John Richards wasn’t a man to stand on ceremony, but he did demand respect, and he earned it. Ian could call him John or Dad, his choice, John had informed him. But call him pop again and he would show Ian a pop he wouldn’t forget. Ian almost smiled at the memory.
Diego frowned. He didn’t like the title any more than John Richards had.
“ ‘Father’ would be a much better greeting,” Diego informed him, not for the first time.
“Too stiff.” Ian moved to the sideboard, piled his plate high with fluffy scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, and toast. For all his faults, Diego had an excellent cook, and she seemed to have grown fond of Ian. “ ‘Father’ sounds like something from the fifties,” he continued, passing over the fruit and various sweets the cook had laid out as he turned and moved to the glass-topped breakfast table.
Sunlight spilled through the open doors and tall windows that surrounded the room as Ian took his seat and let the little dark-haired maid pour his coffee.
“Thanks, Liss.” He smiled as she moved back.
“You are welcome, Mr. Fuentes.” Her lilting English was a little shy, but Ian had learned early just where this little cat’s loyalties lay. And they weren’t with him.
“Set the coffee on the table, Liss,” he directed her. “And then you can leave.”
She looked to Diego. The obvious cut was irritating.
“Liss, he didn’t give you the order, I did,” he told her softly, meeting her dark eyes with the promise of retaliation in his own gaze if she didn’t do as ordered.
“Of course, Mr. Fuentes.” She set the silver pot in the center of the table, between him and Diego, and then headed for the wide double doors, the short skirt of her uniform swishing.
“Close the doors behind you,” he ordered, before nodding to Mendez to follow her out. The other man would stand guard at the doors. Deke and another bodyguard stood guard at the patio and the fourth had positioned himself at the door leading to the kitchen.
Only Deke knew his true purpose there, but the other three were slowly proving their loyalty to Ian rather than the cartel.
“I do not like how you require that I serve myself,” Diego snapped as he reach for the coffeepot and refilled his cup. “I have the servants for a reason.”
“And I’m always amazed that they survive it.” Ian grunted at the thought of the perversions the maids shared with Diego. “But I see no reason to have to kill one of them because they overheard the wrong thing.”
“You should not discuss business with breakfast,” Diego instructed him. “It is bad for the digestion.”
“Right now, business is bad for health, period.” Ian sipped at his coffee as he stared back at Diego. “I’m canceling our relationship with the Radacchio consortium. My men were hijacked on the way to the delivery point and I lost two of them. We nearly lost the shipment.”
The report of the lost coca shipment hadn’t been as bad as learning that the two men he had lost were handpicked agents he had put in place. That pissed him off.
“Sorrell?” Diego narrowed his eyes thoughtfully as he watched Ian.
Sorrell was the reason Ian was there. The elusive terrorist, as yet unidentified, had managed to slip through every net that several countries and more than a dozen law enforcement agencies had attempted to use to catch him.
“That’s what I suspect.” Ian shrugged as he dug into his breakfast. “Valence Radacchio claims otherwise, but the strike was well prepared and centered where security should have been the tightest. They dropped the ball, and rather than getting embroiled in a blood feud with them, I’d rather sever ties instead.”
“Valence has worked with me for many years,” Diego mused. “He has always moved our product through Colombia and onto the ships. If we sever this relationship, we will be forced to forge a new one.”
Ian shook his head. “We move our own product. Why use a middleman when we have the necessary manpower and the network to do it efficiently? It saves time, money, and risks.”
The product, of course, was drugs. Radacchio collected the bales of cocaine from the processing warehouses and transported it across the mountains to waiting ships. From there, he delivered it to various points to another drop-off where others then collected it, broke it down, and shipped it to other points.
Until Sorrell had begun hitting the processing warehouses. The first thing Ian had done when he took over the Fuentes business was to relocate the warehouses and have his men deliver the goods to Radacchio instead.
“Is Valence aligned with Sorrell, do you think? Or has the bastard merely managed to obtain information about our supply lines?”
Ian shook his head. “I don’t know and I don’t care. But Radacchio knew the location of the former warehouses. We changed our locations and began delivering to them rather than having them pick up the bales from us and the hijackings stopped. Now this strike? I’m inclined to once again cut them out of the loop. We’ll see what happens then.”
“He will not be pleased over this,” Diego warned him. “We pay him well for his consortium’s work.”
“Then he can find another client, one with a bit less paranoia than it seems I possess.” Ian’s smile was tight. “I don’t have time for a drug war, Diego. We’ll do it my way first.”
Diego’s black eyes gleamed with excitement.
“The wars spice up life, Ian.” Diego grinned with all apparent anticipation. “They keep you on your toes.”
“I’d been a ballet dancer if I wanted to dance on my toes, pop,” he said.
Diego sighed in regret. “Radacchio will demand a meeting to discuss this.”
“Then tell him he can talk to me. And that’s another thing; either I run this shit or I don’t. Stay out of it. Don’t try to negotiate with Radacchio like you did the Misserns last month. I won’t be happy.”
The announcement had an angry frown creasing Diego’s face. “What do you mean by this?” he burst out. “Stay out of what business? Fuentes business? I remind you, I am the Fuentes. It is my business.”
Ian lifted his head and stared back at Diego silently.
Diego flinched as Ian stared back at him unblinkingly.
“I do not like this,” he muttered. “I am not so old that I cannot be a part of my own business any longer.”