I got him out the firing line.”
Adams is silent on the end of the line. I hope he’s thinking carefully about his next move. He clearly is, but given his lack of a reply, I’m assuming he doesn’t know what it is. “Perry, let me make this easy for you.” I sit forward and rest my elbows on the table. “I have your girlfriend. I’m going to cut off her pretty face and send it to you in a pretty box if you don’t tell me who the fuck wants my marina and why.”
“I’m being blackmailed,” he whispers.
“By who?”
“I don’t know. They have pictures of me and Rose. God, I was so careful, but one of my staff . . .” He sighs. “I obviously wasn’t paying him enough. It’ll ruin me if they get out. My campaign will be obliterated.”
Pictures of him and Rose? Ignore the anger, Danny. Ignore it. Bigger fish to fry. “Are you telling me that you’re trying to turn me over because you don’t want America to know that you’ve been shagging behind your wife’s back?”
“God, no.”
“Who got the pictures? The member of your staff, I want his name.” Let’s start connecting some fucking dots.
“He’s dead.”
“What?”
“They sent me his head, Danny. They sent me his fucking head!” His voice is shaking terribly. His head. Fuck me, Adams probably vomited all over it.
“Yeah, well, I might be sending you a whole fucking body.”
He’s silent for a few moments, the gravity of his situation sinking in. “They’ve promised money. Said I could pay you back with it, but then you upped it to thirty-five million, for Christ’s sake. They’re not coughing up. I’m fucking cornered.” Finally, the man gives in to his helplessness and crumbles down the line. “I walk away from you, you kill me. I walk away from them, they expose me and probably kill me too.”
“I just threatened to cut off your girlfriend’s face, you dick,” I spit, disgusted by his lack of thought for Rose. “Does she feature at all in your dilemma?” I want to cut off his face now.
“You won’t do it,” he replies, too matter-of-factly for my liking. “There aren’t just pictures of me and Rose.”
“What?”
“Today I was sent some of you and Rose. Looking rather cozy on the shore at that boatyard of yours. And at an Italian restaurant downtown. For a man making threats on her well-being, you looked pretty smitten to me.”
I stare blankly forward, my mind empty, leaving Adams to go on.
“My contact sent them and told me not to worry about my girlfriend. Told me she’s safe, and I think she is, isn’t she, Danny? She’s bewitched you too. But I know she means nothing to my contact. I know he’d rip her apart. You have to help me protect her.”
Rip her apart? I’d like to see him fucking try. “She means nothing to me,” I grate, so fucking angry with myself, seeing my dad shaking his head at me in disappointment.
“Really?”
“You want to test your theory, Adams?”
“I’m not surprised, Danny. Don’t beat yourself up about it. She had the same effect on me.”
“Let me spell this out for you, Adams,” I seethe, starting to quake with anger. “If I don’t get that marina, you, your wife, your kids, every living fucking relative of yours will be dead, and it won’t be quick. They’ll all know the reason why they’re sitting on that chair with metal prongs in their thighs. They’ll all know it’s because of your dirty dealings. And as for Rose, you will get her pretty face in a box. You want that?”
“No,” he whispers.
“Who is it, Perry?”
“I don’t know! They contact me. I swear, Danny, I don’t know who they are.”
I slam my fist on the desk, out of control, standing and sweating on the spot.
Brad rushes into the office, his face alarmed when he finds me heaving down the phone. “The next time they reach out to you, you tell them to come see me.” I hang up, reaching up to my throat, feeling my neck veins bulging.
“Do I want to ask?” Brad steps forward, nervous as shit.
“Get Adams and bring him to me.” I slump into my chair, stressed as fuck. My only comfort in this moment is that Rose is here with me, so Adams’s contact can’t touch her. My head falls into my hands. That fucking missile came pretty fucking close, though. I don’t know much right now, but I know whoever’s pulling Adams’s strings is playing for