“Good,” I mumbled, looking through a stack of papers as my hint that I was done talking.
“It’s becoming a damn nunnery around here with all you owners. You guys have the opportunities of kings but live like damn monks.”
“Is that all? I really have a lot to do.”
Sighing dramatically, Nico shrugged and then said as he was walking out the door, “Fine, I’ll let your sad little self get back to whatever you were doing. See you later.”
Yes… get back to what I was doing. Mourning my friend. Sinning in thoughts.
Rest in peace, Dasha… I want to fuck your daughter.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Chapter Four
Anthony
The phone call came in the evening, the night before we were supposed to go out. I generally screened calls in the evenings once I got home. If anyone needed to get a hold of me, they’d call my cell. Pretty much anyone else could leave a message.
“Hello?”
“Hey. How have you been?”
That was usually what she asked me. Immediately after Dasha’s death, she’d stayed with me for over a week. She took over every mundane duty she could for me to keep herself busy while also handling the funeral home and helping to write the obituary. I had felt more lost than I’d ever felt in my life aside from losing my own mother and father, and my usual ability to get things done and handle details had vacated the premises. For a few days, I let Raychel take care of me more than I’d let anyone since my mother. Usually, I was the one who did the caretaking in any situation. And she was the one who had lost her father. Rather than growing weak by his death, she seemed to become stronger. Grief didn’t kick her ass, but it sure as fuck had mine. But she didn’t seem to think any less of me for it. I was sure I would have seen it in her eyes if she had.
I couldn’t stifle a yawn. “I’m okay, how are you?”
“Stop that! It’s contagious!” she yawned back, barely intelligible.
“Sorry, long day.”
I had a bad feeling about why she was calling, and I decided to preempt her.
“Is this the call where you beg off tomorrow night?” I asked.
Bullseye. Complete silence from the other end. I leaned back in my big leather chair, crossing my ankle over my knee, my eyes narrowing as if I had her called onto the carpet in front of me.
“Are you hurt?” I asked calmly.
A pointed pause before she answered very reluctantly, “No.”
“Are you sick?”
Raychel sighed in exasperation. “No.”
It was my turn to pause. “Are you planning to be either of those things tomorrow, so you can cancel out on me?”
I had her pegged perfectly. Raychel prevaricated just a bit, and sounding quite indignant, said, “I am not!”
“Uh huh.” I didn’t believe her one bit.
“I—uh—I called because I didn’t remember what time you had said, and I wanted to be sure to be ready.”
Not a bad lie, but a lie none the same.
“Seven.”
“Seven,” she repeated.
“Short of contracting malaria or dying, you aren’t going to get out of this.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I almost chuckled at the outright despair in her voice. You would have thought I was asking her to tramp through the sewers instead of accompany me to one of the nicest restaurants in the city. It was nowhere near as pretentious as some of them; the meals were items that anyone could recognize and you didn’t need a degree in French to read the menu. The portions were pretty big, and that was something I, being the size that I was, looked for in a good restaurant. There was nothing I hated more than paying forty dollars or more for a plate and still walking away hungry.
“Yes, and you’d better be ready,” I said.
But, as I recalled, Raychel had never been late to one of our lunches. In fact, she’d beaten me there sometimes and I was Mr. Punctuality.
Order.
Discipline.
Structure.
Me.
* * *
Raychel
How was I going to survive a dinner alone with him without giving myself away? At night? It was like… it was too close to a date for comfort. Lunches were just that—a meal in the middle of the day. But dinner—that was a date.
“Are you all right?” His deep voice rumbled across the phone.
“Yeah, why?”
“You just don’t sound like yourself.”
It was out of my mouth before I thought about it. “You don’t really know me very well, so how would you know?”
“Intriguing. Makes me want to discover what I’ve been missing. I thought I knew you pretty damn well.”
I was sitting there with my mouth hanging open, my heart battering itself against my ribcage. My mind screamed at me about how bizarre a conversation this was to be having with my dad’s… with Mr. LaSalla.
Mr. LaSalla.
My father’s business associate. His dark companion. A bad man. A ruthless man. A powerful man. A criminal in his own way. A man I should stay the fuck away from…