The Negotiator Read online

  His arm rose in the air, snapping, grabbing the attention of the female crew member—young, pretty, perky, like all men seemed to have on their yachts.

  I hated snappers.

  As someone who once did a short stint waiting tables, where I learned quite quickly that people could be complete asshats, I felt my lip immediately curl when someone had the audacity to snap at service staff.

  "The lady would like something to drink," he told the woman who moved over toward his side, but stayed silent, awaiting instructions.

  Both their gazes went to me.

  "Anything non-alcoholic. In a sealed bottle," I added pointedly.

  To that, the man's lips curved up. Not a smile. A cocky smirk of sorts if it was anything.

  "You think I'd drug you?" he asked, brow raising lazily.

  "I think I woke up on a yacht off the coast of Santorini with cottonmouth, a sledgehammer in my brain, and no recollection of how I got here. I've been drugged. And you are here. What other conclusions should I have come to?"

  Alright, so soft and sweet seemed out of my wheelhouse with how off-kilter I was feeling. Whether that was due to the drugs still working their way out of my system, or this man across from me, was anyone's guess.

  "Allow me to clarify. I have never needed to drug a woman to get what I need from her," he told me, folding forward, resting his arms on his thighs, never breaking eye-contact.

  Need.

  Not want.

  Need.

  It was a small, yet profound distinction.

  "Thank you," I told the woman who returned with a bottle of orange juice. I twisted off the lid, took a small sip instead of the long gulp I really wanted. "And what is it that you need from me?" I asked.

  "Miller! You ravishing creature, you!" Fenway's voice called from behind me, all lightness and ease.

  Which, as you can imagine, set my teeth on edge as he moved in beside me, dropping down, wrapping an arm around my shoulders, giving my whole body a playful jostle that only managed to make my stomach lurch, making me glad I hadn't chugged the orange juice after all.

  "Fenway," I growled, shooting daggers at his stupidly good-looking face. His smile didn't falter in the least.

  "You always have slept late, but I finally went below deck to take a nap, you were asleep so long."

  "Gee, maybe that has something to do with the drugs in my system."

  Fenway, as was Fenway's nature, completely ignored that. As a general rule, he avoided anything heavy or serious. It would almost be easy to accept him at face-value if you thought that was all there was, if he was just some rich kid who became a richer adult who had a head full of feathers and a liver full of top-shelf gin.

  But Fenway was smart. Almost scary smart at times. And a hell of a lot more perceptive than he would ever let on. Likely out of fear that if you knew he had other sides to him, you would expect anything other than a good time from him.

  "I see you are sharing your abundant charm with my good friend here," he segued instead, giving the man a smile that was not returned.

  I wasn't sure this man knew how to smile. Surely, it would look out of place on his stern face.

  "We have yet to be acquainted," the handsome stranger informed Fenway, tone pointed.

  "Well, that won't do. This is my good friend Miller." Everyone was Fenway's 'good friend'. "She has another name, but she refuses to tell it to me. So we have to call her Miller."

  I never gave anyone my first name. I was sure my coworkers knew it, but not a single one dared to call me it to my face.

  Let's just say there are some names that did not sound badass at all. And my job tended to require badassery. So I kept it simple. Last name only.

  "You're not done, Fenway," I reminded him when he fell silent.

  "Right. I figured you might already be familiar with my friend here," Fenway said, sounding surprised I clearly wasn't. "This is Christopher," he told me. "Christopher Adamos."

  Christopher Adamos?

  This was Christopher Adamos?

  I didn't know him by sight.

  But I damn sure knew him by reputation.

  Shit.

  This was not going to be good.

  TWO

  Miller

  "So you have heard of me," Christopher concluded, making me realize this was one of the very rare times in life when my poker face failed me.

  God, I just needed some coffee. And a couple ibuprofen. My freaking memories back from the last twenty-four hours.

  Then I would be back on my game.

