CHAPTER 1
Twenty years ago
Philadelphia
Ash Riley
“Oi, what’s the goddamn holdup?” I yelled down toward the sidewalk. “We still don’t have a midrail on fourth!”
“Your old man left!” Davey hollered back.
I widened my arms. “That doesn’t answer my fuckin’ question, man!”
But where the fuck had Dad gone off to? He’d told me just last night I wasn’t ready to end my apprenticeship yet, and now he’d left me alone with his crew? In triple-digit heat in the middle of fucking Philly?
“There’s somethin’ goin’ on inside!” Garcia yelled. “They stopped construction, and someone wants to talk to you!”
Oh, for the love of?—
I grabbed my discarded tee and tucked it into my belt, then started climbing down four flights of scaffolding—when all Iwanted was to hit the nearest pool. I bet my brother wasn’t sick at all. He was probably over at our folks’ place enjoying said pool.
Once I was back to ground level, Garcia filled me in while I wiped sweat off my forehead and headed to the entrance of the office building. I didn’t know what he meant by construction stopping, because approximately fourteen million power tools were currently running and quite possibly making this the loudest neighborhood in the city.
But Garcia explained that the problem concerned the offices near the front of the building, and several people working in there had complaints. One of them wanted to talk to “whoever’s in charge” too.
“Are they fucking joking?” I asked incredulously. “Did they think fixin’ the entire exterior and the lobby of an old building was gonna be quiet? And for the record, I’m not in charge. We’re the quietest crew around for miles.”Weweren’t doing any construction.
“I don’t know what to tell you, man.” He shrugged, and he pointed toward the elevators. “One of the other guys told me to get the ‘loud, shirtless fucker shouting outside the windows on the fourth floor.’”
I rolled my eyes and stepped into the car.
Go figure, Garcia smirked and stayed in the lobby.
Whatever. I didn’t need to defend myself to nobody. I was following orders. And if someone bitched about shit being loud right now, they didn’t need to talk to a lowly apprentice working for his old man’s scaffolding business. They needed to talk to the contractors or whoever owned the building.
The elevator dinged on the fourth floor, and I stepped out, only to crash into a lanky suit guy.
“Shit, my bad?—”
“Oh my God, I’m sorry,” he blurted out and stumbled back. He pushed up his glasses and widened his eyes—and lemme tell ya, those eyes wandered. He looked to be my age, maybe a little younger.
He was hot, in that dorky yuppie way. Dark hair, a little wavy, warm features, blue eyes. Nice, cut jaw.
I flexed a little bit. That was an eight-pack, not six. They deserved all the attention.
“Wait, it’s you.” He narrowed his eyes next. “You’re the guy screaming outside my boss’s office window.”
I lifted my brows and held the elevator doors open when they tried to close. “First of all, I don’t fuckin’ scream unless the Eagles are losing?—”
“In other words, you’re a screamer.”
Whoa. Was this suit giving me hate-speech attitude?
It was my turn to narrow my eyes. “If I were you, I wouldn’t piss off the guy you need something from in order to please your dumbass boss. And on that note, what the hell is he expectin’? For the building to be renovatedquietly?”
That made the yuppie glare, and he pointed down the hallway. “Sheis currently consoling a wife who just lost her husband to cancer.Allher patients have suffered trauma or are drowning in grief, and there you are, right outside her window, shouting about midrails, toeboards, and couplers—whatever the fuck that is—and it’s as if you’re physically unable of uttering a single sentence without saying motherfucker, bitch-ass shit, and goddammit.”
Fuck me, he was getting hotter by the second.
