Even with his wide, white, welcoming smile in his tanned, handsome face, he terrified me.
This was the first really bad guy the Angels had come into direct contact with (except for the pedophile Raye stun gunned, but that was before my Angel time), and as attractive as he was, I wasn’t sure this was a good thing.
“Titus,” he said, his accent apparent even on Titus’s name.
Titus went to him, dropped the bag on the poker table, and they did that man-hug, pounding-backs, arm-wrestling thing.
When they broke, Titus stepped aside, and Dimitri looked to us, his face got soft, his eyes got shrewd, and he said, “So these are the Angels.”
While Titus did introductions (with our street names), I realized he’d smoothed our way with Dimitri because his henchman didn’t wait for a call to come in. He was completely unsurprised Titus showed, and he knew the Angels, not some member of Dex’s gang, were coming.
“All the generations of the Angels,” Dimitri noted when Titus was done (and yeah, we’d taken street names from the TV show and movies, and if you knew enough Charlie’s Angels lore, you’d know who were the veterans and who were the new recruits by what names we had).
“Good to meet you, Dimitri,” Raye said, and she looked and sounded a lot calmer than I felt.
“You as well, kroska,” Dimitri murmured, watching her closely.
“We don’t want to take a lot of your time. We just wanted you to have that.” Raye dipped her head to the bag. “And get our friend free of this situation.”
“Spasibo,” he replied. “Bonus, never had such attractive bagmen.”
It was at this point, Titus put all our lives on the line by sharing, “They wanna know if they can take about ten, fifteen K so their guy can get his house painted.”
Dimitri tilted his head in a manner that was both ridiculously attractive and spine-chillingly scary before he turned to us.
“It’s good to look out for our friends.”
Okay.
Phew.
At least he didn’t take offense to that.
He then waved his hand magnanimously over the bag. “Fifteen K works for me.”
I would guess so, since we’d just delivered a quarter of a million, and he did nothing to earn it except probably get one of his lieutenants to set up a meet and then show up at the appointed time in his ostentatious lair.
Titus nodded to us.
I went forward with Luna and opened the bag.
My God.
That was a lot of cash.
I didn’t have time to marvel at what that amount of money in cash looked like, since we had an immediate conundrum, seeing as the cash bundles were strapped like the banks held them. This meant each bundle was a hundred one-hundred-dollar bills, so fifteen K meant we’d have to separate one, and I could tell neither Luna nor I wanted to ask if Dimitri minded if we did that.
“Take two,” Dimitri said gregariously. “I’m feeling generous tonight.”
We looked at him.
He grinned.
It was glamorous and it sent cold singing through my veins.
We took two.
Luna shoved them in her waistband.
