Page 54 of Devoured
“Another security guard, I assume,” I said.
Melissa looked at the man, then turned to Rourke, shooting him a glance, Rourke stared at her, exchanging unspoken dialogue. Then she turned to me.
“Can you really trust this Roland guy?” she asked.
He might have been an opportunist, but he wasn’t a violent man. “Yeah. Why?”
“You shouldn’t,” Rourke said.
“I agree with him,” Melissa said. “He has good instincts on these things.”
“Did you ask him about his ex?” Rourke asked.
My skin flushed. An ex? What ex?
“Why would I need to?” I said. “We’re business partners.” But even that sounded off.
“She died,” Melissa answered. “Once we heard about the takeover, Rourke was particularly concerned,” she grinned up at him. “So he did some research to see what kind of person Price really was.”
“And his ex died?” I shrugged. “Everyone dies.”
“Famous last words,” Rourke said. I leaned back, away from him. Rourke had death lingering on his shoulders, and that’s coming from me, a goth chick who tries to scare people out of talking to me by fostering a look that declares,I worship Satan.
But maybe he was right.
“How did she die?” I asked quietly.
“Overdose,” Melissa said. “At least, that’s what the reports say. She got too much of something good.” My heart sank. Had Roland been there when it happened? Had he gotten her hooked on drugs? “There was some investigation around him when it happened, but then it disappeared, like many of the legal investigations that include him.” Melissa shook her head. “Be careful, Iris. I know you’ve got your spidey senses about this kind of stuff, but don’t let your guard down around him. Price seems like the kind of person who hides things.”
Rourke joined us, resting his hands on her shoulders, and nodded at me. It was almost as if he wanted to be taken as a guardian angel, watching over Melissa, watching over the Dahlia District and me too. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something off about him.
But I let it go. As far as I could tell, neither of them wanted harm to come to the club, the servers, or myself.
“I will be careful,” I said. “Thanks.”
***
When I opened the door to the apartment, harsh house music blared out at me. I cringed, then peered inside. A pizza box was open on the counter, half of the slices gone. Hawaiian pizza, the pineapple bright and cheery on the half-circle. At least the man had good taste.
It was annoying to have my place invaded like that, but somehow, I couldn’t stop smiling. Fucking Roland. What a weird man. Junk food and private shows and financial domination. What was I supposed to make of him?
Then my entire body tightened. Was he high again? I couldn’t stand that. I had done enough drugs in my youth to know that I wasn’t missing much. It was easy to get access to it when you had a junkie mother and foster parents who weren’t much better, but were skilled at hiding it. But after I moved to the group home, I spent days lying in bed, wondering if I could’ve stopped my foster dad sooner. If only I had been able to see it more clearly. If only I hadn’t been high.
Then I stopped getting high entirely.
The bottom line was that you couldn’t let that kind of stuff get to you, not when you had a job to do. And Roland, with the way he worked? Healwayshad work to do.
I pushed open the door to the office. “Are you—” I started, but then my words were drowned out by the sound. Portable speakers were blaring music in the security office, but he actually was peering at a laptop, withglasseson. “You’re working?” I tried to yell. He glanced at me but tapped his ears.
“Can’t hear you,” he shouted.
I frantically looked at the speakers, then slammed the Off button. “I said, ‘you’re working.’” I let out a long breath, glancing around us. “With that music, I expected you to be screwing around, I guess.”
“Technically, thisismy office,” he said, his eyes still trained on the spreadsheet in front of him. Then he closed it and turned to me. I blinked. Those glasses. He looked nerdy and sweet, and so hot. “You met with—” he put a finger to his chin, searching for the name.
“Melissa,” I said.
“Right. Melissa.” He adjusted the glasses on his nose. “Did it go as well as you had expected?”
