9. Rhaim

9

RHAIM

I was in the stable working on Gracie's hooves with a knife the next day when I heard the crunch of unfamiliar tires on my gravel and braced.

Killing me was one thing, but if anyone hurt Gracie—I let go of her hoof and went for the tack room, lifting up a board I'd purposefully kept loose, so that I could get at a combination lock box underneath holding a Glock 19, and then carefully peered outside.

Nero Ferreo was getting out of a car by himself.

Alone.

I supposed I should feel honored. I tucked the gun into my waistband, pulled my flannel over it, and shoved the hoof knife up my sleeve, before coming out of the stable seemingly empty handed.

"Figures," Nero said, eyeing the structure behind me.

Because the first time I'd met him, I'd been a stableboy. One of a fleet of semi-urchins that did what we were told around the racetrack on weekend race days for scraps from the concession stands and twenty-dollar bills if we were lucky. I'd gone to sleep in a stall, wanting to keep my money away from my drunken father to give to my mother in the morning, and when I'd heard a fight break out I'd come running, without a lick of self-preservation, just in time to get spattered with a stranger's blood—and see Nero Ferreo standing over a newly dead body, breathing hard and holding a knife in his hand.

Underneath the bare bulb light of the stable his eyes had looked practically black as they'd shifted to me, and he said just two words. "You in?"

I wanted to live. How could I not be?

But after that, there was no going back—and I'd worked my way up with him, through the horses, to the docks, to large-scale money laundering.

Everything in my life leading to this one moment here, and Nero brushing impatiently around me, walking into my stable by his lonesome.

I jogged after him and caught Gracie giving him a once over with her ears flattened back. He clucked at her though, and she got over it, suddenly more curious about the state of his pockets than the intrusion of his sharply scented cologne.

"I'd forgotten she was such a good-looking horse," he said, running his hands across the well-brushed fur over her withers. He'd been a horse man too, once upon a time. Then he caught sight of the floorboard I hadn't had time to replace. "Expecting someone?"

I shrugged one shoulder. "In our line of work, you never know."

"Indeed."

It wasn't worth pretending anymore. "Come to put me out to pasture too?"

Nero looked sharply at me. "You think I'm going to kill you, just because you have my daughter cleaning toilets?" He blew air through pursed lips, sounding not unlike a frustrated stallion. "A fact she didn't tell me, by the way—it wasn't until HR realized they were going to be writing her name on checks that they contacted me and asked me what the fuck it was she'd been doing for the company." He turned and walked away from Gracie and toward me. "Don't get me wrong, I did think about killing you before that, just for being such a pissbaby when you left town. Did you entirely forget about the Frazetta meeting?"

I hadn't forgotten—I just didn't care. "No."

"So, what, you wanted to lash out at me? But instead of taking it to me, like a man, you took it out on my little girl?" Nero's head tilted as his eyes squinted, telegraphing obscenities.

And that was the instant I knew—Lia hadn't told him a goddamned thing.

"Maybe," I confessed.

"You and your stupid fucking pride, Rhaim," he said, gravely shaking your head. "It's going to get you killed someday—and I can't believe you didn't think to come to me, first."

"You sounded pretty certain of things in my office," I snapped.

"It was ten-fucking-thirty a.m.," he complained, palming the lower half of his face in exasperation. "You of all people should know I never make any business decisions before lunch."

Because he was often hungover—that was a fact. He'd been drinking way too much lately; it was making him look tired and thin.

"Look, get your head out of your ass and come back. We can still make this deal happen. We'll tell them your appendix burst or something?—"

"Come back to teach her?" I asked, my voice rising. "Everything I know?" I said, in a fair imitation of him the other morning.

Nero looked at me blankly, and then barked a laugh, tossing his head back so that the burn scars on his neck shone beneath the barn light. "Jesus Christ, Rhaim, no. Fuck no—I just need you to keep her out of my hair. Lia's too smart for her own good—she was valedictorian of her program—did she tell you that?" he asked, and I shook my head as he abruptly continued. "I made the mistake of letting her finish too much schooling. She's smart, but she's crazy—just like her mother. But you and I both know she's not going to ever run the company. Come on now," he said, lowering both his brows and his voice. "You know who've dealt with and what we've done," he said, with a snort. "She doesn't have the stomach for our past, or the endurance for our future."

I blinked as his confession continued.

