He lifts one shoulder in a very gallic, continental gesture. “I’m the son of a billionaire that people believe is some kind of Mafia don, just because we come from an old Italian family. I take old, abandoned neighborhoods and demolish them to make way for my buildings. Folks keep telling me I’m gentrifying ghettos and driving away from the real heart and soul of the communities. I’m part of the point-oh-oh-one percent, Ms. Lee. Of course, people all over the world are trying to kill me.”
I open my mouth to respond to him, but find I’ve got nothing to say. I close it just as someone comes knocking on the door. “Hold that thought,” he tells me before getting up to answer it.
“Wait!” A nightmare vision of my boss opening the door and getting his head blasted with a shotgun plays like a CCTV video in my mind’s eye. I run up to him and karate-chop his hand away from the doorknob. “Dude, come on. Someone is trying to kill you. Don’t you have bodyguards? Where are they?”
“Room service,” a bored voice on the other side of the door calls out.
“Give me some money.” I hold out my hand.
Without a word, he pulls out his wallet and puts a twenty-dollar bill on my palm.
“All right, hold on.” I drop on my knees and push the twenty bucks under the door. “Just leave the stuff, please. Thank you.”
“Thank you for the tip, ma’am. Good night!” says a more energetic voice in response.
I stare at my boss, who just crosses his arms over his chest and sighs. “I can’t believe you were about to open the door and get your head blown off, man. Go text your bodyguards, will you? You scare me. You’d be dead now if it weren’t for me.” I grab the poker from the fireplace stand and return to the door. “I’m gonna open the door and grab the stuff.” I give him the poker. “If there’s a killer on the other side, bash their brains in.”
Once again, his eyebrows draw together in the middle, and he studies me as though he doesn’t know what to make of me. “You seem to have put a lot of thought into this, Ms. Lee.”
“I told you, I watch a lot of TV. Get ready. I don’t want to get my head blown off.”
“Wait, why don’t I open the door, and you hold the poker?”
“Mr. San Giovanni, I’m trying to save your life, all right? I’m pretty sure you have a lot more to contribute to the world than I do, so I don’t mind doing this for you.”
“Our food is going to get cold while we stand here and deliberate. I ordered cheeseburgers, waffles, and fried chicken.”
I squint at him. "Aren’t you an escargot or caviar type of dude? What the hell do you know about chicken and waffles?”
“I didn’t realize until today that reverse snobbery exists, Ms. Lee,” he says with a smirk. “You don’t think I know about the ‘common people’ just because I grew up attending English boarding schools?”
“Oh, yeah, I’m sure you’ve learned all about the ‘common people’ from all those Anthony Bourdain shows when he’d travel to third-world countries to experience their cuisines,” I say, rolling my eyes. I don’t know why I’m openly antagonizing this man. Hell, according to the Feds, he’s a stone-cold serial killer, but they’re choosing not to do anything about it. “Step back, Prince Harry. I’ll open the door.”
Holding my breath and getting back down on my knees, I wrap my hand around the doorknob and twist it to the side before slowly opening the door. I’m on my knees because I figure it’d be safer down here since the killer would most likely blast at head-level. I poke my head out of the crack I made, looking up and down the corridor before pulling in the cart with a few dishes covered by silver domes along with champagne in a bucket of ice. A table cloth covers the cart, so I can’t see if there’s anything on the bottom. I grab the poker from my boss and use it to push aside the table cloth. Nothing but a rack with two more bottles of champagne.
The bossman closes the door and pushes the cart further into the suite. “You can relax, ace. We’re safe for now. I texted my boys, and they’re currently patrolling this floor. I also asked them to do a background check on Rebecca Kane.”
I scoff. “Bare minimum, boss, jeez. Where would you be without me?”
He removes the silver domes from the dishes and, sure enough, reveals that he ordered a smorgasbord of random stuff. Fried chicken, french fries, waffles, cheeseburgers, cut fruit, and… chocolate cake. “I wasn’t sure what you wanted to eat, so I just got a bunch of stuff.”
I raise my eyebrows. I wonder if I should tell him I ate about three pounds of cocktail shrimp and charged it on the company credit card. Ah, what the hell. I can join him for dinner, I guess. I did ruin his date with that anorexic ginger. But is it my fault that she turned out to be a Russian assassin?
No… no, it isn’t.
He picks up a remote control and presses a button, which brings down a giant projection screen from the ceiling, maybe about nine feet long. On it are a bunch of streaming services like Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu, Disney Plus, HBO, Apple TV, and many others.
There is only one bed in this suite, and it looks bigger than a California king. I’m thinking four adults can sleep comfortably on it side by side vertically.
“What do you want to watch?”
“Uh…” The unexpected intimacy of being in an enclosed location with this man who is… just too virile and… manly to be ignored, activates my shyness mode. I don’t date a lot. Other than the aforementioned Russian ex-boyfriend, I haven’t had much experience with men, so this is a little weird for me. “I thought you wanted to shower or something because you said you smell like a World War II first aid kit.”
“Right.” He nods as though he were just remembering. “Would you like some champagne? Ms. Lee, if you’re planning to escape while I take my shower, let me disabuse you of that notion now. We do have a lot of things to talk about, so I’ve got my men stationed all over this floor. If you try to sneak out, they will only bring you back here.”
“You can’t keep me with you, sir. The police frown upon instances of men kidnapping women against their will.”
“Ms. Lee, a person can’t be kidnapped if they provide their consent. Naturally, all instances of kidnapping are against someone’s will,” he tells me patiently, as though speaking to an idiot child. He opens the bottle of champagne with a soft pop, pours a serving into a fluted glass, and hands it over to me. “Relax. Eat some chicken. Fries. Waffles. Go nuts. I’m going to take a shower. Please don’t try to leave. Oh, and save me some chocolate cake.”