“You do, but you need a new car and a better apartment. Offer to stay on. It can’t be hard work, can it?”
I thought about it for a moment. So far all the job had been was just easy serving. Well, kind of easy. I had to deal with Greyson’s stares. And his mannerisms. He was so damn intimidating.
“I can manage it. But with school-” Graduate school really was a full-time job in and of itself. I was already slipping behind. Today was a victory, but a small one.
“You’ll manage.” He waved his hand and dismissed me. Like I was just another one of his lackeys. Because I was. I was nothing more than his pawn.
I always would be.
Greyson
Blood ran red under the streaming water, washing away all the terrible things I’d done. Another day of acting as my father’s enforcer. He was making me do it more often, lately. Making me remember all the horrible things I’d seen. It was like this every time I had to clean up after. With me washing the blood off of my hands, my body shaking. With anger. With rage.
And even fear.
Jo. I wanted to see her. I wanted her. Not yet. Not until the dinner. I thought a few days would get her the f*ck
out of my mind, but it didn’t. The touch of her, the feel of her, it was all still there tormenting me and my cock. I’d never had so much f*ck
ing blue balls in all my life. I’d never turned down a woman to take care of them, either.
But I did this time.
I would never let her see me like this. I didn’t care about other women. Sometimes I went to them right after, anger and lust overwhelming me. I could f*ck
the hate. The pain, out of me. But not with her.
Yeah, I wanted to f*ck
her, make myself forget all of this, but I knew if I did I would hate myself in the morning. She would hate me. Before I wouldn’t give a shit, but after looking into her eyes, after seeing her smile. I did. It was a weakness I wasn’t expecting.
“Boss?” I heard Janson call me as he closed the door to my penthouse.
“In here,” I said as I turned off the tap and dried my hands. I’d changed and washed my hands. That would have to do. “What do you need, Janson?”
He looked at me, and then the scene in the sink and just nodded. He’d been there before.
Our old men were cut from the same cloth.
“I have the information you wanted, on Joanna.” He held up a manila envelope, “My dad had it all. Sent a PI out before we hired her. You’ll never guess who she is.”
“Who?”
“Dennis O’Brien’s niece. Turns out, dad owed money to us, didn’t want to go to his brother. She agreed to work it off.”
“I thought you said she was just some girl from Brooklyn Park?” I asked.
“I guess I was wrong.”
I swallowed. “So, you’re telling me that we have our rival’s niece working tables and serving drinks?” I asked, processing this information.
“He doesn’t seem to care too much about her. She’s not involved in the family at all. They don’t use her for anything. Dad made the deal to humiliate him, more than anything. If he found out. Didn’t want to put the squeeze on the brother that would be taking it too far.”
I could see the conundrum he must’ve been in.
Still, to think he would allow this to happen. To get this far. He didn’t want to protect her. But I did. I wanted her more than she knew.
“So, I take it you haven’t spent the night with her?” Janson asked, still holding that envelope. I reached for it, but he pulled it back.
We stared at each other. “Why do you say that?” I asked.
“You never seem to want a woman for more than one night. My sister was a pretty good damn example of that.”
“That shit got me into major trouble,” I said.
“Yeah, but your dad respected you for it. He was pissed, it caused derision, but he respected your masculinity. You are a cold, calculating son of a bitch. So what is it with her?”
“Well, she was just some hot piece of ass. Now, now she’s a damn piece on the chessboard.” I grabbed that envelope and opened it, leafing through the photos. Some at the University of Maryland, some at her apartment. Some with her father. With her uncle. A whole sheet on who she was, what she did. All the way to her college transcripts. How the hell did they get those? I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t ask.
She was everything she said she was, a first-year Ph.D. student, a smart woman. So why in the hell would she agree to this? She had to know that getting mixed up with the mob wasn’t going to end well for her.
She had to know what I’d do when I find out. Or maybe she thought I already knew? Maybe she thought that’s why I paid attention to her at all. No wonder she looked at me with such cold eyes.
“Boss? Where are you, you look a million miles away,” Janson stared at me, but I just shook my head and waved him away.
“Sorry, I was thinking. Thank you for bringing me this information,” though I suspected he’d known it all along. I could always tell when he was hiding something. I’d known him since first communion . We were best friends.