I don’t answer her. Only a few know the truth and she will not be one of them.
Instead, I kiss the top of her forehead, smoothing back the small hairs. She takes it as a sign of what I want…
And she’s right.
Miss Guesses-A-Little-Too-Correctly begins kneeling, almost making it to her knees before my cell phone starts blaring, the message alert bleating as a slew of them come onto my phone.
I slip it out of my slacks, staring at the screen.
Her again.
The woman was put on this earth to be a cock-block, I am sure of it.
Nancy’s nickname flashes onto the screen, staying there.
Hell-beast: I want to talk to you.
And before I start, I just want to say that I am sorry. Actually, sorry for calling you a promiscuous oaf tonight.
Text bubbles appear.
And a childish buffoon.
More bubbles appear.
And an oversexed infant.
I sigh, finally responding, the mood waning as she takes my attention from the woman at my knees. I type back.
Me: And I think you’re forgetting the part where you called me a debauched toddler. But trust me. You’re forgiven…for now. I’m kinda in the middle of something.
Hell-beast: I need you to come back to the bar. It’s important.
Me: This is not a good time
And even though I’m standing in the middle of a grand suite—a suite that my family’s money paid for, I feel like I’m missing out on something—something I can’t really place.
My boss at the bar never apologizes to me.
I don’t think she’s actually ever apologized to me…
Ever.
A chill runs down my spine and it has nothing to do with Red, whose nails are currently circling there.
I ignore the woman at my feet, focusing on the phone, my fingers moving fast over the screen.
Me: What is it, Nancy? Spit it out. You can tell me through text
I wait for text bubbles that don’t come. My phone rings instead and a stab of cold sticks into my body, and nothing, not even an NDA matters right now, as I listen to my boss’s voice telling me that my sister came to see me at the bar tonight to let me know my Ma passed away this morning.
Chapter 1
ANDREW
Hell-beast: We need to talk.
The only thing worse than hearing those four words from a woman was hearing it from the woman who stamped your timecards.
But a timecard right now is the last item on my mind.
Because right now, the first is not having a fucking heart attack.
And though I’m a grown-ass man and it’s been seven long ass years since I’ve seen the Fletchers’ attorney in the flesh, it does nothing to ease my pounding adrenaline—nothing to erase the fact that the general counsel for my grandparents' company, Fletcher Financial Group, had always been one of the scariest motherfuckers on earth.
A man willing to sell his kids for a quarter.
But desperation makes you do stupid things.
It makes you show up to places you’d never go. Agree to meet people you couldn’t stand.
And today, I was willing to stand Frank Levins, Esquire, for the next hour or so.
Because my Ma (not my mother but still the woman who raised me all the same), the woman who’d been there for me when my own parents couldn’t be—my grandmother—was now dead.
Because Frank Levins was paying.
And because, to my utter fucking shame, I was nearly broke (in my sense of the word, anyway), the influx of money coming to my bank account all but halted as I drained my account to make funeral arrangements for the one and only Barbara Fletcher—the grandmother who’d once raised me as her own.
My bartender job was never supposed to sustain my income.
Not when I was born into a billion-dollar empire.
But like any halfway decent barkeep in the city, I’d known when I was on the edge of being fired—knew the time clock was ticking down on my time at The Alchemist, my workplace and watering well for picking up women over the past year and a half.
Nancy’s text practically tells me. The four words “We need to talk” have never meant anything good for a man.
So, as I sit in the middle of an office that could fit a Buick, with a man who could afford to buy fifty of his own, my fists squeeze tight, my skin prickling under a secondhand leather jacket that, in my old life, wouldn’t have seen the light of day.
Frank looks over at me.
“I’m glad you decided to come.”
I blink. “I’m glad you decided to pay, otherwise I wouldn’t have. Thanks for the invitation.”
“You’re welcome.” The fleshy lawyer nods as if I actually mean it. “I know I’ve, uh…seduced you here under strange terms, but I figured you could use the money.”
“Why don’t we just cut the bull here, Frank? You know I could use the money. You’ve known I could have used the money over the past seven years, so let’s not pretend that’s not the case.”
Frank reddens. “Contrary to what you might have been led to believe, Mr. Fletcher… It truly wasn’t my choice to cut you out of the trust.”
“No. Of course not. You were only the litigator who helped my grandfather do it. My mistake.”
The overweight lawyer sighs, sitting forward. “I’d hoped we could get over the past, Lincoln. I want you to know that I have.”
I dare to meet his eye. The eye of the devil himself.
Guess seven years has done something for me because I’m not afraid to call the bastard out on his bullshit.
Brushing the use of Lincoln aside, I welcome the change. Welcome the departure from the scared kid I once was—a rich kid not life-experienced enough to wipe his own ass.
New York taught me that lesson. And many more.
My leather jacket squeaks as I lean forward, and it is all I can do not to knock the smug look off Frank’s face—a face that has never seen a struggle in its life.
I take a deep breath, pulling air in slowly.
“Look here, Frankie boy…if you
