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A hard glint appeared in his eyes. "Is that the way you want to play this?"
Oh, man, I loved that his verbiage tied up to my thought processes.
Not that I was supposed to love it, of course.
"Play, what?" I countered. "I reserve this table every day." Twisting around, I pretended to look for a server. "Maybe I’ll just call the management over here so they can be the ones to clear things up."
"There’s nothing to clear up. I’m at the right table. I’m here to speak with you."
"I have no idea who you are," I lied. "And my mother told me never to speak to strangers."
"You listened to her?"
"Didn’t you listen to your mother?" Rumor had it the O’Donnelly brothers were under their mom’s thumbs. Total, complete,utterMomma’s boys.
Although, looking at just how much of a man Aidan Jr. was, his mother couldn’t be the pint-sized mafia princess she was rumored as being.
Junior hummed under his breath. "I read your piece on the Suez Canal. The one you posted last year in theRecord? Discussing how trade wars and political instabilities were going to make for trouble down the line...? I’m not sure an airhead would be able to dissect the probability of container ships wedging it shut."
"Airheads are capable of quite a lot of things. We can even breathe without life support," I told him without blinking.
"Aren’t you smart? Breathing autonomously? I truly am impressed." He said that without blinking too. "However, when I’m sent on a task, I don’t just leave it down to fate. You’re acquainted with who my father is. I’m also sure from the research I know you’ve been doing, that you’re well aware of the fact that he doesn’t appreciate mistakes. Mistakes equal failure in his mind, and he isn’t the kind of man who anyone would like to fail." He smirked at me as he leaned over the table. "I researched you quite thoroughly. Even spoke with a few previous editors of yours. You pissed most of them off."
Christ, he really had done his homework on me.
"Not my fault they have fragile egos."
"Fragile egos?" A laugh escaped him. "They said you were insubordinate and unruly. That you routinely went ahead on assignments that were given to someone else—"
"Because they insisted on sending me on fluff assignments. Anything with any meat went to the people with penises." My mouth tightened with irritation at my blurting that out, but he merely carried on as if I hadn’t spoken at all.
"Your editors were more than willing to give me a heads-up about what kind of writer you are. I read a mixture of the fluff and the grittier, meatier articles. Especially the pieces you wrote in college." He tilted his head to the side. "You can pretend to be an airhead with men who don’t listen and who think with their dicks but I’m no fool, Ms. Daniels.
"I think, in fact, you’d be the fool if you underestimated how much it would piss me off for you to carry on with this ridiculous charade."
My brow furrowed. "Are you seriously autopsying my personality?"
"Are you dead? You look alive to me."
"You just slayed my character." I glared at him. "How dare you?"
"Oh, I dare worse." He leaned in, somehow looming over me even though that wasn’t physically possible when we were both on the same level. "You’re not an idiot. You know who I am. You know why I’m here so cease with the petty messing around and maybe I can save your ass before someone decides to take you out first."
I jolted back. "What?" Shock had me complying and I dropped my charade. He wasn’t wrong about that—I did wear a mask. Sometimes, it was the only way to get people to do what I wanted. And when I said people, I meant men.
Put on a vacant look, dress in a low-cut blouse and a short skirt, wear a vapid smile, and suddenly, they heard you. They even sometimes forgave you when you ‘misunderstood’ the assignment and went ahead and did what you wanted anyway.
Those three editors he’d spoken with had only fired me, not because I was unruly, but because they’d each come onto me and I’d spurned their advances.
Fucking men.
Toxic pieces of shit.
"You heard me." His eyes narrowed. "I’m telling you to stop with this—"
I raised a hand. "You mean ‘someone’ will put a hit out on me if I don’t stop what I’m doing?"
The only person I knew who was higher than him in the Five Points was his father. As the heir, I knew he was pretty much Sr.’s right hand man as his father groomed him for the job of leading the Irish Mob.
