Free Nautier and Wilder by Lora Leigh

quickly to the black SUV
     his driver, Danny, was standing beside.
    The moment the doors to the office had opened, his nephew, Danny, was striding around
     the vehicle. Tall and imposing, Danny was as much a bodyguard as a chauffeur. Dark
     Italian heritage was reflected in his features, while strong American stock was reflected
     in his tall, stout body. Before Rudy could reach it, his door was open, the comfortable
     leather interior and an even more comfortable silk-skinned mistress awaiting him inside.
    The mistress held no appeal for him tonight, though. The potential for disaster was
     rising with each minute that Andre hadn’t called him to report he had the gems. Every
     second those jewels were out of his possession, the closer disaster came in the form
     of some very nasty members of the Russian Mafia.
    The Mackay woman would end up destroying Rudy’s base of power if he wasn’t extremely
     careful.
    Or rather, the woman’s family would.
    That damned brother, Dawg, and her cousins, Rowdy and Natches, and the men and women
     they called friends who were part of the Department of Homeland Security were dangerous.
     Especially that little misfit Timothy Cranston.
    They were a force no criminal wanted to call the attention of. Rudy’d lost a very
     influential lawyer and a rather promising family member he was very fond of to the
     Kentucky natives.
    His niece Marlena Genoa, and her sponsor back into the family, Gerard Andrews, had
     been taken out with such efficiency it had been shocking.
    They had gone to Kentucky to seek retribution against Marlena’s ex-fiancé when he
     had broken their engagement five years before. Neither had returned, and Marlena’s
     body had never been found.
    Poor Marlena. First her father had turned against the Genoa family, effectively ensuring
     she was no longer part of the base of power and wealth Rudy controlled. Then, she
     had let the prominent fiancé she had managed to snare slip from her fingers. Which
     wouldn’t have been so bad if she hadn’t promised to secure him, and his father’s prestigious
     law firm, for the Genoa family. When a promise was made, it must be kept. Or retribution
     must be established and restitution made. Once John Walker broke their engagement,
     the Genoa family demanded restitution, a small portion of the promised funds and prestige
     John Walker would have brought to the family, or Marlena had to seek retribution to
     prove she was strong enough to be part of the Genoa family in an age of betrayals,
     double dealing, and technological deceptions.
    The family needed insurance that she would never do as her father had and turn on
     them—turn evidence over to the authorities and attempt to destroy the family. She
     was to have killed John Walker and Sierra Lucas before the life insurance policy she
     had taken out on him, and he had forgotten about, expired. The funds would have been
     given to the Genoa family, and the blood on her hands would have given at least a
     small assurance of her loyalty.
    She had done neither. She had instead gotten a highly successful and very beneficial
     attorney killed and she had ended up, most likely, under Timothy Cranston’s control.
    A very, very bad place to be.
    If Rudy wasn’t very careful, if his son wasn’t even more careful, then they would
     soon find themselves facing that bastard Cranston and those hick Mackays in the worst
     possible way. That was something Rudy intended to avoid at all costs.
    He’d had the family investigated after Marlena’s disappearance and Gerard’s death.
     What he had learned made him wary. The shadowed vendetta that had played out against
     his organization for a year afterward still had the power to keep him awake at night.
    The authorities had watched his family much too closely, his sources among the law
     enforcement agencies began disappearing, but when his son had been jerked out of England
     after leaving the family and nearly imprisoned, Rudy had known they