Smoke Screen (Alexander King Book 6) by Bradley Wright

Author:Bradley Wright [Wright, Bradley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: King's Ransom Publishing
Published: 2022-12-30T16:00:00+00:00

25

The maître d’ seemed happy to see Xander when he walked back into Circolo Popolare. He told her the rest of his party would be along shortly. She didn’t seem to mind. She sat him against the far back wall—Xander’s A-position when he was a little on edge. He had the entire restaurant in front of him, including the only entrance and exit. The place was still full of people. Clanking silverware, clinking glasses, laughter, chatter, and a whole lot of wonderful smells wafting from every table. Everyone oblivious to what he’d just encountered outside. And that’s exactly how he wanted it.

As soon as he sat down, he ordered a bottle of Ronchi di Castelluccio, a Sangiovese. A low tannin, fruit-forward red wine from just outside of Bologna in Northeast Italy. Xander hadn’t been into wine as much as he used to be when he had his vineyard in Tuscany. It was one of the many things in his past that had gone away when he was forced to disappear from the world. Natalie enjoys red wine as well, so maybe he would look into doing something in Napa. A little closer to home. Speaking of Natalie, he’d just received a text from her saying she was finished with her shoot for the day. She said it was going great, and that made Xander happy. He told her he was proud of her, that he missed her, and he would call her after dinner. She sent back heart and kissy-face emojis. The world was a different place now. Dumber, Xander thought. People replacing words with symbols. Almost as if we were regressing back to the days of cave drawings.

As he moved his nose inside his swirling glass, he let the violet and truffle aromas relax the tension in his shoulders. The first sip brought black cherry as it rolled across his tongue, and the finish after he swallowed left a hint of mint. It was delicious. At the door, Sam and Bentley walked through. The two of them turned many heads in the restaurant, both beautiful women but in completely different ways. Omari brought up the rear, but Juice, who was as wide as all three of them together, never made an entrance.

As Sam introduced herself to the maître d’, Xander was busy trying to decide what to believe about Bentley. For the last couple of years, she’d been on his most-hated list. And that’s a hard list to make considering the kind of people Xander mixed company with on a regular basis. When he’d pulled her from the explosion, his mind was made up that it was all part of her plan. But watching her talk about the son she claimed to have did something to him. He took another drink of his wine and thought that maybe it could be that he was just getting soft. Two years ago, every last one of those men outside would have been dead. He wouldn’t have thought a thing about it.

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