Shark's Edge

by Angel Payne, Victoria Blue

  “It was a mansion,” she charged. “Wasn’t it? You need to spill, Abbigail. Better yet, did you get any pictures?”

  “Pictures?” My mouth fell open to react, but all I came up with was: “You think I had time for pictures?”

  “And you waited a full hour into the workday to start telling me about this?”

  I chuckled softly. “To be honest, I wasn’t planning on telling you at all.”

  “Excuse me?” Her dark brows hiked farther into her hairline than I thought possible. “And that reasoning is why?”

  I made her wait as I slid the avocado slices under the broiler. “Oh, where to start, sis? The judgment? The fact that Sebastian Shark isn’t exactly your favorite C-Suite hottie.”

  She canted her head. “He’s starting to grow on me a little. A little,” she qualified, jabbing a carrot my direction. She started shucking the vegetable’s skin, and I breathed in relief that she was only wielding a peeler. With what I had to relay next, I worried about the woman being anywhere near a knife.

  “Well.” One more deep breath before I went for it. “At the moment, I can say he’s not my favorite, either.” I clamped my mouth shut before sharing more.

  Clearly, that wasn’t what Rio expected me to say. Still, she was calm about rebutting, “Guess it’s a damn good thing we still have Blake’s order to fill, then.” In her old Finding Nemo tee and cuffed jeans, the woman planted her hands on her hips and tapped a flour-covered Doc Marten on the floor. “Time for explanations, sister.”

  “Nothing much to explain.” I gave a small shrug.

  Rio’s emotion-filled tsk spliced the air. “Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?”

  “Because judges are supposed to be impartial?”

  “And that’s really what you want from me?”

  “What I want is to not be judged at all. And maybe a longer pair of these.” I held up the steel tongs I was using to flip the avocado slices and narrowed my gaze with pretend sinister intent.

  “Juicy.” She rubbed her hands together. “I’m in. Where do we start? At the top of the mushroom or the fun bouncy balls?”

  As usual, I couldn’t decide whether to hug the woman or break down and soak her in my confused sobs. The good and bad thing was I knew she’d be okay with either choice.

  “Abs.” She grabbed my free hand with tender meaning. “It’s me, honey.”

  “I . . . I know.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  But now that we were at this place in things, I pulled back my hand, adding an apologetic glance. I already knew it wasn’t necessary; Rio was well-accustomed to the Gibson shutdown, courtesy of her experiences with my difficult brother.

  Difficult.

  Wasn’t that the fitting word of the week, courtesy of the maddening Y-chromosome beast in my life? But how did I summarize it all for Rio without violating Sebastian’s NDA provisions?

  And there was the new rub too, as stupid and pointless as the agreement itself. Because seriously, I was just fine about keeping his street address secret, as well as agreeing not to set a drone free in his house, and even maintaining radio silence about the expensive wine he’d poured with our meal. None of that meant as much as the connection we’d shared. Well, that I thought we’d shared—until it all went up in smoke after thirty seconds of a basic business phone call. And while Viktor Blake had no way of knowing how he’d daggered up our night, it was hard not to let my irritation ooze onto him too.

  But Rio didn’t deserve my bitter backlash about all that. I took a deep breath and went straight for the point. “What did he do, sister?” I drawled. “Well, let’s ask the more relevant question here. What didn’t he do?” As I spoke, Rio’s concentration didn’t waver—which justified the speed of the comprehension that ignited her features like a sunburst through storm clouds.

  “Holy. Shit.” She punched both words with astonished gasps. “Are you telling me what I think you’re telling me?”

  I bunched my eyebrows, completely confused. “Umm . . . what am I telling you?”

  “That Sebastian Shark, man about town, couldn’t perform when the curtain finally rose? Was the curtain the only thing that rose?” She grinned at her own joke.

  “No.” I brought my hand down over hers. “Oh, holy hell. No,” I groaned.

