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“You bastard,” I whisper as it all clicks into place.
“Are you seriously blackmailing us right now?” Jamila looks bewildered, confused. “If you cash the checks, they’ll just bounce. We’ll get more money.”
“But the moment they bounce is the moment you’re in violation of your lease agreement. At which time I can terminate our contract and kick you out of the building. I suspect these workers won’t bother refunding you for all the work they’ve done. Which means you can either go completely broke, or you can accept my generous investment.”
I don’t speak. Jamila doesn’t move. Nolan’s staring at me like he wants to unhinge his jaw and swallow me whole. A thousand feelings burst through my brain all at once, most of them negative. I want to scream, I want to hit him. I want to smash my head through the glass display case.
Instead, I say, “You’re theworstjuggler I’ve ever seen in my entire life, you dickbag.”
Chapter6
Keely
“Excuse us.” Jamila grabs my arm, dragging me away to the book room. She kicks the door shut, turning on me, her cheeks brightening into scarlet. “What the fuckis going on right now?”
“I don’t know,” I say, pacing back and forth, though an idea’s starting to form in my head. “We had that thing at Ash’s wedding—”
“Renewal ceremony,” Jams corrects.
I grit my teeth. “Right, at the ceremony, and I guess we talked a little bit about this whole donut shop thing—”
“You told him?” She crosses her arms, widening her stance. “Why would you tell him?”
“I didn’t know we’d actually do it yet, okay? And I had no clue he’d buy the freaking building, much less blackmail us into letting him invest.”
Jams keeps her cool. I have to admit, in her position I’d be raging right now. She’s pissed, that much is obvious, but she’s not absolutely losing it. That helps me get it together as I lean up against a half-finished workbench, the gleaming industrial metal coated with drywall dust.
“All right, okay, so he got this idea from you at the ceremony. Maybe he didn’t realize we’d actually move in here, but then the opportunity presented itself.”
“Right, maybe.” I shrug a little, but I’m not so sure. I didn’t tell him about this exact location, but he must’ve known that I was thinking about coming here when he bought it. “He did sort of, you know, encourage me.”
“He encouraged you?”
“We got to talking, okay? I was a little buzzed and he can be kind of charming, and when I told him about the donut thing, he just sort of said I should take the risk.”
She cracks a smile. “That’s why you brought it up.”
“Yes, okay, he gave me a little freaking courage. I don’t need you to judge me right now.”
“I’m not judging. It just makes more sense. He must feel a little bit of ownership.”
That wordownershippisses me off. “He does notownany of this. He’s not involved. All he did was say I should go for it. I’ve done everything else.”
“We’ve done it,” she corrects, making me flinch, but she doesn’t seem to mind. “Okay, let’s forget that for a second. The biggest question is, will he follow through?”
We lapse into silence. I stare at the door, thinking. I know what kind of man Nolan is, or at least what he’s rumored to be. The guy’s a mafia prince, a member of a powerful, elite family, essentially immune to any prosecution. Even if I decided to take this to the cops, they’d laugh me out of the precinct.
Which means there’s no way inhellhe’d ever get in trouble.
“Yes, he will,” I say quietly, remembering the look on his face when he was juggling.
The utter, intense concentration.
The same look he gave me later on when we were in bed together.
“Then we have no choice.” Jamila turns and storms back into the front of the shop.
“Wait,” I call after, hurrying to catch up.
