Page 9 of A Very Rossi Christmas
Yeah, the guy was definitely looking for a fight. Unfortunately for him, I'd remembered how to get to that cold, calculated personality I'd been working so hard to achieve.
I bent toward him, leaning down so that my face was closer to his, and did my best to make my eyes as icy as possible. "I would have thought that was obvious," I said quietly. "I'm pinning you against the wall in the hallway where the girl you've been following can't see you. Care to tell me why the fuck you're following Sloane Brennan around like some sort of stalker?"
He actually leered at me. "What the fuck is that to you?" he hissed. "What are you, her newest boyfriend or something?"
I jerked him toward me and slammed him back against the wall, and then did it again for good measure, taking more than a little bit of joy in the dull thud of his head hitting the brick the second time.
"Wrong answer," I muttered. "I'll ask again. What are you doing following Sloane Brennan?"
He spit in my face. The little fucker actually spit in myface. "None of your fucking business," he snapped. "And the last time I checked, she was a grown woman. She doesn't need some piece of muscle trying to—"
He was cut off by the server who suddenly stepped into the hallway and jerked to a stop, her big eyes swiveling from me to the guy I'd cornered and back again, her mouth already opening up to scream or say something cliche and dramatic.
Shit.
I dropped my hands and took three steps back, knowing without even having to think about it that I couldn't afford for her to make a scene. I wasn't supposed to be in this café and I damn sure wasn't supposed to be roughing a guy up in a back hall.
Too many people had already seen my face in LA, if I was being honest. I'd had orders to lay low, and I was doing pretty much the exact opposite of that.
"Just a small misunderstanding," I told her quickly, stepping back again so I was in the shadows. "Sorry about that."
I slid out of the hallway, on my way to where Sloane and Brooks were standing, with one thing on my mind: Grab Sloane, warn her about the jackass in the hallway, and demand that she get someone to watch her back before she ended up getting hurt.
Then my phone rang.
I jerked it up and hit the button to accept the call without bothering to look at the ID. "Rossi," I snapped.
"Where the fuck are you? Donny says you didn't show. Get your ass to that meeting or you're going to have to answer to me, Joseph."
I clamped my mouth shut on the smart-ass answer that had sprung to my lips, knowing it would just make things even worse.
"I got delayed," I said instead. "Something came up."
My eyes went to Sloane, who had thrown her head back in a laugh, and let my gaze travel down her long neck to the edge of her t-shirt, which was draping down to reveal a slice of that red bikini.
Yeah, something had come up, all right. Something that had been brewing since I was seven.
"Get your ass to that meeting, Joseph, or you're going to have a world of trouble when you get home," my father snarled, breaking into my thoughts. "I don't have time for anything else to come up, got it? Anything else comes up again and it's going to come right out of your ass."
"Right, I've got it," I answered, hating how easily I was giving in to him.
Hating that I didn't have a choice.
I dragged my eyes away from Sloane, forced myself to turn back toward the door, and started walking.
"It won't happen again."
From here on out, Sloane was going to have to take care of her stalker on her own. I might have risked my life for her when we were younger, but those days were long gone, and I no longer had the leeway I'd had when we were kids.
At this point in my life, with all the responsibility hanging over me, it was my life if I fucked something up. My father would make sure of it.
These days, saving Sloane's skin wasn't worth risking my own. No matter how much I wanted it to be otherwise.
6
JOSEPH
A MEETING TO GET TO
