Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 82060 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82060 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
They were tight, but why would she do that?
Cautiously, I moved forward and put my purse on the island.
Then I said, “Ally doesn’t think it’s going to be a big deal.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Ally knows about it too?”
Okay, wait.
What was he talking about?
“What are you talking about?”
“You first,” he retorted. “What are you talking about?”
“The shit hit the fan with my cheating boss today.”
“And why does Ally need to assure you it’s not a big deal?”
“Because he came right to me and asked me questions about that file I found.”
I’d told Darius all about it.
At the time, he seemed unconcerned.
Then again, he’d trained Ally to be the investigator she was, so he would be.
“You think he’s gonna target you?” he asked.
“He came right to me. And he’s a jerk. And a narcissist.”
“And what can he do to you?”
“Fire me.”
“Can he blackball you?”
I shook my head and rested my weight into a hand on the island. “The firm isn’t that big. He doesn’t have that much power. Not even within the firm. The other partners are better liked, well-respected, and thinking on it, more successful attorneys when it comes to winning cases. Though, he thinks he does. Have the power, I mean.”
“Can he act on his own in the position he holds?”
Reflecting on this, I realized I’d panicked too soon.
I worked for attorneys. They knew the law. They also knew what could happen if you did whatever you wanted regardless of it.
Even if Jeffrey wanted to be an asshole, the other two partners would never let him put them in an untenable position.
“I don’t report to him,” I told Darius. “On the cases I work, I report to the attorney who’s handling them. But strictly, I report directly to the HR Director. She does my performance evaluations. And she reports to the partners. He might share with her he has an issue with my work, even if he has to make it up, but it would have to be really bad to terminate me immediately, without warnings or official writeups. There’s office politics and gossip, but it isn’t a toxic environment. They’ve let people go since I’ve been there, but not without cause. I can’t imagine the other partners would allow him to do something maverick, especially in a retaliatory manner when he was in the midst of hiding assets. That’s fraud. He could be disbarred for that. Even serve jail time.”
“So you’re good.”
“I think so.”
“Right, then now I wanna know, what’d you think? That I’d kill him?”
What?
“Who? Jeffrey?”
“No, Malia. Michael.”
All the air went out of me in a whoosh.
So it was breathy when I asked, “How did you know?”
The mood in the room, already not great, deteriorated.
“So you were keeping it from me?”
“No. I just…we were busy and…”
“Bullshit.”
“Darius—”
“I’m not that man. Not anymore.”
Not anymore.
“You’ve killed people before?” I whispered.
“You will never know.” Still seated, he leaned toward me, and his tone was awful when he said, “Never. What I will say is that I made an example of the man who wanted to hurt you, so anyone who might find their way to something they thought they could use to fuck with me, they thought twice. That’s all I’ll say.”
Okay.
I was reading this as the fact there was a good possibility that he’d killed people.
This was not knowledge I wanted, but it also wasn’t surprising. He’d been at the top of his game. Shirleen’s husband had been whacked years before, he was a kingpin, and they took over his kingdom when he was gone.
Darius did it to keep earning until he knew the ones he loved would be taken care of even if he was gone.
Shirleen did it because it was all she knew.
You didn’t get to that place in that world without doing what had to be done.
“Love me still?” Darius asked, but there was snideness to that.
Snideness that was hiding fear.
I stared at him.
Then I said, “Yes.”
He shook his head. “You know the man I am. That shit is gonna haunt us for the rest of our lives.”
“It’s gone. Over,” I returned.
“Really? So why, when Liam always wanted to be a lawyer so he can get into politics, is he now talkin’ about going to work for Lee?”
“He is?”
“Yeah.”
Wow, my boy sure shared a lot with his daddy.
“Well, probably because all you all are badasses, and he thinks that’s cool.”
“No, it’s because he knows he’ll never become a senator when his daddy’s an ex-drug dealer.”
I started toward him. “It’s not that. He’s sixteen. He doesn’t really know what he wants to be. But he’ll go through a lot of things he’s sure he wants to be before he figures out which path to take.” I stopped in front of him, but I didn’t touch him. “He’s proud of you.”
“I’m an ex-thug who fucked his momma when he was asleep and had to sneak around to shoot hoops with him.”