“Thank you.”
Black looked at Shy and was glad that he made the decision to send her back to the island. He had sent his mother back the morning after the wedding and he wanted Shy to go with her. She wanted to stay for Doc’s funeral, but now, in light of Barbara’s attempted kidnapping, Shy was on her way to the airport for Jake to take her back to Freeport.
And this time, she didn’t give him an argument about going as she usually did. She always wanted to be at his side through good and bad times, but not this time. This time, Shy thought about her children. Not just Michelle and Easy, but the baby she was carrying and knew that her place was out of harm’s way.
“He is not going to take this well,” Black said and relaxed in his seat for the drive to Wanda’s office.
“At least she’s safe,” Shy said.
“She had to kill one of them, Cassandra.”
“Oh my … that changes everything,” she said, and Black told her what he knew about the kidnapping attempt. “I can only imagine what she’s going through right now.”
Shy thought about the first time she had to kill somebody. She was a lot older than Barbara, but the major difference was that Shy had pulled her gun and shot at people plenty of times before she had to stand in front of somebody, look them in the eye, and pull the trigger.
It made her think about her own children. Michelle wasn’t that much younger than Barbara, and even though she was safe
r in the Bahamas, Shy knew from being kidnapped at their club while in Freeport, there was no safe place.
“Did you talk to her?”
“Yes.”
“How is she?”
“She seemed all right, but we didn’t talk about that.”
“If you didn’t talk about that, how do you know that she had to kill somebody?”
“Her bodyguard told me.”
“Barbara has a bodyguard?”
“One that saved her life today,” Black said.
“I’m glad Bobby hired her a bodyguard,” Shy smiled.
“No, RJ hired her, but I am too.”
“So, how do you know that Barbara had to kill somebody?”
“Tahanee, that’s her name, she works for our security company and there is a code that they use to give information to me over an open line.”
“I want to see her before I go,” Shy said.
“I thought you might,” he said and put his arm around her. “Chuck.”
“I’ll let Jake know that there’ll be a few stops along the way,” Chuck said.
“Thank you, Chuck,” Shy said and rested her head on Black’s shoulder and relaxed for the drive to Wanda’s office.
At the office, Wanda was having a meeting with somebody that at one time, she couldn’t have imagined sitting and talking to. But she was there for two reasons. One because she needed her help to accomplish her objective. The second was more important. Much more important. Wanda had sworn an oath to protect The Family, her family; with her life if necessary, so she had to know if she could trust her.
“I am buying a struggling bank in the Bahamas. However, I have reliable information that the bank's troubles are exaggerated, and its assets are unfairly undervalued,” Wanda said.
“If that’s the case, it makes sense to inject equity into the institution and ride out the downturn.”
“That was my thinking as well. Call it deep value investing,” Wanda laughed. “We are going to have to maintain at least ten percent of the bank's assets as capital reserves and limit our equity investment to less than twenty-five percent of voting shares and thirty-three percent of the total equity.”