  “What? Are you not allowed to tell me or something? Did he make you sign an NDA, like we had to do before delivering to his offices?” At once, her features bugged wide. “Oh, he did. That’s why everyone still thinks he’s a fast player. They all think he’s got an erection for the ages, and—”

  “It is an erection for the ages!”

  Unbelievably, her stare got bigger. “And the Trojans came marching in,” she exclaimed. “At last. Yes! You cashed in your V card?”

  “Oh no, sweetie. No Trojans marching—though they might have stormed the barricades. Maybe a little.”

  Rio’s first response was a litany of F-bombs and something about a sawed-off cactus stump that I couldn’t quite make out because I was laughing so hard. As she walked the pots of noodles over to the strainer in the sink, she finally said, “All right, NDA or not, you’re going to spill everything. I’ve got freaking whiplash. Which Shark are we dealing with here? The Jaws who rocked your world or the guy from here”—she jabbed a thumb toward her T-shirt—“who wanted to just be friends?”

  I dug my teeth into my bottom lip. “Oh, I don’t think he wants to be friends.”

  Rio studied me like I was a Jenga tower and her next move had the potential to topple the entire stack. And I loved my sister-in-law a little more for her cautious treatment of the subject. “But he never moved things into the other category?”

  “It was . . . amazing,” I finally whispered. “Oh damn, Rio, he was amazing. We were on his patio, and the wind was blowing in from the canyon . . . ”

  “And he brought out a throne and then slid your feet into a pair of glass slippers?”

  Her undercurrents were sarcastic, but her tone was all dreamy fantasy. And this was still Rio I was dealing with. I could work with that. “Better than that,” I sighed out. “So much better. All the right words. All the right ways to touch me . . . ”

  “But . . . ” She pitched it up into a question at the end. The rest was up to me, but I didn’t want it to be. Why couldn’t I live in the fantasy forever?

  “But my phone rang.”

  “Okaaay.” Rio narrowed her eyes while drawing out her bafflement. “I don’t get— Oh shit.” But then obviously, she did get it. “Your phone rang . . . right when you were getting to the good stuff?”

  Feeble nod. “Exactly.”

  “And you answered it? Oh, God. Don’t tell me. No; you have to tell me.”

  “It was the forwarding ring from the business line.”

  “And you’ve got this modern gizmo called voicemail,” she said. “It’s the coolest thing. Just go with me here. If somebody calls you and it’s after hours, you can let the phone ring a few times. And then—here’s the really magical part—”

  I stopped her by raising a hand, extending one select finger. As Rio leaned over as if to bite off the digit, I tapped its tip to her forehead. “If I’d left it for voice mail, we wouldn’t be flush by thousands more of Viktor Blake’s dollars.”

  “Whoa.” She reared back and slammed her hands on the rims of the noodle pots. “The call was from him? Hottie Russki Viktor?”

  “I believe I just said that?”

  “But needed to about five minutes ago,” she snapped.

  “Huh?” I didn’t hide my genuine confusion.

  She explained while walking the pots into the cooler. “You know they’re notorious rivals, yes?”

  “Professionally. Which stands to make sense because they’re in the same business. But we’re in an ambitious field too. If we got pissy every time some healthy competition came along and—”

  Her high chirp of a laugh cut me short. “Dearest, there’s nothing healthy about the way those tw
o go after each other. If Shark and Blake could actually make ‘cutthroat’ a thing, you’d see blade sharpeners next to their desks. Probably the huge stone ones, like from the Middle Ages.”

  I shook my head and groaned. “Can we talk about things that don’t involve them wanting to behead each other?”

  “Won’t eliminate the fact that they do.”

  “But why?” I held up a hand, conciliatory despite the big yellow oven mitt I’d just donned. “Go with me here, okay? From where I’m standing, Viktor and Sebastian have achieved damn near the same level of corporate god status. True, Shark Enterprises has more employees here in LA, but that’s because Blake split his HQ teams between here, Singapore, and St. Petersburg. While Sebastian is commended for keeping the majority of his core workforce in America, Viktor has been praised for strengthening foreign relations through commerce. They both feature fine art and high-end brands in their offices. They both wear bespoke suits—”

  “Someone’s been doing her homework,” she said, rolling her eyes. “And you could be rattling down this list for the next hour. Point made, girl. The crowd gets it.”

