Thin Lies (Donati Bloodlines #1) (17 page)

Mika
smiled a charming sight. To anyone else, it would have come off as friendly and
approachable. Calisto knew better—he worked with men just like Mika on a daily
basis. Smiles were simply another way to mask one’s intentions.

“Cal,
then,” Mika said after a moment. “I did notice you weren’t drinking.”

“One
pleasure at a time.”

“Ah.”

“Your
man said you may have something more to my tastes,” Calisto prodded.

“For
the right price, Cal, I can have anything you want in a matter of hours.”

Calisto
tampered his urge to grin. This was exactly what he wanted.

“Be
specific with your tastes, and I will see what I can do,” Mika added.

“Young,
but legal,” Calisto replied. “Sober. Clean. And preferably someone with a bit
more class than these ladies have. I don’t mind a dancer, but frankly, you
couldn’t pay me enough money to get my dick wet with someone that might leave
something behind. You get what I’m saying?”

“Perfectly.”

Calisto
checked his watch. “Aren’t you the least bit worried that I’m a cop?”

Mika
laughed darkly. “No. If you were, you would have taken my man up on the offer
of having one of the girls in the back. Any felony is a good felony, as a cop
would say.”

“True.”

“Where
are you from, Cal?”

“New
York,” he answered. “I had some business to do in Vegas. I’ll be leaving in a
day and a half.”

“Hmm.”

“What?”

“Just
thinking,” Mika murmured.

Calisto
didn’t indulge the man further. “Can you find me something more suitable, or
not?”

“I
can. How much money are you willing to spend, Cal?”

“As
much as I need to. I like being able to come back to something, if it’s good
enough. Do you know what I mean?”

Mika
smiled. “Perfectly. I may be able to help.”

“Do
tell.”

As
Mika began to chat about a private event that he had been invited to for the
evening—one that would offer a variety of skin to shop from—happening in just a
couple of short hours, Calisto kept his mind on the time.

Time
both he and Emma didn’t have.

“I
take it that’s your car,” Mika said, nodding in the direction of the black
Porsche across the road.

“Yes,
my rental.”

“You
could follow behind if you wanted.”

“Driving
with you will be fine,” Calisto assured, lying through his teeth.

Mika
climbed inside a black SUV with windows tinted all the way around. It was
impossible to see inside the vehicle. After the driver—Nathan, Mika had said
earlier—got behind the wheel, Calisto jumped in the back, too.

“I
have another friend going to the event tonight, and he is curious to meet you,”
Mika said as the SUV pulled out of the lot.

Calisto
didn’t plan on meeting anyone else. As it was, enough people had seen his face
in all of this. Those people, like Mika and his driver, needed to be handled.

“Is
that so?” he asked.

“We’ll
meet him at the venue. Usually I wouldn’t go, but tonight I have an invitation,
as I’ve provided something invaluable for them. I should warn you, though, that
my friend is distrustful of people he doesn’t know.”

“This
place—didn’t you say everyone is anonymous in one way or another?”

“Yes,”
Mika said, looking down at his phone. “But everyone is apparently vouched for by
someone else. Newcomers are rare.”

Mika
knew even less about the auctions than Norris had when Calisto talked to him.
It was very likely that Mika’s catch with Emma had set the man up to be invited
to the showing of women.

“We’ll
say you’re an old friend of mine,” Mika said after a moment.

“Do
you think he’ll believe it?”

“No,
but he wants to make money.”

Calisto
laughed under his breath. “I do have that.”

“You
do. So, follow along and everything should be fine.”

Keeping
his bag at his side, and the guns he had hidden, Calisto wondered just how much
money he was going to need. Mika and his men were incredibly incompetent for a
bunch of Russian gangsters. They trusted Calisto’s well-dressed,-well-spoken
person without question and didn’t bother to check his things. To the men’s
credit, Calisto hadn’t given them much of a reason to check him, either.

Calisto
had managed to pull a good three hundred thousand from the bank earlier. The
manager had nearly vomited when Calisto walked in not twenty minutes before the
place was to close, demanding his personal account be emptied.

We
don’t usually have that much cash in the vault
, the man had
said.

Bullshit.

Calisto
knew better.

This
was fucking Vegas.

They
had the cash.

Calisto
likely needed more than what he did have. His offshore accounts, the one he
used to hide and then pillow illegal funds into his legal accounts, toted just
over ten million between his dealings and his inheritance from his father’s and
mother’s deaths.

He
could use that, if needed.

From
the side, Calisto kept an eye on Mika. He didn’t trust the man, but he had to
keep him alive long enough for him to at least get him to the venue. By the way
the event had been described by the Russian, as long as you showed up, you were
let in. No one who hadn’t been vouched for would be given the address to where
the auction was being held.

