I head to the home gym where Eddie is already working out with the weights.
“Morning, boss.”
“Morning. Anything I need to know?”
I take the bench beside him and attach my weights, and he pushes up and nods, reaching for the water, draining the glass with relish.
“How long have you been here?” I raise my eyes, knowing that man never sleeps.
“Thirty minutes, but I ran for twenty of them.”
He jerks his head toward the treadmill, and knowing Eddie, it was set for a punishing workout.
He is the fittest man I know and the most powerful. He is also a master strategist, a bastard with no emotion and a calculating mind that I admire. Eddie is all about the business, and to my knowledge, he sleeps alone, preferring to screw whores in sex clubs for his physical needs, at the BDSM clubs we own.
“Morgan hasn’t moved from the Astoria. She had room service and never left her room all night.”
“Anything else?”
“No, but she has an interesting neighbor who, as it happens, has an adjoining room.”
“Not the penthouse?”
We share a look because I would have thought that a woman as rich as Morgan currently is, would demand the best. Not an adjoining room on the lower levels in a corridor along with many other rooms.
“No, which was her first mistake.”
Eddie rolls his eyes, and it causes me to smile because he is meticulous in his planning and will consider this sloppy.
“Who is it?”
“Raphael Demitri.”
I let his words sink in as my mind powers into overload.
“Fuck.”
“Houston, we have a problem.” Eddie says with a cunning smile and I must agree with him.
Raphael is the most evil bastard I have had the unfortunate pleasure of meeting on several occasions. I wouldn’t trust him with a puppy, let alone a woman like Morgan.
“So, they are working together, an item perhaps?”
“Working – an item is doubtful as Raphael prefers his conquests young and male.”
“Business then.”
My mind is racing because Raphael deals in people, and I wouldn’t have thought that was Morgan’s thing.
“Any intelligence on that?”
Eddie nods, wiping the sweat from his brow with a hand towel.
“Word on the street is Raphael is in the frame with the authorities. His usual payoffs have been replaced with adepartment that is made up of officials who aren’t as open to corruption. Career-minded individuals who are intent on bringing him down and the heat is intense, causing him to abandon his operation until he discovers a hold on his aggressors.”
“Will he find any?”
I’m aware that Raphael uses intimidation to control and if the officials have any skeletons they wish to hide, he will expose them and use them against his persecutors. He hasn’t survived this long in the jungle without knowing how it works, and this will be a temporary blip on his radar.