  “No.” I launched into an adamant head shake. “I don’t think we do get it.” I turned and pulled the finished avocadoes out of the oven. “What’s really going on between those two?”

  “It’s a mystery to most of us, Abs.” Rio returned to shucking her stack of carrots. “But it’s real, as you saw with your own eyes—and paid for with a crying clit—last night.”

  I’d picked the wrong moment to slug down some water. After choking on the stuff for the better part of a minute, I finally croaked, “Want to warn a sister before doing that again?”

  “What?”

  She blinked big Bambi eyes. My giggles replaced the chokes.

  “Crying clits usually aren’t the best side dish for a plate of unanswered questions.”

  “A plate? Girl, you’re working on a whole damn platter by now.”

  “Agreed.” My laughter faded. “Especially after getting tossed out of the manor like I’d crossed some sacred line of the emperor’s.”

  “He tossed you out? Seriously?”

  “Not literally. And it wasn’t like I was little Olivia Twist and he threw me into the snow with a starving belly.”

  “Fine.” She stuck out a rebellious pout. “But I’ll bet he brought the ice all the same.”

  “Dammit.” This time, she’d struck the nail so perfectly on the head, all I could do was hand over the point. “I hate it when you’re right.” I smacked my flat hand on the stainless worktop.

  Rio rushed over, yanking me into a fierce hug. “Ohhh, Abs. Sometimes I hate it too.”

  “No you don’t.” I hugged back, and we snickered together.

  “I’d gloat, but unlike your favorite customer of the day, I’m not about kicking people when they’re most vulnerable.”

  “I’m not vulnerable. I’m pissed.”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “Right now there is.”

  “Which would normally earn you my full vote of support. But since ripping up the contract with his company is off the table—”

  “Wait.”

  Her whiskey golds nearly became fireworks. “You mean you will rip up the contract?”

  “I mean that there’s another way. At least I hope so.”

  “Well, you’ve already used the ice-out option.”

  “More than aware of that.” I folded my arms with determination. “No ice this time.”

  She perked her head back up. Her gaze was twice as brilliant. “Blowtorches instead?”

  “Right idea.” I half laughed it. “But wrong execution.”

  “My inner pyromaniac is open to options.”

  “Tell me you’re kidding.”

  “Why don’t I tell you ‘no comment’?” She averted my stare by inspecting her cuticles.

  For the sake of my sanity, I decided she was just going thick on the sarcasm. “Maybe turning up the heat is the ideal answer here.”

  She amped the mischief in her grin. “Go on.”

  I rocked my head back on my shoulders before doing the same with my weight distribution, appearing like a satisfied designer watching my creation head down the runway. “It’s really quite simple. I’m going to kill him with kindness.”

  The extreme kindness Olympic trials would be calling any second. I just knew it.

  If only my plan hadn’t hit one semi-crucial glitch.

  When I arrived at the Shark Enterprises penthouse, the man’s office was dark.

  I stood in the middle of the luxurious space, all but scratching my head about the dilemma. But that would’ve meant moving, and somehow, I thought I might alter this reality by simply holding still long enough.

  Someone softly cleared their throat near the door.

  I spun around, plastering on a smile. “Oh, hi there. It’s Terryn, right?”

  The young woman with the mouse-colored hair and the darting gaze wasn’t much of a talker—which had probably played in her favor in keeping her position with Sebastian. Still, she stated in a concise voice, “May I help you, miss?”

  “Is, uhhh, Mr. Shark in today? I mean, we received the order for his lunch last night, but—”

  “Of course he’s in today.” Her reply was a whip of sound. Sheez. The little mouse that could—and did. “He’s just not in right now.”

  Screw the whip. The woman’s emphasis was a whole flogger, flailing across my brain. I backed up by a few steps.

  He’s not in right now.

  But that wasn’t what she’d said. Not really.

