The nerve of him anyway, blaming an innocent child for a mistake that should have never happened.
“I hardly think my precious little Asta was at fault in the least,” he said as Jones followed him from the room. “What do you think?”
“Asta’s no dummy,” the other man stated, bringing a glow of pride rushing through Rudy. “I kind of doubt she would have rented the vehicle if she was told specifically not to do so.”
Moving ahead of him, Jones quickly opened the door leading from the office and stood back as Rudy stepped through.
“Get rid of the body,” Rudy ordered the two men waiting outside. “Then return to the house.”
Striding from the office, Rudy left the building and walked quickly to the black SUV his driver, Danny, was standing beside.
The moment the doors to the office had opened, his nephew, Danny, was striding around the vehicle. Tall and imposing, Danny was as much a bodyguard as a chauffeur. Dark Italian heritage was reflected in his features, while strong American stock was reflected in his tall, stout body. Before Rudy could reach it, his door was open, the comfortable leather interior and an even more comfortable silk-skinned mistress awaiting him inside.
The mistress held no appeal for him tonight, though. The potential for disaster was rising with each minute that Andre hadn’t called him to report he had the gems. Every second those jewels were out of his possession, the closer disaster came in the form of some very nasty members of the Russian Mafia.
The Mackay woman would end up destroying Rudy’s base of power if he wasn’t extremely careful.
Or rather, the woman’s family would.
That damned brother, Dawg, and her cousins, Rowdy and Natches, and the men and women they called friends who were part of the Department of Homeland Security were dangerous. Especially that little misfit Timothy Cranston.
They were a force no criminal wanted to call the attention of. Rudy’d lost a very influential lawyer and a rather promising family member he was very fond of to the Kentucky natives.
His niece Marlena Genoa, and her sponsor back into the family, Gerard Andrews, had been taken out with such efficiency it had been shocking.
They had gone to Kentucky to seek retribution against Marlena’s ex-fiancé when he had broken their engagement five years before. Neither had returned, and Marlena’s body had never been found.
Poor Marlena. First her father had turned against the Genoa family, effectively ensuring she was no longer part of the base of power and wealth Rudy controlled. Then, she had let the prominent fiancé she had managed to snare slip from her fingers. Which wouldn’t have been so bad if she hadn’t promised to secure him, and his father’s prestigious law firm, for the Genoa family. When a promise was made, it must be kept. Or retribution must be established and restitution made. Once John Walker broke their engagement, the Genoa family demanded restitution, a small portion of the promised funds and prestige John Walker would have brought to the family, or Marlena had to seek retribution to prove she was strong enough to be part of the Genoa family in an age of betrayals, double dealing, and technological deceptions.
The family needed insurance that she would never do as her fathe
r had and turn on them—turn evidence over to the authorities and attempt to destroy the family. She was to have killed John Walker and Sierra Lucas before the life insurance policy she had taken out on him, and he had forgotten about, expired. The funds would have been given to the Genoa family, and the blood on her hands would have given at least a small assurance of her loyalty.
She had done neither. She had instead gotten a highly successful and very beneficial attorney killed and she had ended up, most likely, under Timothy Cranston’s control.
A very, very bad place to be.
If Rudy wasn’t very careful, if his son wasn’t even more careful, then they would soon find themselves facing that bastard Cranston and those hick Mackays in the worst possible way. That was something Rudy intended to avoid at all costs.
He’d had the family investigated after Marlena’s disappearance and Gerard’s death. What he had learned made him wary. The shadowed vendetta that had played out against his organization for a year afterward still had the power to keep him awake at night.
The authorities had watched his family much too closely, his sources among the law enforcement agencies began disappearing, but when his son had been jerked out of England after leaving the family and nearly imprisoned, Rudy had known they had made enemies the family could ill afford. Word on the street was that the Genoa crime organization had shaken the wrong tree in Kentucky and they were going to pay for it.
It was a tree he had no intentions of shaking again in a way that meant he, or anyone in his organization, could be identified.
The only good thing that had come of it? Homeland Security had pissed Andre off enough to return home and ensure that they could never do so again. He was now learning the ropes and moving in as Rudy’s right hand. And a very effective right hand he was.
The bodies Andre disposed of were never seen again. There was no evidence to lead back to Rudy, Andre, or the family, and no loose lips spilling family business secrets.
It was a good life.
Unless those gems weren’t in his possession when the owners came looking for them.
Resignation burned a hole in his gut.
Fuck. He was going to have to go after a Mackay.
He wasn’t frightened of the Mackays, but he was definitely on guard against them.