Arjen
In three days, I was marrying a woman I didn’t know for reasons that weren’t honorable. However, I had allowed myself to believe she could bring out the best in me. What was it about her that gripped my attention? Her natural beauty, the energy she gave off, and her quiet charm were wonderful attributes she possessed, but none of those things explained why I liked her.
There wasn’t a love connection and I doubted there would be. Only because I was convinced that I was not capable of producing the emotion. Hopefully, Desiree would be the one to lull the stubborn sentiment from my cold heart.
Would we ever have a normal relationship? Hell no. However, with Desiree, I pictured becoming a better version of myself. My smile refused to melt away as I drove to meet Raymond Evans. When he had presented the idea of uniting our operations, I was hesitant until he suggested Desiree.
A Vallin-Evans union would strengthen any gaps that lay between our personal and business relations. The alliance would be further strengthened when my brother married Desiree’s cousin. I had never met Mecca Evans, but if she was anything like my pretty little fiancée, Khane was in for a treat.
Raymond Evans’ reason for offering up his daughter was a plausible one. He preferred her being under Vallin protection if our illegal dealings landed her in danger. She would also be backed by a force called the Ferali Syndicate, our organization.
I’d had a thorough background investigation conducted on her, uncovering information on a kidnapping that had her in the hands of the infamous Diamond-back Crew for two weeks. Although, she had always been a good girl, she had been born into a world of chaos that she’d learned to navigate and live in.
The knowledge that she was no stranger to danger caused my respect for her to grow. She had been stabbed in the back and almost died, and had been caught in the middle of a drive-by that had left five members of the Black Saints dead. She was the kind of woman I needed in my life as she had been exposed to the horrors my lifestyle was capable of producing.
Whether she accepted it or not, Desiree would always be a sitting duck because of her family. Danger was a permanent fixture in my life, but I had the means and connections to provide a higher level of protection if danger came anywhere near her.
* * *
The meetingwith Raymond had been short and brief. I’d handed him ten million in a mix of cash, and a wire transfer, and he had given me his blessing to marry his daughter. The next time I was set to see him would be at our wedding.
Once word spread of my marriage, Raymond and I would discuss plans to strengthen our business enterprises and exterminate the rat problem he was upfront in informing me that he was facing and fighting. With our merger, eyes from our side of the fence could reach across and help Raymond with his issues.
My phone buzzed, calling my attention as I drove back to my house. A glance in the rearview showed the dark gray Yukon driven by Hunter, who shadowed me wherever I went. I was confident that there was another Yukon lurking and driven by Cass, scanning, and protecting my back.
The two men had been guarding me since I had taken control, nearly seven years ago now. They had more-than earned their roles as my permanent protection as they had stopped several assassination attempts on my life. Although Hunter and Cass had earned a certain level of trust, my brother, Khane, who had saved my neck more times than I could count, was the only person that I trusted implicitly.
“Hello,” I answered after a quick swipe over the shiny face of my phone. The female voice poured through my car’s speakers and had recognition sliding home immediately.
We supplied arms to many high-stakes clients that included certain areas of the government and many crime families. I was responsible for supplying most of the west coast and centrally located areas from California to Washington, Arizona, and to my state of Colorado.
We never poached for business outside our region as there were rules in our syndicate that came with a death sentence if broken. Besides, there was enough money to go around, and I’d learned that the real money was in securing contracts with government agencies.
“Hello, Arjen. I have an urgent update for you.” The voice belonged to Denise, assistant to the head of our organization, Bishop. When you heard from Denise, she was speaking directly for Bishop, so you listened.
“Bishop would like to do a workshop. I’ll send out your meeting location a few hours before you fly out tomorrow. There are urgent updates that we don’t believe can wait,” she informed.
“Thank you. I’ll look for the update,” I replied. “Have a good day,” I said before hanging up. When Bishop called, it didn’t matter what you were doing, you dropped it all and went.
Workshops were a way of keeping the enterprise in tiptop shape. We weren’t going to know where in the world we were going until we got there. Denise would call with a meet location to a private airport, and you were on a plane a few hours later.
The organization invested time and money in collecting intel from various agencies and law enforcement officials, and we would be provided the latest in tactics that had the propensity of hurting the arms business.
We would gain the latest updates on new weapons created anywhere on the planet. We would be handed case files of investigations being conducted that might have a link, direct or other, of any of us in the organization. Events were planned, presenting new weapons and live fire demonstrations.
Going to workshops kept you safe, kept you a step ahead of the law, and more informed than most law agencies since we were gaining a collection of information from around the world. Bishop was simply known as Bishop. No one had ever seen him. My father had dealt with him for over twenty years, and after my father’s downfall, I had been dealing with him since I was twenty-three.
A workshop could pop up once a year or three times a year, depending on the urgency of information that had been gathered. With a workshop popping up a few days before my wedding, it would have to be put on hold until my return.
* * *
“Hey. What’s up?”Khane answered on the first ring.
“Hey, little brother. What are you doing?” I asked, although I knew he was probably knee-deep into killing some unlucky soul. He hated it when I called him, little brother. It humanized him when he preferred living up to the beastly version of himself that the rest of society had adopted.
“I’m cleaning shit out of the bed of my truck.”
“Do I even want to know the details?” My nose wrinkled at the idea.