Page 6 of Her Boss

Sure, on occasion, I’d had reason to question my vocational choice—but the money and the thrill always ensured those moments were fleeting.

Could I have misgivings about what I did, sometimes? I’d be an evil asshole if I didn’t, right? Was I truly immoral? Not at all. I could discern right from wrong, even when it was fiendishly complicated.

Was I a mercenary son of a bitch though? You bet your fucking ass. I’d help nearly anyone—if the price was right.

My endeavors didn’t allow for much of a personal life. Never had. Married to my job was one way of looking at it, I supposed. It wasn’t as if I had ‘office hours’ or anything remotely resembling a nine-to-five schedule.

‘On call’ was the understatement of the century for me.

The fact that I hadn’t had a serious relationship in years didn’t actually bother me all that much. It wasn’t that I couldn’t scare up any pussy—there was more than enough in my life if I needed it. But finding someone I could actually love? In the way I needed?

Those were probably unicorns. I was fairly convinced that sort of girl just didn’t exist.

It wasn’t that I blamed the women in my life for that either, not at all. I mean who would sign up to be, basically, a sort of humbled plaything slash serving girl? The only ones likely to be open to that were the sort that charged by the hour.

Sure, I’d had dalliances over the years with various women, some more interesting than others, but none of them had been anything beyond temporary distractions.

Did I want more? Of course. But what I had was good enough for an asshole like me.

Mostly.

My door opened, the hinge creaking a tiny bit. Chloe’s head poked in, the bemused curve of her lips indicating she’d taken my warning about as seriously as most of my directives. She’d look into it. Maybe. Sort of.

But in the end, if she knew I was truly worked up about something, she’d fall into line. Always did. It’s the only reason she’d lasted as long as she had.

“I just remembered what I’d come in to tell you. The intern starts today.”

I dropped my pen onto the desktop. “Ah, shit. Today? What happened to Friday?”

“Chester asked us to take her earlier. Said you’d okay it.” Chloe lowered her chin. “Do I need to tell him you didn’t?”

“I can’t believe I agreed to do this.” I glared at her, gritting my teeth, but nodded.

“Maybe she’ll be a flake, and you can send her packing?” Chloe offered, though the glint in her eye was more than a little mischievous. I suspected she rather liked the idea of someone else getting their ear chewed by the boss man.

“Not that simple, unfortunately. She’d really have to fuck something up before I could get rid of her. When it comes to Chester… it’s gonna take something bulletproof to justify it. Maybe literally.”

The man didn’t like ‘no’ in even the best of circumstances. Mob enforcers tended to be like that, even the more level-headed ones like Chester Nantes. I suspected that when it came to his own niece though, I was going to need a helluva lot better reason than ‘she just isn’t going to work out.’

The muted sound of the phone ringing from Chloe’s desk drifted in. She was a smart-ass, but she was actually good at her job. Fortunately for her.

Doing Chester a favor wasn’t all out of the goodness of my heart though. Nantes had connections to both bosses and crooked career politicians. He had his hand in finance too, especially crypto-focused dark money laundering, something that had exploded in the past couple of years.

Though Nantes was capable of hideous violence, the man was one of the sanest criminals I’d ever encountered. Men of his sort tended to be sociopathic meatheads, but Chester played decidedly against type. He was intelligent and cunning. And he knew that his ends could often be achieved through wily, tactical negotiation just as much, if not more, than they could via strong-arm savagery.

A smart tough guy could be exceedingly useful. And Chester had been, on more than one occasion in the past.

He could also be a major pain in my fucking ass, too. He’d been the one blowing up my goddamned phone that night I’d decided to blow off some steam at the club.

I knew the man who ran the place, Marco. I’d managed to make a rather troublesome—but completely fabricated—sexual harassment complaint against the nightclub owner go away with some strategic shifting of funds a couple of years ago. Paid to go away. It was the way of the world, sadly, when shakedowns, scams, and slanderous accusations seemed to be possible at every turn.

As a token of his appreciation, in addition to my fee, Marco had said I’d have unlimited use of his club—no questions, no restrictions. Still, I’d actually had a stupid doorman try to charge me a cover once; word apparently hadn’t gotten out to all of the staff.

Marco had fired the poor bastard before the night was over.

It turned out Chester’s calls were actually about getting me to intern his niece, though I couldn’t at that moment remember her goddamned name.

“What’s the girl’s name? Jean something?”

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