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“You’re still good for the sit-down tonight with Taylor and Dante Sartorre?”
My ears prick up at the name. Besides being a major player in the New York City underworld, not to mention a majority owner of Club Venom, Dante Sartorre is also a cousin of Luca Carveli, a west coast big time player with, shall we say, unfortunate connections to our family.
“Connections”, as in, our father made a business deal with him years ago in exchange for Callie’s hand in marriage when she turns twenty-one. Which is…coming up.
It’s something we’ll definitely have to deal with at some point. Probably sooner rather than later.
So, yeah, damn right my brows fly up when I hear Elsa and her boss mention Dante’s name. I pull out my phone and pretend to be doing something on it with my back to them.
“Absolutely,” Elsa replies in that prim, proper, frosty ice-queen with a stick up her ass way of hers.
“Good. Thanks. Taylor’s a stone-cold killer lawyer, but it’s always good to have back-up. Especially with a guy like Sartorre.”
I tap away on my phone, glancing up to give a small nod of my chin to Alistair as he walks past me and out the door.
And then, it’s just the two of us.
I swivel my chair around lazily, frowning as Elsa packs her laptop and stacks of legal pads into her giant shoulder-strapped briefcase.
“You have a meeting with Dante Sartorre?”
Her head snaps up, those flinty hazel eyes of hers narrowing suspiciously, like they always do around me, as if she’s confident I’m perpetually scheming something.
I mean, it’s at least half true.
“Were you eavesdropping?”
“I was sitting eight feet away from you and my ears work.” My brow furrows. “Sartorre is a dangerous man, you know.”
Elsa shrugs. “Your family is equally dangerous, and I’m just fine.”
“Dante is different. You should be careful.”
She sighs heavily, like she’s waiting for me to drop the punchline of some joke I’ve set her up for. When it doesn’t come, she frowns.
“Is there a reason you care?”
“Just looking out for my favorite ice queen. If you get whacked, how else am I going to cool off a room in the summer?”
Elsa’s pink lips curl into a sarcastic sneer. “Hades, it’s perpetuallyastoundingto me how a man can reach the age of thirty without ever having evolved past children’s playground insults.”
“I’m twenty-nine.”
“I really don’t care.”
I grin widely. Elsa glares at me over the rim of her glasses.
“Something amusing?”
“Yes. It’samusinghow immune you think you are to my charms.”
She rolls her eyes, shouldering the strap of her bag. “Iam, in fact, immune to you, Hades. To every dimension of you—both of them, actually. And I’msosorry if no woman has had the heart to tell you this before, but sophomoric humor and trust fund cockiness do not, in fact, make you charming or attractive.”
“I think there areseveralwoman probably within spitting distance of this very building who would disagree.”
Her nose wrinkles in disgust. “Precisely. Hades, let me put it this way,” she snaps coldly. “I wouldn’t sleep with you if you were the last man on earth and the continuation of the human race depended on it happening.”
My brow furrows as I stroke my jaw. “Interesting. Very interesting.”
