Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 90642 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 453(@200wpm)___ 363(@250wpm)___ 302(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90642 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 453(@200wpm)___ 363(@250wpm)___ 302(@300wpm)
I don’t care about this girl. Let her be pissed off. Yes, she’s attractive, and yes, I want to do unspeakable things to her body, but none of that matters.
I need what she represents.
I don’t need her.
Before she can respond, I turn and walk away.
After a shower and a change of clothes, I head into the office. My secretary has about fifty messages waiting plus there are ten thousand emails in my inbox. The sudden deluge of bullshit threatens to overwhelm me, mostly because I’ve been thinking about Elena Bianco and her goosebumps and the way her cheeks turned bright red with anger.
My brother’s sitting behind my desk and he salutes me when I walk into the room. “Good morning, boss,” he says with a grin.
“Seamus.” I walk over, pick up his coffee, and chug it down.
“Did you just burn your throat?” he asks casually.
“Yes,” I grunt, because I did and it was very dumb, but he annoys me sometimes. Seamus is only thirteen months younger than me and I don’t remember life without him attached to my hip. “Why are you in here?”
“Mom called again,” he says and stands up. I consider sitting, but I’m too amped up to start work. Instead, I nod for him to follow, and we take a walk through the offices of Quinn Legal.
It’s strange for a crime family to be based around a law firm, but it’s how my father structured the organization. Quinn Legal is the heart of our businesses and all the many different schemes, ideas, clubs, restaurants, and whatever else snake out from this place. We’re the head of the octopus, and the rest are the tentacles. The Waterfront project is the biggest of them all, and the one most likely to drag us under.
“How’d she sound?” I ask him, speaking quietly. There are twenty-three different lawyers working in the office right now. We try to keep it relatively small. Our voices are swallowed by thick rugs and heavy wall hangings. The whole office has a Victorian-era supervillain sort of feel.
“Struggling. You know how it is. Ever since Dad passed—” He shrugs a little. Dad’s been gone for a few months now, and Mom’s been a mess without him. “Molly’s taking her out for breakfast, and Declan’s having lunch with her. I was thinking we could do dinner?”
“Set it up,” I grunt. The siblings have been juggling her around and taking shifts just to make sure she’s never alone. “And do me another favor.” I stop in the hall outside of the copy room. There’s nobody around. “Reach out to Simon Bianco.”
Seamus’s eyebrows raise. He’s around my height, same dark hair, same light eyes. “What for?”
“Tell him I ran into Elena earlier today. I don’t want him to hear from someone else. Just tell him it was nothing and we’re still good.”
Seamus stares at me. I know what he’s thinking and now I have to hear it from him. My brother can’t keep his mouth shut, even when he should.
“You know that might fuck this up for us, right?”
“Just make the call, asshole.” I turn away and start heading back to my office. Seamus keeps pace. “She stalked me down at the gym.”
“Really?” Now he sounds curious. “What’s she like?”
Gorgeous. Sexy. Funny. A good smile. Beautiful when she’s pissed. A fucking handful.
“She’s how we’re going to make sure the Waterfront project moves forward, that’s what she’s like.” I stop outside of my office. “Tell Bianco it was nothing.”
“I got it.” Seamus gives me a look. He’s thinking I fucked up, but this’ll be fine. Simon’s a reasonable guy and he probably knows that his sister is a pain in the ass.
My brother heads off and I linger in the hall for a few seconds, wondering if I should have handled Elena differently earlier, but it doesn’t matter now.
My life is the business now and everything else comes second.
What I want and what I have to do are very different things. Maybe a soft touch would’ve been smart earlier, since I’m going to spend the rest of my life married to the girl, but the organization comes first.
She’s a means to an end. Nothing more.
I’ll stop thinking about that bead of sweat dripping down her throat eventually.
Chapter 3
Elena
Ihum to myself as I water the plants. Apparently, they like it when I sing, and maybe that’s why most of them aren’t dead yet, or maybe it’s because Mom got me into gardening a few years back and now I’m a crunchy granola girl.
“You’re going to grow big and strong,” I tell the pretty little rubber plant I have growing near the window in the kitchen. “But not too big and strong or else I’ll have to move you.”
My place is too big for me, which is probably why I’ve filled it with so much stuff. I have art all over the walls, paintings by mostly local Chicago artists, some in bright Pop styles and some in wild graffiti swirls. My furniture is colorful and modern, and there’s a profusion of coffee table books thrown all over the place. It’s chaotic and all over, but it’s a reflection of me.