Kelly rolled her eyes as she took the contract back and put it in her bag. “Fine. I’ll get six weeks, but you owe me.”
Punk leaned all the way over until his face was mere centimeters from Kelly’s. “Ooh, owe you what? You name it, I’ll do it.”
She put her palm in his face and shoved him backward. “Fuck off.”
But I knew Kelly well. When she had dirty thoughts in her mind, her eyes narrowed, and her pupils got smaller.
Exactly how they were now.
Congrats to Punk anyway. Kelly was a catch in the bedroom and out. I wasn’t the commitment type, but if I were, she’d be an ace in the hole.
The elevator finally reached the tenth floor and stopped. The doors wouldn’t open without authorization, and I was the only one who had it, so I stepped forward and set my thumb on the LED panel near the door. It went blue for a minute as it scanned my fingerprint, then turned green, and the doors pinged and slid open.
The tenth floor was entirely mine.
The doors opened out into my massive rectangular office. Directly across from the doors, I had a huge, cherrywood, L-shaped desk sitting in the middle of the room, with the windows behind my chair. Across from the desk were four armchairs, and to the left was a huge meeting table for when I needed to gather more people than just myself or my co-owners. To the right, there was a door that led to my kitchen and bathroom, and a couple of couches surrounded a fireplace that I’d lit many late nights.
I walked over to my desk and sat down, Punk right on my heels and slumping down into one of the armchairs across from me. Kelly lingered, but only to close the additional security door that I had between my office and the elevator. She’d caught Punk’s hint on the elevator that we’d need total privacy to discuss the most recent mission I’d sent him out on, so she was sliding out the security partition and locking it, ensuring that no one could get in without our knowledge.
We sat in silence until Kelly had taken her seat next to Punk and then both of our gazes turned to him. “Well?” I asked. “How did your meeting with Curtis go?”
Punk threw me a mischievous smile. “It took me a while to track him down at first. I checked all the places you’d said I’d be likely to find him, but he’s not the easiest guy to get in touch with, at least not when you’re looking in the typical spots. I finally found him…” He raised an eyebrow. “Down at Aqueduct.”
My nostrils flared out and my blood started to boil in an instant. “What?” I said through gritted teeth.
Punk snickered. “Aw, I knew you’d love that.”
“Was he...”
“Deep into some horse for the cost of his house? Oh yeah,” Punk said. “And I don’t know if that guy’s just unlucky or what, but his horse didn’t just lose, it came in dead last.”
I folded my fingers together. “Did you talk to him?”
“I went a little rogue,” Punk said. “What was talking to him going to do when he was so down on his luck that he was orderingwaterfrom the bar at the end of the night?”
“What did you do?” Kelly asked.
“Tailed him. Wanted to see what he had in mind for a response to his turn of fate.” At this point, Punk fished into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper, and tossed it onto my desk. I looked down at it and saw the copy of a receipt for a plane ticket.
To Tokyo, Japan—one way.
Kelly snaked the page off my desk when she saw my reaction and figured I’d seen it enough. She scoffed when she looked it over before crumpling it in her hand. “What do we do?”
“We could just slap him with the contract break-fee,” Punk said, barely holding back a laugh as he said it.
“Kids?” I asked.
“Apart from your favorite brothers?” Kelly said, joining Punk in barely holding back a snicker. “Just a daughter. Avion. I think she’s in her early 20s. Never seen her before though.”
“She just joined the family business,” Punk said. “The dad’s business, not the brothers’.”
“Is his car bugged?” I asked.
“It wasn’t, but I made sure to give it a tap on my way out,” Punk replied, but then he rolled his eyes. “Look, can I just kill the guy? I haven’t gotten to be violent in alongtime.”
Kelly shook her head. “This is what you get when you try to tame a street dog.” Then she looked at me. “Although, he’d probably be a little more receptive to Punk and his toys.”
“Relax, both of you,” I said. “If there’s anything I’ve learned from Merrick it’s that sometimes things need to be handled with finesse.” Not only that, but Merrick didn’t want me to start sharking in the first place, and if I lost that money, I was going to get reamed.
