Page 91 of Aching for His Discretion

Micah and Elliot pulled up behind us, and the four of us stepped out. I nodded to the both of them, and we entered the building. The receptionist looked up, and her face paled at the sight of us coming in.

Walking over to the counter, I said, “Where’s his office?”

She shakily pointed to a side door, and I gave her a small smile as a means of saying thank-you.

We walked over to the door, and I opened it only to see him sitting with someone in the room in the middle of a session. He looked over at the four of us, and his face immediately dropped.

“We need to talk,” I said, entering fully and sitting beside the man who was now looking at me in confusion as Ronan scoffed.

“Excuse me, I’m in the middle of a session right now. You can’t just barge in!”

“Oh... oh, did I need to make an appointment?” I asked curiously.

The man gasped as Elliot pulled out his gun and cocked it casually as he stood by the door. Ronan glared at me in anger, and the man quickly stood up and went out the door.

“Look at that… something just opened up. Such a coincidence, no?” I smiled, and he crossed his arms as Nico closed the door.

“What do you want?” he asked, and I sighed.

“To kill you,” I muttered, and his eyes widened as his face paled. “But I won’t.I can’t,” I continued, and he simply stared at me, the emotions on his face seemingly all over the place… understandable, really.

“And why’s that?” he asked cautiously.

I leaned back in the chair. “Well... despite the fact that you’ve been shorting me for the last year on my payments for all the meds I supply you… I met someone,” I replied.

He remained silent.

I laughed humorlessly as I watched him. He looked over at the guys as if he wanted to know if they all were witnessing the same thing, but they were stoic.

“Right. Did you think I wouldn’t notice $450,000 missing? Citalopram, fluoxetine, escitalopram... those names should ring a bell,” I said nonchalantly.

I could tell he was beginning to sweat.

“You can have your money,” he said out of fear, and my jaw clenched as I tilted my head.

“We’re a bit past that, don’t you think?” I questioned, and his eyes glanced back over at Elliot’s gun. He bit his lip as the gears in his mind began turning before he looked back over at me.

“Fine. We do the sessions, and for each one, you deduct from my total owed to you,” he bargained.

I mulled over his suggestion.

“Since you want to negotiate… how about this. You conduct these sessions for free, and after each one, I see a payment toward your total… plus interest. In return, you live another day… follow me?” I asked.

He sighed heavily before grabbing his notepad and writing a few things down.

“So...what brings you in, Mr. Amante?”he asked, and I leaned forward as I placed my elbows on my knees.

Shaking my head, I spoke.

“I fucked up… for lack of better words. I found the perfect woman: intelligent, loving, hardworking, beautiful, forgiving… and I fucked everything up.”

“How so?”

“For starters, I manipulated her into thinking what she knew was a lie, manhandled her, kidnapped and killed three men that made her suffer, made her backstabbing friend switch states, threatened to kill her brothers, and aimed a gun, threatening to kill Nico if she didn’t fix the wounds of a man that was bleeding out in my basement,” I admitted.

He cleared his throat as he finished writing on his board. “Quite the rap sheet, if I must say,” he muttered, and I shrugged.

“Other than the fact that your Ph.D. is the only thing keeping you out of jail, I’d say the same thing for you.”

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