by V. Hunter
Sofia hadn’t interacted with another female since her mother’s death, I realized guiltily.
After both of her parents were killed, I worried that Sofia might become a target herself. After all, she would eventually be the only heir to our family business. Because of that, I kept her restricted to the property. But that meant the only human interaction she got was with all us men. No wonder she’d become so withdrawn.
Idly, I switched the security feed over to watch Sofia for a moment. Her head was buried in a book that looked too big for her. But what did I know, really?
There wasn't a day that went by where I didn't feel guilty that she got stuck with me—and guilty about the crime empire she'd been born into.
Growing up, my own father was only a small-time dealer. It was Franco who built the Pomar empire as it stood now. He used the drug trade to underwrite his legitimate business ventures. Our father had sold on street-corners to make ends meet, but Franco went straight to the sources. He supplied the dealers instead of getting his own hands dirty. People liked him, so it wasn't hard for him to take advantage of that charisma to work his way into deals he never should have been able to get anywhere close to.
Franco built something out of nothing but became a casualty of his own success. As did Irene, and by default, Sofia, too.
My brother did good things with his real businesses but that could never undo the damage caused by the drug empire that served as his foundation. Not that I hadn't benefited from what my brother built. On the contrary, it was Franco that bankrolled my college education, and then several years of aimless traveling after that. He worked while I played.
Maybe that was why I felt so beholden to him now in death, so much so that I had stepped into his shoes despite my misgivings about the state of his business dealings.
I knew something was amiss last year when Irene reached out to me. She wasn't the kind of woman that ever asked for help. During our last phone call, she kept blurting out information about Sofia so fast that I couldn't keep track of it all. I wanted to believe she only wanted me to come back and bond with my niece... she was dead the next day.
I should have known better.
I did know better.
The passing concerns Franco shared over the years about the Brunetti family finally culminated in a long, bitter bloodbath—and the Pomars came out on the losing side.
Oscar Brunetti always wanted Franco to be an ally. No matter how much the Brunetti name instilled fear in the masses, it was the Pomar name that carried loyalty and respect. Brunetti's guys would kill anyone at his direction, but they wouldn't die for him. Our guys proved they would, taking hits time and time again to protect the family until Brunetti finally found a way in.
No one ever could figure it out. There was no sign of information leaking from any of the house staff, and yet Brunetti's guys somehow managed to bypass security during shift changes when the house was at its most vulnerable. Not an easy feat, considering shift changes rotated daily for exactly that purpose.
It was a mystery I'd yet to unravel, but for the moment it would have to wait. Now there was something new under that roof for me to unravel in an entirely different way—and she came with dark hair and porcelain skin just begging to be touched.
7
Brooke
Every nerve in my body was screaming at me to turn around and get the hell out of there. Only that wasn’t actually possible because Tomas—who looked like he’d been ripped straight out of a professional wrestling match—kept inching closer, forcing me forward. The chances of me outrunning him were slim-to-none even if I could somehow make it around his beefy body.
Then there was the fact that even if I managed to get away, there was nowhere for me to go. The place was locked down like Fort Knox and sat in the middle of nowhere.
If I’d thought I made a mistake sitting on the plane, the drive out to the house really cemented that for me. We’d gone miles and miles without seeing any other sign of life. Not to mention that half the drive was through wooded areas that looked like something straight out of a horror film.
I’d been half-expecting a creepy cabin to be our final destination. Instead, I found myself being ushered through an actual mansion.
And I was starting to think that was actually worse.
There was something eery about the place. For one, it was way too quiet. There was something else noticeably missing, too—signs of a child. There were no toys anywhere. No cute family pictures. Everything felt cold and adult.
My footsteps echoed against the thick wood flooring as Tomas nudged me up a huge curving staircase towards the second floor of the house. My fingers trailed over the smooth railing as I sought out something sturdy to help me balance on shaky legs.
“Second door,” Tomas said as I stepped up onto the landing.
I turned slightly to see him pointing towards the right. Reluctantly, I let go of the banister and trudged forward.
I should’ve done more research before agreeing to this.
From what I found with a basic internet search, the man thinking of hiring me owned a few businesses and had some fancy formal title I’d never seen before. So the wealth made sense. The middle-of-nowhere lockdown… not so much.
Maybe I should’ve been searching him on the dark web or something. Was that even a real thing? I suddenly felt more sheltered than ever. I bet it was the kind of thing someone like Tomas would know.
My mouth opened before I could think better of it, “Do you know if—”
Tomas tilted his head to listen, but he was already stepping around me. I forced my mouth to shut as he knocked twice on the dark door. It was probably for the best considering how stupid I’m sure I would have sounded.
There was no response from the other side, but Tomas pushed the door open anyway. He nodded to the person inside, then stepped aside to let me enter. The whole thing felt so choreographed that it made me stiffen.
With no other choice, I forced my feet forward into the room.
And caught my first real look at Jairo Pomar.
