“And you got her number?”
“Yeah.”
Turner sounded more than mildly curious when he asked, “How does that work?”
“We were at a sex club watchin’ a guy whip his bitch and work her pussy with his hand. Shit happened and I had her against the wall. After, I told her I wasn’t done with her. She wrote her number on my palm. That’s how it worked.”
“Jesus, made of stone or not, Olivia Shade is fuckin’ gorgeous so I’m gettin’ hard just thinkin’ about her writing her number on my palm. Seein’ as I’m at work, not even gonna think about the other.”
And Nick was not going to think about why he immediately and unfathomably felt pissed at Turner telling him something about Olivia fucking Shade was making him go hard.
Turner wasn’t done.
“And if I was acknowledging the existence of this alleged sex club, I’d ask how much VIP membership costs.”
“Twenty-five thousand dollars a year.”
“Fuck.”
“Lucky you know the owner.”
“No I don’t.”
That made Nick chuckle.
“Stay sharp,” Turner ordered.
“Later,” Nick returned.
They disengaged.
Nick tossed his phone to the counter and moved through his place to his bathroom to take a shower.
He was at his desk in his office three and a half hours later when he texted her.
Hotel Teatro. Six o’clock. I’ll text the room number later.
He did not identify himself.
She made him wait.
In fact, she didn’t reply until he’d sent his assistant to check in, got the room number and texted it to her.
Which was at four fifteen.
And when she did, she only texted, 6:00.
That was it.
A cool customer.
But absolutely not made of stone.
Chapter Five
Funny
Olivia
8:15 a.m. – Nine Hours Earlier
Sitting at my desk, I wasn’t working at my computer.
I was staring at my cell phone.
This was stupid.
Insane, really.
But I was and I was doing it in hopes he’d call or at least text.
As I’d been doing since I got home last night, late, wanting him to say something, start something, give me a reason to explain why I believed, why I responded to him the way I’d done.
This was insane too and not simply because, to start something, something minimally real, something somewhat normal, would be dangerous but also because I’d been the woman sitting next to him at a sex club who got up and made my way to him, making it clear what I wanted.
A quick, hard fuck with a stranger.
Did something real or normal start like that?
I had no idea.
I just doubted it did.
But I was wanting it, hoping for it, glancing then staring then glaring at my phone like I could make magic happen and get it.
And I needed to stop doing that.
Perhaps in the heat of the moment in an intimately lit sex club after getting an orgasm from a woman he’d never met, Nick Sebring would think he wanted more.
In the light of day, he probably thought differently. And even in the world in which he lived, if he didn’t already have a steady woman who I’d assisted him in cheating on last night, he’d be looking for one who was absolutely not like me.
The woman he would look for would probably be like his brother’s woman, Anya. Exceptionally beautiful, warmth radiating out of every pore. A woman who owned and operated a salon and had nothing to do with Knight’s business. A woman so far out of our world, the only reason I knew what she looked like was because I saw her in her private section in Knight’s nightclub, Slade, when I went there for a drink and to pick someone up to fuck.
I resolutely turned from my phone to my computer, where my email was on the screen.
I grabbed my mouse and hit refresh even though I’d only sent the email to David ten minutes earlier. A carefully worded request that was really a demand that he send all the accounts and other pertinent reports by noon that day.
Not surprisingly, David had not replied.
My eyes slid to my phone.
This had to stop.
I straightened in my chair, looked back to my computer and got to work.
* * * * *
Three Hours, Fifteen Minutes Later
My phone sounded.
My eyes shot to it before I snatched it up.
I stared at the text long enough for the screen to fade to blank.
Hotel Teatro. Six o’clock. I’ll text the room number later.
Oh God, he’d texted.
God, he wanted to see me again.
I touched my thumb to the button on the bottom of my phone to engage it. I went to texts.
I was about to reply when I stopped.
Sebring wanted one of two things.
A fuck from me, this time since we’d have a bed and privacy that fuck (maybe) lasting longer.
Or, less likely but still an option, he wanted to start something minimally real and somewhat normal.
Outside of what I knew of him, I did not know the man. I knew he looked good, sounded good and felt great.
But I knew nothing else. We hadn’t kissed so I didn’t even know how he tasted.
What I did know was that no man deserved the kind of hassle I could bring into his life.
I closed my eyes, feeling that realization settle around my heart so heavy, it felt like it was struggling to beat.
This surprised me since I lived with that sensation every moment of every day of my life. Except for some reason this heavy felt a lot heavier.
I put my phone down and turned my attention back to my computer.
It was half an hour later and I was at the espresso maker across the room finishing making my second espresso of that morning when I heard the tone from my computer telling me I’d received email.
I went back to my desk and saw an email from David.
No attachments. No accounts. No reports. No files at all.
Simply a one line, two sentence email.
