I laugh as I catch the eye of the waiter and sit down across from my friend. I order my own beer, then follow Ulrich’s gaze. Those tan, lithe bodies have nothing on the siren being held captive in my boat. Even now, just thinking about all that naked brown skin has my dick getting hard.
The waiter comes back with my bottle of beer and I hold it up, catching Ulrich’s attention.
“To another successful job.”
He tilts his head and taps his half-empty bottle to mine.
Those piercing blue eyes of his bore into me as he sips.
“What is it?” I ask, knowing he has something on his mind.
He takes a long, lingering sip of his beer before answering. “This is almost the end. This last one was especially profitable.”
“But?” I urge, even though I have a sense of what’s coming.
Ulrich sets the bottle down. “We were all just wondering, why not take more, especially with Constantin.”
“I’d say a hundred million euros is not too shabby.”
“Yes, but the man was worth so much more. And there are so many other wealthy people we could be targeting who are just as corrupt.”
“You know why I do things the way I do them,” I interrupt.
“Yes, yes,” he says, picking up his bottle. “This thing with your father.” He still has a hint of his German accent so his “th” sounds vaguely like a mix of z and s, and the w at the beginning of words come out with a subtle v sound.
“This thing with my father is the only reason why they aren’t still conning old ladies for their pensions, or skimming ATMs, or acting as the muscle for some mobster…or picking pockets in Barcelona.”
Ulrich laughs and picks up his bottle to take a sip, not showing any hint at being offended.
“If you and the rest of the crew have a problem, they know they can come to me.”
I have deliberately kept my team small for the sake of efficiency, but also so that we act more like a family than a boss and his employees. Having started this whole endeavor, I’m obviously the leader, but I’ve always operated with the understanding that any of them could come to me with problems.
“That is where you are wrong,” he says. “We were criminals out of necessity. You do it for revenge. Yes, we are like brothers, and you have never been anything but fair and equal, but you still have the stench of wealth on you. It intimidates them. We all come from more humble beginnings.”
I let that one lie, realizing it would be futile to argue the point.
“And you, do you have any more grievances you’d wish to air?” I ask, with a little more resentment in my voice than I intend.
Ulrich laughs again and takes another swig of beer. “Me? You know my beginnings. A father who disappeared, but not before cursing me with the name, Ulrich. A mother who was too drunk to hold down a job for long. I grew up being teased for having holes in my shoes.”
I know he grew up poor in a small East German city, and decided to bum his way around warmer parts of the European Union. At some point, he discovered that robbing tourists was a fine way to supplement his income. Barcelona, being the pickpocket capital that it is, was the perfect place to hone those skills.
He looks back toward the beach at the particularly lovely view, and chuckles. “Now I’m in Ibiza, sipping beer by the beach with half-naked women lying right in front of me, and several million euros hidden away somewhere.”
Ulrich turns back to me with a subtle smile. “I have no complaints, amigo.”
“That’s good to know.” I sip my beer, wondering if it’s especially bitter, or if that’s just my mood.
I’ve been frank with all four of my men from day one. We target people who have worked with my biological father, Richard Coleman—only for the specific amount they’ve laundered through him.
It took me a while to figure out not only who it was that my biological father killed that night, but why. David Reinhardt was the vice president of a bank in Luxembourg. He was the first to discover that the bank was being used to launder money as part of a much bigger scheme with multiple banks. Being the cautious man that he was, he investigated before acting.
Which gave my biological father and the people he worked with plenty of time to frame him for embezzlement. By that time, any evidence he might have discovered would have been ignored, if not laughed away.
His fatal mistake was trying to confront Richard that night.
His son, Magnus Reinhardt, has been on the same mission as I have. In his own way, he’s been taking down the men involved with that money laundering scheme, ending with Richard, who he graciously left for me to finish off. Permanently.
Although I have no idea what my mother said or did once she left me on that convent island to confront Richard, I know her fate was no different than David Reinhardt’s. I’ve always suspected she used the knowledge of what I saw as some kind of leverage to escape the marriage, leaving me behind just in case things went south.
As though Richard Coleman could be so easily manipulated.
When my mother disappeared, her cousin, Sister Clara was smart enough to make sure I did as well, working in conjunction with Mother Agnes. I had been moved to the Catholic orphanage in Spain by the time the world learned of the plane crash into the Atlantic that took the lives of Richard Coleman’s wife and only son. Few people knew the truth, not including my adopted parents.
“Why were you late? Usually, you’re the one I find already with a bottle in front of you, waiting on me,” Ulrich asks, pulling me out of the past.
I draw my attention back to him and grin. “You know how hard it is to deal in cold hard
