Page 145 of Dagger in the Sea

“Yes. I’m glad we’re here,” she said. “Seeing you and Alessio work together is a good thing.”

“Oh, you like that, do you?”

She cupped my face. “I like seeing people I care about getting along and working together.”

That wild heat she inspired in me kicked up in my blood. “All for you, baby.”

Her cheeks reddened, her gaze falling to my mouth. That unassuming sincere appreciation of hers, that surprise and gratitude that people were doing things on her behalf set off sparks inside me. I wanted to show her my gratitude. That innocent grace of hers coupled with her wild, natural response to me in bed, her willingness to trust me to push her just a bit and then a bit more every time made me fucking wild. My guileless vixen.

Her thumb brushed over my lips, and I kissed it. A smile tugged on the corners of her mouth. “I’m going to check in with my banker and my mother.”

No tears, no shuddering. No anxiety. The warrior goddess was here.

Alessio stood before us. “I have forty-thousand in the safe on the yacht,Cara. It’s yours to use.”

“Thank you, Alessio. I’ll have it for you within days.”

Alessio only lifted his chin at her. He trusted her completely. I liked him more and more, although his endearment for her in that growly sexual animal voice of his had me digging my heels into the floor, I’d get over it. He hadn’t needed explanations about me and Adri. He saw us together, and he knew. Of course, Adri and I locking ourselves in a cabin on his yacht to fuck for the entire trip back to Athens had pushed the point home, as it were. Still, no drama from Alessio.

End of story.

“I’m going to confirm that with the bank now. For the fifth time,” she said. “Greece isn’t Switzerland.”

I kissed her quickly and left her to it.

I crossed the room and sat with Luca. “What did you find on Fokas?”

“He’s a former kickboxer hired by a crime boss years ago as his muscle, collecting protection money from nightclubs, bars, restaurants. Eventually he formed his own gang involved in the same rackets and recruited young boxers and trained them as his soldiers. He expanded his activities to drugs, arms trafficking, and prostitution, bringing in women from the former Soviet bloc countries and Albania. Had his men hired as bouncers for the clubs that owed him protection. He even partnered up with a former bodyguard of the Minister of Public Order. Good one, eh? Big arms trafficker that one—explosives, weapons. This guy trained a group to rob banks, armored trucks, ATM machines with military precision.”

“Is it the wild fucking west out here?”

A smirk edged over Luca’s mouth.

“How do they launder their money?”

“It’s a big market. Luxury cars, cruisers, yachts, jet skis.”

“Yachts and jet skis,” I murmured.

Alessio grabbed his brother’s lighter on the table and lit a cigarette, a thick eyebrow arched high. “Sounds like someone we know?”

“Yianni must have been doing shit for them on his charter sailboat business as payback for that first loan,” I said.

“Oh yeah,” muttered Luca.

“I’ve seen it before,” I said. “They get comfortable and think they’re in, that getting more or getting special deals is easy. Makes sense he’d go to Fokas for the really big bucks.”

“People don’t trust banks here. They consider them a corrupt institution that steals from the people,” said Luca.

I sucked on the last of my iced coffee. “Like the government, right?”

“Si.”A grin stole across Luca’s face.“Bravo, Americano.This past year Fokas went big. His smuggling used to be only cigarettes through Cyprus. Now he’s started bringing in cocaine from Latin America through Western Europe to Greece, hiding the drugs on fishing boats. He has a legitimate fishing business, rental boats. Not all the boats are used to hide the cocaine, but plenty are.”

“Now the summer season is on and there’s big demand for the drugs on the islands,” said Alessio. “Mykonos was nuts.”

Luca tilted his head. “Delivering and picking up in Greece is fun. All that coastline, all those islands, so many boats big and small, really fast, and not enough Coast Guard patrols to go around.”

Alessio brought over three Pellegrinos and handed them to us.

---