Perhaps we can make a meeting to go over what you need. Next Tuesday at 4:00?
We did not need to make a meeting. And it was Wednesday; the next Tuesday would give him a whole week to hide whatever it was he was intent on hiding and play on his history to recruit my father to shut me down.
I knew it.
So I wasted little time firing back, You may have another hour on your deadline. Please send what I requested by 1:00. If you don’t, Gill will be at your office to collect what I requested at 1:30. Thank you.
I sent it.
Ten minutes later, I got a phone call.
It was David.
I ignored it.
At five after one, I started getting the files.
I opened them immediately and began going through them.
* * * * *
Three Hours Later
It was fortunate David sent what I requested (except a good sight more than I needed), this keeping my mind off the fact that Sebring wanted me to meet him at Hotel Teatro and that I wanted to meet him at Hotel Teatro very badly even though I would not be doing that.
But, since David sent far more than what I requested (this suggested he was burying me under information so I wouldn’t find evidence of wrongdoing), I was very busy.
Therefore I was engrossed in going through the order manifests of one of our legitimate companies when I heard the knock on my door.
My “Come in,” was distracted.
I kept my gaze to the computer as I heard the door open and shut.
It took several seconds before I realized someone was in my office but they had not spoken.
I swiveled in my chair to turn my attention to the door.
Tommy was standing there.
Standing there looking at me.
Standing there looking at me with an expression on his face I could read.
I held his gaze, not believing what I saw, not wishing to experience the wash of raw putrescence it sent flooding through me, then fighting back the rage that rushed through in its wake.
With everything else—shockingly not the least of which being my brief but affecting encounter with Nick Sebring—all of it piling on and being too much, for once I did not control my reaction, consider every move available and then move forward cautiously (or, as was often the case, not at all).
I surged out of my seat and quickly made my way to the door.
“Liv—” Tommy began.
He shut his mouth when I sliced my eyes to him.
“You should’ve called me.”
I made it to the door and hauled it open.
“It was a direct order,” he said.
I stopped and asked, “Dad? Or Georgia?”
He didn’t answer even as he did.
His eyes moved across the hall.
Without hesitation, my feet moved across the hall.
“Liv!” he clipped.
I ignored him and knocked loudly at her door, didn’t wait and pushed through.
“Fuck! Get the fuck out!” Georgia, back to her desk, knees up, bent and spread wide, taking Gill’s cock, twisted her head to glare at me.
I looked from my sister to Gill.
It was not the first time I’d noted my sister’s favorite soldier was large, built and exceptionally handsome in a pug-like, blunt, brutal way.
It was just that I was so angry, I might like watching but that absolutely didn’t include my sister, so I noticed it with far more abstraction than usual while catching him fucking her.
“Go,” I ordered, looking in his eyes, not anywhere else.
“Are you insane?” Georgia demanded to know.
I kept my eyes on Gill who was bent over my sister but he had his head tipped back to look at me.
“Go,” I repeated.
He held my gaze then looked down at Georgia.
After a moment, he slid out and straightened, tucking himself back in his pants.
I stepped to the side of the door in Georgia’s office, attention to the floor, giving them both privacy to get themselves sorted.
I saw Gill’s legs walk by me as he left.
He closed the door.
The instant I heard it click, I looked to Georgia’s desk. She was now standing behind it, leaning into her fists spread wide on the top, her expression enraged.
“Do not ever do that again,” she whispered.
“Was he going to Sloan?” I asked.
“Confirm that you will not ever do that again,” she replied.
That meant Green was not going to Sloan.
“Was he going to Valenzuela?” I pushed.
“Liv, confirm that you will not ever do that again,” she repeated.
“So neither,” I surmised and finished, “And you had Tommy kill him anyway. Tommy. Tommy.”
“You are not hearing me—”
Suddenly, I bent toward her, hissing, “No. I’m not hearing you. I do not give that first fuck you’re pissed.” Her brows shot up at this rarity and I leaned back, asking, “Tommy?”
“Fuck, Liv—”
“Tommy!” I snapped his name like a whip, aiming my lash her way.
She pushed away from her desk. “He gets orders just like Gill.”
I shook my head. “No he doesn’t. Tommy doesn’t. Not from you. Tommy’s mine.”
Her face lost some of its anger and her tone was softer when she said, “He isn’t yours. He hasn’t been yours for a long time. And you know it, babe.”
“He’s mine, Georgie,” I reiterated.
“He isn’t, Liv.”
I leaned forward and was again hissing. “He’s mine.”
My sister’s voice was actually gentle, as was her gaze on me, when she returned, “He wasn’t even yours back then.”
My torso shot back like she’d struck me.
“He does what he’s told,” she continued. “He doesn’t get special treatment. He doesn’t get the clean jobs because the boss’s daughter gave him her cunt and her heart. It should have been a long time ago I stopped letting you protect him. Keep him for yourself. Try to keep him clean. The time for that to stop is now. A job needs to get done, no matter how dirty, he proves allegiance by doing it quickly and doing it well just like anyone else.”
