Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 141255 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 706(@200wpm)___ 565(@250wpm)___ 471(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141255 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 706(@200wpm)___ 565(@250wpm)___ 471(@300wpm)
Jimmy was a good fuckin’ guy and didn’t deserve to have his life cut short at twenty-six years old.
And what all the drama had put my brother and Tia through? It was enough to make me do my damnedest to avoid the same thing.
Tia made him better. I wanted a woman who’d make me wanna be better, too. I didn’t know if I’d ever get back to resembling who I was before Deb cheated, but after I got back from Tommy’s wedding I decided on a new era. I was gonna clean up my life.
New motto: man whore no more.
From then on, I wasn’t gonna waste my time with women who weren’t likeminded. I’d try to thaw my heart, but figured I’d probably have to settle because if she was wild like Deb, she probably wouldn’t want the picket fence. I wanted both, but it wasn’t likely so I’d pick picket fences and sensible bikini briefs over the garter belts and thongs if it came right down to it. It’d suck to settle but I’d already had the wild girl and that hadn’t worked out so if I had to settle, I had to.
Not long after we were back from Costa Rica, it was my birthday. We had a small family dinner with my sisters, my brother-in-law Eddy, my pop’s widow Lisa, and my nieces and nephews. But the next day, I found out what Pop had gotten me for my birthday.
I found out that Pop had procured a wife for me. She was almost 23, was a redhead like I’d jokingly requested in memory of my science lab partner who maybe would’ve had a better outcome for me than Deb. This girl was American, and she’d been in captivity for 2 years, trained to be the perfect slave. Part of the deal was that if I wanted, she’d be put in a thirty to sixty-day program to take her from slave material to wife material; some value-added transition service the resort offered for those who wanted their “possessions” to function flawlessly outside of the bedroom. I got the news via an associate of Pop’s, a lawyer I hadn’t met more than three or four times.
“Dario?” he asked when I answered my secure cell line. It was 6:30 in the fuckin’ morning.
“That’s me. Whoever this is, it’s 6:30 in the fuckin’ morning so this better be good.”
“Stan, Tom’s lawyer in Thailand. I’m at the airport, on my way to you. I need a meet. I’m arriving tomorrow night, your time. Where can we meet?”
“We can’t discuss whatever this is about on the phone when you get here?”
“Absolutely not.”
“It can’t wait until day after tomorrow?”
“If need be, but I’d prefer to speak to you sooner if possible.”
“You headin’ here for any other reason?”
“No.”
“Email your flight details to my receptionist. We’ll pick you up.” I gave him the email address.
I had no clue what this was about. Stan and my pop had a friendship that went back decades. I had shit to do, I was busy, but this sounded like something that needed my attention. Yet another axe about to fall, I could just feel it. But I had no idea how big that axe was until Stan arrived and spilled the beans about my birthday gift.
At 9:30 the next night, Dex, a buddy and someone who worked for us doing security and sensitive errands, brought Stan to my place, a condo downtown, just a five-minute walk from the Ferrano Enterprises office.
I told him to wait out front and to drive Stan back to his hotel afterwards. I poured Stan a drink and invited him to sit.
“I’m a busy man. I know you are as well. You spent almost a whole day on a plane to come here unannounced for something clearly pretty important. Lay it on me.”
“Your apartment? When was the last time it was swept?”
He was talking about surveillance devices.
“It’s clean,” I told him.
“Guaranteed?” he prodded.
I raised a brow at him. “You don’t know me real well, Stan, but if I say it’s clean, it’s clean. I do not talk out of my ass.”
“Apologies. There are a few matters we need to discuss about business ventures of Tom’s overseas that he had me help him with. I’ll need some direction in a few areas from you and your brother. On top of that and most pressing, your father, rest his soul, my sincere condolences, he bought something for you before he died and paid me handsomely to arrange it. He said it was a birthday gift. Happy belated. The gift is something less than above board, so I need to be cautious. Very cautious.”
I gave the guy the once-over. He was tall, thin, gray-haired, and 60ish with a receding hairline and a ruddy complexion. He looked totally respectable. He was anything but. He handled some shady-as-fuck shit in Thailand and that part of the world for my father. I didn’t know all of what they got up to, but we were finding out that Pop had a lot going on that he’d never briefed my brother or me about. He had a small import/export business and it was mostly a front for things that weren’t exactly legit and he dabbled in some not-so-legal areas in several countries. The good news was that there were off-shore accounts with a lot of dough left to me and my siblings. The bad news? Besides the fact that there were more unsavory businesses and relationships to end slash unload … was the news of what my birthday gift was.