not the one who can’t see what’s in front of him,” I replied, and walked out the door.
As awful a human being as Gio was, he did believe in every man needing a good woman. His mistake had been in choosing a weak woman though. But I suppose that’s what his generation needed at the time. The elders came from a generation where their women were treated well, but they had their place. They kept the home and minded the children and let their men be men. Their value was placed on their homemaking abilities and not much else.
I didn’t feel that way. I believed strong men needed strong women by their sides. I believed that whatever a strong man could accomplish on his own, the right woman could multiply that accomplishment by ten. Nothing made a man believe in his own masculine power like that of owning a powerful woman. Any fool could control and manipulate a weak female. Only the most cunning of males were able to take a strong woman and make her theirs.
Sensio, my personal guard, was waiting for me outside. Normally, I drove myself around, but when I met with Gio, I usually wasn’t safe behind the wheel of a car. There was every chance I’d aim it for the house and hit the gas, killing Gio and me both. Sensio’s been with me for years, and he knew I hated meetings with my father. “Where to?” he asked, and my train of thoughts had me directing him to drive towards Rotary Heights.
After leaving Remy’s apartment last night, I had called Sal from her lobby, and he said they were heading out, but they spotted a car that hadn’t been in the area by the gas station. I put two and two together and told Sal to come back for me. When they came back to get me, we had driven by the gas station and saw an old, compact car parked near the curb. Tomas had broken in and the insurance and registration showed the car was registered to one, Remy Christian. We headed out, but I told Sal to make sure someone came back and fixed her car and parked it at her place. I hadn’t worried that we didn’t have her keys. My men could do anything.
I shook off my meeting with Gio and started wondering what I was going to do about Remy Christian. I was never indecisive when it came to shit like this…well, anything really. But every time I imagined putting a bullet in between those startling blue eyes of hers, there was this thump in my chest that was particularly unpleasant.
This morning I had ruined Francesca’s plans for a family breakfast when I had called Phoenix and Ciro up to my apartment and told them what had happened. Phoenix had immediately logged onto the computer in my office and did a search on Remy Christian. Phoenix was a whiz at computers, but he wasn’t quite as gifted as Sal. But, then, Sal’s was responsible for the entire Benetti Organization where Phoenix’s skills were for my benefit only.
I already knew the basics from her driver’s license, but Phoenix was able to find out that her parents were still alive and lived in Nebraska, and she had no siblings. Her father worked in a factory and her mother worked as a secretary. Remy, herself, worked as a social worker for Morgan City’s government center. And there was a story there, because, even if she wasn’t rolling in dough, she made enough money to live in a better neighborhood. She’d gone to college and, for whatever reason, she had moved to Morgan City to work with social services.
Thirty minutes later, I was sitting in her apartment, and I was appalled at how easy it was to break into the lobby and her apartment. Phoenix’s search on her suggested she’d be home around six, so that gave me about an hour to search her place.
It took all of twenty minutes.
The woman had nothing much in the way of personal stuff in her apartment, but then, living in this neighborhood, you probably couldn’t invest in anything that could get stolen. So, all my snooping was for nothing. I hadn’t learned anything more about her than I already knew.
The door to her apartment opened about an hour later. I was sitting at her tiny kitchen table, so she didn’t notice me right off, but when she did, she let out startled yelp and dropped