Page 3 of Rent a Mob Boss

“You could just say Quinn,” I remind him. “It’s been like six months.”

“Morning, Miss Thomas,” he says again, and the gate rolls open. Okay, then.

I’m pretty sure the driveway is longer than the road I grew up on. It starts as gravel, but turns to paving stones, curving up through the lawn past the fountain I have never once seen a leaf float in. There are cameras on the light posts. Two more sit at the front door. There’s another over the garage, too. A guy named Paul walks the east side of the property in the morning with a dog named Buttercup. I don’t know if the name was meant to be ironic or not, since Buttercup is around the size of a loveseat.

Mr. Moretti must run something enormous. Finance, investment—that whole world where people say things like positions and exposure and nobody ever explains what they actually do all day. I looked it up once, sort of, and found a lot of words that mean money. Holdings. Acquisitions. Stuff like that.

People with that kind of money get targeted. There are whole news stories about executives getting followed home, kidnapping insurance, that sort of thing. Sometimes people whose retirement account went sideways decide to harass the person in charge of managing their money. They need somebody to blame, so they target the easiest person possible. Mr. Moretti is a widower with a five-year-old and no wife to help watch her. If I had that much money and a little daughter, I would build a wall, too. I’d build two of them.

So it makes sense. The guards. The cameras. The car that follows his car.

I park in my spot, which is my dedicated spot with a marker and everything. The housekeeper decided in week two that I was staying and had it made without asking anyone. It’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me, and I can’t decide if that’s sad or not.

I’ve barely reached the front steps before the front door bangs open, and I know who I’m going to see before she comes flying out at me. “Quinn!”

She hits me at around forty miles an hour. I catch her because I always catch her. If I ever didn’t, I think the earth would stop spinning. She’s all knees and elbows, and she throws herself off the top step with total certainty that somebody will be there.

“Oh, my gosh.” I groan, staggering, while I haul her up onto my hip. “I think you’ve gained forty pounds since yesterday.”

“Did not!” she tells me with a giggle.

“No, you’re right. It’s forty-five.” I drag myself up the steps and make her laugh. “What are they feeding you?”

“Pancakes.” She’s very serious, and just as serious when she throws both arms around my neck and squeezes hard enough to make my eyes bulge. She smells like syrup and strawberry shampoo. Her hair is in the sad, lopsided ponytail that means Mrs. Beaumont did it. She’s a great housekeeper, but not the greatest hairdresser.

This is my favorite three seconds of the whole day.

“Guess what?” she whispers in my ear as we head into the house.

“What?”

“It’s Friday.” She does a cute little wiggle. “That means art.”

“That does mean art,” I agree.

The entryway is two stories tall, with a curving staircase and a chandelier I would bet money cost more than my car. And my tuition. And my entire body.

“Daddy! Quinn’s here!”

He comes out of the hallway that leads to his office. I do the thing I always do: focus on a point four inches to the left of his head, because looking at him for too long makes me do all kinds of embarrassing things I apparently have no control over.

Dorian is twenty-eight years old and looks like something carved rather than born. His dark hair is pushed back and still damp from the shower. His nearly black eyes normally carry nothing behind them until he looks at his daughter, and then it’s like somebody turned on a light in a dark room. He’s wearing a charcoal suit today. No tie, collar open. He’s fixing one of the cuffs as he walks. I really, really try not to stare.

“Good morning,” he says. Two words, low and rough. They have the power to make my stomach drop four floors.

This is fine. Totally normal. Not at all humiliating. I have it under control. “Morning, Mr. Moretti.”

“Dorian.”

“Right. Sorry.” It’s like the thing with Marco all over again, but in reverse.

“You say that every morning,” he points out.

“I know.”

“But tomorrow, you’ll call me Mr. Moretti again.”

“Probably,” I admit. Something happens at the corner of his mouth. It’s not a smile, but it’s a movement, and it just so happens I pay much too close attention to every little thing about him. I’m not proud of it.