“You don’t get a choice. You’re good at fixing things. Just come up with an idea and get someone else to act it out.” He shrugged. “Then you can go back to your little bar.”
I laughed. “I need more details. I need to know the people you’ve been speaking to.”
Ash’s stare was two million yards long. “At least buy me coffee before you fuck me up the arse.”
Because it really was going to be that pleasant.
I foundmy uncle at his villa, a sprawling building on mainly one level, with private steps down to the beach. He was sitting at a table, colouring in a picture with his granddaughter by marriage, Tilly-Anne. She was a snippet of a child, only three, and the only person Colm Kelly seemed to like most days.
He didn’t look up as I sat down, preferring to colour an elf in a hideous shade of green.
Ten minutes later, and I wondered if my uncle’s power play was worth sitting through.
After fifteen minutes, I stood up to leave.
“Tilly, why don’t you go and find your nana? Ask her if she’s joining me for coffee?” He pressed a kiss to her head, and the little girl fled off, shouting for my uncle’s wife, a woman I’d never tire of feeling sorry for.
I didn’t say anything, just sat down opposite him and watched the boats on the horizon, probably yachts about to dock for the day and the night. Maybe one of them of the yacht Livi had chartered.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I’m not sure if this is pleasure. It isn’t for me.”
He laughed, the low, rumbling laugh that I sometimes heard in a reoccurring nightmare. “What do you find pleasurable, Tommy? I’ve don’t remember the last time I saw you smile.”
I thought of Jameson straight away. Last night, her on my knee, her tits in my hands, her pussy clenching tight round my cock.
I’d been smiling then.
“Ash is on the island.” I had no idea if Colm knew that or not. “He’s staying at the bunker.” We’d called it that years ago, because it was that basic.
Colm shook his head. “He needed to keep away from someone else’s turf. Fuck knows why he can’t just stick to what he knows.”
Which was basically fuck all, and both me and his father knew that.
“That issue with Marcus Lawrence is bigger than we thought.”
“I thought that was being sorted.” Colm’s expression turned from displeased to fucking pissed off.
I shrugged. “If it would be that easy we’d be laughing. Marcus has somehow passed a debt he has to Lebedev onto Ash.” They were a Russian family, much in the same way the Italian mafia hadfamilies.
“Fuck.” Colm shook his head. “How much?”
“A figure you won’t pay. But there’s a bigger issue than money.”
Colm’s stare was a few fucking thousand yards. “They won’t let this drop. Lebedev’s wanted a piece of the island for years. The island doesn’t want them.”
He was right. Colm was no saint. He was a bastard with a screw lose, and he cared about very little apart from himself, but he liked Ibiza. The easy-going vibe suited him, and it provided fertile ground for women, parties and drugs. He liked the exclusivity, the richness and the elite – none of his clubs were cheap, all were upmarket, and the police stayed away. If things got dirty, places would be scrutinised, there’d be bad press, and that would be bad for his business and the sweet life he had going on.
“What’s your plan?”
Some things never changed.
“We make this Marcus’ problem.”
Colm nodded. Once. “His father – Marvin Lawrence. He’s a semi-legit businessman but I know he’s had a deal go wrong recently and the cash isn’t flowing.”
My face must’ve given away my surprise.
