“Why not?” She shrugged playfully and his eyes lit up.
“I took some time to think… about me, and you… us.” Rose was so soft-spoken that Minx barely heard him.
He was timid and unnerved, two things that Rose never was. Minx studied him as he clasped his hands together.
“And what did you come up with?” Minx tipped her head sideways.
“I don’t want to talk about this here,” he said to her. “I’m going to hang with little bro, then I gotta link up with Max on some shit. Answer the phone later so we can link up, a’ight? I got something I want to show you.” Rose reached for her and tugged her into his personal space by her jacket.
His hand swept the side of her face, and he raked his eyes over her. She sucked him in with those pretty baby brows and her breathing hitched.
“Answer the fucking phone when I call, Minx,” he warned, right before he kissed her gently on the lips.
Backing up, he left her standing there stuck on his lips against hers. With the simplest gesture, he soaked her panties, and she shook off the aftereffects so that she could go about her day.
After dropping Mille at the house, Rose went to meet Max at one of his office buildings. Whipping his Chevy truck up and parking beside the F-150 that his mentor drove, Rose went through his phone and saw that he had a message from Nadia lighting up. Frowning, since he hadn’t heard from her since shit went down at the gym, he went to the text message that she sent. It was a picture of a pregnancy test.
“The fuck,” he muttered, zooming in on the positive sign. “Congratulations, daddy,” he read her text aloud.
That bitch was trying to be funny. He didn’t think she could even conceive kids, which was why they didn’t always use protection.What the fuck is going on?He frowned, eyes falling on the building in front of him. He tucked his phone, deciding he was going to ignore her ass for now until he dealt with everything with Minx. Rose climbed out of the truck and pulledhis pants up on his hips, crossing the lot to the entry. The bell above the door rang, and Max’s voice carried into the lobby from the back office. There was an older lady, Miss Jane, at the front desk taking calls and filing.
“Hello, handsome,” she greeted him with a warm smile. “You here to see Max?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Rose bobbed his head.
“Rose, come on back!” Max bellowed.
Seated behind his big, U-shaped desk, smoking a cigar with his feet kicked up, Max waved him in.
“Max, I’m telling you now, we have gone over these numbers three times. Something is off. At least a hundred thousand,” his accountant, Vladimir, explained to him.
Exasperated, Rose could feel his frustration through the speakerphone on Max’s desk. He slipped into the chair across from him and folded his arms across his stomach, leaning back. Max nodded, taking a pull from the Cuban cigar between his fingers.
“OK, Vlad. I’ll get back with you after I find out a few things. Send me that report,” Max ordered before he hit the button to hang up.
When he finished, he planted his feet on the ground and spun in his chair to face Rose. Leaning forward on his elbows, Max’s expression resembled stone.
“You hear that shit?” He nodded to the phone.
“I heard. What you thinking?” Rose queried.
Max hated to voice his true concerns because he didn’t want it to be true. Everything in him told him Gannon had something to do with the missing funds. He put him in a position to do so when Rose left a year ago. Max trusted him, and he never thought that Gannon would violate that. Dating Minx now seemed like a violation, leaving Max questioning everything.Rubbing his beard, he leaned back in his chair with a pensive glare.
“He’s sending the report over now.” Max stood tall. He was a big, towering man with broad shoulders. Hair sleeked back into a ponytail, dressed in dark denim jeans with a gray button-up shirt and his motorcycle vest, Max was sharp yet rugged. A rider, and a rock star, that’s who Max was and always would be. He’d come a long way over the years. Every day, he joked with his wife about them growing old and riding on his motorcycle through the city. He wanted them to own their own bar and grill. She would cook, he would run the bar, and their grandkids would run around the back like a bunch of wild banshees.
“What you thinking?” Rose prompted.
Max gave him his back and stood at his fully stocked bar, mixing a glass of bourbon. Taking a gulp, he puffed his cigar, then exhaled. When he spun to face Rose, trouble clouded his face. Both of his thick brows knitted above his gaze.
“When you left, I had to fill a void. At first, shit was good. Gannon stepped in and took care of everything. There were no hiccups.” Max took another sip of his drink. “But recently, the numbers have fluctuated. I don’t like the direction their going. I had Vlad give me a quarterly report of everything coming in. He and his team went through it with a fine-tooth comb. Shit ain’t adding up.”
“You think Gannon is behind this?” Rose asked, surprised.
“He is the only change I have made in anything in the last year. I gave him a chance after you left because I needed him, and now I’m wondering what his motives are.” Max’s voice trailed off as he peered into the glass he gripped in his hand. “I’m gonna have somebody dig a little deeper into his background.”
Rose couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Max remained on his feet.
“Mila called. She said Mille got suspended and you picked him up?” Max asked, changing the subject to some shit he could do something about.
