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He looks, but doesn’t touch. It’s probably against his orders to accept food from me. It would be tacit acknowledgment that he’s spying on me on behalf of one Will Leblanc.
Also, he’s hungry. He has to be. Men like this are always hungry. My older brother Sean is black ops, and he’s always hungry, too. This man’s job probably doesn’t involve as much adrenaline as Sean’s, but he is going to be sitting here all night making sure nothing untoward happens in the apartment complex.
At least not near Building C.
Why?I want to ask.Why hire you to be here when he doesn’t want anything to do with me? Is this some grown-man version of pulling my hair on the playground, or is he doing this out of some misguided sense of obligation?
“Take it,” I say instead.
My personal security guard-slash-spy blinks. One big hand wraps around the can of Coke, and he accepts the chili cheese dog into his other palm.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
He rolls up the window.
I can feel him watching while I cross the street and head for Building C.
I’m going home to the twins, back from school. To dinner in the slow cooker.
To everything except for Will Leblanc.
2
WILL
The new officesare in the Hughes Industries headquarters.
Hughes has fuckloads of properties all over Manhattan and probably all over the world, but this one’s home court. A shining skyscraper on some of the most expensive real estate in existence. It’s a monument to all the money and power the family has been able to gather over the years.
And now it’s my office, too.
It’s not what I expected when I signed Summit over to them.
New office space in a building owned by Hughes? Yes. That would make sense. Why pay rent when you own the damn thing? Headquarters is a different story.
A weeksettling in, and I don’t feel settled. It’s been the longest week of my life. I shift the Aeron chair underneath me and click through emails.
It’s the desk. Or maybe the office itself. It’s three times the size of my old one, which wasfine,thank you. I made plenty of money at the old place. It’s not comfortable here.
It’s too nice.
Reminds me of the first apartment we lived in after Dad went to jail. It wasn’t luxury, like Emerson’s beach house or my place now, but it was a palace compared to the house we left.
This office is closer to a goddamn mansion than it is to that perfectly nice apartment.
It’s a sign that Hughes is taking the acquisition seriously, which should be a good sign. That’s what Christa says, anyway. Christa Hong is my former CFO. Now she’s a director, with a pay raise and a hefty bonus. Along with her payout from her stake in the company. She doesn’t mind the move at all. It’s not just the money, either. She likes the gorgeous gym and the lap pool. She likes the ice cream sundae bar in the lobby and the chair massages and all the corporate amenities that I couldn’t care less about.
Voices pick up outside my empty anteroom.
Bristol’s almost here.
My heart is a fool. It beats faster, like she’s going to breeze through the door with her citrus scent and her big green eyes and everything I need.
Everything Iwanted.I don’t need her. She doesn’t need me. In fact, she needs to stay as far away as possible. I didn’t leave her with nothing. I paid off her father’s debts and made sure her apartment isn’t a piece of shit and then I removed the rest of the danger.
I removedmyself.
