Page 70 of Wicked Tricks

Antoni

“Your mother is on a warpath!” Zarina spat at me as soon as I walked through the door.

“You realise she’s also your mother,” I sighed.

I had barely slept.

After tucking Rome into bed in the early hours of this morning, I left her to sleep and got to work. I had been distracted for too long, and had lots of the boring detail oriented work to catch up on.

One of those tasks was balancing the books for Zarina’s store.

“You need to deal with it! Now!” she said, following me up the stairs.

“You realise I’ve been sorting outyourbookkeeping all morning, it’s a fucking disgrace.”

Zarina was a very talented stylist, and her perky, chatty personality made her naturally gifted at customer service - but organisation and numbers would be her downfall. She was lucky that she had me to do all of the things that she found too boring.

Of course, we had accountants and very capable bookkeepers on our payroll - but I always liked to double check things myself.

Maths and numbers were my strong suit, and because we occasionally laundered our money through Zarina’s business, I wanted to make sure it was just right.BoredHeaux, her lingerie store, was Zarina’s baby.

It was her dream, and I didn’t take risks with it.

Some of my other endeavours, the restaurants, the clubs, the other strictly-business fronts that I owned, I kept a looser touch - but knowing how passionate my sister was about hers, I never wanted my work to interfere with that.

We kept her side of things pretty clean, though she was far from self funded yet.

I flopped onto the couch in my office with a groan, and Zarina followed, closing the door behind me.

“What’s she doing now?” I asked, exhausted.

“She’s gone down to see Diana,” she said.

I instantly sat up, a combination of anger and dread filling me.

“What?” I spat through gritted teeth.

I leaned back, stretching to fish my phone out from my pockets. It had been a while since I checked it. I touched the screen, and it came to life revealing a missed call and one text message from Rome.

“Meet me at the lookout.”

“Fuck,” I said again through gritted teeth, “what has she done, Zarina?” I asked, standing up and pacing the length of my office.

“They were the ones working with the drivers at Belkin’s and stealing our inventory.”

I frowned, “really? How did she find that out?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugged, “someone obviously dobbed them in.”

I shook my head, confused.

“I need to go,” I said, snatching my car keys off the desk.

I had only just gotten home, but I rushed toward the door.

“You’re going to meet her? Alone?” Zarina asked, following me down the stairs.

“Yes,” I said, “do not tell anyone.”

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