Her expression changed and I could tell my words brought a specific instance to her mind. “Yeah. Stressful.”
I was so consumed with Avion, that I did something I rarely did and stopped paying attention to my surroundings. For this reason, Milli managed to get all the way standing behind me without me noticing. I just barely noticed him out of the corner of my eye before he tapped me on the shoulder.
“This is interesting,” he said, eyeing Avion, so he clearly recognized her. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’ve managed to arrange that meeting you requested.”
“You got caught,” Avion said. “Had to be one of us.”
It was frustrating to be sure. I realized that I had gone to the party with a specific goal in mind, but I didn’t want to be done speaking with Avion. If I could just get her number, I could resume work later, but I suddenly found myself without the time. Part of me thought that she honestly could be the one, true, perfect sub. I couldn’t just walk away from her.
“What a shame that we can’t resume this delightful conversation,” I said.
She nodded. “Quite.”
Milli was lingering behind me and I could feel his heat on my back, so I gave up. I was just going to have to hope she was still there when I returned. Hopefully, because she was Curtis’ daughter, she’d be forced to stay at the party as long as him, and so long as he was in a meeting with me, she’d still be at the party.
So I hoped.
“Well, thank you for spending your time with me. I hope our paths cross again soon,” I said.
She offered me a kind, but dismissive smile. “I’d welcome it.”
Begrudgingly, I got up from the bar and followed Milli away. Almost as soon as I cleared the guests standing right near the bar, I locked eyes with Vincent and Anton Narzand who were standing shoulder-to-shoulder at the bar along the opposite wall. I nodded my head and Vincent raised his glass, but both of them had narrowed gazes and I could tell they were probably already wondering why I was there.
It hadn’t really crossed my mind when I was speaking with Avion, but given that she was a Narzand, her relationship to her brothers was far more concerning to me than her relationship with her father if I was truly going to go after her. Curtis couldn’t hurt a fly even if he wanted to, but the Narzand brothers were ruthless and dangerous.
They held political offices to protect themselves while they turned the New York City underground inside out with underhanded tactics and disloyal charm. They were known for lying straight to people’s faces and stabbing them in the back yet, and still, people sought them out for their needs. They didn’t have a niche, but rather dipped their toes into any valuable market they could get their hands on. They’d siphoned off clientele from my own neck of the woods, though I was in a rare subsect of crime with politicians who needed money and knew they couldn’t ask the Narzands for it, so my personal business hadn’t been affected.
Even if my father couldn’t say the same.
“The Narzand brothers, huh?” I said.
“Your favorites,” Milli said. “Cutting it a little fast and loose flirting with their sister.”
“At the risk of embarrassing myself, I can admit that I didn’t know that’s who she was until halfway into the conversation. She’s single-handedly the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life. That she shares a gene pool with them is unbearable to think about,” I said.
Milli just chuckled and shook his head. “Your hatred clouds your judgment. Half the reason the Narzands have people eating out of the palms of their hands is because of their looks. Thankfully, they seem to have taken after their late mother as opposed to their father.”
“Speaking of which,” I said as we sifted through the party guests, “how white did his face turn when he saw you.”
“Eggshell,” Milli responded. “Didn’t put up a fight though. I told him that it’d be in his best interest to speak with you and see what kind of compromises could be made. He asked that I ensure we don’t exercise any violence.”
I side-eyed him. “What’d you tell him.”
“I told him I’d ensure thatyounever laid a hand on him.”
I growled. As a note, I wasn’t an overly violent person, but exerting my power to communicate my seriousness was something I never shied away from.
Milli just liked to wreck shit from time to time.
His little play on words ensured that he would be the one who got to have a little fun today, which was irritating, but I had to commend the innovation, and if it got Curtis in a room alone rather than hitting the bricks with my half a mil, then I wasn’t going to complain.
Towards the back of the rooftop party were a few glass-encased rooms that could be used for enjoying the rooftop atmosphere without necessarily being outside. New York winters were frigid but beautiful, so I imagined Punk wanted to provide a way to enjoy the splendor without freezing to death.
Because the rooms weren’t being actively used, most of the party guests were pretty far from the isolated corner, apart from a few people who’d drifted out to some of the empty chairs around the outside of the party. There was still a good fifty feet or more between the room I could see Curtis sitting in and the nearest party guest and given that it was a security office at the end of the day, I was certain the glass was bulletproof and sound resistant and probably had shades inside.
Which was really all I needed.
Milli opened the door to the room, and Curtis, who was already sweating bullets where he was sitting on one of the sofas surrounding a center worktable, doubled in nervousness. His blond hair was falling in his face and his eyes looked as if he just barely managed to pick the lock on his cage and got caught at the last second.