  The last kind of person you wanted to be off your game around was a man like Christopher Adamos.

  "It is part of my job to know just about every major player in the criminal world, Mr. Adamos."

  "I'm a businessman."

  "Businessmen don't deal in blackmailing."

  "Clearly," he said, his lips doing that smile that was not a smile thing once again, "you have not been around many businessmen. There's not a noble one to be found."

  "They also don't make their fortunes off of the collapse of economies."

  "Of course they do," he corrected. "Why else do your businessmen become richer during your recessions?"

  Damnit he was right.

  And I was just not in the right place to have a discussion about morals. Not that I even wanted to have that discussion. I was not that pain in the ass, judgmental person everyone hated to be around. I'd done plenty of sketchy things in my life. I was friends with those who had done far worse. I frequently spent my time with some of the worst men and women the world had to offer.

  I had no reason to judge Christopher Adamos, despite some of the rumors I'd heard about his ruthlessness.

  I was just in a mood.

  And wearing pants when I didn't want to be.

  "Anyone interested in stopping for some frappes?" Fenway asked, completely oblivious to the charged air between the others present. Or, more likely than not, just ignoring it.

  "I want to go home, Fenway."

  "You just have a headache," he brushed me off, reaching into his pocket, tossing a bottle of pills at me.

  "I don't want Percocet, Fenway. I want you to call a helicopter, get me to the closest airport, and get me home."

  "I'm afraid I can't do that, beautiful."

  For the record, he was not apologetic in the least.

  "What are you talking about? This is your yacht. You can do whatever you want."

  "You'd think so, wouldn't you?" he asked, shrugging as he sent a wink to one of the girls on the crew as she dropped four glasses of what looked like whiskey down on the table in front of us. "But I'm not in charge here right now. I just provided the little boat."

  His little boat cost my house times about thirty.

  There was nothing little about it.

  My gaze went to the glasses again as Christopher leaned forward, wrapping his giant hand around one.

  Four.

  Four glasses.

  "Tell Bellamy to get his ass up here right now," I demanded.

  "Well, when you ask so nicely," Bellamy's smooth voice said from my side, moving past me to drop down across from us.

  Even on a yacht off the coast of Greece, he was in an impeccable gray suit with crisp creases from pressing still visible.

  He leaned forward, pouring the contents of one of the glasses into the one in front of him, holding the empty one up. "The lady prefers tequila," he explained to the girl who rushed up to take it. He took the full glass, taking a sip, leaning back. Casual as can be.

  "I don't want a drink, Bellamy. I want to go home."

  "See how ungrateful my coworkers are?" he asked, addressing Christopher. "I fly them in my private jet, take them aboard my friend's yacht. Bring them to Greece. And they reject my hospitality."

  "You left off the part about drugging me and dragging me against my will," I reminded him.

  "Minor details," he said shrugging. But as he lifted his glass to take another sip, there was a devilish smirk
on his lips.

  "I didn't even get a mini pig out of the deal," I mumbled to myself, leaning back, crossing my arms over my chest, looking very much like a petulant child. And not caring.

  "You want a piglet?" Fenway asked, considering. "I shall fill your house with them when we get back to the States."

  See, the thing was, Fenway would do exactly that. Because he was all about the grand gestures without stopping to consider the repercussions of those actions.

  "Fenway, listen to me," I said, holding a palm up at him. "It is very important that you do not fill my house with pigs, okay? I never get to be there. I don't have the time for pets."

  "I hear they can be trained to use a litter box like a cat," Bellamy mused.

  "Oh my God, we are not having this discussion like we are having a perfectly normal social call."

  "We are, though," Fenway insisted.

  When my tequila came, I reached for it, tucking it between my legs as I went ahead and opened the bottle Fenway had given me. If I was going to get out on top of this situation, I needed to stop the banging in my temples. The tequila? Well, that was just because I wasn't sure it would be possible to deal with these two at the same time without it.

