“Hire her for tomorrow night. I want to see her.” I wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“Sir, I don’t think-” he interrupted me, but I wasn’t going to let him finish.
“I don’t care what you think. I want her. Give her to me.” I slammed my fist onto the table and looked him in the eyes.
“She’s eye candy only. Strictly off limits.” He looked at me and then continued. “She’s entangled. I don’t know all the details, but your father wouldn’t make it a rule if it wasn’t important.”
He had to know that only made me want her more. “Your job is to serve me. I want this. Get me her. Now.”
I looked him over and then stood. “Now, Janson.”
I shuffled the papers on my desk and grabbed a fresh stack of invoices, invoices for my pretend job, and my pretend life. Yeah, it all existed, sure. It was a real job for most men. But not for me.
Chrome. We plated it on motorcycle parts and car parts. A factory full, and I ran it all.
It was only a piece of who I was. A little part, a fake job, a fake life.
What I really was, was so much darker. Deeper. I was a monster, and I worked for my family. The family. The mob.
The Irish mob rolled deep in Baltimore, but it lived, it breathed, in Glen Burnie. In my chromium factory. They were working on the factory floor, in the warehouse, in the mailroom. They were everywhere. My family. My legacy.
And I was the head of the factory, but not the head of the mob. The real head of that very real monster. Well, that was easily the one person I hated and loved more than anyone else.
My father.
And if he said “hands off,” that meant only one thing.
She was going to be mine.
Joanna
“No. I’m not wearing that.” I crossed my arms and looked at the rag on the desk, even that was a generous term. It was a scrap of fabric, and sheer. He had to be crazy. Absolutely f*ck
ing crazy if he thought I was going to parade around in that stupid little thing.
It was a translucent dress with an opaque black band around the breasts and the more delicate places. No way I was going to put that on.
“You will wear it. And you will wear it with the shoes.” Janson put a pair of red stilettos on the desk next to the dress. They were shiny and tall, and everything I hated about being designated “eye-candy”.
“I don’t think so. Do you even know what my uncle would do if he heard about this?” I asked. It was one thing to serve drinks; it was another entirely to have to wear a getup like that. No. Absolutely not. I could just imagine the look of anger on this face as he screamed at them. It would start a war.
One they were on the brink of anyway.
“I think the very first thing your uncle would do would be to ask exactly why your father went to us for a loan. He’s the brother of the most influential man in the O’Brien family. Your family. So why did he come to ours for money, Jo?” Janson stood and leaned over the table, his bulging muscles and stubborn eyes daring me to keep arguing.
“Fine.” I grabbed the clothing and pulled them across the table. The fabric on the dress was odd and stretchy and entirely foreign. “I’ll do it, but this counts as double time for my dad’s damn debt, you hear me?”
“I do, I can give you time and a half.” He was already prepared for the argument, the sly grin planted on that pretty boy face. Well, not totally pretty boy, he did have the telltale signs of some rough tumbling and fighting. A nose that had been broken too many times, a jaw that was stubbled and rough. It took a long stare to decide if I thought he was handsome or not.
It made him look like a totally bad boy. Just not my kind of guy. Janson was too hard, too scary.
He was too honest.
“Good, it’s the boss’s card game, so you’ll want to keep to the same rules.”
“Which boss?” I asked. James or Greyson, which one?
“Greyson.” The sexy dark bad boy with no soul. Of course it was him, his father had never been anything but respectful, I was eye candy, sure, but I was at least mostly covered. “He requested you specifically.”
The one Janson warned me to stay away from. f*ck
, he noticed me. Exactly what Janson warned me away from. “It’ll be all young guys. I’ll be there, so you’ll have protection if they get handsy.”
Janson was a man of his word. It didn’t make him a good man, but when he said he was going to do something he did it. Didn’t matter if that meant he was going to protect you, or break off all your fingers.
If he said he was going to do it, he did it.
“Alright. Rules?” I asked, clearing that image from my mind.
“Same as before. Do not speak unless spoken to. Do not try to look cute, you are there for scenery. Do your hair and makeup like previously instructed, got it?”
I nodded, I got it. I didn’t like it, but I got it. “Is there anything else, boss?”
“Yeah, you wear that dress and those heels. Nothing else, you got it? That was a specific request.”
“Nothing else?” I asked.
“Nothing.” The timber of his voice scared me. “Orders from the boss.”