That accent, though. It wouldn’t have sounded out of place at one of those fancy dinners onDownton Abbey, very posh and polished. His refined table manners matched. He might not have been British, but he’d grown up there, or at least spent a lot of time among their upper crust. Expat? Family fleeing something in their homeland? I wasn’t sure how knowing that could help me, but I noted it anyway. Sometimes, even the smallest, most insignificant facts could prove vital.
“I don’t have a Broadway theater on board,” Alexei replied with a shrug before sipping his wine. “I do have a home theater room with a large selection of films and even a few game consoles. I’ll give you the grand tour after we eat, if you’d like.”
Ever since he’d stalked up to my table at the bar, he’d held himself so nonchalantly. His relaxed posture and familiar tone when speaking were an act – and a good one. It displayed his confidence, the belief he had in his control and power. Given how the day had ended up so far, it wasn’t a false front either.
It rankled me now. He spoke like we were just two people on a romantic sunset dinner date and not kidnapper and kidnapee. If I were honest with myself – and I tried to be – his fanciful little play appeared seductively attractive, as did he.
If Alexei had approached me like an average guy instead of abducting me, he could have gotten me this far willingly. Of course, there was nothing average about the man sitting across from me, impassive tanned face golden in the fading sunlight. He was exactly the type of guy that worried me, kept me from dating, knowing I’d already given up my choice of a husband.
Handsome, powerful, rich, and as I’d been discovering the more he spoke, playfully intelligent – he was the whole package and the exact type of guy I’d choose to go all the way with… if he hadn’t kidnapped me. His play-acting, pretending this was a simple date tempted me. Pleasant lies were always the easiest to believe. I couldn’t allow that to happen.
“Why don’t we cut to the quick here,” I said, punctuating it by clanking my fork against the plate as I set it down. “You already told me what you want: me, but just to hurt my father.”
Alexei’s face remained as flat and emotionless as ever. He didn’t even flinch at the unexpected noise from my fork. His eyes twitched at the mention of my father. He opened his mouth to respond but I beat him to it.
“Then you said you wanted a private conversation before kidnapping me.” I held my arms up and looked from side to side. “We’re miles away from anyone else but your chef, captain and whatever other crew you have on this bucket. Let’s have that conversation now, shall we?”
“If you insist.” He sighed and set his fork down gently before he leaned back in his chair. “You just completed your degree in International Business at Columbia, yes? That’s what you were celebrating with this trip. What’s your next step, where do you see your career going?”
I glared at him, wishing my eyes held lasers, but the only heat came from my cheeks. It shouldn’t have surprised me that he’d know where I went to school and what I studied. He found me on this trip, after all; he’d obviously been tracking my movements somehow. That second question brought up the possibility that he knew a lot more, maybe including my inevitable marriage to one of my father’s associates. Probing him to learn the extent of his knowledge would only offer him confirmation.
“I know I’m going to come off like some spoiled rich kid but you can probably relate,” I replied with a false shrug and a waved a hand toward the floor-to-ceiling tinted glass wall of to the interior of the yacht, “but I was going to take a gap year, find myself, you know.”
“Oh, that’ll be so nice for you.” He paused, the hint of a smirk curling his lips. “Fond memories before your father marries you off to some over-the-hill low-rent gangster?”
Of course, he knew. My laser-less glare failed to explode his head yet again. He held his hands up, palms forward in surrender, but chuckled as his head shook back and forth.
“Hey, I’m the good guy here,” he said with a grin but his capitulation turned into a shrug. “I’m offering you a way out – an alternative in a much prettier package.”
“Did you just call yourself pretty?” I snorted before I could stop myself.
It was easier to be snide, to hit back at him rather than give his argument any more thought. A man who abducted you and pickpocketed your phone couldn’t be trusted, no matter what.
“I like alliteration.” He tilted his head, frowning, “And you are avoiding the issue. Your father’s already approached some of his counterparts in the Buffalo, Chicago and St. Louis families about a match, probably more. I’m not omnipresent. He’s selling you as the perfect Mafia wife, a beautiful, demure little housewife who won’t ask questions or speak out of turn when the menfolk start talking about business.”
My lips remained firmly pressed together, jaw clenched. I counted my breath, four beats inhale, two held, four beats exhale. Alexei had probably seen enough of my reaction to gauge just how hard he had hit me, not that he let it show. His expression remained as if carved in smooth tanned granite.
I dealt with that eventual wedding like I did death. It would happen sometime in the future, but it was best not to dwell on it. Both firmly lay in the ‘thoughts I’d rather not have stuck in my head.’ I shuffled them to the side, easy until someone like Alexei forced me to focus on those nuptials.
“You know what I want out of a wife, what I’d expect from you?” he asked, and following his precedent, continued without waiting for a response. “I’d want you to be happy. If that included a career, well, as long as it doesn’t threaten my interests, you’d be free to do what you wanted, use that degree instead of becoming a baby factory for some two bit don in a third tier city.”
“How woke of you,” I snapped. “Girl power and all that, but I think they’d revoke your feminist card for holding me against my will as part of your effort to seduce me.”
“This has nothing to do with feminism,” he groaned and wiped his face, rubbing his eyes. My needling was finally getting to him. “I just hate seeing wasted talent. Nothing against being a homemaker, but it’s not for everyone. I see that drive in you, the ambition. If you’d been born a boy, you might have even succeeded in your father’s plans and brought the Commission back, if that was what you wanted to do.”
I stared into his eyes and that flat blank expression he hid himself behind. It gave nothing away, no shifting pupils or sweat dotting the temples to tell me he had lied or even concealed the truth with half measures. Everyone had a tell, but only time and experience exposed them. I didn’t trust him, either way. With any luck, I’d find a way out of this before I spent the time needed to learn his tells.
“Would you like to see my files on your potential grooms?” Alexei asked.
He leaned to the side and pulled a dark green, near black attaché case from the deck. Once on the table, he clicked the latches and spun it sideways before opening it. Several manila folders sat in one of the pockets but other than that, the case was completely empty. Alexei snatched the folders and closed the case. He leaned back, opening the first.
“Tommy Di Pozzo?” Alexei read before his eye shot up and widened. “Oh, do you know him?”
I didn’t answer, didn’t have to. Alexei had seen a reaction regardless, probably a shudder that slipped past my control. The Di Pozzos ran Buffalo. During prohibition, they’d been a force with all the rum running across the lake from Canada. Every year since 1933, their take got smaller. They’d be little more than a social club in a decade, old men fondly reminiscing about their youth, when they were still people to be feared.
“I’m talking Junior here,” he continued, flinching dramatically, “though that’s not much of an improvement. If your father chooses him, you’d better hope your children inherit your chin… and, well, everything else.”
Alexei flipped the folder toward me. I should have just left it there, showed the man I had no interest in what he knew but I wasn’t the type of person to ignore information. Besides, learning what my captor knew about my father’s organization and associates could only help me figure the man out better, counter him when the time came.
