Like the one he was shooting me right then.
Dressed in his usual black jeans and a black button-up, he had a bit of a professional appearance. But the skin that peeked out from his clothes was covered in tattoos.Including the backs of his hands. One had a skull. The other had a bold “AC” inked into it.For the Jay Johnson.That he ran.After breaking away from a cartel he’d grown up in while America.He smelled good, too.Kinda spicy, but not overwhelmingly so. Maybe just soap. Or very lightly applied cologne.“Hey, mama,” he said, giving me that smirk I’d mentioned.Gaze moving down, I saw he’d brought one of his mutts with him.A was a big fan of dogs. Lots and lots of pitbulls. Which, objectively, were probably a good idea when you had a massive, sprawling property that you couldn’t have a guard on every inch of.“You can’t bring your dog in here,” I told him, bringing my attention back to my leg, ripping the material wider, since they were trash now anyway.I didn’t even see him move, but when my gaze lifted so I could reach for some gauze out of my desk drawer, A was towering over me, glancing down at my leg.“Whose ass did you kick today?” he asked.And, damn him, it was nice to hear a man admit in even an offhand way that I was capable of kicking ass.After so long with my coworkers, I expected nothing but criticism and teasing from people within the office walls.“Lost a fight with some rusty scaffolding,” I admitted, shrugging.“You’re still standing, aren’t you?” he asked. And it was a very Andres way of saying Seems like you won to me.I didn’t want to soften to him at all, but after the night I’d had, hanging off of unsteady scaffolding in a half-renovated office building to try to get pictures of the CEO banging his secretary, then nearly falling to my death, yeah, it was nice to hear anything halfway decent from someone right then.“Mr. Jay!” Mike’s voice called from somewhere behind me, making me immediately stiffen, something I knew didn’t escape A’s keen gaze.But he said nothing, just straightening and moving a more professional distance away.“Please, don’t let Hope distract you,” Peter added, making me bite my cheeks and kind of wish for that Lockjaw.Each passing day, it seemed to get harder and harder to keep my cool, to not rise to the bait they were all dangling in front of me.“She ain’t bothering me,” A said, and I chanced a look at him, finding his brows pinched a bit.“Good. Good. We have the meeting room all ready for you,” Peter said, the picture of charm when there was a client with deep pockets in the building.Peter was the son of the man who’d first hired me, claiming he’d liked my ‘spunk,’ and thought that the all-male crew could ‘benefit from having a woman around.’Unfortunately, his son hadn’t been as welcoming. And when a little heart trouble meant Mr. Peter had needed to hang up his hat and, for the most part, hand over the reins to his son, my work life had pretty much become hell.Peter looked like what I imagined his dad would have looked like in his thirties. Tall, a little stockily built, his brown hairline already starting to recede, with light green eyes.He was dressed a little more formally today than usual in a button-up and brand-new dark-wash jeans.He had on cologne as well, but unlike A, he didn’t know how to apply it conservatively.“Cool,” A said, shrugging.I’d started to get to my feet since if it was an all-hand-on-deck situation, I had a set of them too.But Peter’s bark stopped me.“Sit your ass down. You’re not coming.”Anger, familiar enough that it was easy to mask, flooded my system as I glared at Peter for a second.It was the next emotion that worked its way through me that had my heart hammering and my neck and face warming.Embarrassment.Normally, the bad treatment from my coworkers was a sort of private shame that I stubbornly tolerated. No one I knew in my personal life had ever bore witness to it.And while, sure, Jay Johnson wasn’t exactly in my personal circle, I did know him outside of work.It felt like there was suddenly a spotlight on my abuse.I was acutely aware of my bloody leg, of my greasy hair, of the way I was still only halfway to a standing position, not sure if I should stand in defiance, or drop my ass back down onto my seat.A said nothing, but his brows were raised. I didn’t know him well enough to interpret what that look meant.Deciding defiance was always my best option in the face of shame, I jerked my chin up and stood up.“I was going to get some triple antibiotic,” I snapped at Peter , moving around my desk to yank open the small file cabinet that was against the wall between my desk and the next one, dragging out one of the first aid kits we had lying around.What can I say? People tended not to like us snooping around in their business. We got scratched up a lot. “Come on, Mr. Johnson ,” Peter said, turning to lead him toward the back as I dropped back down at my desk. “Val, sit,” A said to the dog, dropping his leash and leaving the dog a few feet from my desk. “Stay,” he added, tone both commanding and kind somehow at the same time. When I glanced up, A was standing in front of my desk, his dark gaze on me. “The fuck you let them talk to you like that for, mama?” he asked, knocking his knuckles on my desk, then turning and swaggering away. Leaving me with my anger and embarrassment, and a dog that was looking at me from all of three feet away. “I don’t like dogs,” I told Val, whose tan ears perked up at being spoken to, but stayed put. “It’s nothing personal. I don’t really… get the whole… animal-loving thing,” I admitted. “Christ, I’m talking to a dog,” I mumbled to myself as I got some triple antibiotic on a q-tip and swiped it
Twenty minutes later, I’d drafted and email and sent the pictures to the wife of the CEO, a woman who didn’t need this level of stress when she was already trying to raise four kids on her own without a nanny because her husband claimed it was “her job.” But it was what her lawyer sister said she needed. Proof. Undeniable proof. Because he had the access to the money, which meant he would throw a lot of it toward fighting her about alimony and custody and even child support. Meanwhile, the woman had worked her ass off to support him when he was building his business. It was a case that would end up being pretty high profile, and I was going to pay attention to the progress, rooting for the scorned wife all the way. Then the door was opening, and the muffled male voices spilled out and filled the small room, making Val’s tail waggle furiously, but he stayed where he’d been told to as his owner approached. “We will get started on the case immediately,” Peter said, all ass-kissy whe