The few blurry photos I’d seen of him on the Internet didn’t even begin to do him justice. Dark eyes stood out from the backdrop of his olive skin. His hair—just as dark as his eyes—was slicked back into a neat style that didn’t quite do enough to hide his need for a trim. His facial hair was a bit scruffy, too. That combined with his tailored suit made for an interesting combination that made him look both composed and rough around the edges.
He looked like a predator, calculating and poised to strike, I realized.
Mr. Pomar’s thick eyebrows rose with concern as I stood frozen in the doorway. My cheeks flushed as Tomas cleared his throat from behind me to break my sudden trance.
Desperate to get in the first word in, I blurted out, “Hello, I’m Brooke.”
Showing none of the same anxiety I felt, Mr. Pomar rose from the seat behind his desk and calmly walked around to greet me properly. He stood directly in front of me, forcing me to tilt my head back slightly to account for the way he towered over me. He was lean, but surprisingly tall.
“Nice to see you again, Brooke.” Again? “Jairo Pomar.” he introduced himself, offering me his hand.
I hesitated for a fraction of a second before telling myself I was being silly. It was just a handshake.
Except it wasn’t.
As his warm hand encapsulated mine, the warmth of his touch seemed to seep through to the rest of my body. His eyes were steady on mine, not straying to look at any other part of me, but I felt a prickle of awareness in my chest as he held onto me for a beat too long. Then two. Three.
Gently, I tugged my hand free and laced it with my other one out of view behind my back. As if I thought the man might go out of his way to reach for me again.
“You can have a seat,” he offered as he returned to his own side of the desk.
I didn’t move immediately. Two things had become clear to me in that short interaction with Mr. Pomar. One, that I was w
ildly attracted to the man. Though, to be fair, it was hard for me to imagine any woman being immune to his disarmingly good looks.
The second thing—that Jairo Pomar could not be trusted.
It didn’t escape my notice the way he’d casually looked me right in the eyes while he acted inappropriately. No man in his right mind would make prolonged physical contact like that with a prospective employee. And yet his eyes had remained blank, revealing nothing about his thoughts or intentions. That was enough for me to internally brand the man as dangerous.
Tomas broke the uncomfortable silence to say, “If you’ll excuse me.”
Completely forgetting my manners, I blurted out, “You’re leaving?” as I turned to stare at him in horror. Tomas was just as much a stranger to me as Mr. Pomar, but with the benefit of a couple extra hours spent together. It was enough to make me feel slightly safer with that man than this one.
His eyes flickered over my shoulder, to his boss, I was sure. He offered a tight nod before he turned and disappeared. I was relieved that at least the door had been left open.
I turned back just in time to see a flash of irritation cross over Mr. Pomar’s face.
So, it was possible to get a reaction out of the man after all. A reaction that only made me feel even more insecure about what I’d gotten myself into.
“Please have a seat, Brooke.”
He sounded like a parent preparing to discipline a child. I didn’t particularly like the tone being directed at me, but it was the first sign that he might actually have a kid around somewhere. It was only a small comfort.
I took the offered seat and crossed my legs neatly at the ankle, the way Bridget taught me. My heart ached just thinking about it. We’d been only kids then, with no way of knowing how messy our relationship would turn as adults.
“I hope your trip was well?”
“Yes, thank you, Mr. Pomar.” And then, remembering some semblance of real manners, I added “The flight was lovely.”
Lovely? What; was I eighty years old all of a sudden?
He didn’t even acknowledge the comment. “Please, call me Jairo,” he corrected, instead.
"Oh. Uhm, okay," I agreed, even though calling his by his first name reeked of a nonexistent familiarity.
“Here, this is for you.” He handed me a stapled packet from across the desk. I took it and scanned the front page.
“This is a contract,” I stated.
He nodded.
I shook my head as I pointed out, “You haven’t even done the interview.” I knew I sounded ungrateful, but that just wasn’t how things were done. Even with my limited work experience, I knew I shouldn’t be getting a contract before having an actual interview.
He frowned deeply as he said, "The headhunter I hired to contact you doesn't present job offers, only interview requests. I considered calling this an interview only to be a matter of formality."
"I didn't," I pointed out.
Jairo didn't even have the decency to address my obvious concern. He launched right into giving me details about the job that I couldn't even wrap my mind around because I was so thoroughly confused. I expected there to be questions. And a chance for me to ask questions. I walked in knowing the chance of me actually accepting a job would be slim, and the man across from me was acting like it was already a done deal.
"I'm sorry," I interrupted, "but I think there's been some kind of mistake here."
"What mistake would that be?" he challenged.
"I don't even have childcare experience. Ms. Blackwell was very clear that I could interview with no obligation to accept and that I would have plenty of time to make a decision. And honestly, I expected I would actually get to meet your daughter before any decision was made. Wouldn't you want to know that the two of us would get along if you planned for us to spend so much time together?"