  He’s not in for you, Abbigail Gibson.

  “Uh. Okay.” I didn’t understand how I maintained my polite smile. Whatever the source of my strength, I was grateful for it. The last thing I needed was to expose my disappointment to Terryn, who’d clearly appointed herself as Sebastian’s secret spy. “I guess . . . I’ll just drop his food here?”

  “That’s fine,” she responded, continuing to tap at her smart pad. Recording the four breaths I’d just taken, probably.

  I loaded his tray up with a sandwich, drink, and dessert, but instead of setting it down, I handed it to the woman who looked ready to cut up the man’s food and then serve it to him while on her knees. If he insisted on going the adolescent route today, I could roll with that. I’d just be back tomorrow—probably after a long hard talk with myself tonight regarding this plan of mine.

  Time is my ammunition, Mr. Shark.

  I showed up the next day with a new lunch ready to roll—

  To find out he still was still expertly playing his hand.

  Oh, yes. “Project Avoid Abbigail” was still in full swing that afternoon.

  And the next.

  And the next.

  And even after the weekend, which had brought a botched supplies order, a broken coil in the walk-in cooler, and a panicked what-do-I-wear-to-an-internship-interview call from one of the Intrepids—all leading to my Monday morning attitude of truly not caring if the bastard decided to avoid me for the rest of freaking time.

  Or so I told myself.

  Had even almost convinced myself, through most of Tuesday.

  But when Wednesday came, I had to confront the disgusting inevitable.

  I did care.

  Which was beyond ludicrous and well past stupid—a perfect description for the behavior he’d descended to, not me. Behavior for which there’d never be an apology.

  On top of all that, I gave up hope that the man—if I ever saw him again—would confess he’d actually liked the evening we’d been enjoying before my phone call. There’d be no real resolution of what had really killed his mood that night. I’d never know if it was truly Viktor’s interruption or if the call had saved him from having to be polite about my awkwardness and clumsiness.

  But I was over playing the guessing game about it.

  Just like I was over trying to wear him down with kindness.

  Right now, I just wanted to
be over him, period.

  But to make that happen, I had to face a new truth. Closure with him meant involving him—if only for one last time. And this time, I meant it. No more duck-and-hide between us. It was time to hit the reset button . . .

  During a surprise ambush.

  Snap.

  I’d just arrive at his office thirty minutes before my normal time. It was so easy, it was scary. The fact was confirmed by Rio’s fast support of the plan. She came into work early so we’d have everything ready and loaded to go. And yes, she did it without a single line of snark. In every molecule of the kitchen’s air where that droll sarcasm would have gone, she’d instead inserted humming.

  Humming.

  And not her typical alt-rock favorites either.

  The category of the day: peppy eighties tracks.

  I almost started recording the occasion for posterity but figured nothing would beat the woman’s rendition of “Eye of the Tiger” as we loaded the final batch of sandwiches into the van. Accompanied by her warbled cheer for me to rise up and stalk my prey, I headed out onto the delivery route . . .

  Hoping that was just as easily done as sung.

  Traffic was astoundingly light as I approached downtown, which meant I’d be super early to my first stop on the route: the Blake Logistics building. As I rode the elevator to the penthouse, an eerie anticipation accompanied me. The tweaked schedule meant I’d be walking in on Viktor unawares. I was both scared and intrigued by that.

  Okay, so I didn’t expect to catch the guy cruising YouTube in his underwear and munching on pork rinds, but what was Viktor Blake like in his natural habitat? What did he do and how did he act when he didn’t know I was already in the building?

  As I parked the cart in the penthouse lobby, next to the ornate gold door that led to Blake’s office, a woman emerged from inside. She was dressed stylishly, as everyone in the company usually was, but her posture was hunched, with one hand cupped over a lot of her face.

  A face that was streaked with makeup.

  I saw enough to figure that part out—or maybe it was just my instincts kicking in. Tears were my psychological specialty. While I wished that wasn’t the case, all those intuitions surged into high gear now, telling me the woman hadn’t just been letting off some mild emotional steam.