Page 26 of The Tallest Tower (Underbelly Enchanted)

He demands attention in a way Dana doesn’t. His connection to Christabelle, unclear… though I have my suspicions.

But Dana is obviously a work colleague, so I tap her name and begin typing:I’ve gone home for the night. In fact, I think I’ve developed a bit of a cold, so I’m gonna take a day or two off and hang out on my couch. Don’t call me, I’ll call you.

I hit send, only to tap ‘Reply’ again and add:what did you find?

Then I move to Davis’ blast of incoming messages, and sneer at his shit.

Davis:It bothers me that the city thinks you’re dating that lowlife criminal.

Davis:It bothers me more that you didn’t make a statement today denying it. For twenty-four hours until your opposing piece, the world will believe you’re his.

Davis:Perhaps we should be seen out together. It’ll quell the rumors. I know you wish for professionalism, but we fit, Chrissy. You know we look right together.

Davis:Remember that night? The champagne. The music. The toe-curling orgasm I gave you.

My stomach jumps as her relationship to this douchebag becomes apparent. And though my temper has been close to the surface for days,hiswords, the picture he paints of him and Christabelle together, somehow alight me more than anything else I’ve endured this week.

Who the fuck gave this dude the right to touch?

Another text pops up, and all I can think about is that this fucker is sitting there right now, in his home or office or wherever the hell skidmarks like him hang out, and trying to sext the woman who is currently knocked out on my bed.

Your father approves,he sends.He gave his blessing. Let’s stop fighting against what we both know we want.

Then another:I know you’re there, Chrissy. Your read receipts are on.

Anger claws through my veins, my hands tightening around the fragile device that would cost her underlings a month of wages to buy outright. But since he knows I’m here—or rather, he knows he has an audience—and since he asked so nicely, I tap the screen to reply to him, ignoring Dana’s response as it pops down from the top.

Davis, your micropenis doesn’t satisfy me. I’m not sure which toe-curling orgasm you refer to, as I assure you, it wasn’t mine. I wish for our relationship to remain strictly professional from this point forward. Should you cross those boundaries in the future, I will have you fired. P.S.: my father does NOT approve. He also says you have a tiny penis.

Hitting send and sniggering like the child I never truly got to be, I block Davis’ number and skip over to Dana’s thread.

None of the Malone boys’ birth certificates name a mother, except to saySusan Smith, which I think we can safely assume is false. It’s common knowledge each son had a different mother, and common sense says Timothy Malone didn’t find five different women with the same name.

Then another text:However, we can work our way back and try to guess who each mother is based on when she was reported to be linked with Timothy. Some of them overlapped, but it should be a reasonably simple task to, at the very least, collate a list of women and go from there.

And a third:I’m not surprised you’re not feeling well. You don’t sleep enough, you eat too few calories, and that Beguile nonsense today was unnecessarily stressful. In fact, staying home is probably exactly what you should do. If you’d like me to join you so we can keep working, I’m only a call away. I’ll check in with you tomorrow to make sure you’re okay.

She doesn’t ask for a response—and she seems nice enough, excluding the bit where she’s digging into my life—so I don’t reply, and I definitely don’t talk shit about her dick.

Finally locking the screen and tossing the phone down, I turn on the bed and study Christabelle’s peaceful expression. Her lips, pouty in sleep, and her too-rich existence, though it’s a little less glittery, now that she’s in a skirt suit and not a golden gown.

She might just be a regular, mortal woman, beneath the glamor. And I am a bastard’s son, tasked with keeping the rest of my family alive, and believed to be one of the baddest gangsters this city has ever known.

But right now, I feel a lance of guilt for taking a woman against her wishes.

Maybe she really is sick and stressed, like the story I made up for Dana. And maybe her current condition is legitimately my fault, seeing as how her colleague brought up the article.

Well, now I’ve compounded the issue by drugging, kidnapping, binding her to my bed, and isolating her from anyone who might give a shit about her.

Oops.

Not one of my finest moments.

7

CHRISTABELLE

HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT

---