Page 41 of Release Me

“And you want to pick up where he left off?”

“Something like that.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” I know the project he’s talking about. The small hotel is just a few blocks away from Cerros and owned by some guy named James Robinson. He’s been working on it for a while now, with hopes of opening in October, but he keeps running into delays because his contractors keep quitting on him. “Why would you be interested in taking that on?”

“I have my reasons.”

I can’t imagine what they might be, and judging by the way Nic’s looking at me, I’m not going to find out any time soon.

“Well, I guess there’s nothing left for us to discuss.”

“I guess not.”

We both stand, and I toss a few hundreds on the table to cover our food. Nic extends his hand, and I take it, allowing him to turn the simple handshake into a brotherly hug. “Thanks for the trip, though. That was my first time on a private jet,” he says, laughing.

I shove him away, but I’m also laughing as I leave him to find his own way back to his hotel. “Let me know if your availability changes.”

“I’ll start prepping Andre on the specifics of the project,” he calls out, tossing one last bomb of rejection at my back. I’m still shaking my head when I get behind the wheel of my car, frustrated with his stubbornness. Something told me the day would end with me feeling like this, which is why I planned to visit Vince right after dinner. When I pull up to his place—which is really just our grandparent’s home that his mom moved out of a few months ago to follow him to New Haven—adrenaline and the sweet anticipation of violence pulse through my veins.

I walk up to the front door with a smile on my face, and it stays firmly in place even when Vince opens the door. His eyes are bloodshot, his pupils are the size of saucers, and there’s a bottle of beer in his hand. All of these things would make a better man pause to reconsider what he’s come here to do, but all it does is piss me off because here he is pumping his body full of poison, that he probably paid for with the money from the severance check I gave him, without a care in the world while everyone else cleans up the messes he’s made.

“Seb, what are you?—”

His sentence is cut short by my fist colliding with his jaw. The bottle in his hand falls to the floor and shatters. I crush shards of glass to follow him over the threshold, my hand wrapped around the neck of his shirt, so I can guarantee that the next blow lands where I want it. Vince groans and doubles over, forcing me to let go of him. I step back, allowing him time to catch his breath, to get mad enough to fight back, so I can have a reason to come at him harder.

“What the fuck, man?” He straightens, wiping the blood from his lip. “Are you insane?”

“No, but you are. You had to be if you thought I wouldn’t find out what you did.”

“What are you talking about? I haven’t done anything besides the shit you made up, so you’d have a reason to fire me.”

I don’t even bother dignifying that part of his statement with a response. We both know my reasons for firing him were more than valid. Besides, I’m here to talk about the only person he’s harassed that actually matters to me. “Nadia Hendrix.”

His face turns red, but he tries to act like he doesn’t know who she is. “Who?”

“Nadia Hendrix.” I step to him, enjoying the flare of panic in his eyes when he realizes he’s pinned between me and the wall. “You met her at the hotel bar after the last round of interviews you oversaw.”

“I don’t remember her.”

“Well she remembers you,” I sneer, my lips curling in disgust as I imagine what he must have said to her.

“You flew to LA to tune me up based off the word of some random chick I don’t even remember?”

The jab to his stomach comes in so quick he doesn’t have time to try to block it. He folds over again, and I grab his shoulder to push him up. “I’m here on business, dropping by to beat your ass is just an added bonus.”

His face crumples, and at first I think he’s about to cry, but then he barks out a rough laugh. “You fucking her? You gotta be fucking her because otherwise you wouldn’t give a damn about a conversation I had with her weeks ago. Tell me, did she cry about all the nasty things Big Bad Vince said to her before or after she climbed in your bed?”

“Actually, she told me all about it when I gave her the job you were too incompetent to do correctly. She’s amazing at it, by the way.”

He rubs at his jaw, and I note the presence of a fresh bruise already forming there. “Shit. Talia did a number on you didn’t she? You’ve gone from being married to a hoe to hiring a whore in hopes that she’ll give you some pussy. A desperate girl like that, you could have bought her for the rest of the year and paid less than the salary you’re giving her.”

Something about the way his words touch on every insecurity Nadia exposed to me at Ludus during our second interaction sends rage flooding through my system. My vision is red again, and when I hit Vince, my fist connecting with his nose with so much force it breaks on impact, the white walls in our mothers’ childhood home turns a garish shade of crimson to match it.

I’m running my tongue over the cut in my lip I got when Vince finally got the nerve to hit me back when Nadia walks into my office on Monday morning. We both pause and look at each other, shocked for two completely different reasons. Me, because she walked in without knocking which indicates a growing level of comfort between us. Her, because there’s a bruise underneath my cheek in addition to the cut splitting my lip.

“What the hell happened?” She shocks me again when she moves over to me, her face screwed up and brows knit with worry as she rounds my desk. I turn in my seat, so when she stops in front of me and grabs hold of my face, she’s standing between my legs. “Who did this to you?”

Her grip is firm and it doesn’t hurt a bit to have her touching me, but I still wince because the moment her skin touches mine, my nervous system lights up. Nadia reads it as pain though, and she tries to pull away.

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