  "They're Percocet," Fenway insisted when I grabbed a pill, holding it up, squinting at the markings.

  "Right, because the two of you have proven so trustworthy," I shot back, deciding it was the real deal, popping it, chasing it with a long sip of the tequila that burned in all the right ways.

  "So... frappe?" Fenway pressed.

  "Yeah. Because I have plans to get off a boat in a foreign country with druggers, kidnappers, and Greece's biggest crime lord."

  "Sounds like a normal Tuesday night for you, sweetheart," Bellamy said, shrugging.

  "Except that is for work. This is not work. And since it is not work, I want to be home. In my bed. In my very clean house."

  "Finn's been on a job, babe," Bellamy told me, dashing some of my hopes. "Christ, don't look so heartbroken. I will hire someone to clean your place while we're away."

  "It won't be the same."

  "No," he agreed, nodding, likely having woken up to that heavy chemical smell when Finn had been unable to sleep and came over uninvited, knowing that literally every square inch of his home had been scrubbed. "It wouldn't. But it's better than nothing."

  "Nothing is fine. Seeing as I will be home by tomorrow morning."

  "Well..." Fenway said, looking shady.

  "No, Fenway. There is no 'well...' about this. Send me home. Actually, why the hell am I even talking to you guys? I'll have Quin handle this," I declared, decision made, getting to my feet.

  "Well..." Fenway said again.

  "Well what, Fenway?" I hissed.

  "Well, you could call Quin. If you had your cell phone."

  "Where's my cell, Bellamy?" I demanded, feeling my jaw clench.

  "I believe you accidentally left it in New Jersey."

  "I didn't leave anything anywhere. Since I had no part in coming here."

  "And yet... here you are. And there it is. Half the world away."

  I knew better than to argue with Bellamy. His stubbornness matched my own.

  Turning, I stared down Fenway. "Give me your phone, Fenway."

  "I can't do that."

  "You want me to make you?"

  "You're pretty sexy when you're riled," he shot back, wiggling his eyebrows.

  "Phone." He balked, not brave enough to defy what was clearly Bellamy's grand plan. My gaze went to someone who I intrinsically knew would always be able to defy anyone. "May I use your phone, Mr. Adamos?" I asked, letting a little bit of honey slip into my voice, the ability to do so while pissed was thanks to years of honing the skill to get the outcome I desired.

  "You'd be willing to sully your unpolluted hands with my blackmailing, crime lord phone?"

  "Miller have a seat," Bellamy invited. "Let us explain why we are all here."

  "Aside from you being a psychopath?" I asked, dropping down, needing answers if I wasn't going to be able to call Quin.

  "Yes, love, aside from that," he agreed, sending me a smile.

  "So why am I here?" I asked.

  "Business," Bellamy told me.

  "If this was official business, Quin would have sent me here," I countered.

  "Yes, well Quin would not be a fan of this particular job."

  "And yet..." I prompted.

  "Christopher is an old friend of mine."

  "Half the world is an old friend of yours."

  "That can't be right," he mused. "It has to be at least two-thirds. I'm a likable guy."

  "That is debatable. But, Bells, I work for Quin. I don't do private contract work. For a multitude of reasons. Not the least of them being that Quin provides me safety when dealing with shady characters," I said, letting my gaze slide toward Christopher.

  "We're right here, doll," Bellamy assured me.

  "Yeah, now. But what happens when one of the Victoria's Secret models throws a house party?"

  "Clearly, they would take precedent," he told me, lips twitching.

  "You wouldn't want us to miss out on that fun, would you?" Fenway asked, putting a hand over his heart.

  "I think you have had more than enough fun to last five lifetimes, Fenway. Anyway, the answer is no. I am not doing contract work for you or your friends, Bells. Mr. Adamos, I'm sorry if Bellamy made you promises without first consulting me. That was an error in judgement on his part. If you'd like, I know several other very good negotiators that I can put you in contact with."

