Katja nods, smart enough to read the situation and not ask any further questions. She tells the girl at the counter, “Check Mr. Giannopoulos back into 1304 please. He’d like to extend his stay.”
Though rage is sizzling through me, I can’t help but find a level of amusement in the balls of this woman. This little vixen needs to be taught a lesson or two. My hand itches and my dick hardens at all the thoughts flooding in on how I’m going to do exactly that. She wants to play with the big boys? Well I’m about to show her what that truly means.
Chapter Eleven
VALENTINA
I can’t get out of the backseat of Jar Omar’s black sedan fast enough. The sound of the slamming car door followed by his driver speeding off into the late afternoon mid-town traffic finally allows me to let down my guard. Spending two hours listening to the Moroccan laying out the impossible obstacles laying in front of me had been draining.
This job is a shitshow. Every instinct I have is screaming at me to walk away now before I get in any deeper, but after taking a few cleansing breaths of cool fall air, reality smacks me upside the head to remind me how close to empty my bank account is getting. I don’t have the luxury of turning down a job this big, no matter how dangerous it might be.
Standing out on the sidewalk of my building isn’t going to solve anything. Pulling out the key to my apartment, I then punch in the four-digit entry code to my building and start the trek up the stairs. Once I have my door open, I throw the keys into my purse, take a few steps into the apartment and freeze.
It takes my brain a couple long seconds to identify the danger. Shoving my hand back into my purse, I take out my Glock, quickly lifting my arms to prepare to shoot.
While I was out, someone stole the knock off Van Gogh from the wall of my foyer, leaving the blank wall as an obvious sign of foul play.
“Who’s there?” I call out to a hopefully empty apartment. I’m grateful for my years working the streets of Boston. They’ve trained me well to hold my weapon steady as I listen for any movement.
Creeping forward, the cramped living/kitchen space comes into view. The late afternoon sun casts shadows and it takes me a moment to recognize that the Gustave Caillebotte knock-off of Paris Street, Rainy Day is also notably missing. That the small flat-screen TV directly below the empty place on the wall is still there confuses me. If this was a robbery, the thief should have known the mass-produced reprint was pretty much worthless.
My heart skips—my Seurat!
I rush through the empty room, not bothering to turn on the lights. My bedroom door is closed and my heart sinks. The bastard who robbed me had gone into my room which meant…
Turning the knob, I push the muzzle of my Glock through the gap, and slowly open the door until I get the confirmation that my most prized possession is gone.
Tears flood my eyes, making the empty frame where my priceless original of The Eiffel Tower had been when I’d left that morning blur in front of me. A sob escapes and it’s all I can do to move forward to finish the sweep of my apartment. Whoever did this had better pray they are already gone because I’d love nothing more than to pump a few bullets into the chest of the asshole.
It’s hard to hold down the panic I feel rising. Possessing my Seurat had been my personal symbol of success in the art world. It had not only been my first million-dollar theft, but it was also my nest egg. My rainy-day insurance. The one thing I owned I knew I could turn into easy cash in an emergency, not that I would ever part with it.
Only now I was parted with it.
The crush of grief I feel is warring with my internal fury, but I force both emotions down long enough to inspect the bathroom. It was the last place someone could hide. Hope flared. Maybe I’d come home in time to catch the bastard. Maybe I could exact my revenge.
Nothing could prepare me for the sight waiting when I opened the final door. For a minute I think that my eyes are playing tricks on me. Or maybe, this is all just a bad nightmare, because what I see feels like one of those moments of disorientation after waking up from a dream that made no sense.
My arms holding my Glock fall to my side as I step into the small bathroom, inching forward, trying to understand what I’m looking at.
Kneeling down in front of the tub, I reach out to run my fingers through the mound of sand completely filling my bathtub. My first thought is this is some kind of dangerous message the mafia might send as a warning—like a threat of being buried under soil, but that thought doesn’t match up with the rudimentary sandcastle built in the middle of the pile and it certainly didn’t mesh with the plastic children’s toy set of shovels, cups, and rakes laid across the surface of the odd sandbox.