19. Chapter 19

Chapter 19

ROMAN

N ow I was the one who needed a distraction. I told her we could talk about the house rules when we got home later. I’m glad that Alex could take a joke and knew I was kidding. No one else I’ve ever dated would’ve played along like that.

I didn’t know she was going up to her apartment , I thought as I watched her get into the elevator. I thought she was just getting her car. She must’ve needed something. I’ll drive across the street and wait until I see her leave, then I’ll feel better. As soon as I saw her at the valet, she called me.

“Thanks dad, all is good.” I laughed and waved to her.

“Have a good day and I’ll see you at home tonight.” God, that felt so good to say to her.

I called Amelia on the way in to find out what these meetings were about. She said she didn’t know, and she’d let Harrison talk to me about Texas. I drove to the office and once there, I stopped at Amelia’s desk to get my schedule. I liked it on paper, so I didn’t have to stare at a computer screen all day. I head into my office and Harrison was right behind me.

“Hey man, good morning. I’ve got some crazy good news for you about Texas.” Harrison said with excitement.

“Good news, huh? Like I don’t have to go?”

“That can be part of it.”

“Really? What happened?”

“You know how the zoning got fixed, right?” I nodded.

“I only know that it did get fixed but not how. I also thought we were waiting for the money trail.”

He smiled from ear to ear and said, “I still don’t know how it got fixed, either, but the money trail was found, and arrests were made. The project is ready to go again…”

I tried to say something, but he continued and said, “Hey, now wait just a second before you interrupt, I need to finish. The kickback money was returned. It’s in an account down there being held by some financial advisor firm in the name of ‘The King/Kennedy Project’.”

I’m sorry, what? Who the fuck?.. I looked at Harrison, confused.

He said, “I know, I know. We have no idea who did this. Like none.”

That was unsettling .

“I can’t touch that money without finding out where it came from. I may have to go down there.” Fuck! What’s going on?

“How much money is it?”

“Approximately $500,000.” I ran my hands through my hair and sat back in my chair.

I guess I don’t have a choice. I don’t think I should tell Alex about this right now. She’d freak not knowing who did this.

“This is so weird. Who would know Alex and would do this?” I asked more to myself than Harrison. My nerves were on edge now.

“No idea. I’ll make the arrangements tomorrow for the jet. I’ll go with you.” I was shocked he wanted to be a part of this aspect of the deal, but he had been different the past couple of weeks. I thanked him and decided to call Grant and see where he wanted to meet.

Right before I dialed, the name Santoro scrolled across my screen. This ought to be interesting. I answered and said, “Roman King.”

Mr. Santoro replied, “Roman, how are you? Alessandro Santoro.”

“Alessandro, good to hear from you. What can I do for you?”

“Well, you see, we bought some property about thirty minutes north of the city to start a winery and we’re going to need someone to do the renovations. I was wondering if we could meet up here at the new place and talk about what that might look like.”

Now that was interesting. I had no idea that they could do that since there was no commercial zoning. Had something changed, I wondered?

“You and Alex, both told me you couldn’t get commercial zoning. Did you find something else?” My curiosity got the best of me.

He laughed and said, “No, we had our hearts set on this place and if you want something bad enough and it’s meant to be, things always seem to work out. Don’t you agree?” That made me laugh, thinking about Alex .

“You know, I’m going to have to agree with you on that.”

“Do you think you and Alex could meet us on the property tomorrow afternoon and talk about the plans? Maybe stay for dinner?”

“I’ll talk to Alex tonight and see if that would work. She’s got some exercise classes she takes several times a week, so I’ll let you know. She may be able to join us after, for dinner, if that would work.” He agreed and I hung up and dialed Grant.

“Roman, sorry about the secretive message.”

“No worries, what’s up?”

“We need to talk. I’ll text you the address and meet you there. Can you be there in an hour?”

“Yeah, does Alex…” He cut me off and said, “Alex doesn’t know about this, and I’d like to keep it that way for now.”

“This sounds serious and a little shady. Are we on the up and up with whatever this is?” He chuckled. “Yes, it’s just information, but it’s important and it can’t be done over the phone or in my or your office.”

He texted me an address and we hung up. This was getting weirder by the minute. I plugged in the address. It was a very trendy expensive Italian restaurant. Well, that’s fine because I’m hungry, and he can buy lunch for all the hassle and weirdness. I had Amelia block off an extra hour and asked her if everything else was okay. She said it was and that she had the plane ready to go for Texas in the morning, a hotel and got the other meetings rescheduled.

***

ALEX

I kind of expected him to be waiting there until I came back down .

If I was going to do this moving in thing with Roman, I needed to get some things from my place that were pieces of me. I took two pictures off the bookshelf. One was a family vacation shot, and the other was of me and the girls with their families at a birthday for one of the kids a couple years ago. I’d wanted to add a picture of me and Roman somewhere in there too, but for right now, I just needed this representation, so I didn’t feel like I was living in his house.

When the valet pulled up my car I climbed in and inhaled deeply. I missed the smell she had that relaxed me and the dark tinted windows that concealed me from the craziness of the outside world. Damn it felt good to be driving Betty again. I never thought I would miss driving my car so much.