  "Very good," he said, pinning me with that penetrating gaze of his. "I don't want pretty good. I want the best. My fellow crime lords inform me that you're the best."

  That was humor, right?

  It certainly sounded like it, even if he delivered it without a hint of amusement.

  "He's right you know," Fenway piped in. "You are the best."

  "Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence, Fenway. But I am not doing this."

  "You don't even know what the job is," Bellamy told me.

  "Or how much it pays," Fenway added.

  As a general rule, Fenway didn't often talk money. I guess because he had more of it than God, he never felt like it was something worth speaking of. So the fact that he was, I figured, meant the payment for this prospective job would be significantly more than my usual pay. And I made good money working for Quin. Hazard pay, if you will. Since I was generally the one who dealt with the hot heads, trying to make them all come to an agreement that no party was completely happy with.

  "This isn't about the money," I insisted. And I was incredibly lucky and thankful that I was at a point in my life where I could say that and mean it. I was comfortable. Thanks to Quin and some careful investments and a lot of saving, since I was never in one place long enough to really spend a lot of money, I knew that—should Quin decide he no longer needed me tomorrow—I could live a comfortable, though in no means lavish, life without any other means of income should I decide not to work again.

  "Two," Christopher said, gaze unblinking.

  Two-hundred-thousand was a fair bit more than I made on my average job. Tempting if maybe they'd contacted me the right way. But this was the principle of the thing.

  "Million," Christopher added when he realized I clearly misunderstood him.

  That was, well, that was more than a little tempting; I won't lie.

  That kind of money? That would make me more than comfortable for the rest of my life.

  But if I let this pass, even just this one time for this one giant sum of money, it would let Bellamy and Fenway think that they could do crap like this and get away with it—that money could solve issues even of morality.

  "For that kind of money, you could have all my competitors at once. Which, combined, would give you the best."

  "You're not going to turn your nose up at two million dollars, are you?" Bellamy asked, brows furrowing.

  While Fenway could be a bit out
of touch with things like money, Bellamy was a little more in touch with how much money could impact people's lives.

  "I am."

  "For what reason?" Christopher asked.

  "It's the principle of the thing."

  "Three."

  "Mr. Adamos," I said, even though my belly was starting to wobble at the idea of turning down money like that, "I am not trying to shoo you up. I am not going to take this job."

  To that, he slowly bent forward again, eyes unblinking, tone deadly serious. "Four."

  Jesus.

  Could I actually turn down that kind of money? Just because Bellamy and Fenway had fucked up the introductions?

  "We've got your attention now," Bellamy said, his smirk of the victorious sort. Like he knew the decision had been all but made.

  "Good. We can get some frappes now, then," Fenway said, smiling big, giving one of the crew members a nod.

  Not more than a moment later, the yacht started moving, taking us closer to shore.

  "You'll take the job," Christopher said. Not asked. Said.

  Because it was truly unfathomable that money like that could ever be turned down.

  "We haven't even discussed the job yet," I told him, moving to sit, only to be hauled back up by Fenway as he got to his feet.

  "There will be time for that. In a little cafe where I fell in love with the most intoxicating of creatures."

  "For the night only," I added.

  "Naturally," he agreed, ignoring my eye roll.

  "Fine. We can talk it over frappes," I agreed, deciding caffeine was very much needed to balance out the drugs, tequila, and now the Percocet. If I was going to take this job, I wanted to make sure I had my wits about me while making the decision.

  "Do you want to go raid the spare closet downstairs to slip into something that won't make you sweaty and miserable in five minutes when we're on land?" Fenway asked.

  Yes, Fenway was the sort of man who kept clothing in a closet for women in case they should need to change clothes. I never much understood the practice until this moment.

  "Yeah, I'll do that," I agreed. "Excuse me," I said, turning, and making my way below deck.