The Mafia's Arrangement

Chapter 3

Aspen POV

We both hang up and I enter the London lab having parked inside the designated parking garage. When I walk in, I head to the lobby front desk where two security men both nudge at one another as I approach the counter.

“Miss. You’re in the wrong building.” One of them sprouts out before I even get a chance to say anything.

“I beg your pardon.” I say as a statement more so than a question.

“The Embassy is across the street.” Oh, great. This, again.

“Aspen Chiu. Graduate Student at Cambridge. I’m working on the Ender Project.” The two security guards take hard looks down my body before they nod in absolute approval at what they are seeing at least below my face.

“Oh, you’re a student.” One of them finally says something. “It’s on L4 in the elevator. If you are supposed to be there, they should have given you the pin to enter.”

With that, I leave in a hurry. I hate that. Ugh. When I get into the elevator, I hit the L4, but I am stopped by a hand that stops the elevator door from closing. That’s when he walks in. Damn. You have got to be kidding me.

“Aspen.” Otis says to me.

“Otis.” I acknowledge him.

“It’s been awhile.” Apparently not long enough. “How have you been?”

“Fine.” I reply to him. I can practically smell the small smirk form on his lips.

“Always so short.” He gives me a glance. “I assume you’re working on the Ender Project too.”

I don’t respond to him. Damn. I should have known. The elevator stops at the floor but don’t open. I punch in my keycode and he does the same. That’s when the elevator finally opens up to our lab.

“Welcome!” I hear the main project coordinator gesture towards us to join the other three people who are here. Carson is here alongside two other men. Great.

“Why don’t we have some introductions all around?” Professor Jonathan exclaims excitedly. “Start with your name, College, Graduate College.”

“Hi, everyone! I’m Carson! I went to Oxford for Biomedical Engineering. And now I am at Cambridge for their bioengineering graduate program.” He gives an award winning smile at everyone to which everyone promptly smiles back, well except me.

“I’m Kenny. I studied Mechanical Engineering at Stanford in the States. I now go to Oxford for their graduate program.” He gives an awkward nerdy smile as he points his glasses to stand upright. An American. Interesting.

“Name’s Otis, but everyone calls me Odey. I am from England, but I studied Electrical Engineering at Cal Tech. And now I’m at Oxford for their Complex Systems Graduate Program.”

“I’m Leo. Went to UCLA for the women mostly.” Everyone gives a little snarky laugh at the idea. “I studied Chemical Engineering. And now at the Imperial College in London studying the same.”

Everyone looks towards me as I have yet to say a word. Before I get the chance though, Leo thought it would be appropriate to make a comment.

“Let me guess. Peking University?” I scoff at him. “And you studied Industrial?” Doing my best not to hard eye roll on my first day on the job, I just give a grin. That’s a bold assumption to make that just because I am a Chinese woman that I went to school there. f**k this guy.

“Aspen. MIT. Weapons Engineering. Cambridge. Nuclear Science and Weapon Engineering.”

Holden POV

“Father.” I knock on his office door and enter to see both my father and Kenneth hush up immediately. I’m not sure I like the tone of that. Bast is in the other chair, fuming.

“Shut the door.”

Doing as he commands, I shut the door behind me as they make their way from the desk to the relatively large living space area in front of his desk.

“We have a problem.” My father starts as he paces around. Kenneth looks mildly bored, but that’s just his usual composure, so nothing out of the ordinary there.

“What is it?”

“Last week, Kenneth told me he was going to be at the concert in Paris last night.” He need not say more than that for me to take a hint.

Though I remain in my composure, I can’t help but blink hard at that. I know exactly what that means. I swear to God that I am going to find this son of a b***h and break him down myself.

“And do we have a name?” I barely grit out between the gaps of my teeth as I seethe in anger. One of our men betrayed us.

“No. Kenneth announced he was going to be there at the dinner last week. Nobody else but the people in that room knew about it. His sons didn’t even let their own people inside when Kenneth announced it.” My father informs me and I turn to Kenneth.

“Uncle Kenneth, I apologi-“ I get cut short when Kenneth shakes his head and just holds his hand up to stop me from apologizing to him. He knows I hate to apologize.

“You have done nothing wrong. But I wanted to alert you all of this as soon as it happened. I couldn’t trust this to be over the phone. And I had our men sweep the office before we started talking. No bugs.” Paranoid Uncle Kenneth does have its wonderful perks at times.

“We are going to find who did this.” Bast assures him, but again, Kenneth shakes his head at our sincere apologies. I feel like s**t, f**k. Uncle Kenneth is practically our father; he’s family.

“We must be strategic about this. If they know that we know there is a mole in our midst, we may never be able to get the rug from under them.” Kenneth replies in his usual serious tone. He is quite the battle strategist.

“Well, I’m open to any ideas.” My father opens up to all of us.

“We use him.” I say promptly. “Efficiently. We will have to feed some wrong information through the grapevine.”

“Yeah, but we risk feeding the right people the wrong information.” Bast counters.

“Then, we make sure whatever information we are feeding to our people makes this Ivory Brotherhood Mafia come directly for us.” I reply back simply.

“I could retire.” My father suggests, but none of us are too keen on the idea. Though he’s basically retired now and I run the mafia now. He is still advising.

“Even if you did retire, it wouldn’t be much of a difference than it is right now.” I counter with my father.

“What about if we ran out of money?” Bast suggests.

“Even if that were true, Kenneth would jump in in a heartbeat. He’s in charge of like 100 banks across the world.” My father smirks over at Kenneth.

“Not 100.” Kenneth reminds him, but my father just shakes it off. He’s been awfully quiet while we have been spewing ideas.

“Where’s J?” I ask as I notice that J and the twins are absent from this meeting. This is a pretty serious situation we have here, wouldn’t they be here?

“The boys are meeting with someone later tonight and they need to make an impression.” Kenneth replies to me, but for whatever reason, I feel like there’s more to that story. I drop it for now. I have no reason to not trust my godfather.

“Let’s just think about this. Now that we know, we at least know to be cautious. Why don’t we blow off some steam and re-convene at a later time?” Bast suggests.

“Don’t tell me you’re suggesting a game of ice hockey at the arena.” My father gives Bast a dreadful, yet proud look.

“Hell yeah, I am! After what we just figured out, I think it’s about time we take it out on the ice. Really let off some steam.”

“I’m in.” I join Bast in his adventure. We do this quite a bit. When some s**t show hits the fan, we all head out to the hockey arena and let loose a bit with a bit of unfriendly slams against the walls. That’s how Bast and I used to settle our arguments when we were kids. I’m not exactly sure how we ended up so close after all of that brutality.

“Tell J, Riley, and Tom. I am sure they’ll want to get in on this, especially since we put down some wagers on a winning team.” Eric nudges Kenneth who is in deep thought. Once broken out of his trance, he just nods along to whatever my father wants. Strange.

“They’ll be there tomorrow.” Kenneth reassures us before asking to speak to my father alone…