Page 64 of The Saint

My shoulders lifted. “Until I meet them, I can’t be sure.”

“You?”

“Is there someone else you’d prefer?” Rolly asked, and Alvarez blanched when he saw the pocketknife Rolly held, the sharp tip scraping along the edge of his fingernail.

When Alvarez had been found out, when Zee and the men he was with broke in and threatened him until he gave the name of the man who had hired him, Hector had begged for his life with tears hanging on the edges of his eyes. He’d pleaded, crying out that he didn’t want the fucker with the knives to get him.

Apparently, he’d heard what had gone down in the syndicate. The only real question was, which fucker he was talking about?

“We can find someone else,” Rolly continued, ignoring the paling of Alvarez’s tanned skin. “But there’s no guarantee they’ll be as forgiving as her.”

Rolly closed his knife, and the sharp sound of the metal sliding against metal was the only noise in the room. As Rolly slipped the knife into his pocket, Alvarez shook his head.

“No. No, she’s fine.”

“Great.”

Alvarez’s cell phone buzzed against the desk near his computer, and he nearly jumped in his seat.

“You might want to get that.”

“What is it?” He reached for the phone, swiping his fingers across the screen, pulling up the email Shaw had just sent.

“Some contracts you’ll need to sign. First, an agreement with our organization, stating the terms of our business arrangement. That needs to be emailed back. Second, the contract you’ll want to look over and have ready in about an hour, when your first client is set to show up.”

“First client?” He didn’t raise his gaze from his phone, his dark eyes darting over the words, widening, then narrowing, his brow furrowing and smoothing. Every emotion under the sun passed across his face as he read, as his finger swiped furiously at the screen while he skimmed the pages of the contract.

“We took the liberty to clear your calendar,” I mentioned, any bravado I’d shown earlier tamped down, “but it ended up not being necessary.” Alvarez winced, and I felt worse about that than about all the threats we’d doled out today. His calendar was clear for the next month, the lack of work the reason for the severe dip in his bank account.

Bread and butter weren’t enough for a member of D’Angelo’s syndicate. We needed him to have business so he could grow the company into what we knew he was capable of.

“The client is looking for a custom bike. He understands fifty percent is to be paid up front.”

Alvarez finally glanced up from his phone, and I could swear I saw him tremble. He swallowed, straight-faced, and rose from his chair when we did. He extended his hand to me, and when he spoke, his emotion-rich voice lacked the desperation it’d had when we’d first walked into the room.

“Thank you.” He held on longer than he needed to, made eye contact that, from anyone else, in any other situation, would have made me uncomfortable. “I don’t know how… Thank you.”

“We’ll get out of your way,” Rolly said from my side. He extended his own hand, and Alvarez let go of mine to shake his. “You’ve got a client to get ready for.”

“Of course.” Alvarez raised his head to the ceiling, his eyes closed for a moment.

“I’ll be in touch tomorrow so we can schedule a time for me to see the operation.”

There was a smile on his lips when he nodded, and suddenly, I wanted to get out of there as fast as I could. This was too much. Too much emotion swarming through the room, threatening to drag me into it. And I couldn’t allow that.

Emotion had no place in this world. In this business.

And that’s all this job would ever be.

Rolly and I walked out, leaving Alvarez Autobody much the same as we’d found it. Only the people inside had changed. Hector and Gloria, the men they had working there in the shop that would no longer need to worry about losing their jobs for lack of work.

We drove in silence across town, Rolly’s hands gripped tight on the steering wheel of his red sports car. I didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to live in those emotions that were pummeling me, and it didn’t bother me one bit that he didn’t speak. He went straight to my parking garage, and it wasn’t until we’d opened the door of my apartment that he said his first words.

“Fuck, Jael.” He slammed the door behind him, then stalked after me as I crossed the room. He grabbed me by my shoulders, spun me around, and pushed me backward onto the kitchen table.

“What are you doing?”

His hands were on my pants, his nimble fingers working through the buttons and yanking them down. “Do you have any idea how fucking hot that was?” he asked, before his mouth came down on mine.