I clench my jaw at Jenson’s words. He’s not wrong. The inside of Sterling’s piano bar, Seasons, has been eviscerated beyond recognition. Where there was once a low stage with a baby grand piano, there’s now a pile of charred remains, emitting a stench like that of a corpse.
“It’s going to need work,” I clip as I place my hands on my hips and survey the mound of what’s left of the tables and velvet seating that the clean-up team have moved to one side of the shell of a room, ready to be removed. “That fucker.”
“Hope he rots in jail,” Killian says as he bends and lifts the remnants of a picture frame from the ash, the photograph inside melted to the glass.
The chain of piano clubs is the thing that my boss, Sterling, threw his energy into after his wife, Elaina, and their youngest son died. I know a man clinging on to something when I see one. One so lost in his grief that he needs a purpose to get out of bed every morning.
Seasons was Sterling’s.
It became a place where people yearned for a membership, to be welcomed into its inner circle where you weren’t judged on anything other than the type of man, or woman, you were between its four walls. Now it’s destroyed. Obliterated by a person with a grudge against Sterling and Halliday.
And I failed to stop it.
“Grayson Global is handling the re-model. Sterling will want to take the reins, no doubt. But we are still to take as much of the strain away from him over this as possible, understand?”
Jenson and Killian nod.
“Good. Our point of contact there is Imogen,” I tell them.
“Not the British guy, Drew?” Killian asks, mentioning the guy who did the original design.
“No. He’s about to become a father,” I say.
“Is everyone knocking people up around here? At least we know ours will still swim when we’re Sterling’s age. Ouch!”
“Idiot,” Killian snorts, whacking Jenson up the back of the head. “That’s your boss you’re talking about. The guy who paid for your grandmother’s surgery and gave your baby-faced ass a job.”
“Hey, I know.” Jenson throws his hands up. “I didn’t mean anything by it. He’s a solid guy. I’m actually impressed, and a little in awe. He’s fifty and getting laid more than me.”
I step over the blackened floor, shards of smoke-stained glass crunching beneath my shoes, ignoring the two guys as they joke with one another. This place needs to be even better than it was before once it’s finished. I’ll make damn sure they do a stellar job rebuilding it.
I owe it to Sterling.
My phone rings in my jacket pocket and I pull it out.
“Hello.”
“Mr. Layne? I’m returning your message about Miss Beaufort’s car. I understand you’re the one who will be collecting it once it’s ready?”
“That’s right.”
My eyes track to Jenson and Killian who have stopped jerking around and are directing some of the workmen and women who have arrived to where they should start. Sterling placed Sinclair under my protection, which means I need to know when her car is fixed. Something tells me she’d be all too happy to pick it up and go out alone in it without telling me if she gets the chance.
“Well,” the guy on the other end of the line sucks in a breath, “It’s the crystals… Like I said to Miss Beaufort, the windscreen cleaned up nice, and the shit, well, shit don’t stick, does it?” He chuckles. “But those crystals have to be ordered in from Switzerland. I told her it’d take a while.”
I stop walking. “Did you sayshit?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time we’ve known someone to take a dump on a car. Assholes.” He sighs. “Like I said, it’ll take a while until it’s done. I’ll call you.”
I grind the heel of my shoe into a piece of glass, relishing the way it pops, then splinters beneath my weight.
“Take your time, she won’t be needing it.”
I end the call and curl my hand around my phone in a fist. If Sinclair thinks she can leave out details like the fact that some fucker with a death wish took a shit on her car without me finding out, then she’s got a shock coming. Sterling entrusted her safety to me. And I never break my word. Sinclair Beaufort, no matter how difficult she tries to be, is stuck with me until we work out if she’s in any danger, and until we figure out why the hell this Neil guy is back in New York.
Exhaling a tense breath, I open up the tracking app on my phone. Her phone location is showing her in her Park Avenueapartment where she said she’d be. I make another selection and a small blue dot pops up on the screen.
“That’s a good girl,” I rasp, as the tracker I snuck inside Monty’s collar shows him as being in her apartment too. She hardly goes anywhere without that dog. If he’s at her place, then chances are that she listened to her father when he told her she can’t go anywhere without me.