I didn’t like losing that kind of crazy on this side of the border, but if there was a situation going on down there, he was someone who was capable of… sending a message. There was no room for subtle when it came to cartel warfare. Shit was rough between syndicates. Literal gunfights in broad daylight in the streets. That had been the life I’d grown up in. And because there wasn’t a whole fuckuva lot of options to get out of the debilitating poverty I’d been born into, I’d gotten myself wrapped up in that world before I was even in middle school. That life makes you hard, and it does it fast. I hadn’t so much as blinked at the idea of torture since I got my twelve-year molars in. “I’ll get him the message,” Marco said, nodding. “You heading out?” he asked when I reached for my keys. Here is where never letting anyone close enough to you to truly know your tells came in handy. Because I had to lie right to his face. “Val’s gotta hit the vet. Got something going on with his sto
A take-no-prisoners, badass woman who never let anyone even look at her sideways… let her coworkers talk to her like absolute shit. The fuck was that about? I had no idea, and then I was being ushered into the back with the men while Naomi sat in the front, watching my dog like he was planning on charging her or something. I sat there, saying very little, as the Peter guy prattled on and on and fucking on about their experience andAnd, at the end of it, I came to the conclusion that I didn’t trust a damn one of them to handle my shit. Hope, though? With her biker daddy and her biker uncles and her aunts that did all sorts of illegal shit? She could be trusted. Besides, it was funny as fuck to watch those men’s faces fall when I demanded it be Hope. If there was one thing I’d learned in life, it was that it was satisfying as hell to take a person of power down a peg or two. With that, I walked out, a smile tugging at my lips as I walked Val down the street with me to order som
“Nah, man, he spent the morning cleaning up puke and shit,” Manny said, walking up behind Luis with an even more stacked plate. “I wouldn’t be hungry either.” Luis’s brows pinched as he glanced over toward where Val was sitting at the front window, watching the grounds, likely itching to get out there with his friends. But the dogs were on schedules. Some were in the house a good chunk of the day, but outside all night. Others had the opposite. I didn’t believe in having dogs living outside, not even for protection, but some of them—like Val—seemed to live for their guardMy gaze kept drifting toward the clock, watching the hours tick away, getting more and more concerned that I hadn’t heard from that PI place. Were they really going to shoot themselves in the foot by not letting Hope take on the case? I mean, they got paid whether she solved the fucking case or not. Though, yeah, I had no doubts that she was capable of sussing shit out. If for no other reason than spite. Spite
Nah, man, he spent the morning cleaning up puke and shit,” Manny said, walking up behind Luis with an even more stacked plate. “I wouldn’t be hungry either.” Luis’s brows pinched as he glanced over toward where Val was sitting at the front window, watching the grounds, likely itching to get out there with his friends. But the dogs were on schedules. Some were in the house a good chunk of the day, but outside all night. Others had the opposite. I didn’t believe in having dogs living outside, not even for protection, but some of them—like Val—seemed to live for their guardMy gaze kept drifting toward the clock, watching the hours tick away, getting more and more concerned that I hadn’t heard from that PI place. Were they really going to shoot themselves in the foot by not letting Hope take on the case? I mean, they got paid whether she solved the fucking case or not. Though, yeah, I had no doubts that she was capable of sussing shit out. If for no other reason than spite. Spite
So I wasn’t afraid of male anger, knowing that no matter what form it took, I could defend myself against it. That meant I didn’t jolt or shrink or feel like I was going to cry when someone was in my face and screaming. Instead, I kind of just focused on how ridiculous their actions were. How they reminded me of the emotional regulation of a five-year-old instead of a fully grown man. Peter, he always got red. Liam kind of spat a little when he was yelling. Elijah cursed so often when he was pissed that I actually started a mental ticker when he started talking. It was only Vane’s anger that I even remotely worried about. Unlike our other coworkers who ran hot and emotive, Vane was a cold sort of fury. Quiet. Unpredictable. Or maybe I was just reading too much into shit, given our history, given the fact that we barely spoke since… well… all that shit went down. I was sure he wasn’t happy that the biggest client we’d landed in six months wanted me, and only me, on the case. B
Which is someone working behind—“ Elijah started. “I know what a fucking snake is, E,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Did he say why he thinks that?” “He didn’t give a lot of specifics,” Liam said. “He mentioned some vague things about things getting leaked that shouldn’t have been if ‘all the holes were sealed up,’” he went on, air quoting the part A had said. “Pretty much. We can’t go asking questions, but need to have answers,” Peter said. “Now why don’t you run along and tell the client what is going on, then take your ass home, so we can get to work?” I wanted to snap back at that, but I didn’t say anything as I grabbed my wallet, took another sip of my cold coffee, and headed out the door. The problem was, I didn’t have a phone number. Honestly, I doubted Peter and the guys did either. Jay struck me as more careful than that. And I couldn’t exactly show up at his house either. So my only choice was to wait for him to leave, hope he was alone, then follow him. It took longer t