“I’m sorry, Matt.” My eyes shoot to the floor. “I’m going to have to cut this night short.”
“Because of him?”
“Can I just say right now that I apologize for his behavior?”
“So you’re inviting him in here to stay?”
“I’m obligated to.”
“He looks like an older version of the guy in that picture.”
Matthew points to the group photo he was looking at earlier.
“Yes, that’s him.”
“You said he was your family, but it’s pretty obvious that man out there is not your brother.”
“No, but our fathers are best friends. My parents wouldn’t have sent him here if there wasn’t something important going on. Can I take a raincheck on our movie date?”
Matthew grabs my hand, leans in, and gives me a chaste kiss on the cheek.
“I understand, Gigi, and I trust you. Family first.”
You don’t find too many gentlemen like Matt these days.
"Thank you."
There’d better be a legitimately good reason why Knox blew up my entire life tonight or I’ll strangle him myself.
Seven
Knox
I’m leaning against the wall, scrolling through my phone as if I don’t have a care in the world. I don’t even raise my head to acknowledge their presence as Gigi walks the submissive loser dude out.
“It was nice meeting you,” he says, although this time he doesn’t extend his hand to me.
Gigi is standing behind him, and stares at me over his shoulders with a look that demands I be cordial, but I don’t want to play nice. The moment I laid eyes on Gigi again, something shifted inside of me.
Something I don’t even understand myself.
In response to his gesture, I give the dude some sort of grunt and a slight head nod. Then I return to mindlessly checking emails on my phone until the guy is out of earshot.
“He’s the reason you didn’t want to answer the door?” I ask in a deprecating manner. “Or your mother’s calls?”
“I didn’t want to answer the door because I have nothing to do with the business of Masterson and Associates. Any threat against the owners of that business has nothing to do with me, therefore your presence is neither wanted nor required here.”
Sometimes I want to just shake the shit out of Gigi. She sounds ridiculously naïve when I know that she’s smarter than this. Like it or not, if there is a threat to one of us, it’s a threat to all of us. Just because you wake up one day and decide you want to distance yourself doesn’t make it a reality.
Without an invitation, I walk inside her apartment and all that’s left for her to do is follow. I can feel her eyes appraising my body from head to toe. I’m sure from behind, she can’t help but notice how my body has significantly changed.
When I left Philadelphia, I was a boy and now I am a man. I was lifting weights and doing some martial arts training in Miami. My back is broader and my trapezoid muscles are more pronounced. My chest slopes into a defined V at the waist and even my butt looks more powerful.
I wonder if she’s as impressed with the changes in me as I am with her, because holy fuck, Gigi has grown into a magnificent creature. There is no doubt in my mind that she needs protection because every single man within a hundred-mile radius that lays eyes on her will be a threat.
“For the record, I don’t know much more about what’s going on than you,” I tell her. “It may be nothing. I’ll do my best to stay out of your way while I’m here.”
“Yeah, right,” she responds skeptically. “Everyone knows that you’re the golden child. A true criminal mastermind in the making. Of course, you know what’s going on because our fathers are grooming you to take over the business one day. That’s what living in Miami was all about, right?”