"Niece," he corrected. "And why wouldn't the two of you get along? She's just like any other little girl." He hesitated as he said the last part, which only made me more wary. As an afterthought, he added, "Her handwriting is very bad."
“I don’t care if her handwriting is bad.” I laughed humorlessly. “And I’m more than a little concerned that that’s the only detail you’ve chosen to pinpoint about her. You can talk to me about schedules and schoolwork for hours, but it doesn’t tell me anything about her.”
“I don’t know what it is you want to know.” He genuinely seemed to think that was all there was to it.
I crossed my arms over my chest, feeling myself shifting from anxious to irritated. “Which is exactly why I’m saying I’d like an introduction to be made before anything gets decided.”
I walked right into some sort of scam—there was no other explanation. The way Jairo talked there was no way he actually lived with a child.
He stared, offering no response as he examined me from across the desk. I didn’t like it. Especially the part where my whole body seemed to jump to life under his watchful eyes. My skin practically hummed as his gaze swept over me.
I needed to get the heck out of there.
...But another part of me sort of wanted to crawl up onto his desk and invite him to do more than just look.
Jesus, Brooke, I silently admonished myself.
"My niece Sofia is busy right now," he finally answered in a sharp tone that let me know he thought that ended the discussion.
I stood as calmly as I could and smoothed my hands over the thighs of my dress slacks. "Then thank you for your time, Mr. Pomar, but I'm not able to accept."
I laid the paperwork face-down on his desk. Besides my lingering question about whether his daughter—or niece, rather—even existed, I knew there was no way I could ever work for a man I found so inexplicably attractive. That would just be asking for trouble.
"I think you should reconsider," he ground out through clenched teeth.
"No, thank you," I said, my answer firm.
Nothing could have prepared me for Jairo’s sudden onset of anger. His face went a deep red as he grabbed a paperweight from the corner of his desk and flung it at the wall. The sound made me duck, covering my head with my arms as I yelped.
The room fell silent except for the sound of Jairo’s heavy breathing. I chanced a peek at the wall, noticing a small notch in the middle of the wall. Had he really thrown that hard enough to crack the drywall?
I shuddered.
His reaction only cemented my decision. He glared at me as if waiting for me to react. Instead, I forced myself to lower my arms, raise my head, and stare passively back at him. If he thought that horrifying display would make me more apt to stay, then he was completely out of his mind.
8
Jairo
It made me furious to know she’d drawn that sort of reaction out of me. It’d been a long time since I’d displayed the kind of hot-headedness that often got me into trouble as a kid. In fact, most of the time I prided myself on my ability to stay calm in tense situations.
But I couldn’t seem to help myself with Brooke.
She had such a soft, sweet, innocent look to her that I assumed she would be passive. Instead, here she was questioning me and doing her damndest to get away from me as fast as humanly possible.
She crossed her arms again in front of her, staring wordlessly down at me. I didn’t like her looking at me from a higher vantage point, so I stood, too. Now she was forced to look up at me since I was nearly a foot taller than her.
“You’re going to take this job.”
“No, I’m not,” she stubbornly replied.
“Then you’ll stay here until you change your mind.” I glared at her, angry that she was making me resort to holding her hostage. And doubly angry because with her arms crossed and chest heaving her breasts were magnificently on display just for me—as if she were subconsciously offering them up to me.
She let out a soft gasp. “You can’t do that.”
“Who’s here to stop me?” I taunted her.
She might have been putting on a
brave face, but her body betrayed her when I stepped around the side of the desk and she stumbled several steps backward to keep distance between us. I’d scared her, which I didn’t necessarily like, but it did give me an advantage that I needed at the moment.
"What did you think? You could come here to escape your sister's engagement party on my dime? And then you'd just prance on home and... then what? You'll still be living at home with your sister, watching her prepare to marry a man you spent your childhood years dating."
Her face paled, a strange sight considering how naturally pale she was anyway. "Why do you know any of that?"
"I didn't need to interview you because I already did my research. Not because I'm negligent, despite what you seem to have assumed." A little color returned to her cheeks as my words seemed to embarrass her.
"Well you didn't get everything right, obviously, because I wasn't just a child when I dated Alex," she replied haughtily.
"You were a child until the moment I laid eyes on you," I taunted her.
Her cheeks went from being a little pink to full-on scarlet. She didn't miss the sexual undertone lacing my words, which had been exactly my intent. I needed her to understand she wasn't setting the tone for our interaction any longer. Not if she was going to act like a brat instead of giving in to the simple attraction she clearly felt.
It wasn't like she could hide her own lust because for fuck's sake, I could see her nipples forming hard little peaks under her blouse. And I kept the house warm, so it couldn't be blamed on chilled air.
She needed to accept who was boss here—me. The sooner she did that, the sooner I could give us what we both clearly wanted.
I strode towards her, taking two steps for every one she took back, until we were face-to-face and there was nowhere left for her to retreat to. I held my hand out to her and stared down at it quizzingly.
