce the noise in the next iteration of the program.”
“Excellent.”
“In addition, the Brainiac serpent has been released and is arbitraging the futures market for your organization. It is both returning the difference to your bank accounts and creating false trails to account for those funds of yours with less than legal origins.”
Mary Varvara Bell smiled at him, pressing her full lips together. “Oh, that’s so nice, Tristan. I’m so glad you decided to come on board with us. You’re a valuable member of White Holdings, Inc.”
Tristan’s grieving heart pulled at the muscles of his chest like it had turned to lead. “It’s an honor to work with you, Dr. Bell.”