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I’d almost forgotten he was up Drake’s ass from way back when. A foolish oversight on my part.
“Piece of shit or not,” Eric said. “He called Drake, Drake called you. You didn’t fucking answer, Bran. Your phone cut to voicemail three times straight. You didn’t answer, he called me. What was I supposed to do? Tell him to call back later? I don’t fucking think so.”
“And caning the shit out of Annabel was his idea, was it?”
He shrugged. “His and Richter’s. Compensation, Drake said. I was gonna strangle her unconscious if you hadn’t pulled the plug. Both of them are gonna be raging now at the blackout.”
I hated Drake.
I’d have happily given the prick twice the pounding I’d given Eric in my rage without so much as blinking.
But I couldn’t.
Not with his contacts. Not with his investment. Not with the full extent of his knowledge of our set up.
I barely even thought of him anymore. Didn’t give him any more of my brain time than absolutely pissing necessary these days.
He got pings with new girl details and the necessary lowdown on their contracts. He got quarterly updates on business and how his shares were performing, as well as a complimentary login to the screenings.
Everything else he could go fuck himself for. Unfortunately, he didn’t see it that way.
I leaned back against the wall and scowled down at my brother, loathe to admit he’d been stuck between a rock and a hard place with no obvious solution.
“We’ll draw a line under this bullshit,” I told him. “Put it down to a bad job all round. Drake can crawl back into his hole and Richter can get his dick wet as per pissing usual when a suitable bid comes in from him.”
I was reaching out a hand to help him to his feet when he shook his head again.
“We can’t,” he said, and I paused, hand in mid-air.
“Can’t?” I prompted. “Tell me, little brother, why the fuck can’t we?”
His eyes were shiftier than I’d ever seen them. His throat bobbing like a sad little duck as he struggled for the words.
“Because I told him about Rebecca Lane,” he said, and my hand fisted like a rock between us.
“You fucking what, asshole? Why in the holy living shit did you tell Drake about Rebecca Lane?”
His voice was a bleat. “Because you weren’t here! Without any good fucking reason! Because I didn’t want to tell him you were chasing some piece of skirt all over town like a crazy with no regard for clients!”
“Because you’re an idiot,” I hissed, and I meant it. “You’re a fucking idiot, Eric. The last thing Drake needs to hear is about Rebecca Lane gossiping all over campus. I’ve got it under control. Nothing to fucking see here.”
“I may be an idiot,” he said with a shrug. “But that doesn’t matter shit right now. He wants you to call him.”
I managed a bitter smile before I tossed my cigarette butt down the stairs and pulled out a fresh one. I could smell Paige Emmerson’s pussy on my fingers as I raised it to my lips.
And that’s when my crazy day got all the crazier. My sensibilities did somersaults, refusing to come back to order, and that’s when I clocked it. The ridiculous notion underneath my own sanity.
Because no matter how much I loathed the prospect of speaking with Drake and indulging his ridiculously bloated fantasies as to his position within this establishment, I had no regrets whatsoever about indulging some ridiculously bloated fantasies of my own.
Paige Emmerson’s pretty little pussy would pay for her part in this debacle, even if she didn’t ever know it. I’d make damn well sure of that.
She’d rue the day she used her wiles to distract me from urgent business. Beg me for forgiveness for a crime she wasn’t even aware of committing and take her punishment like the good little slut I’d force her to be.
But that wasn’t for now.
I left Eric slumped on the landing and headed out to make the call to Drake.Chapter Twenty-SixPaigeHe’d left his belt. I found it fallen by the bed once I’d pulled myself together enough to crawl for my clothes.
It was a talisman. A leather serpent coiled sleeping. My only real token of his presence bar the wad of used notes I stuffed in my handbag.
I doubled the belt back in two and raised it to my face. Breathed in the scent of him around the leather.
My skin still burned all over. Every muscle aching.
The devil on my shoulder was still singing. The angel on the other was nowhere to be heard.
Getting myself dressed was one hell of a challenge. I barely even fastened my shoes, teetering away from that hotel room like the used-up hooker I was fast on the road to becoming.
I tried my best to be quiet as I placed the room key back on the desk at reception, but the grinning woman from earlier poked her head around the door from the back office before I could slip away.