“So,” I began, “Green isn’t stupid enough to turn on us, he just lost his patience because he needs money to actually feed himself, he takes off and you send my ex-boyfriend to whack him to make a point?”
“A point that needed to be made. Not only to Tommy but out there.” She threw an arm wide before she pointed at her desk. “And in here, to all our boys.”
That speared through my heart.
“It was you?” I asked.
“It was me.”
“Not Dad?” I pressed masochistically, but holding on to hope that she was taking orders too.
Just like Tommy.
She shook her head, her manner still gentle. “No, sis. Not Dad.”
She hadn’t relayed the order.
She’d given it.
I stood just inside the door of her office, silent.
Defeated.
Tommy, my Tommy, had killed a man. That man was Green. My man. My soldier.
It wasn’t like Tommy was clean. Before and after there was a Tommy and me, he’d done things. Many things. Including that. He was a gangster, like me. That was part of the business.
Though, I’d never killed anyone nor ordered an execution. But I’d sat through listening to orders being given with and without saying a word against it.
But since there was a Tommy and me, it was Gill or another member of the crew.
It wasn’t Tommy.
Not my Tommy.
“He gave up on you.”
Her quiet words set my entire body to trembling.
Even so, I retorted, “Dad had Gill pouring acid on his face.”
“Dad himself poured boiling oil on your back and you didn’t give up on Tommy,” she shot back.
I looked away, the trembling worse, the pain resurfacing. Vast assortments of pain. Entire collections.
She was right. We’d been found where we thought we were safe in Baja. We’d been dragged back. And the torture hadn’t been just for Tommy for overstepping his bounds, daring to fall in love with the king’s princess, taking her away.
The torture had been for me too.
We both had a lesson to learn.
Everyone associated with Vincent Shade had a lesson to learn.
But I’d been first.
There was a small area of skin on Tommy’s left cheekbone that looked like it was melting.
He’d endured that for five minutes and renounced me. Promised it was over. Accepted his punishment of working by my side and never again touching me. Ending forever what we’d had. And last, committing his future to my father’s sister’s daughter.
He’d married my cousin three months later.
But for ages, Tommy had watched the oil poured along the small of my back, my upper hips, and I had not renounced him. He’d shouted. Cursed. Fought against his restraints. Begged them to burn him.
But when they turned to him, he hadn’t endured his long.
I’d endured it silently, focusing as best I could on making new plans. Plans for when it was over, we were healed and it was time to try again (this time successfully). The oil dripped on my back while I decided our next destination. How we’d get there. How we’d cover our tracks. At the same time hoping with each drop gliding pure agony, I was proving to my father that I loved the man I was accepting torment for so he’d find it in him to simply let us be free.
“Liv, sissy, you need to give up on him too,” Georgia told me gently.
Her words brought me back into the room.
“He’s a soldier, nothing more. He’s not yours.
He’s ours,” she went on. “And he needs to do his job.”
She was correct.
In this world where we lived, she was absolutely correct.
It was just that I didn’t want to live in a world where things like that were the way you lived.
“Right now I hate you,” I whispered.
Her shoulders slumped slightly, but that was all she gave to me.
“It isn’t the first time,” she replied.
She was again absolutely right.
She was my sister.
But she was also her father’s daughter.
And I detested him.
“No,” I agreed and watched her fight the flinch. “And I’m sure not the last.”
Still holding my eyes, she started to round her desk. “Liv—”
“Fuck you, Georgia,” I bit out and she halted at another rare reaction from me.
“I’ll give you time,” she offered.
“Excellent call,” I returned, reaching out a hand to the doorknob. I opened the door and started through but turned back to share, “David’s hiding something. I’m leaving for the day and working from home for the foreseeable future. I’ll cover his duties while he’s out of commission. Until I find out what he’s hiding and how bad it is, you need to use your inestimable skills to shut him down. I’m sure I can count on you doing that.”
“Liv—”
I raised a brow as I interrupted her. “I can’t count on you to do that?”
Her mouth got tight before she forced out, “It’s done. I’ll go with Gill personally.”
I made no reply.
I walked across the hall, trying to ignore Tommy leaning a broad shoulder against my doorjamb.
“Liv,” he said quietly as I moved his way.
I made no response.
He shifted as I got close so I could enter my office.
He entered it with me and closed the door behind him.
“Liv,” he repeated.
Stopping behind my desk, I did not sit. I turned and looked at him.
“Now is not a good time.”
Something flashed across his face I’d seen a lot over the years. Too much. He should have learned to hide it. If not for him, for me. I’d learned how to do it for him.
Now, I wondered if he didn’t do that just so he could manipulate me.
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