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And yet this five-foot-nothing woman with nothing on her bones except courage had done it.
My entire body had snapped with tension at the blatant cheek in her statement, but I let her walk away, controlling my baser urges. Fucking her against the door hadn’t been the point of this exercise.
The point had been to find out exactly how much she knew about the will her father left for her.
And watching her, it would seem she knew nothing. She didn’t speak like someone who knew she owned shares in a multi-million-dollar company, nor did she live like one. But that didn’t mean she didn’t know her father left her a will, and if she were to find out the entrails of that, then she would be trouble for me to handle.
Until I found out how to expertly control her, that was.
Had she gotten the letter her father sent at all? Did it reach her, or did it get lost on the way? Did Dom even know where she lived at that point?
If she had the letter, then why was she here?
The problem was that I couldn’t trust that I was reading her properly. Some of my judgment was probably clouded by the desire that gnawed at my gut whenever I was around her. It made me want to forget whatever the fuck I needed to know and bend her over the table as quickly as possible.
But I’m not going to do that,I told myself. Despite everything, she was far too young for me.
And I did owe her father the loyalty of leaving his daughter the fuck alone. She fascinated me, sure, but that was as far as I was going to take this.
Even though I didn’t have a conscience worth a damn.
I walked back to my desk and glanced down at my work phone. It noted that I had two missed calls from an unknown number, but I didn’t call back. If it were that important, then they would have my personal number.
Instead, I thought about what I had to do today. I needed to talk to someone about hiring a new shop girl since Chelsea was leaving. Thank God that I wouldn’t have to fire her. I was planning to but always held back when it came time to do it. The girl just might burst into tears, and I hated it when women cried around me. It always made me feel like some kind of asshole.
Usually, I wasn’t as hands-on with the daily activities of the pawnshop, but with hiring, I needed to make sure whoever I got knew how to keep their mouth shut about anything they saw. That meant no cops or people with law enforcement in their family, and I typically preferred people with no family at all. They usually made for the most loyal employees.
The pawnshops weren’t a high priority in my business portfolio, but I still found myself spending more time here lately. I mean, ever since Emily started working here, I made it a point to be here every day. Which was probably unhealthy on some level, but whatever.
I dragged myself through the day, fulfilling everything I had to. Unbidden, though, her words came back to me.
Are you missing your best friend all of a sudden?
I thought about it. The truth was that Dom and I had never been the kind of friends who would miss each other should one of us go missing. For a long time before he passed, I knew he was dying, and I had come to terms with it already. I also came to terms with my anger at the fact that he’d sold shares he was meant to keep for me because he wanted money for his expensive medical treatments. It was stupid because if he’d just asked me, I would have been more than happy to give him the money, but Dom had more pride than sense.
Furthermore, on his deathbed, he’d asked me to take care of his debts so his debtors wouldn’t go after his daughter. He’d also asked me to make sure his daughter got what she deserved in the will.
A prick of guilt wasn’t enough to awaken my long-dead conscience.
I didn’t fool myself into thinking I was a good guy, and if Dom had thought I was, then that was his problem. I’d always shown him I was a selfish bastard. He should have listened.
Especially since he’d given away shares without my knowledge, so now I needed some way to get my power in the company back.
Even if it meant using Dom’s daughter to do it.
I just needed to figure out how she fits into the puzzle and how to use her to get what I deserved.
But what about her? What about what she deserves?
I suppressed the voice of conscience, reminding myself that I’d always been a self-serving asshole, and I wasn’t about to stop now. The way I saw it, life dealt everyone nasty hands, and we could only do what we could with them.
And I did eventually plan on telling her about the will if she didn’t know about it yet.
I just needed to figure out a way to do it, so it favored me primarily.
Maybe make her fall in love with you before you tell her, so she would be all too willing to do anything you say?
The thought occurred to me, but I knew she wasn’t the type of person to vote with her heart rather than her brain.