"Just—show her some of the clean shit. Maybe let her pretend to run the distillery. I'll get her married off here in a few months—maybe I'll make that a part of her dowry." He paused to consider that before looking me in the eyes. "Just babysit her for me, until I can sort through the best angles—but by this time next year, she'll be knocked up, and the word ‘office' won't even be in her vocabulary."

"Really?" I said, without thinking about my personal wellbeing.

"Of course," he snapped. "I want some grandkids before I get too old to enjoy them. Alonzo shouldn't get to have all the fun."

I didn't point out that the only reason Alonzo was the man of his household was because Nero had sent his kid off to die eight thousand miles away. It had been a hazard for most of us, for a decade or more, until it became more lucrative to fuck people over inside a boardroom than underneath the table.

But I knew all about Nero's obsession for having a male heir to pass off his company to. He was almost as bad as Henry the Eighth—Lia's mother had been his fourth wife.

And I could actually remember being worried about what would happen to me, if she were a boy, before she'd been born.

"Get your ass home and be at your desk on Monday, bestiola," he said, turning on his heel in the dirt. "And we'll pretend none of this ever happened." I watched him walk across the field, and it occurred to me that Nero Ferreo would've never considered breaking up a twenty-thousand dollar suit to help a girl protect her honor—he'd have just shoved a wad of hundreds in her pussy to help cover up the gap.

"Stupid, prideful, fucker," I heard him mutter, shaking his head gravely, as he made it through the pasture gate.

Well.

I was two of those things, at least.

There didn't seem any point in racing back to town during Friday rush hour, especially seeing as I'd already practically made myself nocturnal. It was just as easy to log onto my accounts from here and start sending out somewhat apologetic emails declaring a health emergency of a personal nature—just enough to give me some retroactive grace for falling off the planet.

And while I tried to make myself sleep that night, so I could go back to being whatever schedule passed for normal, I couldn't help it—around 3 a.m. I woke up all on my own, thinking about Lia, in my moonlit, breeze-caressed bedroom.

Because by now it was a habit.

Same for the hard on that came with the thought of her.

And what they didn't teach you in grief counseling—not like I actually went, more like when I was googling "how to move on" late at night, in somewhat drunken desperation—was how awkward it was to have boners for strange women you don't actually know in front of professionally painted portraits of your dead wife.

The only thing that made it tolerable was knowing that it would make Isabelle laugh her head off if her ghost could see.

I lay there in the dark, staring up at the ceiling for longer than I cared to admit, then got up, kissing my fingers before tapping them on Isabelle's oil-painted cheek, before heading downstairs.

I don't know why I bothered. If Nero had found out about me torturing Lia, then there was no way she'd be showing up for her final shift. He would've yelled at her for ever playing my game and for not coming straight to him.

And I didn't know what to do with the fact that she hadn't.

She had had the upper hand now—twice.

And apparently was too . . . what? Too ignorant to realize it?

Nah, I didn't believe that for a second.

My dick only jumped for smart women.

Too . . . nice?

Possibly, but . . . doubtful.

She was Nero's daughter, after all. And some of her upbringing with him must've rubbed off. I couldn't remember hardly anything of her childhood—she'd been one of those shy kids that liked to read. The only real time we'd interacted was one time I helped her bandage up a scuffed knee at the end of a party.

So she had to be playing a longer game. Some kind of con.

With me.

But why?

I flipped the switches to turn all of my screens on and sat down, ignoring my semi, and started going through Corvo Enterprises's camera galley systematically, not wanting to admit to myself what it was I was looking for until I found it.

One slender brunette girl, sashaying behind a trash can in the eleventh-floor hallway, singing her heart out.

Was she lonely?

Sad?

Secretly putting all of this on Instagram for the likes? I snorted, rocking back, watching her sway and twirl, my hard on slowly becoming more insistent.

Did she know nothing she did for the next few months mattered? That to hear her dad talk, she'd be married by Christmas?

All I knew for sure was that whatever she'd put into my system—this entire week of doubt, decision, and anxiety—it was time to get out. To purge myself of thinking about her. Since I was "safe" now, as safe as men like me ever got to be, it was time to move on.

After—and I knew how inane it was when I thought it—just one last time.

My entire life I'd been around junkies of assorted bents. People who were sure the next pony was their lucky one, or actual addicts looking for one more hit: of hard drugs, soft women, faster cars, or another dollar sign in their bank.

So I knew as I watched her and my left hand sank inside the waistband of my sweatpants, and my right hand lifted up my shirt, that I wasn't fooling anyone.

Least of all myself.