Calisto
wasn’t all that surprised that Mika had quickly, and quite easily, taken to him
without much question or concern. An enigmatic, rich stranger, willing to toss
out money on a woman who could satisfy him was exactly the kind of client that
Mika needed to get higher in the trafficking business.

Sometimes,
being an upstart made you desperate to just go up.

Calisto’s
willingness to follow along with Mika, find some skin to buy for the evening,
and part ways, lulled the Russian into a false sense of security. Cops wouldn’t
go this far, surely. A cop would have drunk at the club to fit in, he would
have followed Mika’s man to sit down at another table, and he probably would
not have gotten in Mika’s car.

Sure,
it made Calisto uncomfortable. He wasn’t in his own territory. He still didn’t
have time to doubt himself. This was far too important.

“Have
you ever participated in an auction before?” Mika asked out of the blue.

Calisto
shrugged, but answered honestly. “Yes.”

“When?”

When
my uncle took an operation down because they wouldn’t pay him for being on his
territory
,
Calisto thought.

“In
my younger twenties. I didn’t get much out of it.”

Mika
laughed. “I think you’ll have a better experience tonight.”

“I
certainly hope so.”

More
than Mika knew.

Mika
lifted his phone and showed off a message that looked like a bunch of numbers
and gibberish. “This is our invitation to the event. We show it at the door,
and we’re permitted entrance. Nothing more.”

Good
to know.

“So,
I don’t really need you, huh?” Calisto asked. “Your driver must know where the
place is.”

Mika’s
head snapped up. “What did you just—”

Calisto
pulled the gun from his back, the one he had taken from Poppy’s place. The
weapon met Mika’s forehead with a crack as Calisto pulled the other gun he’d
been hiding from the bag holding the money. He pointed the second gun at the
driver.

“I
don’t really need you,” Calisto repeated.

Mika’s
hands twitched like he was going to reach for something.

“Drive,”
Calisto barked at the driver. “Move your hands a single fucking inch from the
steering wheel and I will put a bullet in the back of your head.”

“Do
what he says,” Mika said quietly.

“Your
desire to climb higher in your business makes you an easy target, Mika. Tell
your girl Poppy that I said hi.”

Mika
opened his mouth to speak. Calisto pulled the trigger. Blood sprayed the
passenger window as the man’s body jerked to the side.

Calisto
didn’t take his eyes off the driver.

“Nathan,
is it?” Calisto asked.

“Y-yes.”

“Did
someone named Emma come into the club tonight, looking for your dead boss,
here?”

Nathan
nodded.

Calisto
kept his gun aimed at Nathan, but leaned over to grab the phone from Mika’s
dead hands. He only needed the message on the phone. That’s what the fool said.

“Keep
driving.”

“Okay,”
Nathan mumbled.

Fucking
sickening.

Calisto
was pretty sure these fools had never come face to face with anyone worth being
frightened over. They probably thought they were top dogs in their worlds, when
in fact, they were at the very bottom of the food chain.

That
was their problem.

He
had a hell of a lot to lose.

“Drive
faster,” Calisto ordered.

The
car sped up.

Calisto
walked through the dimly lit hallways of an unmarked building that, from the
outside, had looked like nothing more than a warehouse. In front of him,
another man walked alongside another man who had greeted him outside of the
building not ten minutes earlier. Calisto simply had to flash the message from
Mika’s phone in front of their faces to be allowed inside. The men had asked
him a few questions, of course, and checked him over to search for any weapons.
Calisto expected it and answered with a cool smile and his usual vagueness. He’d
left the guns in the SUV, knowing he would probably be checked.

His
voucher to the event was Mika.

But
his money got him through the door.

Kostya
was the man’s name. He was far more Russian than Mika had been.

Thanks
to the dark-tinted windows of the SUV, no one noticed a thing when Calisto put
a bullet in the back of the driver’s head. Once Nathan brought Calisto to where
he needed to be, he took care of that little issue.

There
was only one thing left.

Emma.

“You
have accounts to use tonight, yes?” the man asked, turning to look at Calisto.

“Offshore.”

“Those
work fine. Almost there.”

Calisto
followed behind in silence, unsure of what he was walking into. At the end of
the long hallway, a woman waited with a wicker basket in her hands. He was more
shocked to see a female at an event like this than he was over the intricately
designed masks in the basket.

“Please,
take one,” she said.

Calisto
grabbed the one that was passed back to him. It was black, would cover half of
his face, leaving only his mouth and jaw exposed, and had a satiny feel.