Page 52 of Embracing the Change

It was then, I heard my phone vibrating on the sofa cushion.

I ignored it because Jamie announced, “From where I’m standing, you’re not handling either of those pieces of shit at all, darlin’.”

“I didn’t maroon me on a floating palace with you,” I reminded him. “My hands are rather tied as we become intimately acquainted from afar with the coastline of Delaware.”

He dropped his head, tore his hand through his thick, dark, hardly-silvering-at-all hair, leaving his fingers curled around the back of his strong neck, before he grumbled to his shoes, “Fucking hell.”

“Jamie, rest assured, the G-Force is on Paloma, and I’ll make it very clear to Roland upon our return that his attention is unwanted.”

His phone had stopped vibrating, as had mine.

But his started up again right away, and after his head shot up, he dropped his hand and spoke his next, so did mine.

I couldn’t make note of either to him, not only because he was speaking, but also due to what he was saying, and the low, deep, threatening voice he used in saying it.

“No, baby, I will make things clear to Castellini, and I will be certain that cunt steers very clear of you.”

That was the c-word I would have used in regard to the P-word, and oddly, I didn’t find it vulgar at all when Jamie used it.

“What the fuck is a G-Force?” he asked before I could dispute his assertion he was going to butt into my operation.

I flipped a hand out. “It’s a kind of special operations unit, society style, made up of gay men.”

He stared at me like I’d lost my mind for a beat before he returned his gaze to the ceiling once again, this time to mutter, “Fuck me.”

“Jamie, your language is appalling.”

He looked back at me. “Darlin’, you’ve set a pack of gay guys on a bitch on a mission. I suspect in most cases, gay guys can get the job done. But we’re talking Paloma Friedrichsen here. She’s made a living off sucking cock to keep her in heels and jewels, but she is not of an age she can turn that kind of man’s head anymore. Which means she’s desperate. Evidence of that, the last time I saw her, she was with my father, and no woman who is not alarmingly desperate would touch his shriveled ass and depleted bank account with a ten-foot pole. She’s dangerous, and she has you in her sights.”

So he knew about AJ.

Maybe?

“I think she’s actually seeing your father,” I felt it safe (ish?) to disclose.

“I know she is.”

Well, it was good I didn’t have to confirm that for him.

“And I’ve got him on his back foot, Nora. You know that.”

I did.

Jamie had been working for years to destroy his father in the way that would hurt him the most, that being decimating his finances and his pride.

He was close to succeeding in the first, the second would be harder, considering the false pride a man like AJ Oakley had was coated in steel.

But he’d get there, mostly by annihilating the first.

He wouldn’t get there, though, without backing AJ in a corner.

And a cornered predator was unpredictable.

Not to mention vicious.

This was something that had been worrying me for quite some time. It did the same to Dru (we’d talked about it once). But we’d both agreed Jamie was smart, savvy, and his reputation and money made him untouchable.

At least, we hoped so.

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