Page 79 of Morally Gray Daddies

For the next twenty minutes, I rummaged through the fridge looking at the food that could easily provision a restaurant while Sonja waited for her lunch order to arrive. I ended up with the plate of marsala that I popped into a microwave big enough to cook a Thanksgiving turkey. It took several minutes of stabbing my finger at the little touchscreen to get it to work, but finally I got the thing going and my food heated up. When hers arrived, we sat down across from each other at the island counter, eating in companionable silence.

After taking an enormous bite of the panini she’d ordered, she made a theatrical groan of pleasure, shooting me a smug look as she swallowed.

“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered. Before she could tease me any further about my leftovers, I decided to quiz her about something I’d been curious about since we’d arrived.

“Hey, can I ask you a question?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Have I ever stopped you before?”

“Taylor Par?—”

She thrust up a finger. “Oh, no. No, no, no. We’re not having that conversation again.”

“Okay, that wasn’t what I wanted to ask anyways.”

“Then, what?”

“All of this…” I gestured with my hand to the entire mansion around us. “What does your dad do to be able to afford all of this?”

Sonja tilted her head. “That’s what you wanted to ask?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

I shrugged. “I dunno… just curious, I guess. I mean, it’s gotta be something pretty substantial to pay for a place like this, not to mention the ginormous Uber Eats bills you clearly run up when you’re home.”

“Oh, ha fucking ha,” she replied with a scowl.

“No, seriously”—I spread my hands—“is he a… CEO or something? A hedge fund manager? Or… maybe an inheritance baby?”

Sonja gave a sharp shake of her head. “He’s definitely not an inheritance baby.”

“Okay, sooo… c’mon, tea?”

She braced her elbows on the counter, chin in her hand. “Let’s just say he’s in… business.”

“Business.” I shook my head. “That’s a pretty broad field, Sonya.”

“The acquisitions business,” she supplied.

“Acquiring…?” I drew out the word, cocking an eyebrow.

“Things.”

“Things.” I wasn’t sure why she wanted to play this game, but I wasn’t giving up now. “Oookaay… and what kind of things would those be?”

“The money-making kind I don’t pry into,” she answered with an end-of-discussion tone.

“You don’t know what he does, do you?”

Sonja slumped, rolling her eyes. “Sure. Let’s go with that.”

The tap of footsteps brought both our heads around at the same time.

“Afternoon, ladies.”

I swallowed. It was Sonja’s father. As he smoothly entered the kitchen, I tracked him, wondering how much he’d heard of our conversation.

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