SCANDALOUS

“Nice veins.” I pointed at his forehead, fishing my cell phone out and dumping it onto the table.

“You’re very fu

I shrugged. “Thanks for the analysis, Dr. Strangelove. Now let’s do this as quick and as painless as possible, so that Jordi can go back to admiring the reflection of himself on the four-grand mirror in his office. Shall we?”

“We shall.” Jaime slapped the desk, dark circles framing his eyes. His wife, Mel, had just given birth to their second daughter, Bailey. He looked as happy as a pig in shit and as tired as the person hired to clean up the pigpen.

The poll had started off with Jordan, who obviously voted for keeping his daughter employed. Then came my turn, and I surprised everyone, including myself, with the answer.

“Yes.”

“Yes?” Vicious blinked, giving me his what-the-fuck-is-your-game look. “Yes means you vote for her employment,” he explained slowly, like I was an idiot.

“I know what yes means, dickbag.”

Vicious, Jaime, and Dean exchanged puzzled looks. They were going to go with my plan, but now, I’d changed it. Jordan appeared out of sorts, looking among all of us, searching our faces, trying to make sense of it all.

Jaime was the first to recover, rubbing the dark bags under his eyes. “Whatever. I don’t care.”

Dean’s turn. He tossed his te

Then Vicious. He looked up at me, shaking his head slightly in warning.

I don’t want to fuck her, asshole. I mean, I do, but I won’t.

Then again I’d never had a serious girlfriend in my thirty-three years, and the one thing I did have was a runaway ex-stripper whom I’d knocked up in a dirty hookup and who’d left me with our kid. So maybe I did deserve that warning.

But even though Edie Van Der Zee was definitely trouble, Luna seemed to like her.

Maybe.

Probably.

Goddammit, hopefully.

I knew I was making zero sense. I didn’t give a damn. Let them think I was crazy. More power to me. No one liked to mess with crazy. Ruthless? Why not. Powerful? Sure. But crazy was unpredictable, the worst attribute in human nature.

Vicious opened his lips, relishing the power of having the room. “It’s a yes from me.”

She was in.

My friends were my tribe, my custom-made, hand-selected family. Saying we had each other’s backs was an understatement. Nearly twenty years and counting, we were still blindly loyal toward one another. When one of us jumped, the others gladly took the fall.

Dean stood up, collecting his shit from the table. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to call my wife. She had a doctor’s appointment today. Mazel tov, Jordi.”

Vicious and Jaime got up and started discussing a conference call with Japan they had tomorrow at the butt crack of dawn.

Van Der Zee and I found ourselves alone in the boardroom, surrounded by nothing but the white noise of the air conditioner. Jordan tapped his finger on his thin lips, his foot mimicking the irritated movement.

He was waiting for me to explain. Foolishly, I might add. Volunteering information to the enemy was a rookie mistake, one I’d learned not to make long before my rich, sheltered friends had learned how to wipe their own asses.

“Feeling indecisive today?” His long, bony, Voldemort-like face twisted in displeasure. He looked like a tsar and acted like a tyrant. Jordan thought he was intimidating, and maybe he was, but not to me. To me, he was all bark, zero bite.

I shrugged, resting my legs on the table, knowing it’d drive him nuts. “Nah, I was always okay with your daughter working here. Just wanted to make you sweat a little. Cardio is important at your age.”

“How considerate of you. You’re not one to waste time, and you just wasted plenty of ours, so I am guessing there’s a plan behind your change of heart. Let me be clear—my daughter is completely off-limits for you. You will be wise to stay far away from her.”

I couldn’t get butthurt over his comment, because no matter how wildly insane and sick it was, I did find his teenage daughter good enough to eat. At the same time, I knew better than to even think about it. She acted like a child. I had one at home. They weren’t much fun, and were ridiculously hard to tame.

“I expect the other guys won’t be getting the same warning?” I tipped my chin down, averting his warning. Not that I was going to fuck little Edie, but he didn’t have to know that. Pulling at his strings was my version of a hobby.

“Your colleagues are gentlemen.”

My colleagues had fucked enough women between them to populate a medium-sized country, but I wasn’t going to argue this point. Not with him, anyway. I stretched in my seat, yawning. I may have been The Mute—I was the one to never, ever talk. Not at meetings, not at company functions, and not to mingle with anyone—but when the situation called for it, I was happy to fight for what I wanted.

“You know, Jordi, I sometimes feel inclined to pull the race card on you. You seem to approach me with a bag of prejudice that doesn’t apply to my fair-ski

Van Der Zee snorted, shaking his head. “Don’t even go there, Rexroth. You’re practically white. You look like you’re working on your tan.”

“A simple, ‘I’m not a racist’ would have been more sufficient,” I pointed out.

“At any rate.” He stood up. “Stay away from my daughter if you want to survive a year in this company.” A year ago, Jordan had agreed to buy forty-nine percent of the shares in the company, with us four splitting the remaining shares. We did it so we could all move to Todos Santos and live close to each other. But we never knew Jordan would be such a pain in the ass.

“Color me bored at your idle threat. Besides, I heard you the first time.”

“Heard, yes. Acknowledged? No.”

“I’ve got your acknowledgement right here, sir: Fuck. Off.” I slid my hands out of my pockets and showed him my two middle fingers before getting up and grabbing my phone and wallet. I dialed Sonya’s number to give her the good news about Luna nodding. She answered after the first ring. “Sonya, hold on one sec.” I shot him a smirk, pressing the receiver to my chest. “Word to the wise, Van Der Zee—next time you get into business with someone, make sure they are a gentleman. Because I sure as hell am not, and I don’t care how many shares you have in my company. Let it be known—if you threaten me one more time, I will leave you to collect dust and a string of financial losses. We’re done here, partner.”

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