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Leaving me to wonder exactly what would be our next “round”.
TWENTY-FIVE
ORION
This motherfucker…
I frowned at the photos enlarged on my screen, scrolling through one by one. I just needed to see it for myself, to confirm what the people I paid for such things had already assured me of.
Eric Jarvis—EJ—at my fucking construction site, causing mess.
Sothatwas where he’d been.
As of now, his absence around Blackwood was the only thing that made sense.
Sure, he and his little gang-affiliated buddies were deep in number and organized enough that petty crime wasn’t really their usual thing. But corporate sabotage?
That was some other shit.
And traveling for it, at that… this didn’t feel like simply trying to get back at me for what happened on Christmas. And it didn’t affect Nalani at all, so there was no reason to believe it was targeted at her.
What itreallyfelt like was… William Stark. He was familiar with EJ because of his connection with Nalani and this kind of petty shit had his name all over it.
But again, for fuckingwhat?
Nothing, really, was going to keep the construction from moving forward, and William didn’t have the power or capital—especially now that his kids had scrubbed him fromNectar—to go to battle with me.
If these were his last desperate attempts to just get under my skin and annoy me, he was doing a pretty good job of it.
But really, it was probably more frustrating for Stanford than it was for me. He was the one at the helm of the expansion efforts and it was his territory. In the grand scheme of things, I was just the man who wrote the checks and expected people to report back.
On a day to day basis, the shit was mildly annoying to me, when put into real perspective.
Stanfordwas the one with the real frustration.
Which made an even stronger case for William to be at the crux of it. I knew in passing that he and Stanford didn’t really get along, but Stanfordneverbrought the man up. The closest he’d come to it was mentioning Nalani and his interest in potential expansion efforts forNectar.
As with most of William’s beef, it seemed to be one-sided.
In any case, I couldn’t let my thoughts linger there. I had better things to tend to. I let my security team know to keep me in the loop on his movements and then shut my laptop down, heading to go check on Calli before I left.
Running the risk of getting cursed out, but I had to take it.
When I entered the room, the nurse had Calli up out of bed, helping her walk to the window, agreatsign. I’d hated seeing her confined to monitors and shit, so I was glad the recovery from the seizure had been relatively quick.
Andglad that the new medication cocktail they had her on seemed to be getting a good immune response.
“Good morning,” I called as I approached, prompting both women to look in my direction.
“I thought I told your ass not to show your face in here until your wife was back on the premises?” Calli asked, and the nurse looked away, hiding her smirk as she helped Calli take a seat at the chaise by the window.
“You forgot this wasmyhouse?” I asked, taking a seat next to her. “You’re always trying to tell me what to do.”
“Somebodyhas to,” she quipped. “Since you’re hellbent on stirring up drama.”
I frowned. “Iam?”
“Yes,you,” she countered. “You’re the one brought that heifer into your wife’s house, right?”