I had a meeting with Grant this morning. We were going to conference call Matt so I could get the low down on where they were in the search for a relocation area for the Burrow Township residents. After thinking about the list of things I had to do today, I turned up the volume on my stereo to drown everything out until I got to the office. It was all starting to get bunched up in my head and it felt more like chaos than a to do list.

I stopped at the reception desk to say hi to our new receptionist Felicity. She seemed even more nervous around me now than the first time I met her. I wondered what that was about. I walked past Grant’s office, but he was on the phone, so I waved and went down the hall to see Shay.

“Hey girl, how short is my schedule today?” My to do list might be long but I haven't been in the office in three weeks so I couldn't have that much scheduled.

“You have one meeting with Grant and Matt this morning and then you’re picking up Darius Jackson and taking him to the District 5 area to scope out the neighborhood. Then you’re supposed to go to a couple of places that Grant and Matt were looking at— to see what you think.”

“Anything else?”

“Nope, not right now.” This was good for my first morning back.

“Shay, make a date for us to spend the entire day together please. I’m going to bring you on these reconnaissance missions with me. You can have half of all the sales. I just think it’s a lot more work than I can handle on my own....”

“What about answering the phone for you?”

“We can just have the calls transferred to your cell.”

“Hell yeah! That’s going to be so much fun.” She was bouncing in her seat.

“Don’t get too excited, the fun I’ve had doing this so far hasn’t exactly been anyone’s idea of fun.”

She looked solemn, then serious. “Am I going to have to carry a gun?”

I can’t even imagine Shay with a gun. “No, not ever. Why would you say that? You’ll be in good hands, I promise.”

She let out a deeply held sigh, “Ok, good, because guns scare the shit out of me. I heard it’s a bad neighborhood and was told I should carry a gun.”

Good lord, who would tell this young woman to carry a gun?

“You know what? Let’s not worry about planning for you to start going with me. You can start today, and this is what we’ll do until it’s done. Does that work?” I smiled but didn’t wait for a response since I had the answer already as Shay bounced out of her seat. “If you have other clients you want to work with, that will be fine also. I’ll help you do whatever you want,” she squealed, as I made my way down the hall and into my office to put my stuff down .

As I passed her again on my way to Grant’s office I mentioned, “We’re leaving in an hour.” She was smiling and clapping like a little girl and all I could think was this girl has no idea where we’re about to go. I don’t think she’s ever been out of the suburbs.

I knocked lightly on Grant’s door as he was finishing up a call. He got up and came around the desk. It’s always nice to get a welcome hug from Grant. “Thank God you came to your senses,” he said and kissed my forehead.

“Yes, well at least there were senses left to come back to.” I shook my head to forget all I’d been through.

“Grant, I’m so sorry for everything I put you and everyone else through. I just couldn’t handle life after what happened.”

“Ali girl, you have nothing to apologize for. I know you so well. I knew you would figure it out. When I first met you, you were married to that guy and all I could think was, ‘she’ll figure this out.’ I knew Luke wasn’t the guy for you. You looked defeated with him. I saw a fire in you that was being snuffed out.”

We’d never had a conversation about this before. It was so strange to hear him talk so intimately about me.

“How about now? How do you feel about the guy now?” Everyone seemed to be on team Roman.

“Roman? I’m happy for you. He’s a good guy. You should consider a commitment.”

I laughed and said, “How committed do you think moving in together is?” His eyes widened.

“Did you move in with him?”

I nodded. “We’re going to pick up some more things from my apartment on Saturday, maybe. I’m still a little nervous about it. What do you think? ”

“I think you’ll be fine, like I always do.” After that conversation we called Matt.

“Hey Grant, hey Alex.”

“Hi Matt.”

“Good to have you back on the project, Alex. Looking forward to dropping the kids off to you and Roman on Friday, too. So is Jack.”

Grant interrupted, “Ok, first, I want to ask about something I heard from this weekend. Did Roman really take down Luke at the club Saturday night?” Oh no, not this shit again. Except the fact that three of the people that were there work here, but damn, keep your mouths shut.

“There was probably a slight lack of common sense due to alcohol involvement. I don’t think he hurt him too bad though.” Matt said as he tried to make less out of it.

Grant turned to me and said, “I knew if I asked you, you wouldn’t give me the whole story.”

“I think Luke got lucky it was broken up by the bouncers.” I wondered if this is just a guy thing that Grant wanted to hear about something like this.

After we got that out of the way I said, “Ok, now for the serious stuff please. What have you guys got for me?” I clapped my hands together, getting us back on track.

We went over everything that they’d been doing and where they’d been looking and the couple of houses that they found— the ones I was going to look at today. I’d been tasked with finding affordable housing that might not need too much work. The housing prices had gone up so much. It might be hard to find homes to replace what they had that didn’t need gut renovations .

“Grant, why didn’t you tell me that Roman had gotten the zoning issue fixed with the Santoro’s property? I meant to ask you about that the last time I was here?”

“Oh, I thought Roman would’ve said something to you.” That’s weird. Roman knew that was important to me.

“No, he hasn’t mentioned it at all.”

“Such a humble guy.” Yeah, not really what I was thinking, but I’ll ask Roman about it later. Now, however, I have to go grab Shay and head over to get Darius for his first day of work.