Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 75289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
“You want money.”
“Yes!” she shouts, exasperated.
“Just so we’re clear, how much?”
She pauses like this is some kind of trap. It’s not a trap. I’m not the one trying to back her into a corner. She came here with the intention of giving me this sob story and extorting money from me. She’s not the one who has a right to be wary.
“However much my parents and granny had.” She pauses, eyeing up the tattoos on my forearms. They’re bulging a little since I’m leaning on the desk with my arms taking most of my weight. A trickle of adrenaline shoots through my bloodstream at the appreciation on her face that she just can’t hide. It’s probably just part of the act, but my dick doesn’t care. It twitches in my pants, giving me fair warning that I need to get out of this position. Immediately.
She swallows in slow motion and continues, “I don’t even know how much it was. I haven’t asked them. I just know it’s gone. We’re all freaking out and trying not to get our legs or necks snapped or whatever it is that more modern thugs break now. It’s probably all the bones. I doubt they’re nice people. We don’t get the family discount for being in this mess all together. Are you listening to me? My granny is an eighty-two-year-old woman! She could have a heart attack!”
I give her a slow clap and stand. Seven minutes until my meeting. “As far as blackmail goes, I have to say, this is quite original. I’ve never been threatened with granny guilt before.”
“I’m not threatening you right now.”
“I’m sorry, that’s right. It’s your next step. Police and media and all.”
She swipes back a few of her curls in an errant motion that I realize is pure exasperation. They just spring back right in front of her face. “Are you going to pay me back what Reginald stole? Are you going to find him and bail him out? I know you said he was cut off, but this can’t count. Not when it’s a life-or-death situation.”
There it is. She just admitted the real reason she’s here. It’s not hard to discern the path this dramatic show traced before she showed up.
She might not have wanted to do this. I’d even bet money that Reginald put her up to this. Or Candice. Either way, a plan was cooked up like a delicious tray of exotic cookies. Something with peanut butter and chocolate. It was up to her to put the chef’s kiss of perfection on that blackmail, but the oven is open, and all I see is something that’s overbaked, and it stinks. Like…like…
Oh, for shit’s sake, it’s Monday morning. Comparing this crap plan to anything is doing any food out there an injustice, including Brussels sprouts, and they’re about as stenchy a beast as I can conjure up at the moment.
“It seems like my son has made his own bed,” I state in a voice flatter than roadkill. “He’s an adult, raised far too liberally and without consequences. If it takes going to jail to get him to learn that there are consequences for his actions, then so be it.”
She stares back at me like I’m the unhinged stinking sprout that somehow mutated in the oven—don’t ask me how since chemistry is wild—and just busted out, looking for gooey, stinky, veggie vengeance. “You’re kidding me. You know what jail is like, don’t you?”
“I’m as serious as a thorn.”
“A thorn where?”
“In a hard-to-reach place that would require an embarrassing X-ray and an even more mortifying surgery.”
“That sounds horrible,” she screeches. “You’re a monster! Don’t you even care about the black stain this will leave on your name?”
“It has nothing to do with me.”
“Bro! He’s your son! I know you don’t care, but that’s cold.”
I do care. I fought for Reginald for years. I made a mistake. I was sixteen and thought I was in love. I was used, played, and discarded. I’ve paid for that poor judgment for the past twenty-one years, not out of guilt, as my parents have, but out of what most people would probably incredulously term a misguided sense of decency.
I’m also well aware that the cameras in here are capturing everything, and this conversation isn’t private for my own protection. I’ll have to have a discussion with Gerald after this. Never mind, he’ll make sure nothing said in here sees the light of day. It will be stored for legal purposes, but past security, I trust this is going nowhere.
“First, I’m not your bro.” I flick my phone screen. Two minutes until my meeting, which means wrap up and now. “Second, I might have been more inclined to help if you’d just asked for the money without trying to extort it dishonestly.”
Amalphia stumbles forward, her desperation kicking up a notch. “I already said this was my last resort! Dishonesty?” She shakes her head so hard that her curls jiggle in slow motion. “Just stroke a check, big guy, and I’ll be on my way. You can certainly afford it. Your office is eighteen times the size of my parents’ house. I did enough research on your family to figure out that you’re uber old-school rich.”