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The king with his queen, making sure his kingdom was secure. But that was how it always was between them. They both had their jobs, and Cassiel’s were always the dirty ones. He looked at his Uncle Gabriel, another second son in the Loring line, and Cassiel nodded. He loved his brother. And his family. That’s why both he and Gabriel did this.
“Of course,” he replied.
Chapter 2
CAT
Cat realized she was sashaying down the hallway of her office building in downtown Boston.
Not because she was a lunatic, or into Cottage Core and sashaying fit her brand, but because her boss was an asshole and he never stopped to listen to anyone. He made everyone do a sideways jog next to him to pitch their projects, or he made people who were also short (like Cat) hop up to see his expression. Which means she had to sashay in this very undignified manner.
She also realized that she, of all people, should not sashay. She was on the small side, and she had big eyes, a button nose, rosy cheeks, and a slender figure that made her look like she was sixteen and not her full twenty-six years. She was always having to prove that she was not some meek little doll. Women like her shouldneversashay.
She frigging hated her boss, Dick. First of all, hechoseto be called Dick. Not Richard, or Rich, or even Chard for the love of all, but Dick. Her boss wasproudto be a Dick. Cat felt that in and of itself summed up why she needed to get this book on the Loring family written and published. She knew it would be a hit and it would at least allow her the freedom to write what she wanted to write. Not that she quite knew exactly what kind of books she wanted to write just yet, but she’d save that existential crisis for later. At the moment, she just had to write something that she knew would sell, and that meant the Lorings.
The Loring line reached back to the Revolutionary War. They were an institution in the city of Boston, and although they had their name all over the city, from streets named after them, to libraries built by them, to scholarships created by their endowments, there was not one tell-all book written about them. No Lorings had ever written a racy memoir or had a biographer follow them around to do a whitewash of what was almost certainly a dirty history.
Even just thinking about it, Cat wanted to screamcome on. They were billionaires. No one became a billionaire without doing something shady. Cat was determined to find out what that shady thing was, and she was going to make a name for herself doing it.
But first, she had to stop sashaying.
“I have a lead on the kidnapping of Bianca Loring,” she said to her boss’ retreating back.
He stopped. “Bianca Loring got kidnapped?” he asked skeptically. “By whom?”
Cat didn’t know. But she smiled at her boss like she did. “I need another two weeks to follow this story.” And to work on her book rather than chase down puff pieces for the holiday season.
Her boss, though he was a Dick, at least knew a good pitch when he heard it. He nodded. “Follow it.”
She contained herself and walked sedately back to her desk. She did not act like she’d just gotten away with something as she gathered her things. She called her boyfriend Ashton on the way to the elevator.
“Hey, Babe,” he said picking up.
She didn’t like it when heBabedher, and she’d told him so, but she let it pass this time because she was so happy. “Guess who got the next two weeks off of the beat desk?” she said.
“That’s great,” he said, sounding less than enthusiastic. “Is this so you can work on that book?”
She took a breath so she wouldn’t immediately launch into a fight with him. He had called her “combative”. She felt like she was only combative when he was criticizing her. Which he was just about to do.
“What?” she asked.
He sighed. “Well, like, the holidays are coming and that means we’ll be spending more on gifts and going out for dinner…”
He trailed off and didn’t continue. Her temper—admittedly always a short one—was starting to fray. “And…” she prompted.
He made a disgusted sound. It was beneath him to explain himself to anyone. Ashton was the type of person who hated it when anyone made him spell things out. He was a poet. More than once he had railed against having to deal with people who were so dull, that they couldn’t simply grasp what he meant in any given situation without him having to plod through and tell them what he was thinking.
Cat had spent over a year of her life proving to him that she was smart enough, sensitive enough, and intuitive enough to not be one of those literal people who were so tiresome to him. She had put an enormous amount of effort into being good enough for him because she was the kind of person who put an enormous amount of effort into being good enough for everything. But right now, she was starting to get angry, and she wanted him to say it.
“If you take two weeks off from the beat desk, will there be, like, afinancialrepercussion?”
Of course, he was worried about her finances because they were his finances. She was the only one of them who was employed, and even though they didn’t live together at her place in South Boston and technically he lived with his parents in Marshfield, she was the one who paid for all of those gifts and dinners that he was worried about losing. Even when she wasn’t the one going out with him. And the gifts weren’t for her.
When she didn’t answer right away, he started to backpedal. “I mean, we’re going to have to have do dinner with your friends from Smith, and then there are all those presents you’re going to have to buy for your nieces and nephews in the neighborhood,” he said quickly.
Technically, they weren’t her nieces and nephews, but in the narrowing circle of the Irish community in Southie, they were called her nieces and nephews because of the age difference. People from the old neighborhood, those that were left after the latest round of sellouts to gentrification happening in Boston, were still tight. She called people who had no blood relation to her at all “aunt” and “uncle” just because they’d grown up with her mom and dad. Now she was the aunt, and on the hook for a lot of presents, though there were a lot fewer neighborhood kids than there used to be.
The remnants of the old neighborhood were dwindling. Cat was still there, of course, the last Murphy from Southie holding out against the insane offers she’d gotten for her row house, but there weren’t that many descendants of the working-class Irish immigrants left. They’d gotten out of Southie like so many of them had dreamed. It was good and bad. Her parents would love that she was still there if they were still alive. Although her dad probably would call her renovations snobby.
